With the release of Adobe's Creative Suite 6 due to launch in the next few weeks, a lot of people will be weighing the cost of upgrading.

In my case, my copy of CS3 has become flakey and unstable under Mac OS 10.7 Lion.  But do I really use it enough to justify the cost of upgrading my entire suite?  I use Photoshop and After Effects pretty often, Encore occasionally,  Flash and Illustrator somewhat rarely, and Premiere and Soundbooth not at all.  For me to upgrade would cost over $900.  To buy the Production Premium bundle (the motion picture/video oriented bundle of Creative Suite) outright will cost $1900.

Or  I could subscribe to Adobe's new Creative Cloud service for $50 per month ($600 per year) when I need to use some Adobe products.  Any of their Creative Suite products.  All of their Creative Suite products.  As in the $2500 bundle.  For $50 a month.

I don't know how this makes sense to any of bean counters at Adobe, but it makes great sense to an independent film maker or small production or post shop like me.  It literally costs less money to rent the entire Creative Suite for two years than it would for me buy it new.  And they will probably release CS7 in two years!  Here's the buying options for CS6 and the Creative Cloud.

Need to do some titles and greenscreens this week? $50 and I get a month's worth of AE (and all the rest of the suite!).

Need to cut a couple of industrials or a short this month?  $50 for a month's worth of Premiere, AE and Speedgrade (and all the rest of the suite!).

Need to fix up my website?  $50 for a month's worth of Dream Weaver and Flash (and all the rest of the suite!).

And If I can squeeze a couple of projects together into the same 30 day period?  I don't have to pay any additional for the Adobe software for the extra project!

And if I don't have any projects on my calendar that would require me to use my own license for an Adobe product?  I don't need to pay for it!

Sweet!

Maybe it's some sort of an insidious plan for Adobe to get us to use their software for more projects?  Well, it kind of looks like the Creative Cloud subscribers still win...

The Hidden Hand, a documentary that I've been involved with, will be screening on 8/31 at 7PM at 841 Broadway, #2, on Union Square.

The film is about alien encounters and the people who have experienced them.

More info at the film's website: http://hiddenhandthemovie.com/

I'm going to Film Forum tomorrow, 2/10/12 to see a restored digitally projected version of the 1927 William Wellman classic, Wings.

For anyone unfamiliar, Wings is the first film to have ever won the Oscar for Best Picture.  It also has the best air combat sequences ever seen in a motion picture, Top Gun and Star Wars included.

The story follows two friends, Buddy Rodgers & William Arlen, from the American heartland to aerial battlefields over World War One France.  Clara Bow also stars.

More info at the Film Forum website: http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/wings

Andre Campbell's new book, "Out of Your Own Pocket: Making Your First Short Movie, Volume 1" is a breezy little pep talk for aspiring film makers filled with some very good advice on how to find a script, cast, crew, locations, equipment, etc.

Campbell does not give detailed advice on plot, lighting, sound recording, choice of camera, editing or any other in depth technical advice, but he does give a nice over view of the basic nuts & bolts of film making.  There is a good primer, for example on coverage, and a nice explanation of the difference between tape-based and file-based cameras.

What the book does do, is tell you where to start, what to worry about, and what to plan for.

If you've never been involved in the making of any type of narrative film, this book would be a good place to begin your learning process.

Last month, I got a tour of an upstart web TV station, OnlyOneTV.com.

With not much beyond a few cheap cameras and lights, some video switching software and a fast internet connection, these guys are hosting and creating a bunch of TV talk shows on a variety of topics.

It reaffirms something that I first realized in the middle 1990s when I read Paul A. McKinley's memoir of his WWII service at his website, CruiserScout.com.

"Traditional" media like over the air TV and radio, cable and satellite, printed newspapers and magazines, theatrical films, they all put a lot of effort and money into the basic mechanics of publishing and distributing.

We now live in an age when anyone with an internet connection can distribute their own content for free or close to it. Fiction, nonfiction, video, audio, photographs, paintings, podcasts, webisodes, blogs, tweets- anyone can make them and post them.  Transmitters, printing presses, film prints, none of this is necessary with web based media.

Independent film makers have been distributing their own films for decades by booking their own theaters and printing their own DVDs.  Now they can also stream through services like Hulu, Netflix and iTunes.  Even if they can't get their film into one of those channels, they can still post it on their own website, and maybe sell some advertising and charge per view.

But being able to distribute your own media is still only a small part of the equation.  You still need to get someone else to find it, something that most independents still struggle with.  But the biggest hurdle is to make something that's worth watching- even the networks and studios often struggle with that!

The Hidden Hand, for which I was colorist & online editor will be screened at the NYC Blood Center Auditorium at  310 E67th (off 2nd Ave) at 7PM on 10/21/2011.

The Hidden Hand is a provocative documentary about alien contact with humans and the effects on the contactees.

Liquid Sky, my client Slava Tsukerman's most famous film, will be shown at the Anthology Film Archive, 2nd Ave & 2nd St in Manhattan tonight, 10/10/2011.

Made in 1982, Liquid Sky is a cinematic acid trip about punk rockers and love.

Around 4 or 4:30 AM Eastern time my web host, inmotionhosting.com, was hacked.  Mine was one of many that were "defaced", displaying a crude message announcing that the site had been "HackeD By TiGER-M@TE", and displaying a handful of what I presume where the hackers' handles.

My compliments to Inmotoion for resolving the problem for all of us in a timely manner.

I have to say that I'm disappointed by the hackers, though.  I feel that they should have put a little more, or any, effort into their graphics package.  I suspect that they simply bought some prebuilt package of hacking software on some Russian hosted website with a stolen credit card, dumped it into the first exploit they found and then went and laughed themselves silly over a beer.   No real sense of craftsmanship or pride.  No real effort put into it.  Basically the child like work of teenage hoods.

In his new book, "The Future of 3D Media, Bringing Stereoscopic 3D to Consumers", Keith Fredericks manages to give a good, general overview of 3D displays without having to delve into the overly technical or the arcane.  Mr. Fredericks makes a strong case that 3D in the home, whether by traditional cable TV or via the internet, will not become popular until glasses free displays with acceptable quality become commonplace, which he argues is not that far off.   While it's not a technical primer or text, this book is a good read for anyone who wants to get a better, general understanding of 3D displays and content.

Tangent Devices is debuting its new Elements modular control panels for color grading software at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam.  No word yet on pricing or when they will ship, but family of modular panels will be supported by Apple Color, Assimilate Scratch and SGO Mistika, among others.  No word on Black Magic Designs' Davinci, but it would make little sense for BMD to support Avid's MC Color and Tangent's Wave but not the Element.

http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_element.asp