Lee Kelly

That is interesting that you have such good things to say. I think this sort of posting should be encouraged instead of the usual bitchy comments made on forums. If someone from Rode did get wind of this they would be quite chuffed and it would inspire them to continue their level of care.

@j.f.r. Sort of. Depends. Apparently my mother may have bought me a red ha ha

What I was trying to say may have been mis-understood slightly. I wasnt saying there isnt a difference in looks but in reply to people saying they think Red looks bad and Alexa looks better, I have many examples where both were used in a 30second commercial space and its not like one jumps out as this or that. They cut quite well. That was my point. You can use that same point to discuss any of the cameras we talk about too. They can all be great and we can use them all in the same edit and you might not be able to tell the difference. On another recent shoot I was on that just went to air, we shot Alexa as the main body, my Red in the water and the new URSA or whatever its calls as the DP had won it or something and wanted to try it out. Oh and we had 35mm and 16mm film. All looked great and I cant really pick one from the other and I was there on set! Ok, maybe the film shots I can tell. Brand recognition is massive. Even if one of these other less popular systems like Black magic or similar killed it in all your bench tests, you might still find it hard to get it over the line on a professional shoot. Maybe with a few other projects on file to draw apon as examples of what you have done with it, however as soon as there is a holdup or a delay in post it will always be compared to Arri and how easy it is. As it is, I am surprised Red gets on as many jobs as it does, considering almost every AC I work with hates it, post houses try to milk money by 'transcoding' pffft whatever which makes producers freak out. Yes, I have a pretty safe source who suggests the mini form factor will stay and sensor upgrades will be in the pipeline. I have my eye on it and is why I am investing in the new waterhousing, assuming body wont change and when the newer sensor pops up, if its affordable (like Red) I will jump on one. With my line of work, rental houses will not insure their gear to go in the drink. Got to have one myself to really make sense. Like my Red, it will also be dry hired between my own shoots with it.

I literally just got home from set after working a day on a local feature film. 3 cameras, all Dragon. This was not the DPs choice but instead the director, who loves Red for whatever reason. I could post several very high profile jobs I have shot where we mixed Alexa with Red and if you told me the shots where it was one or the other I would be very surprised. You might say you prefer the look of Alexa over Red but again, i would be very surprised if you could tell the difference in the edit. I will admit that Red often has a contrasty look applied to it on a lot of things i have seen, whereas sometimes (very popular here) Alexa is left with a more low-con 'ungraded' look for some reason. I have been fortunate that my personal camera has never missed a beat but I hear stories. I think at the end of the day, there is no point hating on Red. It is actually an awesome system when you know how to use it and plenty of the big shows and films are using them for a good reason. Alexa is the more popular system and much easier for ACs and itll be interesting to see if they feel pressure from a big player like Netflix to bring out a 4k+ sensor or keep doing a lower resolution properly while they can still get away with it. I am not sure Alexa 65 will be a viable everyday camera kit anytime soon. New Red is tiny and will be 8k before we know it and one of these days just like we do now with 3chip mini dv, we will look back and wonder how we ever considered 4k to be acceptable.

@Policar It was interesting that you brought IMDb into the conversation as a way to try and belittle me. I was just thinking the other day that I should chase all that up. I guess I have been lucky not to even have a showreel or IMDb presence and still work with the top commercial DPs and directors here in Sydney. Its kind of tricky with my role as camera operator, in the water, on a tvc shoot, where my shot(s) are one or two seconds here and there. The DP gets the credit as they should but I would rarely be listed and not arrogant enough to email IMDb or whatever it is youre meant to do to get a listing. Maybe I should follow it up so that I have that justification. Or maybe ill just keep working each week for another 20yrs. To me, its a little like why I dont have social media. I dont care what I ate for breakfast this morning so I sure as hell dont feel like I need to show the world to get a thumbs up. Right?

