mtheory
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Posts posted by mtheory
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I find that Vimeo is a great concept but often lacks in execution. Paid content for example should not force viewers to get a vimeo account but pay/stream immediately the way Gumroad does it. The search still doesn't work, the point of channels vs groups is still confusing. Best thing about it is community...it has become a good version of what flickr used to be...a place where you can learn how to shoot and get valuable comments.
As for Vimeo becoming Netflix....unfortunately Vimeo doesnt have the massive viewer traffic to do that.
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I wouldn't say they have pushed any envelopes, they just made the action bigger and more intense, essentially using Michael Bay approach to action. If I have to pick the movies that have indeed been pushing the envelope I'd point to The Raid series, that was pretty much the only breath of fresh air in action cinema in the past decade.
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Mtheory, first I want to apologize. My comment was unclear and it was rude and immature of me to suggest you couldn't read.
Yes, you can make a short. Obviously. But what if you want to make a feature?
My point is that a filmmaker does not need to follow every filmmaking method the pros do to make a good product.
For instance, I don't record double sound. It is too time consuming of a process and requires extra crew I don't have access too. So, I mount a shotgun mic on the top of my camera, or cage, or sometimes just plug a lav directly into the camera, sometimes through a preamp. And I make sure I do a couple takes as close as I can to the actor.
Is it as good as double sound, obviously not, but I usually get a decent track that is usable and if not... ADR... Which is what Hollywood does the majority of the time.
So, I think the original point I was trying to make is that, for me, as a no budget filmmaker, I have to make sacrifices where I can that will have the least amount of impact on the overall product.
I thought a lot of indie filmmakers do this, but the more I read this site, I realize I am definitely in the minority. But what I find amazing is how much a lot of filmmaker's look down on me for that.
No worries, mercer, I take my words back too. Try not to worry what other filmmakers think, by the way, all that matters in the end is you, your film and the audience. If you can shoot a feature and finish it yourself, then distributors at film festivals will be even more willing to talk to you.
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So what do you do, if you have little money, little crew but a big desire to make a movie, with a good concept and a great script, or vice versa?
You make short films until you have the resources to make larger films. You publicize and promote them at film festivals, always carrying a screenplay with you in case you meet a producer looking for a new talented director. Either that or you go purely through Internet, do crowdfunding and hope you get millions of youtube views to be noticed.
There is only one way to succeed. Use the the resources you have to impress maximum number of people with best work you can do. There was a time when even if you made your own film, you could only screen it to people physically, in a room, etc....now...you upload it once and if its good, it can reach millions. Filmmakers have NEVER had this option before. Ever.
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Evidently we have different definitions of "a real movie about real people." Makes me think you haven't seen the first one in a while.
Now your point is well taken about Jurassic world. What they've done to that franchise, which has a legitimately classic first movie, is an abomination.
I meant this in a purely biological "they-follow-the-rules-of-physics" real people kind of way. Don't make me pull my arthouse creds to prove my realness, now.
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Part II shows you the real meat of how grading is completely different from using LUTs.
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Axel, don't confuse extra responsibility with extra authority, a moderator is not a cop / authority / father-figure but a dude like you who does a little extra community work by cleaning up spam and trolling when other users request so. If you see me as condescending its because you've put me on a pedestal, I'm actually speaking right beside you, not down to you.
Mercer responded to an informative explanation with accusation of elitism...the great irony is that I don't even like color grading workflows myself, think they are outdated and clunky in its current form and myself detest the elitism of the expensive Flame / Inferno / Quantel Pablo hardware crowd. ( DaVinci and SpeedGrade were actually considered to be pioneers in making color grading easier from a previous generation of elitism that cost literally in $ millions, if only people appreciated it ) I eagerly wish color grading workflow becomes easier, cheaper and more accessible, - right now it is still a luxury that only a few filmmakers can afford.
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I swear it is like you don't know how to read. If you did, you would understand my original point was against your elitist comment regarding... real color grading.
But the fact is... no matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you spend on equipment, you are not going to perfect every discipline required to make a feature film, so you do the best with what you have. If that means using those lowly LUTS then you use them.
It doesn't matter anyway, story is king and all the surgical color grading in the world won't fix a bad story or a poorly directed film.
Firstly, I think its your writing that's jumbled and unclear. Start with a central point first, then add sentences as supporting arguments.
