fuzzynormal

FWIW, the EM5ii was my favorite camera ever to hold and shoot with. Shame the IQ was poopy. If only they would've engineered it to do 4K I'd probably still be using it.

With 3rd party apps I can actually get some rather awesome IQ video outta my Xiaomi 12S Ultra. That's kind of neat, right? What I can't get is an app that let's me film motion pictures without a lot of unnecessary difficulty and fiddly nonsense. Thus, I do not use my Xiaomi 12S Ultra to shoot rather awesome IQ video. Imagine trying to use a hammer and the handle is a jug of milk. Pretty freaking hard to strike a nail. It can be done, but...annoying as hell.

Oly fans have been begging OM for an update of the PenF. Ain't gonna get it. Such is Japan management.

f me. I'm over here shooting a doc with an EM10iii I bought used for $300 and thinking, "Dang, this looks pretty good!" And yet now I want an SL2. Damn you all.

Well, look, always has been. Trains are cool.

You joke, but I spent this summer getting my old Amiga 2500 back up and running and playing around with the VT. As for FC7. The best looking movie I ever made was cut in FC7 and shot with a LUMIX gx7, so....

Or if you fart within arms length of the rig. Looks cool when it work though.

Yeah, if a move isn't motivated, then...why do it? On the other hand, it's a lot of fun to actually and effectively realize motivated movement; movement that helps tell the story. When that happens you're now not just getting coverage, but doing things that start to get cinematic, imo. Been working on two documentaries this year and I've literally wanted to shake the camera-people that shot the footage and ask them how they like it. Spaztic shooting, very amateur hour. For the most part I don't use tripods these days for my own stuff, but I try to stay as quiet with the lens as possible. Still, I would have loved a heavy duty smooth-as-silk-Sachtler for some recent wildlife work where I was over (ffeq) 1500mm a lot. Had creative solutions to get me through, but something with excessive MASS would have been the exception to my typical "stay-mobile" attitudes.

I only have to assume you're editing this stuff too. Once you're trying to edit footage from an inexperienced shooter using stabilization, it'll drive you mad. So many good shots wasted by the false stabilization shift. "Oh! This looks like it's going to be nice pan to the... [image does an ugly shift/hitch] ... ah fuck!"

"The media completely lied about the election forecast" Yet I was out here voting and worried about Harris winning. Why's that? All the reported polling forecasts I was reading about had it at a statistical tie. All polls were within the margin of error with many polls showing Donald trending to a slight lead. I was incredulous about it being so close going into election day because it's Donald, and, you know, all he does, how he behaves, and all the ridiculous authoritarianism he represents, but never thought for a minute the election wasn't a toss up. After all, eggs cost more now. All MSM I saw was reporting these fact. Lo and behold, look what happened. So, friend, where's the lie in that? What media do you consume that implies otherwise? And, bare with me here, could that particular narrative potentially be what is not true? The stories we tell ourselves. Ever curious. I suppose a good story always needs a bad guy?

There it is. As it was as it shall be. It's just fast as hell these days because of tech. I like to lean into Robert Persig's philosophy of "metaphysics of quality" outlined in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If true, then there's always going to be a cultural inherent yearning for things that transcend the bullshit. Now, I lean into it because I WANT it to be possible... But, as you say, (and Persig does as well) there's also always going to be people that can't appreciate it. Who wins out in this modern world? Hell if I know, but I know what team I'm on.

Well, I'll tell you what, there ain't no way I'm laying the blame at the feet of labor in regards to the state of the biz here in SoCal. Any objective analysis of the industry over this past decade will reveal a much more complex narrative than the recent labor dispute. There's a bunch of chapters of that particular story that should focus on the board rooms foremost. Funny how that narrative has a hard time sticking in the popular media landscape, yeah?

Gotta start making horror films @120fps.

I'm not watching the "myths" video posted here, but I really want to know how those differences in DR that are illustrated in the thumbnail would matter at all when it comes to storytelling? Not much, imo. DR important? Does it have roughly 12 steps? Good 'nuff for me. As for movies, I grew up watching $1 films at the end of their distribution run at the local "grindhouse." Movies always looked like shit in my world. Didn't care. Looked good enough to tell a story. Heck, one place I would go to that was built in an abandoned cotton gin had a single screen, and ran Pulp Fiction for 11 months straight. Guess what that projected film looked like on week 48. Also, the glory years of American cinema as an art form is the 70's. Y'all watch any 70's movies? They mostly looked like crap compared to the IQ of today. Watch Deliverance, for example. That's a more compelling movie than most anything that's been released from Hollywood in this current era. Excuse me. Got some clouds to go yell at.