Interesting. I didnt realise IMDb was the be all and end all and I guess I really should have updated every single thing I have ever worked on with the camera my mother bought me ha ha I dont need to bother having a pissing contest my friend. Lets just say, I do know what I am talking about and if you want to use your GH4 and some hacked together lens attachment and call yourself a professional then all the best. My main point was in reply to people who consider Red to be over hyped or a dead-end as far as camera tech goes. Its a little naive to suggest such a thing. In my opinion and experience, the worst thing Red did, was come in hot before they were ready and before post houses were ready. That first 6-12 month period did a lot of damage to their reputation with producers as the workflow was very confusing, expensive and time consuming. Not to mention some of the first gen Red One cameras were a little buggy. Fast forward to today, and no proper post house should have any issues working with Red files. Shit, I can cut footage on CS6 on my lappy without any problems. 90% of the shoots I work on, 'A' camera is Alexa of some kind and these days its Mini more than XT or Amira or Plus. The system is simple and works. My work as an underwater camera operator has allowed me to exclusively use Red and just recently I dropped $30k usd on a new underwater housing for the Mini as I know its the smart thing to do. Of course Fincher was one example of someone pushing his filmmaking using Red and I am glad you saw the article on nofilmschool or wherever you subscribe, about his new camera. Regardless of his relationship with whoever, do you think if the camera system was inferior his studio backing would support it? Of course Netflix is not a person but they have set a standard in accepting a particular finished product and Red is there. Many others listed in this thread are sadly not. It might very well come down to brand recognition but it is a two horse race at the top and its Arri and Red with VERY few top end shoots using Canon or Sony at the moment even though those systems are great they just dont have the cinema brand recognition to get them up there. The guy who asked the question about Dragon was asking for advice from people who know. All of a sudden Red was being bashed by people who in the very next sentence were saying they dont have much experience with it. Does that make sense? My advice is hire an Arri and a Red and the lenses you like, study the workflow, shoot some real world tests and see what works best for you. Now I just need my mother to buy me an Alexa Mini to go with my new housing.

woW

I do find it quite fun to read opinions on a forum that for the most part is littered with hobbyists, about things they dont really have any authority on. Red Dragon is amazing. It is a proper camera which needs to be controlled by a professional. The images, when shot correctly are awesome and anyone who thinks its dead is kidding themselves. All you need to do is look up what blockbuster films and Netflix shows are being shot with Red to realise that, that particular sensor is waaaaaay ahead of the others in many areas. Sure, Alexa is also amazing but they havent quite got to the resolution levels that people like Netflix and David Fincher and many others consider future proof. Maybe the projector and bandwidth technology hasnt quite hit the mainstream as fast as some of these people would hope, and all that extra info is somewhat wasted and 2k is more than 'enough' for what we are delivering but who wants good 'enough'? Oh right...Hobbyists.

Was this just south of Sydney? I was doing some tests in similar locations today myself. We walked through one LOOOOOONG tunnel for about 30mins before getting to the otherside. Cant see light at either end which is kind of sketchy waiting for some tweaker to jump and out rape me. Super annoying that some of these tunnels I was exploring today were gated. On the whole ES thing, I still calling it Syndicate. Love to be wrong but this past month I have been getting phone calls from scam artists doing all sorts of things. One is the taxation dept accusing me of tax evasion and penalties, another one was another taxtation kind of thing where they were trying to work out if I was 'a property owner...' as I would be entitled to new tax breaks etc. Knowing these are scumbags trying to trick me I am hyper aware and even if this silly rangefinder makes it to these guys and everyone is refunded, I still cant help but feel the whole thing is part of a much deeper conspiracy. Be aware ladies and gents.

Hi Oliver, Hope you enjoy your new toy. From what I have been told, that little X5r is pretty cool. I am hoping to get a look at some realistic low light tests if you were interested. I have seen some late dusk/night time city scape drone stuff but with all the twinkly lights in the scene its a little easier to hide any blocky artifacts and thats what I would love to see. Maybe see how it performs at 800iso with a shot of a person maybe being lit with a standard sort of indoor lighting type of thing. Lit by household practicals? kind of good to see how high iso and low light might fall apart or if it can still handle a little bit.

Yeah my producer is onto it but I appreciate you guys replying with your thoughts. Its always a tricky one. Seems like the short film market is saturated these days with the accessibility to cameras and the shorter learning curve, not to mention youtube tutorials etc teaching people how to do things. Everyone can make a film these days. Film festivals are pretty clever. They often get some government funding as part of philanthropic culture type of community events but then charge whatever per submission, often only accepting several films in the end but pocketing the rejected films entry fees. i understand it takes money to hold a festival but they always have sponsors and funding etc to cover those costs right? Quite interesting especially if the system is somewhat setup to favour established or the chosen few who will often win and not have to pay and as their star rises with various wins, their future projects get more funding and better names involved and the cycle continues often with unknown films of similar or sometimes better story/quality etc getting rejected. Anyway, so far this film has been accepted to a couple but still a long way from winning any awards...

