Industry input on daughters career path with a portfolio website question mixed in

[Jon O'Brien]

Yes, allow me to define my use of the word. Picture, if you will, Professor Frederick Treves in his lecture theatre (just for dramatic effect). And in glorious 35mm black and white. He turns to his lecture theatre full of earnest professional colleagues, be-whiskered (many of them) and wearing fine woollen suits).

 

"Gentlemen, the word "Muso" is an Australian English term, and quite simply means "A musician, chiefly of the professional class".

[David Mawson]

 

Sony

I think someone mentioned about Sony and reliability. My son did the Appalachian Trail Thru Hike last summer. If you don't know what that is it is approx 2000 mile journey from Georgia to Maine from Mar to Sep through the Appalachian Mountains. Something like elevation change would be like hiking Everest 16 times. He is (actually both of us) are amateur photographs. We bought him a Sony A7 for the journey. We were worried about it making the trip but it did. Now maybe he just took good care of it. Normally had it strapped in a chest pack or in his hand. Took a lot photos.

 

That was me. And for professional use you can't afford to judge reliability that way unless an asset is one you can afford to replace if a fault develops. For vital assets you really need something like this

 

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/services.do

Welcome to Canon Professional Services (CPS). The European CPS programme is a completely free service that offers Canon professional photo and video users exclusive access to a range of benefits. These include access to CPS support at major events; a priority repair service; and local CPS support in selected European countries. Free back-up equipment loans during repair periods are also available, depending on the level of your CPS membership

 

Although your son's camera did fine, Sony are known for horror stories like Phil Peterson's here -

 

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0158SRJVQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt_rgt?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&filterByStar=critical&pageNumber=1

 

..That isn't saying that you shouldn't buy Sony (I'm waiting to see what the next A7 series is like myself) just that when you buy a business critical asset for any business, you have to make reliability and service a much bigger part of the picture than for a consumer purchase - paying 10 or 20% more for robustness, fast repairs and loaners can make excellent sense. Alternatively, keep an emergency fund that lets you replace a piece of equipment while it is being repair, either by buying or renting.

 

...And it seems that Sony are at least offering paid-for pro support now -

 

https://alphauniverse.com/prosupport/

 

...Although you need to have bought quite a lot of hardware to qualify - and then they might still turn you down.

Edited September 1, 2017 by David Mawson

[Glenn Batson]

Interesting update on women in film. Anna got her first dose of it at school. She searched out organizations for film stuff. School does. It have film program. Well she ended up in a meeting with 14 boys and she the only female. Head organizer was impressed with her editing knowledge. She was not to keen on what they wanted to focus on because they look to just be doing small what's going on at campus clips. She was hoping for more creative approaches to their shooting. Group was called creative collective. Shooting is shooting experience though. . Mom was not to keen about her and a bunch of senior guys since she is freshman. We just read so much on campus rape. Kids and your worries for their protection.

[Michael LaVoie]

 

Well that's one issue no one has dared touch in this thread. There are ZERO female DOPs posting on this website, why is that?

 

R,

Laura Beth Love was around this forum for a while. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showuser=62362 She's definitely busy. I wish she'd post more. Would love to hear what the Sharknado 4 set was like.

[Phil Rhodes]

Didn't Jen White post here at least a couple of times? And Erynn Patrick has just signed up.

I had, other than me, an all-female camera department on a short a while ago (Anna Carrington, Sophie Piedallu and Tzu Chi Chung) and it didn't strike me as particularly unusual. I suppose objectively it is unusual, but frankly you're too busy to care.

[David Mullen ASC]

My camera crews have been almost 50% female for a while, it's hardly unusual anymore. And on my last series, a third of the electric department was female including the "best boy" -- and on the series before that, the best boy Grip was female.

[Glenn Batson]

Two funny updates from my daughter. We picked her up last night due to holiday weekend.

 

First story is she has to take this social class for freshman. Required money maker. There are like 50 kids. They made teams of four for the year. She said they grouped them on the answers about what they wanted to do in life. Of course Anna said cinematography. She got lumped in with trophy wife, traveller and I don't what I want to do girls. This was the woman who told them her real work is biology. And it is not one of those fluffy sciences you know. I told Anna she thinks cinematogphers are fluffy careers.

 

Second story Phil and Macks will like. So told you there was long story about her national film completion and that they got 20th. We'll talk is going around confirmed by the head guy that there was a mistake in the scoring. Her partner thought maybe it had to do with their film because their viewer count went up unexpectedly went up. I couldn't break it to my daughter that the view count is likely from my actions on this forum.

