Apps
Hitchcock - The best $20 I've ever spent
13/09/09 09:31
Attention iPhone filmmakers, Dp’s, Directors, Writers, Fluffers and all the below line crew - Hitchcock, from Cinemek Inc, has arrived and boy oh boy is it awesome. HItchcock is a “mobile storyboard and pre-visualization composer designed for Directors, DP’s, Producers, Writers, Animators, Art Directors, film students and anyone who wants to be able to visualize their story.” - Cinemek Description on iTunes.
In lamens terms, its pure glory. I’m a very visual person, and often I would find myself leaving voice memo’s about shot ideas on my phone, or going old school and grabbing a pad and paper. The problem with those methods though is that down the road when you go back to review the voice memo or doodle I tend to forget what I was trying to portray.
Enter Hitchcock. Hitchcock allows me to take photos from my camera roll (or on the spot) add them to a storyboard, determine what type of shot it is, duration of the shot, the ability to add extras, and even watch your story board in real time. Hitchcock also uses the ever omniscient cloud technology to allow you to export your storyboard and download it from their website (72hr availability limit). Another cool feature is the ability to record audio notes within each storyboard frame. Hearing your notes while you watch your storyboard in real time is a very useful feature
When you’re done with your storyboard, Hitchcock lets you export it as a PDF and download it from their website, here’s a quick sample of something I threw together this morning:
So whose going to use this? Hopefully everybody! The indie market will eat this up I hope. As described anyone from a Director, DP, Writer, Animator can take advantage of being able to, on the fly mind you, visualize their story. I know I will be using it for some upcoming projects and really think it will make my job a lot easier when I get behind the camera. I also think it will help editors as well. Imagine as an editor being on the set and snapping shots throughout the day on your iphone and then throwing together a preliminary rough cut before you even get to your Final Cut suite. By being able to watch the story board in real time and adjust the duration of each frame, editors now have a field editor when they normally would have sat on set making notes.
There is only one thing I wish Hitchcock allowed you to do:
• export storyboard to .mov quicktime file
A .mov export would likely be a little difficult, but still plausible I believe. Even if Cinemek only allowed you 24hrs to download the clip so it doesn’t bog down their cloud the ability to throw your sequence into quicktime would be fantastic.
A couple of people I spoke with balked at the price, “$20 for an app!? Never!” I then put it in perspective. How much pizza or beer do you by when working on a storyboard? $40-50 worth? In the grand scheme $20 is cheap and the perfect price. It makes the app worthwhile. As a DP and Editor I will never be at a shoot without using Hitchcock. So go without beer and pizza one night and buy the app, it’s that simple.
Cinemek did a fantastic job catering to a market that probably didn’t even know they couldn’t live with out this app.
Check out Cinemek and Hitchcock at their website: www.cinemek.com
-Nb
Editors Note: I used the free app Swissmaker to create the title. I made the graphic and then took a screenshot of my iPhone.
In lamens terms, its pure glory. I’m a very visual person, and often I would find myself leaving voice memo’s about shot ideas on my phone, or going old school and grabbing a pad and paper. The problem with those methods though is that down the road when you go back to review the voice memo or doodle I tend to forget what I was trying to portray.
Enter Hitchcock. Hitchcock allows me to take photos from my camera roll (or on the spot) add them to a storyboard, determine what type of shot it is, duration of the shot, the ability to add extras, and even watch your story board in real time. Hitchcock also uses the ever omniscient cloud technology to allow you to export your storyboard and download it from their website (72hr availability limit). Another cool feature is the ability to record audio notes within each storyboard frame. Hearing your notes while you watch your storyboard in real time is a very useful feature
When you’re done with your storyboard, Hitchcock lets you export it as a PDF and download it from their website, here’s a quick sample of something I threw together this morning:
So whose going to use this? Hopefully everybody! The indie market will eat this up I hope. As described anyone from a Director, DP, Writer, Animator can take advantage of being able to, on the fly mind you, visualize their story. I know I will be using it for some upcoming projects and really think it will make my job a lot easier when I get behind the camera. I also think it will help editors as well. Imagine as an editor being on the set and snapping shots throughout the day on your iphone and then throwing together a preliminary rough cut before you even get to your Final Cut suite. By being able to watch the story board in real time and adjust the duration of each frame, editors now have a field editor when they normally would have sat on set making notes.
There is only one thing I wish Hitchcock allowed you to do:
• export storyboard to .mov quicktime file
A .mov export would likely be a little difficult, but still plausible I believe. Even if Cinemek only allowed you 24hrs to download the clip so it doesn’t bog down their cloud the ability to throw your sequence into quicktime would be fantastic.
A couple of people I spoke with balked at the price, “$20 for an app!? Never!” I then put it in perspective. How much pizza or beer do you by when working on a storyboard? $40-50 worth? In the grand scheme $20 is cheap and the perfect price. It makes the app worthwhile. As a DP and Editor I will never be at a shoot without using Hitchcock. So go without beer and pizza one night and buy the app, it’s that simple.
Cinemek did a fantastic job catering to a market that probably didn’t even know they couldn’t live with out this app.
Check out Cinemek and Hitchcock at their website: www.cinemek.com
-Nb
Editors Note: I used the free app Swissmaker to create the title. I made the graphic and then took a screenshot of my iPhone.
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