Cinemek-hitchcock Storyboard Iphone App

[Jim Geduldick]

Anyone with and iPhone will want this app .
Check the link for the video .

http://www.finalcutuser.com/2009/08/12/cinemek-hitchcock-storyboard-iphone-app/

[Brandon Fraley]

anyone know when it will be available?

[Peter Mosiman]

That was really awesome. Extremely cool app, especially for filmmakers.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

great app...cant wait to get it

[Martin Weiss]

anyone know when it will be available?

"Hitchcock is the first of our suite of iphone apps. it is currently in the approval process at Apple and will be available within the next few weeks."

http://vimeo.com/6030115

[Emanuel A.]

Happy to see someone acquainted in these news.

Congrats Jonathan!

E. :-)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The software looks cool, but when it comes to the demo video, I don't get it... If you have already shot your film and have stills representing your various shots, why would you be storyboarding it that way on an iPhone? Perhaps it's just a bad example scenario used for the video.... Looks like a cool program if I scan in a ton of storyboard cards and mock shots that I want to play with on the go without lugging around a laptop. Overall, I'm not really sure just what to think of it, though...

[Stefan Christou]

:iamwithstupid: Agreed. A drawing or photography mode would need to be put in

[Cüneyt Kaya]

its usefull when you are in a place and suddenly something attracts your imagination and you start to play around with ideas and see if they work imediatly.

[Barry Gregg]

We did a photo storyboard for a short earlier this year. Some stand-in actors, the location that we thought we were going to shoot and we ran through the shot list with digital stills. It worked well and this app looks to me to be designed for this very scenario. With low budget indie projects it's very hard to get a storyboard artist to do the boards within a small budget.

It's great that the app will run the boards as an animated slide show, add audio files and save as a .pdf. Will the pdf file have embedded audio?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

i know a couple of directors who do a storyboard video with friends on a small canon....

then edit it....

now you have the complete movie in a really rough version and can see where the problems are (pacing, staging, storytelling...of course you never judge the perfomance of the actors)

then commonly they rewrite parts of the scripts...make scenes shorter, longer, rearrange scenes, add shots, delete shots, add/change camera movement) etc.


its a great way to find out if what you have in your head is really understandable to the audience.

this is another underreted part in film making.

every director get sleepless nights if it happens that what was in his mind doesnt transport to the screen.


here it get popular after carlitos way and the shoot out in the barber shop. (it had a problem with pacing) de palma just shot some more shots and changed the place of some shots...the sequence is now longer but felt shorter than the original one.


eidt: previz are pretty common today i guess, but if you cant afford a 3d storyboard artist, you get creative.

[Jeff Coatney]

I dig that app. I'll be buying it. Makes my job easier. But I agree with Jeff that you should be able to draw in it or take photos or video if you have the 3Gs iphone.

[Mitch Gross]

I recently did a roundup of useful iPhone apps for cinematography. Check it out on our blog, Cine Technica at blog.abelcine.com.

[Barry Gregg]

What I would really like to find is an external keyboard for the iPhone. It would really speed up working with Hitchcock.

[Imran Farouk]

The stand in actors thing is what we've been doing also, using a digital camera and then just putting shots into photoshop, silhouetting the actors and potentially the area in some cases then exporting it as a full storyboard, this process seems to be able to go with that, although I don't think you'd even need the stand in actors, if they soon incorporated silhouettes sitting, standing or crouching...simple positions you could do most of it by just taking shots then placing in silhouettes, although stand in actors would be easier xD

A great feature would be to import pictures from Photo on your iPhone, so like Jeff suggested, you would scan whatever you already have, put it into iPhoto or whatever, sync to your iPhone, sit on a plane/train/waiting wherever or in a coffee shop and just deal with story-boarding or whatever on the app and send it to wherever it needs to go!


I doubt the PDF will have embedded audio, I don't think normal PDFs even play audio...maybe in the future some new format like a PDF will allow it :D (could just be horribly wrong though)

[CameraObscura]

You might want to take a look at SunPosition (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326069567&mt=8) .

Sun Position allows to quickly determine the azimuth and altitude of the sun for any given time and place on this planet.
The main view contains all relevant information such as sunrise, sunset, altitude, azimuth, daylight time, shadow length factor and an inclinometer. On Iphone 3GS, a compass is available.
Location information can be entered by the user or generated by the Location Services on Iphone/Ipod Touch.
All this for less then a buck...

[Jonathan Houser]

Hey everyone. Hitchcock should be up on the app store in the next few days. We are excited to receive feedback on it and how we can improve future versions. Many of the things in this thread are already on the future version lists. Thanks again!

[Imran Farouk]

Just had an idea, works sort of like the masking feature in AE but not so extreme, as in I can cut the figures waist off to make it look like his standing behind a desk etc.

Rag doll effect maybe? move the arms or legs, given certain points such as joints etc. I don't know, just thought of it whilst I was sitting in the cab, figured it'd be good to make it appear as if the figure was actually sitting down, didn't complete the idea before i got out the cab but figured it'd be nice, say crowd effect or anything you put like 10 of them having their arms up in the air or two shaking hands...

