North Korea using Australian camera for 4K movies, footage reveals

NK News ^ | November 17th, 2016 | Leo Byrne

[TigerLikesRooster]

North Korea using Australian camera for 4K movies, footage reveals

The camera is part of a sophisticated rig which can track people and objects

Leo Byrne

November 17th, 2016

North Korean movies are making the leap to 4K resolution with the help of an Australian-made camera, according to a segment from Korean Central Television (KCTV) showing sophisticated new filmmaking equipment published on Wednesday.

The footage shows a 13 jointed, computer controlled camera rig, which can run on rails as well as track people and objects.

While the KCTV footage says the rig was designed and manufactured by a local engineering laboratory, the distinctive 4K resolution camera appears to be made by the Australia-based Blackmagic Design.

“We can now film the scenes more accurately and flexibly … we can now produce richer and better scenes at the better cost”, so we already adapted these technologies to produce multiple movies,” Kim Jeong Seok, a North Korean movie director says during the segment.

The Australian company said it did not have any North Korean customers, though it’s unlikely any direct sales would breach any sanctions.

[TigerLikesRooster]

This kind of episode provides us with a window to Kim's mind, showing what Kim's priorities are. He is not happy that N. Korea looks shabby to his eyes or outsiders'. So he wants to make glitzy and fashionable things he sees while going out: high rise buildings, amusement parks, nurseries, and airports. He wants to see modern high-rise apartment buildings in Pyongyang, spending enormous sum of money from his cash-strapped country's treasury. It would make him feel good watching them instead of old shabby Soviet-style apartments, but how many of them would afford to live there? He rebuilt Pyongyang's international airport to look as good as any airports in other economically prospering countries, but how many people are using them? They don't have large number of foreign tourists or N. Koreans coming in and out of the country.

This is like trying to dress up a poor starving man in old worn-out suits by giving him a new trendy suit jacket, and pass him as a well-to-do businessman. He is not interested in giving the man opportuniies to earn enough money to have nice meals three times a day and afford to buy new suits. His countrymen continue to rot in misery.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The Nork propaganda is going to look gorgeous in 4K UHD. Too bad they forgot to import 4K TVs. Maybe Samsung will be happy to sell them some...and arrange for them to explode like all their other products.

[Pearls Before Swine]

The Nork propaganda is going to look gorgeous in 4K UHD.

That propaganda is for display in public places and for export. The shortage of UHD in the home doesn't really matter. It's all Kim, every day Kim, 24/7.

[Jonty30]

There might be tourists going in...

[TigerLikesRooster]

Well, a cheaper and more effective way is to recruit a suicide bomber posing as an Al-jazeera cameraman, arrange an interview with Kim, and make him set off a bomb hidden inside his portable TV camera. Jihadis once did it to take out their enemy and then-American ally Ahmad Shah Masood in Afghanistan.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yeah, but what’s the fun in that? We wouldn’t be able to crack Samsung jokes.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Correction: opportuniies —> opportunities

[AdmSmith]

Continuation of this:

But South Korea's most celebrated film director and his film-star wife were not so lucky. Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee were both snatched in Hong Kong. A similar ruse was used to that tried with the pianist - the lure of meeting in a remote house. The couple spent eight years in North Korea making films there before finally escaping.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31628415

More here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abduction_of_Shin_Sang-ok_and_Choi_Eun-hee