O'Grady's PowerPage

Tag: snowball

  • Director David Leith shoots amazing “Snowbrawl” movie using iPhone 11 Pro cameras

    This qualifies as awesome.

    David Leith, the director of John Wick and Deadpool 2, shot an incredibly epic snowball fight using only an iPhone 11 Pro in what appears to be 4K video at 60 frames per second.

    The 90-second ad, titled Snowbrawl, follows a young girl who teams up with her friends in a sprawling snowball fight against her older brother and his cronies with a teddy bear at stake. Packed with tons of action stunts and gorgeous slow-mo shots you wouldn’t expect to be shot on a phone, the new ad will have you hyped to shoot your own winter videos.

    Take a gander:

    Still, shooting with a smaller camera opened up a bunch of possibilities that wouldn’t be possible with the type of giant cameras you’d find on a Hollywood production set. That shot of the garbage can lid twirling across the battlefield looks especially great. A couple of iPhone gimbals can be seen, but it looks like a lot of scenes are handheld shots filmed at 4K 60fps.

    Via Cult of Mac

  • REVIEW: Blue Microphone’s Snowball mic

    bluemic-snowball.gif

    The Snowball microphone (US$159) from Blue Microphones is a nice USB condenser microphone for recording podcasts or anything else, for that matter.
    Blue bills the Snowball as “the world’s first professional USB mic” and the sound quality bears that out. It’s dead simple to use, literally plug and play. There’s no software to install and it’s recognized immediately by Mac OS X. The Snowball also works out of the box with Windows.

    With its dual capsule design and unique three-pattern switch (cardioid, cardioid with -10dB pad and omni), the Snowball can handle everything from soft vocals to the loudest garage band — and it’s ideal for podcasting.

    I’ve been using the Snowball microphone to record the last six PowerPage podcasts (usually over Skype) and I’ve been suitably impressed with the sound quality. I don’t usually take the Snowball with me on the road because I prefer a more compact headset-based mic like the Plantronics DSP-400 (which I reviewed in 2005). The sound quality of the Snowball is far superior than the DSP-400.
    One tip: if you buy a Snowball, immediately download and install the firmware update from BlueMic.com for the best sound quality. To find out more check out Blue Microphone’s Snowball product page and FAQ. Although the Snowball lists for US$159 it’s available online from Guitar Center for US$99. Which is an excellent deal.

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