Secondly, my comment was not elitist. It's just that you are insecure about your skills and felt attacked personally when I explained the difference between putting a LUT and color grading. Using a LUT is like choosing a film stock...DOPs have been doing it for decades, it gives a specific look to the whole film....color grading is a further shot-by-shot adjustment of color and tone..its about deciding the look of each shot individually, guiding the eye within each shot, and colorists have been doing it for decades too.
These two processes are complementary to each other and are optional to every filmmaker. You do not NEED to color grade. You do not NEED to have a LUT either. You don't even NEED lights in your film if you can shoot in natural light, how you distribute your time and budget across a production is always your choice and really what filmmaking is all about.
In your case I'd also allocate some budget for emotional therapy before you step on the set though...
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Your argument strikes me as being this: I'm a DIY builder. I love to build stuff in my spare time. I particularly like to build chairs that hopefully people will be able to sit on. Here's the thing though - there's builders out there who have done apprenticeships and been working for a very long time and they make these amazing chairs that everyone loves and are perfectly sturdy enough to sit on. Why am I expected to be able to make chairs that are good enough, and sturdy enough, for people to be able to sit on, when I haven't spent years working to be a builder??
Exactly, it's this weird entitlement that I can't figure out. It's like someone is holding a gun to his head to produce Hollywood visuals and he complains how hard it is...as if respect and glory are some human rights being denied to him and should be given automatically instead of being earned with years of hard work. Bizarre.
Its simple...if you don't have skills...if you don't want to have the skills...and if you don't want to get someone on your team who has the skills...then don't worry about expectations, I doubt anyone will expect much from you.
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I had to like this comment because I have no idea what you're talking about? I never said anyone owes me anything, nor did I ask for anything. I was merely explaining my opinion on some notion that an indie filmmaker, specifically no/low budget, must wear the hat of producer, director, cinematographer, screenwriter, editor, colorist, art director, actor, sound designer, grip, gaffer, food services, etc. To think you can master every aspect of this collaborative media is insane, yet no/low budget filmmakers are held up to the same standards as big budget productions and the professional craftsmen that produce those films. The idea is unfair to the indie filmmaker and it is offensive to the professional craftsmen that spent years honing their craft.
You complained about being "expected to have the same level of quality" as big budget productions. By whom? Who is pressuring you?
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Yes, I don't doubt this. But if someone is a brilliant 'surgeon', and this is his only calling, would he then grade in the CC embedded *Speed*grade anyway? He then will have one of those hardware suites with elitist software, the names of which are seldom uttered, because they cost $100.000 and much more (hardware calibrated reference monitors, a full cinema projector if he grades for the big screen, control panels that even Mr. Chekov ate his heart out). The protocol by which the colorist gets access to the footage from old AVID could as well be carved in stone, compared to this 'workflow' Adobes dynamic link really is already an all-in-one-solution.
Why not? Not every surgeon is a millionaire, so a professional colorist might work with expensive hardware at his full-time job at a post company, and cheaper/no-hardware at home for freelance gigs, but he/she will still use SpeedGrade or DaVinci as software because thats where the core skill is.
I think you are overestimating Adobe Dynamic Link....you may edit a short film or a music video with ease on it, but try anything really complex and it becomes unworkable. This is why large projects still use XML and EDL formats, because they work.
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Your point would hold more weight if the original fast and furious wasn't an awful movie. At least the new ones have spectacle. Way more than I can say about the franchise before Fast 5
The original Fast and Furious was basically a cop show about a guy infiltrating an illegal racing gang and bonding with them in the process, essentially a bad "Pointbreak" with cars, but at least it was a real movie about real people.
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No, no, I don't mean fantastic plotlines like King Kong or time travel, I love em...my point is how HUMANS are increasingly handled in movies now...there is a tendency now to make every protagonist a superhero with superhero powers...even looking back at traditional larger-than-life characters like James Bond and Indiana Jones and even Rambo, they were exaggerated but ultimately they had human limits...
From a storytelling point of view...it's important for the element of danger to remain in the film for you to really be invested in the action...superhero films don't follow those rules...that is FINE, we expect Superman to fly....but why is Vin Diesel now able to defy the laws of gravity too with that final helicopter sequence?
I'm just noticing that the superhero genre is creeping into the mainstream action genre, maybe it's due to the popularity of Avengers, but its kind of spoiling the experience for me personally. -
I think here in lies the problem. As no/low budget filmmakers we are forced to wear a lot of hats.
It requires a jack of all trades mentality.
The professionals spend years honing their craft, in their respective fields, and we're expected to have the same level of quality?
It doesn't make sense.
I'm not a colorist. I don't want to be a colorist. I just want my footage to match and have a filmic look. I have recently started working with color correcting and it is like a goddamn mystery.
I'm not trying to code a video game.
I just want my highlights and lowlights to match, from shot to shot, and then... maybe give the footage an overall look... Depending on the project.
So, I like these consumer based products. iMovie is s fantastic little program, for what it is. FCX is an amazing step up. Now if somebody would make the iMovie of Resolve, then I'd be happy.
If you do not consider yourself a pro, noone is expecting anything from you. A pro can work in an indie or corporate environment, and will get the job done no matter what tools he/she works with. And if you can't scale up your skills then get someone to help you. Noone owes you anything, man, seriously.
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Grading is far more complex than color adjustment or color matching that people do with LUTs, it is primarily working with tracking masks and creating hierarchies within the shot that guide the eye. Premiere and even AE don't have the tools to do such real-time adjustments and tracking. LUTs are basically like instagram filters, they're just there to give the overall image a punch. They are like a sledgehammer while grading is like surgery.
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I disagree, - even blockbusters were alot more grounded before, look at the original Jurassic Park for example, - aside from the cloning the dinosaurs the film was strongly grounded in reality..not a single human in that film ever challenged a dinosaur and lived...whereas in the new Jurassic World reboot I fully expect the main character to uppercut the T-Rex at some point...I mean..look at the poster...
...he already tamed the damn Velociraptors. Its just bizarre.
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1. Get a warehouse.
2. Get a logo.
3. Spend the rest on a sales team that will bring clients through the door.
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When this franchise started it was about kids having fun with cars and doing illegal races...now its a damn ensemble superhero film ala Avengers...did anybody notice that? I can totally see them doing a crossover "Fast & Furious Transformers" in a few years where Vin Diesel is riding a car that transforms into a robot dinosaur, then teams up with Marky Mark to save the planet...
Keeping it real is no longer cool in Hollywood...
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Snyder thinks "darker, grimmer, broodier" refers to the color palette, not the emotional tone of the film. Even if you made Man of Steel black and white, Superman was still a damn cartoon character bouncing around the screen like crazy, it undermined whatever drama was in the film.
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I'd prefer if A7S II was an evolutionary upgrade...i.e really fix the blue light issue, improve rolling shutter, increase battery life. When these companies rush to market without proper QA time consumers end up losing out. The best camera is the one you forget about during the shoot, no matter what the specs are.
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There are no internal 4K FF cameras on the market, period (1DC is crop)
KineMINI4K + KineEnhancer
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This camera is in a tough, TOUGH market. New camera companies are bought when they are at low price levels, but at the F5, C300, FS7 bracket, now that's a hard sell. The thing is, specifically at this price bracket, shooters get hired for their camera names. At the highest end market, no, no one really cares much about the name if you're a hollywood director and want to use the Kinifinity it's fine, and at the lower end market, noone specifies thr camera model. It's that middle corporatr, wedding, business type of video shooting, when you making a vieo company and want to get work, you're going to make much more success with an FS7 that's requested by everyone, or with a C300, or with an F5. Even if the Kine camera is better in ways, marketwise I'd never spend 10-14K on it, just never, unless I work completely for fun and just have lots of money.
This is why this camera wil not be a marketing success, the same reason the Cion, URSA also weren't a success. The price bracket is not suitable for trying a new camera company.
It's something I reallydon't like about the industry on how they really require specific cameras to get work. If you have a C300, you WILL get work in europe, it's a 100% guranteed, and you will make its money back in a few months, but with a Kine chinese camera company no one knows about, it will br a MUCH harder job trying to earn it back!
However, it takes good reviews and trusted people word like Andrew's to make the camera requested too. If it is really better.
Did it occur to you that they might not care about weddings? This camera is already being used for advertising commercials in China, - they are gunning for RED's market more than anything.
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Can you change life exposure by several stops with Cineform Raw? Does it keep the information?
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I noticed that most of the China scaremongering is coming from RED fan boys. They should name their next camera "RED Neck".
- ade towell and sudopera
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Vimeo pivots away from free video-sharing into paid content
In: Cameras
Posted
Some very interesting ideas about discovery fatigue and content shock. I find that internet in 90s seemed to be of better quality...what I mean by that is that the actual technical barrier to content publishing kind of ensured that only the most dedicated, motivated, competent people got through and that resulted in content that was very good and engaging...now we are in the era of casual publishing...where the barrier of entry is so low that people are literally live-streaming their breakfasts and lunches...that is a problem...I don't know how it can be solved really...only corporations can really cut through the noise now, it seems.