Make no mistake and I would happily bet money on this, ES is not who he wants you to think he is. I could google images right now and post them on here saying this is me. Hell, this ES might actually have stolen the ID of the person he has posted as himself. The person in that ID photo might not even know hes had his ID stolen? Its a small world but its still a big world. You can go onto someones social and drag their images right onto your desktop and create your own account using those pics and the chances someone will work that out is very slim and even if they do, big deal, do it again with someone else. Before you ask if it is hard to get a copy of someones ID, I (maybe stupidly) have sent a copy of my own license to prove my ID to someone buying gear off me. Pretty common thing to do. Dont be naive. And how dare you even think to keep such a person in this community after committing a CRIME but ban someone who was a bit of a kook at worst. (I dont even know who Zach is???) but i am guessing he didnt steal money from other members. As someone else said, if someone comes into your house and steals from you, you then want to be their friend, even if they return the goods? Nup you break their fucking arm and teach them a lesson and drag them screaming by that broken arm to the police and hope he gets the phone book treatment. Thats how I would want to deal with it. We assume the scammed were wealthy, and perhaps they are in comparison to this ES group but it is rude to assume they did not work hard for their money to buy gear they were passionate about. At the end of the day if you are born into comfortable western life, you should not be made to feel guilt for that! What are you meant to do? You play the hand you are dealt but in the same breath, if your hand isnt quite as good as someone else, taking from them unlawfully is WRONG and ILLEGAL. I dont even have a clip in mind... Oh and Ed, I would happily happily happily send money to buy into the producer rights for a potential film project on this. There must be 100 people within this thread and if we all put in the magic $200 (which is nothing because we are all wealthy westerners) thats a decent starting point to get something made. Call it percentage points and you just never know...

For starters, this is the funniest thing to engage me in ages. I started my time on this thread with promises or violence and as things progressed I realised this guy might be real person and could harm himself from this public barrage so tried to talk him off the potential ledge. Then the more I thought about it, it made much more sense that this is part of a typical (or not typical) internet scam group, who have used several 'members' of their group to scam many different people over many different platforms, and i assure you its not just cameras. Setting up social accounts is the easiest thing in the world. Fake friends, real 'friends' its easy to build a profile and give the perception that you are a regular, respected member of a community just trying to sell some gear or need some money to save your sister or fall in love with a lonely single woman who might send you (your group) money to help get you closer to her. What do my video links have to do with anything? Either you dont quite get western culture yourself and have no humour in your life or you cant see the pretty clear somewhat subliminal similarities of some of the clips to other posts on here or references to this ES himself that it would be a waste of time to explain these in the simple details needed to get the message across to you. You kind of sound like one of those people who ask questions while youre watching the movie. 'whos that guy?' 'Why is she there?' ARGH!!! Watch the movie and you might find out!!! ANYWAY... The coming to America nightclub clip refers to the fact that there are multiple 'personalities' represented in the form of different women, just like this ES character seems to have several 'personalities' and 'lives' when we did a little deeper. He was this, he is that, he wants to be this and hes planning on being that. The best one is the tranny at the end who has been watching from the sidelines and now wants to eat them alive! As I said, lost on you it would seem.

ok ok this one is kind of relevant also. Everyone of these is ES. As I said, if nothing else, watch the film its amazing!

This fits quite well. This is how I will sign off. SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!!!! and if the relevance of this clip doesnt resonate atleast watch the movie as its one of the greatest. They sure dont do em like that anymore. SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!!! (mic drops..fade out)

