Why so many low-budget shorts look like !@#$

[Michael LaVoie]

So shouldn't all experienced cinematographers who are working with less experienced directors be doing the same? I'm not suggesting this isn't done, but maybe if it were done on a larger scale there would be more quality products out there, shorts and all.

 

Thoughts?...

Discussing the awful performances in ultra low budget films could be it's own separate thread and I'm sure we could go off on that for a while.

 

In theory, suggesting a better way to a green director is a great idea but it can go either way. Depends on the director. I've worked with newbies who were very humble and open to input and that's always great, cause it makes things way easier to suggest and to alert when something may not be reading properly. If I think a line is coming across the wrong way in tone, I'll quietly confirm with the director about it but it's always their say in the end.

 

I now make playlists of music to listen to that keep me in the headspace of the script and story. And this is just in case the acting is so bad that I can' really listen to it on set without it affecting my work. So I can listen to music and stay engaged in the film creatively and just pretend the acting is far better than it is. :D Bad acting is really hard to ignore. Unless you're a bad director -

 

Edited February 5, 2015 by Michael LaVoie

[Brian Drysdale]

Casting is key to any film, be it low budget or mega budget. Any film maker should invest time in casting and as Phil says finding the best location possible.

[Albion Hockney]

I'd just like to say there are a lot of great shorts made every year. You don't see them because they go through the festival rounds and most of these filmmakers are using them as a way to get to feature length films. The shorts just don't get seen. I have seen brilliant stuf shot on crumy DV cameras for little to no money.

 

 

Poorly made short films are not just poorly shot they are poorly made in general.

 

 

This has to do with people who are all working at a certain amatuer level ....from script to perfromance to sound to light ....if things arn't all up to par and though in depth about well ....its well...amatuer.

And thats fine people are starting out or w/e.

 

 

as an experienced DP you will never take a first time director who doesn't know what they are doing and make a masterful film with them. But if they are lacking certain understanding, for example in the way they are blocking a scene not working well for the shots, or they might not be thinking about a certain cut in how two shots will come together.....but they can't be a tottal amatuer. some people are really brilliant, but just don't have the experience that some DP's have and they need to learn those skills.

[Roberto Pirodda]

I gave up on the idea long ago that you can do a good short and submit it to a real established film festival and have a prayer that it would get reviewed and given solid consideration without knowing someone there personally. There are simply too many submissions for festival screening personnel to watch them all. Check out Official Rejection for a great documentary on this subject.

 

The reason it's tougher now for an educated filmmakers festival submission to be given a chance is demonstrated quite painfully in the clip above. It's the giving of horrible advice to wannabe filmmakers. Which causes an avalance of submissions to all the big festivals of utter garbage which in turn buries an educated and experienced filmmakers genuine effort under a lot of clutter making it that much harder to get viewed.

 

Empowering amateurs is really counter productive to professionals who are trying to make a living doing this. who've spent tens of thousands on an education and real equipment. It's absurd why anyone would want to make filmmaking seem easy or cheap. Benefits nobody in the end.

100% agree

[Phil Rhodes]

I don't think it's any great revelation to point out that life is not a meritocracy.

 

P

[Albion Hockney]

 

I gave up on the idea long ago that you can do a good short and submit it to a real established film festival and have a prayer that it would get reviewed and given solid consideration without knowing someone there personally. There are simply too many submissions for festival screening personnel to watch them all. Check out Official Rejection for a great documentary on this subject.

 

The reason it's tougher now for an educated filmmakers festival submission to be given a chance is demonstrated quite painfully in the clip above. It's the giving of horrible advice to wannabe filmmakers. Which causes an avalance of submissions to all the big festivals of utter garbage which in turn buries an educated and experienced filmmakers genuine effort under a lot of clutter making it that much harder to get viewed.

 

Empowering amateurs is really counter productive to professionals who are trying to make a living doing this. who've spent tens of thousands on an education and real equipment. It's absurd why anyone would want to make filmmaking seem easy or cheap. Benefits nobody in the end.

100% agree

 

 

I can't say I agree, sundance gets 5,000 shorts they choose 150. Yes I'm sure many excellent short films dont make the cut....sundance has something they look for and yes there is a politcal aspect to it for sure. That said if you make a really great film it will get seen. Vimeo Staff picks are a nice show of this. I get real fed up with people talking like this as someone who knows festival programmers and sees the process from both sides. Honestly most people who have such disdain for film festivals just don't make good enough films. ....and yes you can then point to some examples of some awful film that got in to a festival for political reasons or its casting ...but that is not the rule that is the exception.