You made it through an entire decade here. Impressive!

Yeah, small unassuming kit and crew can be much more productive than the opposite when doing doc production. I can bear witness to this. Anyone else willing to testify? As for me, if someone told me a GH2 was all I had to make something, I'd shrug and do fine with it. I've done it before. Moreover, it would be fun and nimble. Okay by me. Yeah, I'm kind of done with fretting about perfect colors and resolution when it's much more important to get decent well shot coverage. I swear to god, I wish I had footage off a GH-ONE in the hands of a competent shooter for this current doc edit I'm doing --rather than the piles of sloppy handheld crap from an ARRI "cinematographer" that I'm trying to stitch together. Oooooooo, your pile of shit footage in my edit bins has more dynamic range? You got to play with a bunch of neat-o gear in the field for a year? Hooray, you used a jib. You had a portable video village? A PA? You broke out the steady cam? Your prime lens package cost more than my car? La dee daa. All your footage sucks and doesn't cut together. Great. (just spent the day in the editing room)

The BBC exists in a different production and financial context than independent documentaries. Even there, if the option was to capture something on a GH2, or not get it at all, they'd choose the GH2. Lucky for them, they don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, depends on what you really want to accomplish. I'm a doc guy so my first thought is: capture it or it didn't happen. Without story, well, what are you looking at? At least that's my tact. If rez or skin tones are less than optimum, I'll cope with it later, but at least I got it.

I just watched Inland Empire. Now what?

Best I can do is a silver jumpsuit.

I'm in agreement! The irony is that I basically did exactly what you say "wouldn't have worked" 25 years ago. Betacam SX camcorder ops with torn rotator cuffs unite! My career back then was filming tourism video around the world using big 'ol NTSC camcorders, large ANTON batteries, and a massive tri-pod.

One thing about these YT'ers and their marketing, they are actually offering looks at interesting imaging products, which does make things a bit of grey line in some legitimate film production. For instance, I just convinced a neophyte documentarian I'm working with to stop invading the space of his subjects with his "A Crew" Which is him, his cinematographer with a RED and all the rigging gak-gak that goes with it, a sound guy with boom pole and harnessed multi-mixer, an RF video village, and assistant producer. Trying to parachute in and get useful naturalistic footage of a person ON A HALF DAY SHOOT with that nonsense? C'mon. By the time they're in and out they maybe put in the can only about 30 minutes of footage, it's all stagey as hell, and if there's 10 seconds that's compelling it's a minor miracle...they got lucky with what the subject's personality delivered, not with the process of their craft. RED gear and crews are built for certain situations. Docs of a certain type? I say nope. No, just allow a savvy and talented 1 man band w/a mirrorless to go into the situation and keep it chill. Trade the marginally and slightly more advanced IQ for BETTER F'IN FOOTAGE. If an image looks better, but is inauthentic, what have you accomplished? Not much. The easiest path to some sort of normalcy in cinema veriti doc filming is to do one's best to mitigate the disruption of that normalcy. Boys and their toys. Always thinking that more is better.

What's better for you in general? Playing with gear or actually making motion picture stories with gear? Personally, I don't fault either. I'm more the former if I'm being honest. If you're tech head and like get excited about that, go for it. If you're a true creative and that's your priority, that's fine too. I have my biases about online freelance marketers, but a few of them seem to have eventually evolved into trying to be real filmmakers and left the influencer game behind. Curious about your perspective.

All hobbies are like this.

TL/DR: Old man+lawn+upset. Funny to me that this video is considered a "spill the beans" kind of deal. The information super highway has become what it was always destined to become. It's novelty gave it value. It's coasted on the early-year-legacy when it was a bit of a legitimate gathering space and access was a bit difficult. Even then, late 80's early 90's, I was interviewing corporate folks that were manipulating content. With the advent of Mozilla and Netscape they really began to realize the scale potential of things. Data tracking was a goldrush and they knew they'd be in front of the zeitgeist of citizen's respect of privacy. Yeah, privacy used to be a thing. People valued it. Anyway, as we all know, but seldom really grok the extent, we are the product. If you can segregate from Web 2.0 or find safe spaces, like this one, then you can remain slightly objective. But it's pretty hard. In this world right now the 99% of us are just things to be exploited. I mean, we were back in pre-80's as well, but there was a useful skepticism to marketing, it wasn't AS insidious, and it was a lot easier to avoid. I keep expecting a backlash and a shift in culture to forgo this intrusion into life, but then I look around and just end up typing ellipses ...