fuzzynormal

It's kind of like the old-school difference between "broadcaster" and "filmmaker".  Aspects of both crafts can often be interchangeable and muddied, but there's a philosophical difference between the two.

'Broadcasting' the States has most often been about making quick, often shitty, content.  News, game shows, talk shows, soap operas --just constant stuff stuff stuff.

A lot of that is now being built on independent folks, rather than organized broadcasting business entities, but it's still the same low-effort-with-the-narrrative content.

Decent filmmmakiing is considered and slow.  There's typically a serious effort to infuse some story telling art into it.  

Churning out content... eh, there's some of that, but not so much.

3 hours ago, Michael S said:

Why employ your own staff

The gig economy is the future economy.  As a freelancer my whole life I ironically find it kinda sad, actually.  It's yet another corporate race to the bottom.

11 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I really despise ‘cameras as jewellery

I've literally bought Oly and a few Panasonic cams because they looked cooler than other manufacturers. 

I then beat them all to shit until they looked ugly as sin, but still...

3 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

lens choice becomes a lot more intentional.

It's intentional for me as well as I'm most often doing docs or corporate personality profiles. 

So, rationalizing it as bringing the viewer intimately into their world.  As you mention, using that bit of focal compression as a way of isolating the person unto themselves.

OTOH, my wife and I did a narrative short last year and we ended up using 18mm on M43 mostly.  So, 36mm FF equiv.  Felt like the right choice as the main characters were a couple.

To the topic's OP: as you see, none of these decisions are reliant on specific camera brand purchases.

4 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Interesting take! Any particular reason you prefer tight shots ?

I like to use longer focal lengths.  Not necessarily tight shots.  A person filmed head to toe with a longer lens just looks better, imo.

On 3/6/2023 at 4:16 PM, SRV1981 said:

when using just a camera and lens with hot shoe mic.

FWIW, aside from the pro stuff, I'm pretty close to being camera body agnostic now that we're into the 2020's.

My preference is to use a 40-50mm prime lens on M43.  Or 85 on FF.  It just looks more cinematic to my eye.  Anything in the "portrait" regions of focal length.  Not a fan of wide angle filming unless it's very considered shots.   I don't like a lot of different focal lengths in my videos.

DOF I prefer modest, but not ridiculously shallow.  bleh.   f4 on FF and F2'ish on m43.

I also use a tripod when I can.

Just those choices alone makes the stuff I shoot look wildly different than most 'content' online.

I've been sticking with that for awhile now.  I like it.  I shoot natural light mostly.  Learned to take advantage of the situation rather than putting up my own lighting.  For instance, I almost always shoot now by turning off the lights in a room and using window light; repositioning my camera/subjects to get the best lighting angles in those situations.

It's always funny when I turn off the lights, the client turns them back on thinking a mistake has been made "Don't you need lights?"  Nope. "The natural light from the window looks wonderful, let's give that a try."  And I turn the overheads off again.

Even a horrible office room can look decent with natural light and a little repositioning.

6 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

how do you get to 10K the fastest?

Fastest?  I say weddings.  Do one on the cheap and make it ridiculously awesome.  Use it to garner other clients.  

But I ain't doing that.  The special kind of video people that dig doing it are blessed, 'cuz it's evergreen clientele.  In this market that's nothing to dismiss.  Also, when you're exceptional at it the affluent will drop some serious $$ to get the best.

Other than that, you can do something similar by creating spec work for corporate and make a killer reel, then hustle for gigs.  The key is to find an initial client that you suspect will allow you to network to other good clients.  That's not any fun, imho, but there ya go.

Well, I agree with his assessment on the Oly lenses.  I'd buy the whole PRO line if I could afford it.  I also like the jokes.

Played with LUMIX S5II a bit at our local film festival.  The guys from the San Diego camera shop, Nelson Camera, came to the event and showcased their gear with one of the LUMIX ambassadors.

Anyone in SoCal?  I'd recommend visiting those guys as they're really adopting the video aspect of cameras these days.  They got loads of stuff for sale and rent, btw, and are leaning into the indy film scene.

