Speaker: Julie Gerstenberger, Moondog Labs
5:30 PM: Dinner at Philips European. Reservations required. Contact House@osarochester.org
7:00 PM: Talk Begins at UR/LLE
Increasingly, serious filmmakers and photographers are reaching for the phone in their pocket to make professional-quality films and photographs. The integration of phone camera footage into an Oscar-winning feature was once unthinkable, but mobile filmmaking is rapidly gaining credibility with recognition like the Oscar awarded to Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man - partially shot with an iPhone. The unique characteristics of mobile phone cameras have created an opportunity for novel but relatively affordable professional quality lenses. As an example, the wide aspect ratio, organic flares and distortion associated with anamorphic lenses add a unique aesthetic to a film, a look that has had continous popularity since the 1950's. Unfortunately, traditional anamorphic lenses are too expensive to be widely accessible to many filmmakers. Moondog Labs has capitalized on the scale of mobile phone cameras with a novel optical and mechanical design to enable an affordable anamorphic adapter. This presentation will give a brief overview of anamorphic imaging and discuss the trends and design tradeoffs in mobile cameras that created an opportunity for this adapter. Use of Kickstarter to raise both funding and market awareness will also be addressed.
Biography: Julie is co-founder and CEO of Moondog Labs, which develops novel lenses for filmmakers and photographers and launched its first product on Kickstarter in 2013. She is also the Principal of Pinnacle Technology Strategy, a technology commercialization consulting firm. An electrical and optical engineer, Julie has developed digital and mobile phone cameras, projection systems, digital cinematography cameras, and a wide array of printing, defense and medical equipment. Interested in the business decisions that make technology successful, she later moved into management and strategic planning roles. As a technology commercialization executive, she managed strategic alliances, venture capital, engineering, image science, and project management teams supporting worldwide research and product development at Eastman Kodak. Julie holds an MS in Optics from the University of Rochester and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan.
