Newsletter - May 2013
Sasha
May 2013
In 2006, apertus° started in the minds of a few with the idea to build an open source film camera. Now in 2013, after 7 years, we still dedicate ourselves to the same philosophy - but the project has grown to become so much more. It's no longer only about building a camera. It's about developing an entire ecosystem of open and free tools for professional film production, supporting an international network for collaboration - who would have thought 7 years ago that we would all produce a feature film together under the apertus° umbrella, and that a company would carry our name...
apertus° project at the Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) 2013
In April, the apertus° project was present at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2013, an international gathering point for developers, builders and users of Free, Open Source and Open Hardware projects for Graphics. This year it took place in Madrid (Spain) from the 10th to the 14th of April, with a strong emphasis placed on Future Tools.
Most small and big projects in the Free/Libre Graphics world were present: Synfig, GIMP, FontForge, Krita, LibreOffice, Inkscape, MyPaint, and so on. Whether you are a drawer, a film maker, an animator, a designer or someone working with anything graphics-related, there were many fantastic discussions here following the current evolution of digital workflows and media creation toolkits. Alongside all of this were developers talks, artist demonstrations and hands-on workshops offering up amazing examples of how artists are working with Libre software.
DIY Kino Flo Guide:
On the hardware front, after tearing apart a Kino Flo Divalite 401 we’ve discovered that it consists mostly of off-the-shelf parts that can be sourced locally for a fraction of the price of the original Divalite 401 unit. Sebastian has been spearheading this DIY project, with a summary located in the Developer (Hardware) area on our site.
If you’re interested in building a DIY fluorescent area light, a guide is hosted on the Apertus wiki, and can be found here.
Throughout April, apertus° member Philippe Jadin has been busy on set with Oscar, Minske and the Picoux Productions crew moving through the shooting script for Vanitas (working title). Between his responsibilities of focus pulling, data tech’ing and media management, Philippe described his role as a “camera operator and mercenary”, in a team where everyone is required to do a little of everything. Production will be continuing throughout May, with steady progress on all fronts.
A small selection of current Vanitas production photos can be found on Philippe’s blog (in French).
This concludes our news updates for another month. If you have a project, blog or cinema related guide that you would like to share with our community, please feel welcome to do so on our forums. After all, our strength and development lies in that which we can give to one another.