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How do I remove people from my friends' list?


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There're some non-users here, and I'd like to clean up my profile.

 

I'll also add that activity on this BBS has died considerably from when I first cruised by way back in 2005 or 2006. I'm wondering why that is, and if there's any way to bring in more people.

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People have possibly moved off of here onto more camera specific forums. It's sad because there seems to be a mentality that the camera is what really matters, anymore, and not the person behind it. Hence why some boards dedicated to x or y system seem to ebb and flow as technology marches forward.

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Personally I'm just shooting way less than I was before. It feels like in the early 2000s, everyone round here was scraping a living in the shattered remains of the british film industry. The economic situation has affected that just as much as anything else, and now there's so little going on that I've had to develop a couple of personal projects just to keep my hand in. It's probably better for full time DPs who're doing music promos and the like, but the sort of low-end stuff that was my bread and butter has just vanished. Not unexpected, under the circumstances, but pretty unwelcome.

 

That, and I'm doing quite a lot of writing for a living and my appetite for writing more on the side is a bit feeble now!

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All I can say is this place used to be jumping with DPs working on big projects, and now there's only a handful of regular posters, one of whom I highly doubt is any kind of DP or crew person at all.

 

I'll end it there.

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I'm not sure there were ever lots of people doing big shows here. I never was!

 

Yeah there were. The DP for Crystal Skull jumped down my throat when I said several live action sequences looked like digital.inserts.

 

Other examples, but I'm too lazy and pissed off to dig them up.

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Yeah there were. The DP for Crystal Skull jumped down my throat when I said several live action sequences looked like digital.inserts.

 

Other examples, but I'm too lazy and pissed off to dig them up.

Are you talking about Janusz Kaminski! On this site ? sorry I missed that!

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Personally I'm just shooting way less than I was before. It feels like in the early 2000s, everyone round here was scraping a living in the shattered remains of the british film industry. The economic situation has affected that just as much as anything else, and now there's so little going on that I've had to develop a couple of personal projects just to keep my hand in. It's probably better for full time DPs who're doing music promos and the like, but the sort of low-end stuff that was my bread and butter has just vanished. Not unexpected, under the circumstances, but pretty unwelcome.

 

That, and I'm doing quite a lot of writing for a living and my appetite for writing more on the side is a bit feeble now!

Second that Phil! Feels like I've been Tardis'd back a decade! I shoot mostly commercials and by july I would be on about 15 normally. I've shot three!! Got one coming up in August but that's it for now! I've gone back to TV to earn a living this year. Lucky to have friends in the industry that throw you a lifeline! Wish I could write like you though:-)

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I think that the 'democratization' of film making, as brought to you by the RED company et. al, has changed the demographic on this forum, and that in turn has led many of its contributors to either cease or drastically reduce posting.

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Why am I getting the gut feeling that there's another explanation. Something a little more tangible and real.

 

Me, I'm just a guy whose been spending the last several years of his life trying to get one project off the ground after another, and going through legal wrangles with the locals. I've got an excuse. I'm not sure about anybody else.

 

And when I look at other boards that are jumping and thriving with activity. I begin to wonder. Over the last two years I've come across some people on this BBS who have absolutely no clue as to what they're talking about, and I kind of wonder what the hell is going on.

 

Example; I actually had some guy from India comment on one of my threads that there was no independent film making community in the Bay Area. What a load of s__t. San Francisco and Berkeley are the hubs on the west coast for indy films.

 

It makes a guy scratch his head and get more than just PO'd.

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I think that the 'democratization' of film making, as brought to you by the RED company et. al, has changed the demographic on this forum, and that in turn has led many of its contributors to either cease or drastically reduce posting.

 

 

I think your absolutely right, very few people seem to have any interest in lighting anymore, they just want 20 stops of DR & grade it later.

 

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Well I do quite want 20 stops of dynamic range please!

 

I think a lot of it has to do with facebook and other blogs, which do effectively the same thing as forums only worse and with more boastful self-aggrandisement.

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H/o, I"ll ask my twitter followers for you Freya, but only if you make sure to retweet me to your instagram vine.

 

I can certainly see a certain amount of people divesting from the "old web," over to the new cool social web. It's almost akin to IRQ and it's slow dwindling when forums really took off, as well as IM and the like.

Also, though I am noticing a lot more people from other countries asking questions here, as well as on my own FB to me directly and on other forums.

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I think your absolutely right, very few people seem to have any interest in lighting anymore, they just want 20 stops of DR & grade it later.

 

Not to be a total downer but I actually think that cinematography is a dying thing generally. It's not something people are interested in at a conscious level at the best of times. I also think that the switch to digital is pushing more and more into post. It's easy to imagine movies without a cinematographer at all these days. Hire a pre-lit green screen and shoot the whole thing on that.

 

Visual Effects generally get more notice than beautifully shot footage.

 

Freya

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Personally, I think it's due to WYSIWYG mentality-- wherein I mean you can just look at the monitor and make your choices based off of that, for better or worse, -v-, when working on film, for example, you really need to know where you're putting your lamps and how they'll act across the shot because, frankly, you're shooting blind in a lot of ways.

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H/o, I"ll ask my twitter followers for you Freya, but only if you make sure to retweet me to your instagram vine.

 

I can certainly see a certain amount of people divesting from the "old web," over to the new cool social web. It's almost akin to IRQ and it's slow dwindling when forums really took off, as well as IM and the like.

 

Also, though I am noticing a lot more people from other countries asking questions here, as well as on my own FB to me directly and on other forums.

 

I thought you meant IRC at first and then I realised there really was an IRQ, a strange thing that was green and had a flower or something. Can barely remember it!