[Albion Hockney]

as phil said yea no where in life is there a real meritocracy, but if you make a film that is that good or show strong talent and pursue it things will happen.

 

There arn't many filmmakers who made great work no one ever saw.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

There arn't many filmmakers who made great work no one ever saw.

 

How would you tell?

[Brian Drysdale]

Surprising number of film makers are terrible at marketing their films. Many don't even have production stills, which are key to doing anything with a film.

[Simon Wyss]

They look like !@#$ because there’s no work in them. The difference between pros and amateurs is that pros work, and they’re payed for. The amateur is better called a dilettante, he or she is interested in the diletto it gives. Fun. Distraction.

 

When I work I know that I can go the whole way or take a shortcut here and there. As a professional I know what I talk about or keep at least my mouth shut and learn as much as possible. I’d never try to go working as a sound engineer, not even as perchman. I am not a sound man. I can prepare developer baths, bleach baths, fixing baths, I can water films and know how they should dry. I can project films, too. Professional work is something serious. Amateurs are never serious.

[John E Clark]

 

How would you tell?

 

Is this one of those 'if a tree falls in a film fest, would it make a sound', type of questions?

[Brian Drysdale]

An amateur is someone who does something purely for the love of it. There are some extremely serious amateurs around, be they painters, musicians or film makers, although most amateurs don't have any desire to more than exhibit to their friends, family or community. Perhaps less so in film making, but in other disciplines some (small number) become recognised as major artists. It seems In film making, because of costs, the serious ones tend to move to the professional world.

[Justin Hayward]

I can't say I agree, sundance gets 5,000 shorts they choose 150.

 

Yup. I submitted a short film to Sundance, paid the fee, didn't know anybody, got in.

[John E Clark]

 

 

Professional work is something serious. Amateurs are never serious.

 

I don't agree that 'amateurs' are never serious. I do agree that there are lots of 'junk' shorts or features, that would have never seen the light of the Display, were it not for Youtube/Vimeo/et al.

 

I think there is a certain sort of mind set among many 'men with a camera'(*), that they have to claim to be more advanced than they actually are, in order to get gigs, even 'free' ones, which leads to less than 'good' (or even less than passable...) results.

 

(*I actually don't know any women who are interested in cinematography 'per se'... I've met women writers, a few directrices, but perhaps only one woman who was focused on 'image formation'...).

[Simon Wyss]

It seems I didn’t make myself so clear. I mean to speak of payed serious work and a professional has also his love in it. The difference thus is matching payment with physical delivery, so to say. That takes a budget, a bigger budget.

 

Bigger budget is possible with an audience. I have nothing against a mini-budget production, video or film, for private use. But when there’s a paying audience I want my share of the income. Of course there are more forms of presentation such as for school, scientific, political or investigative purposes.

[Dennis Couzin]

I would hardly consider that "disturbing". He's right. Audiences will be more sensitive to bad sound than bad picture.

 

We know what peoples voices are supposed to sound like because we have a lifetime of experience hearing people speak. On the other hand, we see bad lighting all the time in our daily lives and cameras "perceive" in a significantly different way than our eyes do. We don't have a built in set of rules about how things should look the same way that we know how voices should sound.

 

I'd put it a slightly different way than that guy. I'd say that audiences are more accepting of a range of styles/qualities in the visuals than they are in the audio. You can have blown highlights, flares, grain, etc. in an image throughout a movie (i.e. things that are "mistakes" or anomalies often used for stylistic effect), but a soundtrack with clipped levels, inconsistent room tone, unwanted noise, etc. will put people off pretty quickly.

 

There's near consensus that low quality audio sticks out and is disturbing in ways that low quality video doesn't, but I don't buy either of these explanations. The problem with Dan's explanation is that voices are heard every day in very poor sonic conditions. Often we can't make out what they're saying. What's the difference with poor visual conditions? The problem with Ravi's is that it begs the question. Why isn't low quality audio just as usable for stylistic effect as low quality video?

 

There is visual imagination. Almost any image invites deep examination. This is true anyhow for naturally occurring or amateurishly recorded images. In this, visual imagination overlays visual information. There is no corresponding aural imagination (except perhaps for specially musical minds). We have some ability for extracting audio information from noise or distortion, but not for making something new from the remnant information. This mental difference between vision and hearing might be due to the very different neural mechanisms. Vision is a three channel and two dimensional affair. Hearing rests on frequency analysis. Frequency deficiencies are recognized, but mind can't operate in the frequency domain. Badly recorded sound is therefore broken sound.