Hard not to drool over what LUMIX has got going on once you have this new kit in your hands.

Funny, 'cause meanwhile the film festival itself was running around with GH1's taking a bunch of stills and video with those cameras...

On 1/8/2023 at 9:21 PM, kaylee said:

i like your heavy film grain treatment, translated p well on vimeo (?)

thoughts on this/how you did it?

Massive data rate file that was uploaded in 4K, so that helps.  Seems to have maintained a lot of the detail.  I uploaded an .mp4 file.

We used the Universe plugin from Red Giant for the dust and the jumpy gate weave.  "Misfire" was the effect setting.  I think maybe those film damage effects subtly popping up as things go along helps with the look.  Black dust and very subtle splotching are there, but not too obvious.  We didn't want it to look like a reel that had been on the road for months,  suffering all that accumulating spooling damage, but what you would potentially see as the first pristine print at a premiere, you know?

The 'tight' gate weave keeps the frame hopping left to right just a little also, which I think looks cool. 

BTW, the plugin is too flaky.  Can't recommend Maxtor stuff based of this particular effect.  The effect is nice and this one did the job, but it wasn't reliable.  Crashed my system a lot.

Also used FilmConvertNitrate for the B&W stock film look and underlying film grain. "IL FN P4" for those of you that have that plugin.  

Maybe it's just me and my background as a doc guy, but you're being incredibly particular there as the two shots are pretty similar.  Your shadows are only slightly more defined from one to the next.

If you're looking to be a wildly accomplished and precise gaffer and you are OCD by nature, I suppose you could be this discriminating, but even then?  Debatable.  In fact, it might be a liability on set, depending on the production you're doing. 

Personally, if I had crew fretting about lighting issues and THIS was the thing they were worried about, I'd be, like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to work with anyone that precious ... I don't know ... ain't too many narratives I've ever done wherein I'd be upset about this technical result if t was the look I wanted.

I'd be much more worried about the storytelling, the acting.  Heck, even the craft services table (seriously, gotta keep the crew happy) than this lighting difference.

5 hours ago, MrSMW said:

the lowest considerations.

Ha!  I ain't gonna lie.  

I bought a GX7 back in the day because it was silver and looked like a rangefinder.  The specs matched most other cams in that range, so what it looked like was the thumb on the scale for me.  Funnily enough, that damn thing had the best out-of-the-box-IQ of any LUMIX camera I owned before or since.

Then I lost it.  [Sad face]

2 hours ago, SMGJohn said:

actors should be more theatrical in their performance and scream their lines

Yeah, we really thought about doing that old fashioned "Continental" accent, but the director wanted more of a modern delivery once she saw what we were getting during rehearsal.

Thanks for the positive feedabck on the dolly moves.  Not a lot of folks mention that.  Kinda wish I'd gone even more aggressive with it in hindsight, but that's all part of the fun.

3 hours ago, kye said:

WeChat is kind of like Twitter + Facebook + Instagram + SMS + Apple Messages + Skype + YT + ApplePay / your credit card / cash + Uber + Uber Eats + lots of things

Thanks for the warning.

Like I said, because of nonsense like this I'm ready to let modern culture turn the page on me.  I'm willing and able to be a footnote.

I honestly have never heard of WeChat.  I'll brag about that.  (I think?)

Oh, wait, I just googled it.  Yeah, it's that messaging app that's popular in Europe.  Yes.  I remember that it came preinstalled on my Nokia-6300-mostly-dumb-phone.

Let me tell you, seriously, there's some liberation knowing that one has gotten older than the cultural zeitgeist --and it doesn't really affect them anymore.  FOMO?  That desire has been snuffed.

It's kind of nice, this bubble of ignorance.  I can see the appeal now.

(might be why I'm still filming stuff on a GH1 13 years on.  Anyway, musings of an old man.  If anyone wants to know how I used to walk to school uphill in snowstorms, drop me a DM)

On 10/9/2022 at 7:27 AM, Cosimo said:

I'm sure you won't like what I'm about to say

There's a time and a place for everything, right? 