I hope i am wrong again, however anyone thinking they are getting their money back is tripping. This is way deeper than we think. No 19yr old would bother with all this creation of accounts and characters etc. Why invent some grandfather who is the guru of cinema blah blah blah why not just claim yourself as the all knowing? Oh wow kid, your 'grandfather' knows camera, where does that get YOU in life? Nowhere. What is to gain from fabricating a person that is not yourself, they get all the kudos and youre just the kid. As others have said, get your iphone or similar and post a video of yourself (and the grandfather for shits and giggles) and explain the whole thing that way. As it stands for now, its not hard to invent a FB or IG account with photos and 'friends' etc in fact that is the simplest thing in the world to do! My dog has an IG account. Collecting money from WU under the name ES is a little trickier however, there is no reason that this isnt as popular as 'John Smith' in Egypt. Hell, if this is deeper than we think, the REAL ES may be a completely unknown victim of ID theft and not even remotely associated with this forum, cameras, or anything. ID theft is a huge problem around the world and seemily easy for plenty of people from developing nations to specialise in. Ed obviously feels he did wrong but I dont think you did wrong at all. If you did this to me (or my dog) and I was innocent, my friends and family who ACTUALLY know me would know within seconds that this was not true. I wouldnt even bother defending the charges. I think you missed the point. Well done.

Some people seem to be able to consider these sorts of crimes soft. Its a faceless crime in many ways. The thing is, internet crime and this kind of theft is cowardly but just as harmful as having someone sneak into your house while you are sleeping and taking something from you. He may not have bonked you on the head and stolen something from you but he still stole something from you. Seriously, its on the news too often how many poor naive lonely usually elderly people are scammed in a similar way out of countless sums of money. Sure, some part of me thinks if youre naive enough to believe someone on the internet and give them all your money then what do you expect, but at the sametime on the other end is a sly scheming ripoff merchant who has premeditated the scam without issue. In this case that same person has then taunted the victims because they thought they would get away with it. As far as I can tell, the image we have of this guy might very well not even be who we are talking about. How deep does it go and across how many different platforms? The FB and IG accounts could be just as fake as anything else. Maybe I am a dick for believing in justice. Maybe if a 'kid' is taught a lesson early on, they might remember that kick in the arse and think twice about doing it again. He stole from people and taunted them about it with arrogance. I hope that it is not actually some kid in a jam who made a mistake and is now feeling like his world just ended because as I did say in an earlier post, the whole internet thing is not worth killing yourself over. I 100% promise every one of you that you are never likely to deal with ES in a professional fashion within the film industry and if you did, it wont be something that you remember and affect his career in any way. The internet never forgets as someone said just up there, but the internet is also the quickest medium for gratification and just like you swipe left and double tap, within seconds something else fills that little hollow space between your ears. I bet you cant even remember the name of the person who started this thread without looking at page one. People barely remember important milestones in history let alone some quick buck camera forum scam. For example; What year was Kennedy shot? What year did the Titanic sink? When did Princess Diana die? Who was Prime Minister of Australia 3yrs ago? Who owns the Star Wars franchise? What year did 911 happen? plenty of you and me will not know the answers to many of these questions off the top of our heads and these are SIGNIFICANT moments in history. ES is a teeny weeny nothing. A teeny weeny scam artist and fraudster but still nothing.

Ed, mate i think you have fallen for this the worst. It was only 200 odd years ago that people were sent to the great southern colony for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families. Someone stole from people here, made up a crazy series of lies to do so and then when they were finally cornered, made up another sympathy story to make the mob feel bad. There may have been promises of violence and I stand by that. As I said earlier, if someone steals from me, I will happily take their clothing and leave them crying naked in the street to teach them a lesson. You think that form of justice doesnt exist in the middle east? If he stole from his own countrymen I assure you the punishment would be much worse. The fact he has told a story about his sister here, is either the worst thing he could have ever done, or there is no sister and I sure as hell hope there is no sister because in these parts of the world that kind of operation suggests an act that would bring SERIOUS consequences and in many cases family members are the ones to dish out the punishment and it doesnt end well. I am not convinced this person is anything they say they are now or before, even with instagram investigations. I wonder if you had any actual reply from any of them yourself asking for more detail? You said you showed them this thread so the evidence is out there. You promising to tell them it was a mistake kind of doesnt really help. I hate scheming scam artists as much as I hate violent offenders and a boo and hiss from this crowd is nothing as punishment for a CRIME. Hes only actually sorry because he didnt get away with it. You think we are tough on him, you need to watch how people in his own country behave. Fucking disgusting. Do not feel sorry for him. As I said, lets damn well hope there is no sister... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=134_1452444063

Name and shame. Its interesting if for some remote chance he was not guilty of ripping people off and then admitted to it, just to get the heat taken off him. The biggest issue I have with his 'confession' is the reason he wanted money. As someone else said, his reasoning is about as gnarly as can be in that part of the world and I cant imagine anyone risking (literally) the life of their sister by admitting that as their reason on a public forum on the world wide web, using their own name etc. Makes me wonder, if he really is a 19yr old Egyptian guy or something completely different? Is he a new breed of Nigerian internet scammer? Instead of woo'ing lonely single people with promises of love, hes pulled a swifty on a couple of camera geeks. That all being said, Ed apparently hit up his friends which suggests he is real? Its all sort of strange! In any case, I hope he doesnt neck himself over this, I hope his sister isnt really in need of an illegal abortion and I hope we never hear from him again.

