Xavier Plagaro Mussard

​When I watch TV on a plasma it just reminds me more of a theater experience. LEDs/LCDs are great but I feel like I"m watching an iPad with brightness to 100%. Just a preference I guess.

Am i the only one who wishes they still made plasma?

In my experience it looks just as good as on a native 1080p screen.

Probably a stupid question... but how bad does 1080p stuff look on a 4k monitor? I'd like to get a 4k monitor to really view 4k content, but I anticipate doing a lot of 1080p work indefinitely still, and 4k here and there.

Imagine NAB without BM.
All we'd have is a sensor for next year and a slight reworking of their system (RED)... 2 fixed lens cameras (Canon, Panny)... and 1 great, but pricey C300 mk II.
BM certainly know how to shake it up each year.

That design looks like it belongs on a cool robot!

I feel like DJI, Blackmagic and Metabones need to just be one company. They all seem very similar and all compliment each other really well.
Imagine if you could buy a DJI copter specialised for the BMMCC, with a Blackmagic speedbooster, all in one set. Or even all integrated into one package.

It's funny, without all of the glitter and camera moves it's just a girl singing stationary on the stage. Pretty boring to watch live I would assume.

Why the hell did they put a fixed lens since they've got the biggest lineup of lenses that people could buy and...oh wait I forgot about their Cinema line.....

Arri was in the same mess - they made film cameras and lenses.  And now look at them - they adapted and I think are thriving.  Kodak had the first digital camera patent - if they knew what they were doing, they would have be at the forefront of the digital photography movement.  It was their game to lose and they lost big.
So did Sony and Panasonic and Microsoft.
Microsoft was number one for so long, Apple was about to go out of business.  
Then the iphone revolution happened.
And now look at Apple.
It's sad to watch film die, but it was inevitable.  Whatever is cheapest and most convenient always wins. And shooting film for stills - you just don't get that much of an advantage for the cost - film is clearly better, but how much is it worth it?

To be fair, I haven't tried their pasta sauce. 

​It helps a *lot* for a camera to have (at least) one "killer feature" for it to get attention
For instance the GH4 was first (ICL at a non-insane price) with 4K. Killer feature!
A7s has insane low light. Killer feature!
NX1 lacks a similar "key feature" that can instantly sell itself to the average joe out there. 240fps FHD would be that!

Once I got my hands on the FS700 you better believe I abused the slow-mo.  Had fun doing it too.

Film emulation for video (with noise, hair, flickr and frame movements), plant growing animation, black bars to simulate 16:9, too shallow DOF, slow motion and now color correction abuse. What will be the next video cliché??

​I played around with that and it's extremely cool. I find it super hard though to actually implement such capabilities into my shooting style because I am so locked in to manual focus in video mode. I am essentially terrified of giving up any sovereignty to the software. That's how Skynet got started after all. 
 

​here's the last script I wrote - it changed a little in the final version but still it's mostly this plus some adlibbing.  About rolling shutter - yea - I wish I shot at 180 shutter but what can you do?  Also shooting the footage I had no idea I was going to turn it later into a short film - I started it just for fun. - 
 
The Quiet Escape
by Edward C David
 
I do want to leave
this city but I’m
always half in or half out with it
but I really want to leave it
but then I don’t but I do
then I don’t then of course I do
 
when i’m here i want to be there
but the truth is when I’m there 
in the country
I don’t want to be here, the city
it’s a drug to get off of
 
 
its safer now this city,
new york city
but it’s
more crowded and, noisier
and very very expensive
even a single subway ride costs way too much
 
ten years ago I came here
from college straight to here, no where else
I didn’t like manhattan, I liked living in brooklyn more,
cheaper and smaller and more like 
my suburbs where I grew up
more peaceful  - 
but maybe not as much now   
 
And of course it’s my fault and other young turds like me
who gentrified areas like in williamsburg, brooklyn
 
I remember before those luxury condos on the water there 
it was kind of dangerous or maybe i was just a young kid and scared of everything
but it was more dangerous and cheaper 
 
i lived here and worked and worked and worked
just to move forward financially, my art on hold
I had a script I never made
about a man walking 
through the city 
and all his thoughts
mending, fluidllike 
the war forever fought in our heads
 
But I didn’t finish the film
and now I’m 33 years old 
 I can’t remember that much
the last 13 years at all really
just having some low rez photos
 
 
here I am
now talking into my phone mic recorder
out in the country
with my wife and my dog
and her family and I have time, 
finally,
to do my art.
 