Heh...just an idea I thought I'd throw out there :P

[Jonathan Houser]

Just had an idea, works sort of like the masking feature in AE but not so extreme, as in I can cut the figures waist off to make it look like his standing behind a desk etc.

Rag doll effect maybe? move the arms or legs, given certain points such as joints etc. I don't know, just thought of it whilst I was sitting in the cab, figured it'd be good to make it appear as if the figure was actually sitting down, didn't complete the idea before i got out the cab but figured it'd be nice, say crowd effect or anything you put like 10 of them having their arms up in the air or two shaking hands...

Heh...just an idea I thought I'd throw out there :P

Those are some good ideas. I really like the crop idea. That would be relatively easy to integrate into the next version.

[Imran Farouk]

It's up now...heh most I've paid for an app...going to be well worth it though...

[Cüneyt Kaya]

It's up now...heh most I've paid for an app...going to be well worth it though...

link?

[Imran Farouk]

umm not quite sure how to give the link...

Type in cinemek into the app store...I'm on the aus store...If i can get a link I'll pass it through here :)

EDIT:

here you go...
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=325697961&mt=8

EDIT 2:

Hi Jonathan,
is there any chance on getting custom rotation for the figure profile...?

[Jonathan Houser]

Hi Jonathan,
is there any chance on getting custom rotation for the figure profile...?

here is a link also www.itunes.com/apps/hitchcock

Imran,
I'm not sure I follow you. Custom rotation for the figure?

[Imran Farouk]

Apologizes, should've elaborated,

the silhouette, when i press the profile button I get four positions (including the original) by custom I mean can we rotate it manually? so like a rotation button, we can put the silhouette half way between two positions...

Seems a bit odd I know but I thought this could be really useful for doing scenes with only the background there if you do decide to include cropping abilities to the silhouette later in the application,

No need for 'stand in actors'...have an idea on the spot, take pictures and throw in the silhouettes, use the dialogue option etc.

[Jonathan Houser]

the silhouette, when i press the profile button I get four positions (including the original) by custom I mean can we rotate it manually? so like a rotation button, we can put the silhouette half way between two positions...


Yes, I'm following now. So basically a 45 degree position? I have been thinking about adding this position. That could be a next version thing. The manual rotation ie 3D rotational would be a great deal of code which may affect performance. A facing towards 2/3 and facing away 2/3 would not be that hard. Great suggestion!

[Mike Jacks]

Any way to add the ability to play a song behind the whole storyboard? I'm thinking for Music Videos. Obviously if you start playing in the middle of the storyboard, the song would pick up right where it should be. Great program BTW. Loving it! Thanks!

[Jamon Lewis]

What I would throw out as far as a good feature would be crop frames, looks like the one you have now is 16/9, a 2.35:1 would be good. Looks like a dope app, im gonna buy it.

[Jonathan Houser]

Any way to add the ability to play a song behind the whole storyboard? I'm thinking for Music Videos. Obviously if you start playing in the middle of the storyboard, the song would pick up right where it should be. Great program BTW. Loving it! Thanks!

Great suggestion. I'm going to talk with our dev team about that. I hate to add another forum to peoples list of currently visiting forums, but we are compiling a list of feature sets for future versons of Hitchcock here. http://www.cinemek.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52&p=180#p180 Feel free to chime in if you want.

[Jonathan Houser]

What I would throw out as far as a good feature would be crop frames, looks like the one you have now is 16/9, a 2.35:1 would be good. Looks like a dope app, im gonna buy it.

We are thinking about implementing them as smoked glass overlays. So your default is 1.78 but if you want you can pop the 2.35 crop over.

[Jamon Lewis]

We are thinking about implementing them as smoked glass overlays. So your default is 1.78 but if you want you can pop the 2.35 crop over.

That's how I would do it...

[Imran Farouk]

Just wondering,Any chance on a hint of what other apps are in development?

[Jonathan Houser]

Just wondering,Any chance on a hint of what other apps are in development?

I love a good tease, but we are still too early in the development stage to leak anything. I can tell you that they go hand in hand with Hitchcock. We are focusing on all stages of production with our iphone development. There are lots of good things to come.

[Jonathan Houser]

Here are some new tutorial videos. Thanks!

http://www.cinemek.com/hitchcock/hitchcock_video_manual.php

[Joseph Ward]

Neat little App.

[KETCH ROSSi]

Yeah is def a great app, will be playing with it more then I should, that is a fact, but one of the girls on set She just would not give the phone back :). It surely has its use and yes me too this is the highest price paid for a iPhone app.

It almost makes you wish there was such an app that you could use on your laptop and manipulate images or drawings to create a comprehensive Storyboard presentation in PDF animated format.



ciao

[Jacek Szwarc-Bronikowski]

...and just imagine Hitchcock on an Apple new 10-inch tablet ! :ihih: