mtheory

Can anyone imagine Steve Jobs quitting Apple just because people thought he was an asshole? A visionary is driven by the passion of invention, not by having his ego stroked. Pathetic.

Before BM floods the market with affordable RAW cinema cameras, Kineraw still has a chance to gain marketshare by dropping Kineraw Mini to $2K. It would be a desperate move, but one that could pay off in the long run. They have a chance now to use BM's delays to their advantage, it would be much more difficult to gain RAW marketshare later.

Can anyone imagine Steve Jobs quitting Apple just because people thought he was an asshole? A visionary is driven by the passion of invention, not by having his ego stroked. Pathetic.

But the smaller sensor has it's advantages too, more lens options, better DR. But i agree that the main competitor to the Kineraw is probably the 5D3 because of the full frame.
 
Either way, the Kineraw seems like is stuck between a rock and a hard place in this market. If I was desperate for full frame, i really don't see the value of it compared to the 5D3. 

If Kineraw bought the price down and sold a usable camera instead of trying to cover up maximising profits they would sell like hot cakes. Especially with the mood people are in over BMD. Surely they could do that. They could establish themselves right now for the future But this way no one in their organisation will make lots of money and will disappear off the radar in my opinion.

I love the images coming out of this camera and the form factor, I almost ordered this but pulled back due to lack of IS support, will definitely reconsider if they enable it. 

Any day now... 

Any day now... 

Based on how they've allowed the situation to be (mis)handled, and by not showing any leadership, I now tend to think they are very disorganized as a business overall. If they were being deceitful I think there would be a more unified method and voice, albeit one based on trickery. Instead, by letting chaos reign and different voices proliferate, they seem to have no idea how to make this happen. I sense goodwill on their part for sure, otherwise why the incredible price point? But, I also sense an odd combination of idealism and youthful ADD spread rampant through the company, so to speak, which is threatening to undermine their whole project in total.

The flip side is I'm glad they aren't like Apple yet. I'll take waiting for a well speced affordable product rather than one that is overpriced and underperforms...and that's coming fron an Apple user. Apple has shifted to 'giving us less' as a business model. At least BMD, with their similar appreciation for aesthetics, is trying to give you more for less. Their idealism is their best quality. They are making a mess of things like a child would, but at least there are good intentions. Hopefully, they can release a few good cameras in quantity before their business model gets seduced into the demands of the corporate world a la Apple.

to be brutally honest, I could care less about exact ship dates or how close they match up to promises... i'd just like to see them actually release a 4K RAW s35 global shutter camera at this price point, at some point, sooner slightly better than later, because it will put that much pressure on all the other major manufacturers to stop f****ng around and come up with an answer... with similar features at similar price point.  win win

Would people be happier with Apple's policy? Not tell anyone anything until the units are in the store?

Thank you very much for your prompt reportage and refreshing candor. I am disappointed but not surprised about the BMD4K output being worse than the BMCC, this sentiment coming from Brawley as well is the nail in that coffin. They will hold the product for the rest of the year trying to rectify that (perhaps abandoning global shutter) but I'm going to wager now that it's killed by the spring. I.e. no 4K camera from BMD for at least another year, until they can source a better sensor and one hopes create a more ergonomic casing.
 
I have no doubt the 5D3 has a better picture in more situations than the BMCC. I'm not even sure you need the RAW hack to get there.

Criticism will be healthy for BMD, it will prevent them from becoming the next RED cult and keep fanatics and douchebags at bay.

DSLR communtity is full of too many people who are like sheep and only follow other peoples views they have no views of their own -
do your own thing and break away from the crowd
- do someting that cuts through the clutter
- buy random stuff to test to see if it works for you
- you dont need someone to tell you you have to buy something!!
- its the only way to really try stuff and find kit that works for you!!

What you're describing here is not the indie filmmaking community, it's a camera-gear-lust driven movement that has very little to do with filmmaking at all.
 
Honestly, I don't think those video-blog-stars have much of an effect on indie filmmaking at all (unless you consider lame camera tests edited to copyrighted music with accompanying fancy titles "indie filmmaking"), if anything they have an effect on gear heads, but I don't see any serious filmmaker pointing them as their great influences anytime soon. Those indie filmmakers might even know who they are and may have seen a video or two when researching a camera, but most of these bloggers have little to offer (or at least have offered very little so far) when it comes to proper filmmaking advice on how to tell a good story and make a relevant film.
 
Let's be honest here for once, regardless of how much we love the tech and wish for the dream camera to come along at a price we can afford, the choice of a camera for a narrative film is probably the least important element of its making, and as long as these people keep acting like it's the the only important factor, they will never represent "the indie filmmaking community".

I reckon just do yo thing. The celebrity camera blogger thing is a bit embarrassing, my influences are film makers, when one of these guys makes something that isn't dull as dish water I'll eat my hat. Saying that will never affect my career, otherwise it'd be a career I wouldn't want, and I'd quit ;)
 
Personally, I pretty much don't care what anyone else makes as when it comes to what I make, I make the films I wanna see, and talk to fellow film-makers for technical tips and watch movies for influence, and practice to get better. If what I make is out of fashion, fuck it. I'm not a banker, I don't work for numbers.
 
I don't need to pretend one bit of gear is best or be loyal to one or change every five minutes. I need to find me i need to find my voice in vision, how i tell stories and light and compose, in how i make the viewer feel (the hardest thing to do). When I get a paid job and the client wants bread and butter I give it to them, but no one else ever sees it with my name attached. When it's my work I seek to be unafraid, and to blend my influence and my own expression into something new.
 
Most of those who worship are just lacking in confidence. They imagine that sucking virtual c**k will get them some kinda giant career step. It's teenage fantasy. The greatest teachers are films themselves, or the quiet, smart people who know lots and just get on with it. Blustering pseudo celebs who self-aggrandise but produce bland plastic work will be remembered for what they are: salesmen.
 
There's a whole scene of "I'm better than you because X" in film and music and everything creative. I'm always annoyed the kind of clean cut guys who have all the technical kit, love talking about permissions and rules and licenses and so on because it makes them feel part of something special, but then produce bland dross. Unsurprisingly they always moan about kit being cheap and kids being able to create, because they're scared that meritocracy might actually arise. The classic dude with his Canon 1D with L lenses and Zacuto rig (and more money than sense), but no ideas, sniffing at kids with 550Ds. Meanwhile a big chunk of A Field In England was shot with a rented C300 and a lens cap with a hole in it.
 
My goal is, in every way, to always be the opposite to that kind of "exclusive club" film-maker in my personal work.
 
I've even pulled it off on paid jobs, you just need the right client. This weekend I have some stuff screening on a stage backdrop at Secret Garden Party, all shot on 600D. It cost me 12 quid in materials and I used one lens. The world is full of people actually doing creative stuff. The internet, however, appears to crammed full of digital "id" (in the Freudian sense) and adverts.
 
Too many people expect to become great or learn lots just by sucking up to a blog or copying an "accesible" online "celebrity".
 
What they need to do is find real selfless teachers (there are some online), and to go out and make what they see in their head a reality. Use the cheap kit to break boundaries, work with what they have, not aspire to the next more expensive model. Tell stories, shoot footage, learn rules, break rules. Find their own path...
 
I'm rambling now, but you get the idea. The truth will out, and the cream will rise...

Trying to stay calm in the face of bullshit like this is very difficult.

You misunderstood. This is genuinely a thread for shipping information. We have the other thread for general banter.

It only took a year of living in LA to understand why the industry is headed in this direction: nepotism. And not so much literal nepotism... but more-so the broader idea of "who you know-ism". Your only chance of landing a job in Hollywood is through a "connection"... ESPECIALLY in the business/executive roles that make the financial decisions.

It's all very simply. The people in charge are the kids (and friends of kids) of the last generation who only learned THE BARE MINIMUM requirements to take over these positions. Now that there are so many other options for entertainment... and the system has to be reworked to adapt... nobody has any clue as what to do. Basically, these people have learned how to do a "job"... not how to "make films". The couldn't innovate if they tried.

But, hey, it's not all the execs faults... there is a such thing as "workers greed" as well... and it also runs rampant through Hollywood. Let's say for a minute, that somehow a producer or executive DOES have a genuinely good business idea... can he/she execute it? Nope. Not really. The unions are still going to demand the picture be made to union standards... i.e. hiring 8 people for a 1 person job. Why do the unions do this? Well, obviously, the more jobs they can keep around... the more pockets they can take union dues from. And the longer it takes to make a film... the more they can justify taking. Unions benefit from throwing wrenches into the machine, and then demanding you hire "thier workers" to pull it out... for you know, oh, about 100x the labor value. This is why the execs are taught it's better practice to kill films... then to green-light them. It's a circle of destruction from both ends.
 
It's top-to-bottom corruption... and the ones who are getting screwed are the audience, the next generation of creatives who might actually be able to make better material for 90% less $, and the industry/art form itself. The film execs want million dollar salaries for having nothing but their arbitrary titles they earned for networking/sleeping their way to the top... and the union workers want $1000/hr for jobs, that more often than not, don't need to exist. Things have to adapt. They're basically using the same film-making model since the last overhaul in the 70's. Innovation needs to happen. We have the technology and capability to make films for about 80% less money and require 80% less labor... better start putting it to practice soon.

Trust me, we'll be seeing a lot less anti-Chinese themes from Hollywood in the future as International box office now basically became more important than US Domestic, and China is a big chunk of international grosses. They already changed the bad guys from Chinese to Koreans in the recent "Red Dawn".

Suckerpunch was Snyder's Inception, it failed on an emotional level, it failed even on VFX level ( looked like a video game, just like Man of Steel ) but it did manage to mislead 99% of audiences in critics into an incorrect interpretion of the story. And this is where it is a 100% success in terms of what it was trying to do, that is sucker punch everyone.
 
Almost everyone interprets the film as a story of a girl who is in a madhouse who escapes into a fantasy whorehouse reality, then escapes into a video game reality. That is incorrect. The correct interpretation is that this film is about a girl in a whorehouse who escapes into a madhouse fantasy, then escapes into a video game fantasy.
 
There was never an evil uncle or a dead sister, there was never a lobotomy...the "sister" is the girl who sacrifices herself to let her escape, the evil uncle is the pimp, the "lobotomy" is her losing her virginity to John Ham, who she visualizes as the Doctor who "penetrates" her body. Lobotomy = Loss of virginity, innocence, childhood.
 
The movie basically reveals the artifice of the lobotomy in one key scene when she first arrives at the Whorehouse, you see the other girl performing a theatre play portraying a character GETTING A LOBOTOMY, that's where she got the idea for her Madhouse fantasy. Even more, the opening narration SPELLS IT OUT for you, when it talks about "angels, demons, and an old man who comes to save us when we least expect it"...the old man on the bus who saves her from the cops is REAL and everything else is imagined, she is imagining everything on the bus, having escaped the whorehouse.
 
Is noone paying attention anymore? That was probably Snyder's point. 

RE: Suckerpunch, an interesting case!
 
The Movie Bob piece was a good watch, but IMHO Movie Bob is doing exactly what the neckbeard audience always does: read too much into their movies, books and games in an attempt to make them cleverer than they are. He may be attempting to stop people ascribing negative "testosterone fueled" intentions to the picture by revealing a plot underneath, but in truth the complexity or otherwise of any plot underneath doesn't matter if the film fails to rise above that which it attempts to parody or subvert.
 
If you followed the theory he's using here, every single dumb over-the-shoulder shooting game actually deserves our respect for its incredibly deep plot, just because it attempts to in some way humanise its characters, and throw in twists to seem smart. *slow clap*. This theory would make Dragonball Z genius, because it's both over complicated and  really violent.
 
In gears of war they chat for a minute or so between huge battles, and use ham-fisted ways to get us to connect witht he "characters": a dead wife, some other family nonsense, but it's still hackneyed tripe. Basically, Bob's line runs that because they gave it some kind of attempt at plot, because they bolted a puzzle-piece story around the action scenes they wanted to show, we are wrong to say it's a wankfest. I say it plays to precisely the same audience, and lacks subversion.
 
The theory seems to be that if you throw a load of clunky, disconnected and overt-thought complex metaphors into a graphics piece it's somehow clever. But it's not, it's still reams and reams of extended, explosive battleporn interspersed with minimal dialogue and a paper-thin storyline, which itself is cobbled together from the least emotive, most aesthetically pleasing parts of of other stories. The purpose of the so called story is to excuse the following action.
 
Setting something in multiple reality layers does not automatically render it clever or successful (see: Inception), it can give a superficial appearance of out-of-the-box writing, especially in a genre of movie where risk aversion is a way of life, but this swiftly becomes unraveled without the character empathy necessary to allow the audience to truly connect.
 
There's no real development of character in Suckerpunch, every single player in it is one-dimensional designed to drive the flaccid story in one direction or another in order to line up the next round of basement-bro bad-guy thwacking.
 
We have zero empathy with the characters, which means it doesn't matter how many levels of reality are there or how much we're 'being laughed at', we don't care. It's not good enough to go "Aaaaaaah, but you didn't get it, it's actually really complex...", so are all stories, especially if you start to project you own beliefs onto them vie in-depth after-viewing analysis.
 
The important thing is that it does not function as a anything more than a beautiful graphics showreel, because the graphics are beautiful, overwhelming and make you go "wow" while the plotline, characters, scripting, pacing, acting and attempts to make a point that may or may not be intentional, are all lacklustre.
 
Finally, the layer of "it's laughing at the audience" plays perfectly to the target audience, who always want to feel cleverer than the rest, like they get something no-one else does. In order to truly subvert you have to rise above. In order to be a Trojan horse it's not enough just to get in the gates, you need to bust out at night and take over! Suckerpunch just ended up in the stables with rest of em...