For instance, my family just got word that my 20 year old nephew has Hodgkin's--Anyone telling my family they can't "discern" things, for whatever reason, would be rather unwelcome.

Please, let's all try to be kind, empathetic, and aware.

Horrible news.  So many of us have been cruelly affected by cancer in our families.  Fuck cancer.  Be loved and give love Andrew.  Embrace what you can while you can. Never let go. 

6 hours ago, John Matthews said:

It does something weird when skimming through a clip (strange macro-blocking)... not sure why that is. On Prores footage, which is roughly the same size doesn't do that. My impression is that the prores footage is better. Am I wrong?

Oh, I don't actually know.  If your post-production workflow looks better to your eye, then stick with it.  There's no right or wrong answer here.

Although I would say that if your final rendered movie files look okay, and if it's doing some macro blocking only during editing playback, then I personally wouldn't bother with transcoding; 422 data storage demands increase for instance. 

Again, if that doesn't matter to you, then no worries.

3 hours ago, John Matthews said:

M1 iMac seemingly edits EVERYTHING

Does the M1 handle AVCHD footage decently as well?  If so, shouldn't you skip the transcoding?

On 9/13/2022 at 12:11 AM, John Matthews said:

squeak out the the very last bit of IQ from AVCHD.

Sorry if I missed it, but what editing system are you using?  I had 5DtoRGB for the longest time, but gave it up when I left FCP7 all those years ago.

Proxy editing kind of makes 5DtoRGB sort of unnecessary in my post workflow.

6 hours ago, markr041 said:

high shutter speeds are due to the lack of an ND

I think the point he was getting at was this:  if you lowered the SS to 24fps you would find the digital stabilization process introducing visual artifacts, thereby making the image rather unusable.

Be that as it may, personally I find high shutter speed video in general quite unusable and unattractive.  Unless it's a visceral visual effect that helps tell a story (Saving Private Ryan) then I'd rather not see high SS at all.

Of course, there are post-plug-ins that do emulate motion blur...buuuuttt, that's tricky too on the IQ.

I like IBIS for run-n-gun-handheld standard talking head corporate work. Takes the edge off footage and makes it palatable for clients.  I also abuse the hell out of slow-mo for corporate work.  For instance, stuff like this:

I definitely don't like it for more cinematic work.  Shot one of my latest docs with it and I was, like, "Nope, not doing that again."

AF? I don't care to worry about it.  Manual focusing just looks cool and I'm half way decent with pulling it, so I'll stick with MF.

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Big shift to personalities, clickbait, TV style content, away from magazines, articles, blogs. Shift to Facebook groups instead of forums. Shift to phones instead of laptops. It all encourages a lower quality of discourse and content. The shills and PR industry completely control the popular influencer scene which in itself gobbles up 90% of the attention ...It is a dreadful state of affairs.

Modern culture is in a bit of a vortex with this, I think.  It's not just cameras.  Society has to figure out if it can evolve beyond this somehow --or if the majority of us are perfectly fine with being sophisticatedly exploited by our corporate overlords.

I still visit forums because that's my comfort zone.  It's a form of interaction built upon years of usenet and also the communal gee-whiz-ness of personal computers from back in the day.  But, hell, I was born in the 60's, man.  I lived in a different world. 

Your earlier metaphor is apt.  Some of us like a novel, but most people prefer a photo pamphlet. 

3 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Is the general topic of cameras and video in decline?

Sure is. 

We had the renaissance just over a decade ago and now we're finally in a different landscape.  In the early 'Aughts consumers really couldn't make cinema level image quality.  I mean, the best we could do back then was rig up those goofy lens adapter machines and film a rotating disc capturing light from vintage lenses with a camcorder.

The Sea-change unfolded starting with the 5DII and it was always a wild ride.  Now?  Damn near everyone has a pretty awesome motion picture imaging device.

I know for myself I'm actually retro and like to play with things well behind the bleeding edge.   For instance, there's not a lot of people in general that would be interested anymore in me hacking another GH1 like I did last week, but in 2010?  Man, that would launch a thread of a 1,000 responses.