The many many many Ebrahims and the one and only Andrew Reid... This is kind of a cryptic attempt at a metaphor for digging yourself deeper and deeper...

Hoping to use the experience of some of you lovely filmmakers who have submitted to various festivals in recent times. Considering many have quite strict terms and entry fees ad up, which ones do you think are the ones to concentrate on with the following considerations; Cost Terms Reputation Chances of being accepted/awarded Peer/industry recognition

This is kind of where its heading...

The thing with most alien abductions is the victims always seem to talk of anal probing? Call my an old romantic but if i was probed anally by an alien, id be keeping that shit to myself and crying in the shower like Ace.

Complete sarcasm. i may talk a bit of rubbish but I dont like to seriously hurt peoples feelings, regardless whether i think my online opinion should affect them or not. This is why i wrote the little disclaimer at the bottom about not intentionally disrespecting your sister or her relationship with her husband. My advice, if you are as much of a victim as the people who lost money, take the humorous road and consider that this has caused such a fuss, not to mention there have been plenty of people on here willing to back you. In any case its amazing that this $300 (or whatever) dispute got everyone involved and supporting the greater community and if you are the victim then laugh it off with us all and please dont lose any sleep over this. In my country, soooooo many teenagers get 'bullied' on social media and take their own lives over it. I just dont get it! This is a serious issue and not a joking matter and the point i am always trying to make is that its the internet, zeros and ones, strangers for the most part. Family and actual friends are much much more important than stupid thumbs up icons and all that bullshit. I am sick to death of seeing young people in the prime of their life looking down at their phones, getting hit by buses on the street because theyre not looking up! Your own eyes are the best camera ever invented and seeing things with your own eyes is the best experience you can have. 'liking' someones photos on social media is bullshit. 'Liking' someone on tinder is bullshit.

Mate, relax. You dont really have a reputation that is in any danger, in reality. You are worried about a couple of dozen strangers who wouldnt even know you if you bumped into them in the street? You young people need to worry less about your online reputation. If you are the victim or a theft and a hack then you should be worried about the physical person/people who have betrayed your trust not any of us here. Sure, I made promises of violence to anyone who tried to steal from me. This is not directed at you in particular but the person who ever takes from me or my family. I am sure you can appreciate that sentiment, as your blood must be boiling knowing someone potentially close to your family has allegedly caused all this. In defense of all involved in this crazy thread, it just goes to show that people take this kind of thing seriously. Nobody likes being lied to and ripped off and as much as it seems the finger has been pointed at you as the culprit, perhaps some of this digging and probing will actually help you clear your name. That being said, there was been a couple of interesting theories and some things just dont quite add up. Your grandfather sounds like he wants to do the honorable thing and refund the victims but i dont think its his responsibility unless he is the nicest human ever or has a reason to clear this up (for someone) Interesting, also is that the item being used in this scam is something you claim to actually have. This scammer sure knows your inventory. Be different if the scammer was selling something you dont even have any history with. eitherway, it is entertaining and if you are truly the victim of a scam yourself then you should not worry to much about any of this crap. It might actually be the perfect feature film for you to write and shoot with your media company because the script is being written right before your very eyes and its clearly got a decent audience. You could use your rangefinder to shoot it? Imagine the added drama of the tribes on the streets and the machine guns and stuff, throw in a twist, something like a love interest, maybe its the sister who is falling for one of the victims behind the families back, helping him get closer to the truth? A fast car chase scene and you have a blockbuster! I see Jared Leto playing Jr and Benjamin Kingsley as Snr. Mila Kunis as the sister. Can you feel it? By the way, Finding Dory was nowhere near as deep a story as this little one! ps, no disrespect to your sister. Just added a good twist to this blockbuster script. Lets crowd fund it and have 'investors' contribute via western union!