Filed under: Software, Video, Odds and ends, Internet Tools
The Departed: 'Made by a Mac' gets new meaning
The Departed finally netted Martin Scorsese an Academy Award that many felt was long overdue. I personally haven't seen it yet (I know, I know), but the film has just become notable for another reason: Scorsese used iChat to direct one of its final shots. As the monstrous Macenstein tells the summarized story from a Blackmagic Design case study on the film, filming had wrapped in LA, but Scorsese called for a re-shoot of one scene. The only problem was: he was in NY, and the crew was still in LA. The solution? The crew set up a Mac and "aimed iChat at the video tap on the camera" so Scorsese could view the action in NY (note the interesting use of calling the iSight + iChat setup as simply 'iChat'). A microphone and speaker system were also set up so Scorsese could call the shots as he was viewing footage in real time.[via digg]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fred said 12:13PM on 6-15-2007
I can see it now
Marty: CUT!
Marky Mark: Huh?
Marty: A/S/L?
Marky Mark: Leo is teh sucks!
Leo: Is this the part where we make out in the car on the boat?
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bootle said 12:38PM on 6-15-2007
Come on, this is stupid. How many films involved 1+ conversations using an IM client. This is a non-story, and it's an example of mac user hype simply because it happened to involve "ichat". iChat is nice, but it's not God's Gift to IM.
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Sam said 1:11PM on 6-15-2007
Eh, I saw it, it wasn't anything special. I was kind of disappointed really when compared to the Infernal Affairs trilogy. Definitely a lot was lost in the translation.
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Fred said 1:04PM on 6-15-2007
Bootle,
I found the story mildly interesting, and humorous. Pull the stick out, and lighten up, friend.
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mikull said 1:23PM on 6-15-2007
gotta agree with bootle there to an extent; it was a mildly amusing story, but it's being toted like yet another 'look! mac!!' story.
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basscadet said 1:36PM on 6-15-2007
ssssso, nothing new about the iphone today?
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Jason said 3:01PM on 6-15-2007
This story is absolutely true... The LA Crew had a Panasonic HVX-200 camera hooked up to iChat via Firewire and Scorsese was directing from new york over the net..
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Eric Carroll said 3:02PM on 6-15-2007
I actually used to work for Mr. Scorsese, in his NYC office, as his Mac support guy. So when they say they pointed iChat at the Video feed from the video camera they probably didn't use an iSight, but a Firewire video converter. Hence the pointed out lack of the word iSight anywhere in the description of the set-up. That or the camera might have even had a Firewire out, for the on-set editor, which might have been hi-jacked for this purpose. That being said although I helped set-up a few things like this in the past, I was NOT involved in "The Departed" so I only speak from past experiences, not from first hand knowledge of this event...
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Matt said 9:45PM on 6-15-2007
If this were done on Windows it wouldn't be worth a mention now would it? I think the concept of directing while far away is great sure, for emergency changes like this but not the mac hype. It's too much.
This doesn't make up for WWDC.
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