Hi, guys, man have we been busy since our last update! For starters, we attended NAB 2015 and saw all kinds of really cool stuff. Much of it has been discussed across the web with many big announcements still being talked about, namely RED Digital Cinema’s new 8K Weapon camera and Blackmagic Designs’ new low-cost 4.6K URSA offerings. We have photos from the convention but haven’t gotten around to upload them lately due to all of our other developments. We’ll be posting a big photo update on the Babs Do site as well as our Facebook page soon though.

Now, our first big development! After many years of outspoken support and intense study in the subject, we have now officially adopted 4K as our main shooting format for all of our live action productions going forward! We had previously acquired a Sony A7S for its low light abilities and we have now added an Atomos Shogun 4K recorder to unlock the camera’s high quality 4K resolution mode. So, 4K and super low light capabilities equals some awesome filming possibilities!

Our second development is that we’ve put together our first working Hackintosh computer out of a Dell XPS 8700. The process was pretty grueling and long for this particular build, especially because our old Mac Pro 1.1 couldn’t use any OS beyond Snow Leopard and Lion. Thankfully we had a friend with a current Macbook Pro who helped us out and we got the whole thing up and running in a day with the proper Mavericks boot drive. Now our effects plugins from Final Cut Pro 7 and Prores encoding won’t take as long to render. Just a side note, the only hiccup we’ve had is Adobe Premiere CC 2014 not playing video correctly but since we’re using the Hackintosh for Final Cut Pro 7 and, eventually, Final Cut Pro X, this isn’t too much of a problem. This should also help with some of the stock footage we’ve been collecting and building up for a while now.

Our third development involves our current projects. We’re very close to finishing up a big test scene for our 3D animated project and the only thing left to do is record some new motion capture data and set up the lighting and it’s ready to edit. Our live action project from last summer is coming along nicely as well. We had to do a few extra reshoots for a couple of small drop-in clips that turned out much better than the originals and Co-President Zack Birlew is doing the necessary voice overs for the project as well. Music and sound effects have been gathered over this time as well for various things and we’re having a blast discovering new companies and musicians for our sound needs.

Our most recent development is that we’re writing a new feature film! We’re developing an idea we had written previously as a short and expanding it into a feature, classic filmmaker story, we know. We always knew that we would try to make it as a feature at some point and we’ve been inspired recently to bring it to life. The current draft is already 26 pages in and we’re excited with the direction it’s going in. For this project we’re really going all out and “going back to school”, so to speak, with almost daily reading and research on Youtube and various filmmaking websites to absorb any tips and tricks that we need to know before production. We’re currently considering a lot of things for the project, particularly behind the scenes content. Keep checking back on the website and follow our social media to keep up with our progress.

Writing this, it feels like there’s going to be more updates sooner rather than later. There are some things that we wish we could tell you about but that would spoil the surprise! Until then, as always, stay tuned!