On Sunday, January 8, CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a piece on the Department of Defense’s Perdix autonomous military drones, filming an impressive spectacle – a swarm of 100 drones. But this was no easy feat. In fact, the small, fast-moving drones proved so difficult to capture that 60 Minutes nearly abandoned the entire story. That’s when the team came up with an idea. Would a cameraperson who is able to capture a small, fast moving golf ball be uniquely suited to capturing drones in flight? With the help of the latest Sony production technology, the 60 Minutes team was willing to find out.
Using Sony’s HDC-4300 4K high frame rate camera system attached to a nearby PWS-4500 4K server, golf cameraman Rudy Niedermeyer attempted to capture the drones in action. 60 Minutes Overtime, the program’s online source for material beyond the broadcast, was there to see if Niedermeyer would succeed. After many failed attempts, Niedermeyer was able to take advantage of the camera’s 480 frames per second to slow the footage down. With the right person, the right tools and multiple days of testing, 60 Minutes was ultimately able to achieve what they set out to do and spectacularly captured the swarm of Perdix.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More