My Rough Theater

What is my rough theater?
Well if it has to be anything but a traditional theater, than I would say that it is just that.  With new camera technology like DSLRs and iPhone 4s cameras, I really can film anything, anywhere, and have it look pretty damn good.  I have been experimenting with my iPhone's footage in Final Cut and getting a pretty solid workflow down which can yield very impressive results.  48 mbps video encoding at full 1080p with a variable frame rate of 1-30fps is quite impressive for a cell phone.  After transcoding to ProRes 422 it hold us well in post as well.  I recently color graded some of it in Magic Bullet Looks and it surprisingly held up quite well when pushing and pulling exposure and playing with color.  I am impressed.  That being said, there really are no restrictions with locations now.  I don't need to rent a camera and take it somewhere to get good results.  I think a simple bounce board is enough to light a lot of outdoor locations, so with some bounced fill and a properly placed cell phone, great results are easy to achieve.
Furthermore, my Canon 5D really takes mobile filmmaking to the next level.  The quality is great, but even better is the lack of hinderance that the camera itself lends.  It is small, very small in the world of HD cameras.  I usually keep it in my car too, so in theory anytime I am feeling cinematic I could grab my camera and roll.  There is no need for a traditional theater environment to film something great.  The type of run and gun cinema is really quite rough, as the rough theater suggests, although it still gives from pretty striking results.
Pushing this even further is the cardboard/3D project.  This takes the DSLR revolution, pairs it with the 3D revolution, and proves that all you need is two cheap cameras and some cardboard to produce results. Its pretty neat to realize the ability that we now have.  10 years ago film students never would have been able to work so extensively with rough theater.  We are really lucky, and the exciting thing is that technology is only going to keep getting better and smaller, which is only going to push the limits of rough theater.  Sensors are getting more sensitive, allowing for less lights, and everything is getting smaller, making on location shooting that much easier.