 

So what does H/o mean?

 

I've noticed more people from all over too and I think it is a really good thing! :)

 

Freya

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Guest Stephen Murphy

I for one have found myself posting and reading less and less over the last two years, which is a shame because I used to find this site an incredibly useful resource. I know that the site is only as good as the contributors, and its a bit hypocritical of me to criticise it when I havent been contributing, but I've found the quality of posts has for the most part just deteriorated to the point that I now only skim the topics for anything interesting, keeping an eye peeled for the few posters I know will write something in an intelligent manner.

At some point a few years ago we seemed to get an influx of new members, most of whom didn't seem to want to spend the time to read the FAQ's and would just clog up bandwidth asking variations of the same basic questions. This seemed to go hand in hand with the Red and Canon democratisation of film making - although maybe that was just a coincidence - but I see fewer and fewer conversations that I'd be interested in being a part of now. That may just be more to do with what I'm interested in right now craft wise, but I also think it's fair to say that something has changed in the kind of information people seem interested in now as opposed to when I first joined the forum. I'd also politely suggest that some of the more prolific posters of late might benefit from posting less and listening more: I don't think we have as many overnight DP's as some other camera centric forums but there's definitely a few on here, and its certainly something that stops me from engaging in threads that they post in.

For what it's worth I still find the "David Mullen/Manure" type posts INCREDIBLY useful, I just wish more of us had the time (and David's gift with words) to start similar threads. Perhaps now that the Film/Digital debate has settled down and we're all reasonably comfortable producing quality images in both mediums we can get back to discussing Cinematography as a craft instead of talking about specific camera brands.

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Personally, I think it's due to WYSIWYG mentality-- wherein I mean you can just look at the monitor and make your choices based off of that, for better or worse, -v-, when working on film, for example, you really need to know where you're putting your lamps and how they'll act across the shot because, frankly, you're shooting blind in a lot of ways.

 

It's different. With film you could pick the right film stock and then shoot something and when you saw it back it was magic! There was magic there from the film stock itself and often the results were even better than what you were seeing in your mind when you shot them.

 

Now shooting on digital, I shoot things and often they don't look as good as they did on the on set monitor when I get them home and then I have to mess with things slightly to get it back closer to what I imagined and basically it's just a bit rubbish in every way but its what the world has chosen. I feel more blind shooting digitally to be honest but I think you are right that there is a greater comfort level to see it on the screen and knowing that is what is being recorded.

 

Freya

Edited by Freya Black
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Aye indeed. When i still have chance to shoot film, I am thrilled when I look at what we recorded (most of the time, though sometimes the transfer is absolute rubbish!). When I'm on digital; one of the biggest problems is actually getting away from what the monitor tells me I should do-- both in my own mind as well as the minds of those around me on occasion. I think the major problem is that when you can look at it, and see it, it seems to easy that anyone can do it, so everything thinks that they can. The value, the magic-- shamanistic knowledge as my one anthropology professor years ago refereed to my knowledge of things-- is quickly negated. Still, I hold out some hope that these things resonate-- going from not being too important while everyone piles on the democracy and ease, then back to being very important as they realize the results they are getting are quite sub-par. Time will tell and until then I'll stick 'round on here to answer and ask and engage [even if it gets repetitive and slightly annoying] , and I'll keep on shooting and learning and trying to get images which I can be proud of.

 

Also H/o is a way of saying "hold on."

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For what it's worth I still find the "David Mullen/Manure" type posts INCREDIBLY useful, I just wish more of us had the time (and David's gift with words) to start similar threads. Perhaps now that the Film/Digital debate has settled down and we're all reasonably comfortable producing quality images in both mediums we can get back to discussing Cinematography as a craft instead of talking about specific camera brands.

 

I really miss posts in the "In Production" section generally. Even the posts that were a bit like "I shot a music video on a HVX200 with a brevis" or something, because it was people showing what they were shooting and talking about how they went about it. I didn't mind if this was some fabulous production of the like that David might be involved in, or something a bit scary and cobbled together on no-budget, and it didn't have to be all that eloquent in language either. It was great to be able to ask questions too about things you might see behind the scenes or techniques.

 

Nobody seems to post there anymore and I miss that.

 

Freya

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Aye indeed. When i still have chance to shoot film, I am thrilled when I look at what we recorded (most of the time, though sometimes the transfer is absolute rubbish!). When I'm on digital; one of the biggest problems is actually getting away from what the monitor tells me I should do-- both in my own mind as well as the minds of those around me on occasion. I think the major problem is that when you can look at it, and see it, it seems to easy that anyone can do it, so everything thinks that they can. The value, the magic-- shamanistic knowledge as my one anthropology professor years ago refereed to my knowledge of things-- is quickly negated. Still, I hold out some hope that these things resonate-- going from not being too important while everyone piles on the democracy and ease, then back to being very important as they realize the results they are getting are quite sub-par. Time will tell and until then I'll stick 'round on here to answer and ask and engage [even if it gets repetitive and slightly annoying] , and I'll keep on shooting and learning and trying to get images which I can be proud of.

 

Also H/o is a way of saying "hold on."

 

I think as well, that when you have the monitor there, it also kind of stops you from looking at the light. With a real film camera you look through the viewfinder (which is optical anyway) and you look at the light in the scene, and you are thinking about the light in the scene. If the on set monitor is there, it can be hard not to be looking at the light in the monitor more than the light in real life.

 

To get even freakier than that. I would also say you have already observed the light, in a quantum way, so by definition you have removed a load of the magic. That might be getting a bit scary tho. ;)

 

Freya

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