Matthew W. Phillips

Gotta agree with Tyler on this one. Not paying people only makes sense when, you yourself, are starving and your project is destitute. If you have the money for a crane then you can buy your DP dinner and room for the day.

Either is homelessness.

It's not that you arent qualified...its that he isnt listening.

I am not going to take sides here but I will say that it amazes me how much some people care about what other people are doing. If two consenting adults agree to do something then I fail to see what the issue is.

The ONLY industry that seems to be able to gamble, lose, and still come out fine is the world of "too big to fail" banks, apparently. Us mere mortals must deal with our bad decisions.

Artists should be able to use any tool in the toolbox. Whether that is the DP using on set techniques or whether they (or Director for those that shoot their own movie) want to use color grading. It shouldn't really matter what they use if they are able to communicate what they want. If we carried that reasoning into other parts of the set, like Miguel said, we would be stuck with "reality TV: essentially. No fun.

Richard, it is posts like these that make me wish I were British.

I was confused by what you meant until I discovered "logorrhea." I am guessing this is what you are referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logorrhea_(psychology)

Awesome job, David! Supernatural + retro look + beautiful woman = My kind of movie. Will definitely hope to pick this up when available.

Not that I am defending that Cinematography, but when I watch it as a Director, I can see what they were going for. The positioning of him magnifies his vulnerability. Notice how she sits so high and lofty relative to his position? They did a good job of establishing who was in control of the situation. Edit: i didnt actually listen to the audio so I could be wrong about what is actually going on. But that is what the visuals would imply to me.

You wonder why the "beef" when you make comments like this? It isnt a beef, it is how you talk dude. You are speaking about people who are far more successful than you but you still act like they are hacks. What have you done that gives you a right to criticize them?

Of course I don't. Because you are the only person that understands anything around here, Tyler. Get over yourself, dude.

Okay, so I suppose all of the churches that put on functions weekly across the whole world are dying or getting sick from food poisoning because they arent spending absurd amounts on food catering. :rolleyes: Fair enough...you know best for your project so go ahead and spend half Kevin Smith's budget on Clerks to feed people. RR could almost make El Mariachi twice on that total. But I guess those guys are hacks who make "total garbage."

Wow, you really have a low opinion of people, dont you? Feeding 35 people isnt that hard for even for some mothers in this world. But throw other people's money away if you want.

Haha, ok then. If you say so. I do not know what ":industry norms" are but any restaurant manager can tell you that, with economy of scale, your costs are way too high. When I was a teen, I managed a Jack in the Box and we spent less than that on raw food cost and we had hundreds coming through our door. One would think it would be better to hire a student chef and have them manage costs as you would probably get a better turnout. But if you two say this is how it is done then it is just another example of why films cost so much.

Like x 1,000,000

$850 a day for food? What is the size of your cast to warrant that?

Not saying I don't believe you but I have yet to get any examples to explore for myself. Maybe it is the college boy in me but I like evidence before coming to conclusions.

If your argument is that filmmakers should have SOME level of experience by having made one or more shorts before, I am in complete agreement. But there is a big gap from saying one needs some familiarity with filmmaking before shooting a feature and saying one needs to have a 1.5 mil budget with all union cast/crew. If one wants to make the latter statement then there are too many good counterexamples to disprove that.

Care to share any names so that I may check them out? If you do not feel right about calling them out publicly, I welcome a PM.

Apparently, according to IMDB, Napolean Dynamite had a budget of 400k...not much more than you mentioned and that was a wildly successful venture.

If I had $250k for a feature and I wanted to hire a DP, I would pay them well. In my thinking, you take care of the DP and the Sound Guy first. Then you allocate money for the final sound mix. Then you worry about everything else. I realize many low budget films worry about trying to squeeze some A-lister or B-lister for one scene at the expense of the whole production. I do not feel like $250k is an unreachable goal to make a quality feature with a well paid, albeit modestly sized, crew. Of course this depends on the script and how grounded the Director is in reality about the expectations of the project.

Tyler, I do not see why it matters to you what someone "churns out?" Is this an axe to grind because you do not feel you are compensated well enough? You are able to turn down work if you wish. Funny enough, the industry has always had tiny budget films. When you factor in film costs in years passed, I imagine the working budget (after stock + process) was about as low as some nowadays.

Richard, I was not jumping into this to defend Batman vs Superman. I was jumping into this because Tyler sounded like he was implying that indies should not make films. I know he didnt say it like that but the implication was there. You of all people should know that we need MORE indie films, not less.

More like a few months ago and, no, I never said Dark Reprieve was a POS. I just didn't understand what was going on. I was fond of the visual style though. And those two months grew me up a great deal too which is why I apologized to you.