 

Finally the creative collective head guy wants to do buzzfeed vids. That is why she was not that interested.

 

Off to mow the yard. Hurricane Harvey made my grass grow tall.

[Max Field]

Yeah I never tell people I'm a "filmmaker" when they ask my living. When you're under 30 people assume you're a loser going nowhere.

[Landon D. Parks]

I was involved as an instructor in a summer high-school filmmaking camp that just wrapped a couple weeks ago. Of the 29 students who took part in the camp, 16 were girls – so more than half. At the end of the class, we took a poll on what each kid wanted to ‘do’ in the industry when they grew up, this is the results:

 

Director: 14, 7 of which were girls.

Cinematographer/DP: 6, 5 of which were girls.

Producer: 3, 2 girls.

Writer: 2, 1 girl.

Editor: 3, 1 girl.

Production Management: 1, 0 girl.

Below-The-Line Production Personnel (catch all for ops, ac, gaffer, etc): 0

Post-Production (including VFX): 0

 

Surprisingly, the most startling statistic was that 5 of the 6 who wanted to be a cinematographer where girls, the highest among any category next to Producer, where 2 of the 3 were girls.

 

Take these numbers as what you will, and I don’t want to say they are any kind of scientific numbers – but I think it does prove that we shouldn’t write-off girls not wanting to get into the industry at all. I think we should be more concerned with the fact that no one wants to actually do any of the grunt work and/or work in post-production. Not that I’m really shocked, since everyone wants to ‘big’ jobs.

 

Bottom line, I think the real reason there are not a lot of working female cinematographers is not because they are discriminated against, it’s just that there aren’t many who actually enter the field in the first place. When 95% of the workforce is male, is it really shocking to see 95% of working cinematographers be male? Any other statistic and I’d have to assume discrimination on the part of the men.

 

BTW) As part of the class, I took them to my studio office downtown and let them play around in the post-suite a little. Imagine my surprise when this one girl, who was either 14 or 15, sat down, opened up Fusion Studio and began to construct a sequence of nodes on a clip she pulled from her phone. I believe she was one who wanted to be a producer, but that chick had some talent with VFX. After a few minutes, she had fusion particles shooting out of her friends hand, deflecting off the ground… And we all know (or might), that Fusion is not the easiest of VFX software to learn.

 

Come to find out, her dad bought her a Blackmagic Pocket Camera for her 13^th birthday, and she had been playing around with resolve and fusion for a few years. I was impressed. I certainly hope she stays with the film industry, since I seen some major talent in her.

[Max Field]

Tons of kids know VFX software nowadays though, all the youtube tutorials and people like Freddie Wong made it a normalized hobby thing. Now when she pulls out a script that makes you cry from an epic tragedy, then you know you got something.

[Guest]

Well more women on set have some practical advantages for the producer. Women are about 90% LESS likely to sexually harass opposite sex members of the crew. This is an on going problem with male crew members. Women crew are also a lot less likely to be abusing alcohol during a shoot, another on going problem with men. Women crew members also tend to swear a lot less than men as well, and tell lurid sexual jokes on set. (Although everyone appreciates a well placed, "That's what she said," while filming is under way.) :)

 

So in conclusion, I wish a lot of men would clean up their acts on set. I have a long list of men that will never be coming back onto any of my sets due to very poor conduct. That list only has two women on it.

 

R,

[Michael LaVoie]

I have a long list of men that will never be coming back onto any of my sets due to very poor conduct. That list only has two women on it.

 

R,

That's surprising given the fact that many of your films were family oriented with child actors on set a lot of the time. I would expect that to keep people on their best behavior.

 

After these mishaps are you more inclined to want to weigh in when crew are hired or do you rely on the UPM and their recommendations? What steps would you recommend a producer take to avoid hiring crew that may be distracting or even dangerous on set?

[Guest]

I have imposed strict no swearing rules on set for all four of my family features. It usually takes the crew 4-5 days to get that I am actually serious about it.

 

Maybe you'd like to hear about the fist fight that broke out at the wrap party on Against The Wild 2.

 

R,

[Max Field]

What qualifies as a swear though?

[Phil Rhodes]

I've tried to make that rule, but I always !"@?ing break it.

[Guest]

Well the no swearing rule can be broken on set at anytime by the producer under certain circumstances, i.e., someone hands me a bill that is five times over the original quote. :)

 

R,