[Gregg MacPherson]

 

There is visual imagination. Almost any image invites deep examination. .....visual imagination overlays visual information. There is no corresponding aural imagination (except perhaps for specially musical minds). We have some ability for extracting audio information from noise or distortion, but not for making something new from the remnant information. This mental difference between vision and hearing might be due to the very different neural mechanisms. Vision is a three channel and two dimensional affair. Hearing rests on frequency analysis. Frequency deficiencies are recognized, but mind can't operate in the frequency domain. Badly recorded sound is therefore broken sound.

 

Hey Dennis,

Very interesting and thought provoking. Just please nudge me with what you mean by ..."Vision is a three channel and two dimensional affair". Are you just counting time as the third channel or degree of freedom or were you thinking of something else?

 

I think there are some areas of common human experience where the "aural imagination" is well developed, highly sophisticated, but highly cultured, and so, perhaps one might think, quite bounded. But film makers are quite used to provoking experience within these boundaries, and pushing people just beyond those limits.

 

OK, so a cultured imagination may not really be an imagination at all (hilarious laughter here).

 

EDIT: spelling

Edited February 7, 2015 by Gregg MacPherson

[Simon Wyss]

There is visual imagination. Almost any image invites deep examination. This is true anyhow for naturally occurring or amateurishly recorded images. In this, visual imagination overlays visual information. There is no corresponding aural imagination (except perhaps for specially musical minds). We have some ability for extracting audio information from noise or distortion, but not for making something new from the remnant information. This mental difference between vision and hearing might be due to the very different neural mechanisms. Vision is a three channel and two dimensional affair. Hearing rests on frequency analysis. Frequency deficiencies are recognized, but mind can't operate in the frequency domain. Badly recorded sound is therefore broken sound.

 

Totally agree, well said.

 

When the guy speaks about lavalier microphone and sound recordist from 0:39 on in the OP video and the thing is out of synch I simply have to laugh. The rest is more or less lip synch. I know about the complex randomness of YouTube, here it’s not YouTube.

[Bill DiPietra]

All great posts. This has been a really interesting thread and I just wanted to thank everyone for their contributions.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

There is no corresponding aural imagination

 

Oh, I think there is! If I picture a massive science fiction space battle, my brain does the sound effects as well as the visuals. Ptchewww, fwsshhhh, fzzz, pzing!

[Brian Drysdale]

This BBC Radio 4 programme has a few thoughts on images and sound. I'm not sure how well you can listen outside the UK.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051w066

[Dennis Couzin]

..."Vision is a three channel and two dimensional affair". Are you just counting time as the third channel or degree of freedom or were you thinking of something else?

 

I just meant the ordinary two spatial dimensions -- up/down, left/ight -- with three color dimensions at each point in the space. The color information really does flow on three channels somewhat like video's Y,U,V.

 

Visual space is three-dimensional, sort of. And visual perception is temporal, sort of. And color is arguably more than three-dimensional. But those niceties are unnecessary for the comparison with hearing (and even complicate it).

 

For further reading. Two breathtaking intellectual highpoints of the 3×2'ness of vision: R. Carnap's construction of the visual sense as the 6-dimensional subspace found in the full swarm of sensory experience (The Logical Construction of the World, 1928); and J. Letvin's explanation why higher animals evolved with no more than 3 cone types (color sensors) because of the retina having 2 dimensions (The Colors of Colored Things, 1967).

 

The auditory sense does not lend itself to the kind of construction Carnap uses for the visual sense. In fact he retreats to constructing the ears and then declaring the auditory sense that which goes dead when you cover your ears! (He needed the visual sense to construct the ears.) The point is that the two senses are deeply different. Whoever, including the fine composer Messaien, likens sound mixing and color mixing has gone off the deep end. Red light and green light mix to what? A color chord? A color dissonance? No, no, to yellow light. And what's an octave above some pure color? Our ears are Fourier analyzers, our eyes not. I think this is at the heart of the audio/video quality matters we're discussing.

 

None of this is to suggest that sound and image can't interact beautifully. Rudolf Arnheim's arguments against sound films were lame (but his argument against 3-D films was sharp.) In fact the deep difference between hearing and seeing can be exploited in those interactions.