And finally for the first time
well I’m being a little bit dramatic 
but  here I can see
what a waste it all is
to live in that city
 
to fight to survive
when you can just as the cliche goes, work to live
or is it work to live?
 
Unlike that city , I have time here
and peace and nature,
it’s not all candy land - i’ve been
confronting my flaws and 
my pain 
all bottled deep down in this well - 
ten years of tartar and plaque in my head.
but god I needed to do this.
 
I hope I can remember it
 
The precious luxury of all. Boredom.
The luxury to be bored, jesus that’s where
our lives have gone?
or maybe it’s just me and this city virus in me.
 
the constant stimulation
makes you numb
you tweet away as the world fades and burns
 
I have so many good memories of New York
because 
New York is such a 
romantic place, those lights at night.
how could anyone not love that
those walks thru the west village god it’s so charming
Riding my bike on and on and on thru brooklyn
god those nights are good but dry up the next day
and with the trash out  and that smell
and the loud noises
you start to realize you’re
paying an incredible amount of money
for a little plot of land you rent from
some slumlord far away
(not talking about my current landlord
who I love, he’s awesome, seriously)
 
I’m done self-sacrificing myself, thinking it’s
making me a better artist.  no, 
Great art only comes if your brain is clear
and your neurons and heart are firing properly.
 
I got this unique chance to get out of this
shithole and I’m going to take it.  
but still gotta be near some city
and those wackos are pretty lovable
but I see less and less of them
as those suits and young rich bastards
move in, with  their hands always on their phones
posting photos of themselves with their friends
when I think I know they go home at night
and are really secretly sad, a lot like me.
 
We humans spent a zillion years in nature.  With low noise, 
not in a city with  bus’s tire stretching or the sound
of a police siren.
My dog knows that.  
 
We lived in small communities, maybe tribes of 100 or so.
Not six million strangers
None of which are allowed really to care about each other
because there isn’t time.  Our heads would blow up. 
 
Getting smaller and quieter
increases quality of life.
I should put that on my fridge.
I don’t want to wake up tomorrow, ten years later,
in my little prison
with my noise canceling headphones on.
No, thank god for that little dog, he would never let me.  
 
DEDICATED TO MY WIFE LILY FRANCES HENDERSON
 

I never ever understand why a lot of hobbyists online base their opinion of a camera on some Vimeo test footage where good lighting wasn't used. 
Sometimes I feel the geekiness of camera tech overshadows an understanding of using light effectively, and therefore creates some kind of laziness to the prospect of actually using a light source at all. How many people can admit they have bought more camera bodies they can chew, instead of investing in a decent set of lights that will last a decade?  
The improvement in image won't come from the camera, it will come from your understanding of shaping light and composition to portray emotions and messages in the story. Choosing the right camera is part of that understanding. 

Two words: liquid nitrogen. No more noise, cool & sexy 'fog', and they can sell their own brand in a can (dewar). For super high frame rates you can switch to liquid helium, to get the sensor down near absolute zero. Liquid helium gets the sensor so cold it can then actually hit 16 stops of DR. This is achieved by running the sensor in Quantum qubit mode .

From my blog, eddavid.tumblr.com
 
On a recent thread on an unnamed camera nerd user-board, a user, I will call "Johnny-Five," wrote a beautiful little message about how brand loyalty doesn't work in the world of cinematography.
At the end of the day, you have a camera, lenses, and accessories, and grip and lighting and sound and they all come from different companies, from different countries.
Your lights can be German, American, French - all different brands and you mix them together and they work great just as you can mix HMI with fluorescent with tungsten fresnels.  Same with your lenses or monitors - on some jobs I use English lenses and on some German or Japanese lenses.  I don't look at brands, I look at how good something is.
"Johnny-five" got flogged on the board.  "What? How can you say that?  I love my company - it's my family."  This is because these nerds have spent thousands of dollars and hours of time on their camera toys.  Thousands of dollars investing in products.  And they don't want to hear this.  Imagine if someone told you that your car or your house could have been made differently.  You don't want to hear it.  You just spent a lot of money so don't tell me the windows can be switched out with better windows.  No thank you.
But it's important to hear.  And hence why rental houses are so important in cinematography.  Because not every camera or light or lens is the right one for each job. These companies own a variety - and they are prepared for how it all changes.  Ten years ago Zeiss Standard speed lenses and other uncoated vintage glass were not as desired, but now with super sharp sensors, they rent like hot-cakes.  Who would have known back then?
Now part two.  Everyone is drooling about two new cameras - one is named a "weapon" -  the other a "mini".  Both cameras don't exist.  Well the mini is a prototype.  But why drool until that camera exists?
The same thing happened a few years ago with a few screengrabs of a camera named after a fictional mythic creature - which I will call the "Lockness Monster."  It was promised to have 16 stops of dynamic range and beautiful new color and make it the greatest camera ever made. 
I drooled.  "This is it," I mumbled to myself as I typed on internet camera nerd forums.  But it wasn't.  
It had low light issues and the color isn't that much different than the original camera. 
But the biggest problem with the Lockness Monster is the same thing that plagued that camera company since they switched to a smaller body - the fan. 
It's loud - it's on really loudly when you rehearse takes.  This is when you need intense concentration to think - to light, to block, to work with actors.  You don't need a giant fan on.  When you shoot a long beautiful interview at minute 20 it gets loud - really loud - and it's over - the moment.  And you can't focus and concentrate because it's blowing in your ears.  Who would thought the thing that makes me the most upset is a minor issue that probably could have somehow been solved?
The Lockness Monster's fan may be better once the Weapon comes out - but for me, I don't care right now because it doesn't exist.  
I rather just keep my money and buy an older camera on ebay and figure out how to make it good.  It's a lot cheaper to not be an early adopter.  To let other people figure out the quirks.  
Because at the end of the day, any camera that can shoot log - you can make it look good with the right composition, angles, creativity, and grading.  Some will look better, but at the end of the day, it's not how good something looks - it's whether there is a good story, good acting, and if you have something to say.  Cinematography is always secondary to story.  So please weapon, fix that fan noise.

Hey Guys.  Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for the kind write up Andrew.
It's funny, this blog post and the comments about the brand name being immature coincide with my current direction as it is.
​I'll answer this rather stale and grumpy response first:) -
1. The name sums up exactly how the lenses would be considered by traditional photographers and technicians.    
2. Yes I guess it was a bit of a joke at the time.  2.5years ago I started offering the lenses specifically to be used with the Iscorama in order allow a more vintage look - since I always found results from my iscorama were a little clinical when comapred to smaller and cheaper optics which might not have had the sharpness of the iscorama, but have a charming quality due to their limitations.  I never intended on making more than about 5-10 of these.  for a few people who shared my own feelings of the iscorama.  I wanted the lomo look, but the sharpness and ease of use of the 'rama.
3. It did get your attention, as well as a load of bloggers.  Though as far as I remember this was never a marketing strategy, but a bit of a childish joke since the concept was never meant to be anything more than that.  If I hadn;t chosen such a ridiculous name, bloggers wouldn't have blogged it and I imagine i wouldn;t be pumping huge amounts of money into developing new optics - I'd be doing 2 weeks work a month making prototypes for dyson vacuum cleaners and doing occasional photography work.
4. As I've said, the name was never a marketing decision.  It just so happens that the majority of users 'get' the fact that they're buying carefully ruined lenses.  
5. The guys who make the effort to look into it deeper are the ones who seem to be enjoying the little lenses I'm making.  This passion meant they were willing to pre order a wide angle attachment meaning manufacture could go ahead.  No other manufacturer would even entertain developing and manufacturing a wide angle attachment of such quality.
6. Not a rebrand, but I believe the 'brand' will likely soon be a lo-fi division of a more traditional company name.  Since the newly developed optics like the FF38 and FF88 as well as the TRUMP lenses I feel deserve to live within a slightly more respectful label since they couldn;t be further from shit IMO. 
 
   

This is a very nice thread! 
The key is in the intentions. Of course this is about voyeurism, to look what people do normally, not in a staged situation with actors! There is nothing wrong about it!
About the people not living the experience, but shooting it I don't understand them!!! I live in Rome and I see people who didn't watched directly anything. They watched it in their iPads, smartphones, camcorders viewfinders... It's pretty sad. I wonder if in their memories they include metadata like: "The first time I saw the Pantheon I just 20% of battery left and my SD nearly full" "When I arrived at the Coloseum, I made sure the UV filter was tight, format the SD and started shooting".

I like how they also list the third party products used in post. That's pretty classy of them, if it were Adobe: "EDITED COMPLETELY IN PREMIERE!"

​
No surprise there, FCPX is an excellent editing program, especially after all of the latest updates and native support for many cameras. One thing you need to understand though is all modern editing programs basically do the same thing, no real difference at all between X or Premiere, just slightly different how they work/operate

Shooting weddings, events, or Broll for an organization with people in it, I must say, I get more and more tired of people's fear and dislike for cameras. You're an adult, get over it already.
Getting the stink eye gets old after a while. Just because cameras reveal and remind you of how stupid you look and how dumb you sound, please don't take it out on me.