Matthew W. Phillips

Because I choose to? Didn't know I needed you or anyone else's permission to do what I wish with my time and money. Interesting that you don't see how you come off to others. I re-read my old posts and cringe because I did this but I had some people have a "come to Jesus" speech with me about it and I started seeing my approach with others and it wasn't pretty. TL;DR: Stop speaking down to others like you are some global authority. You aren't and people can do what they wish whether it makes sense to you or not.

...and there it is. "We are not all so fortunate in our friends as you." - King Theoden LOTR: The Two Towers

I said "This entire post shows how out of touch you are with the majority of indies in the scene." I still stand by this. You reply with a single instance of someone who you worked with who won distribution as though that is the "majority". Look at some of the people on YouTube who appeal to low/no budget indies. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of followers and they are buying and using the gear you consider to be "garbage." Your one anecdotal story does not discount the massive trend. And you need to re-read that other thread. I never said anything about making digital skin tones look like a 16mm example. I was referring to help grading film scans. I even said that I am decent with grading digital footage but not so good at grading my old film footage. I have been thinking about pulling the trigger on the Ursa 12k. I have the cash but want to be extra sure this is what I want because I cannot justify a fire sale and repurchase to the better half if it isn't what I had hoped. I have been downloading the samples the Blackmagic gives and playing around with those to get a feel for the post workflow. I already own Resolve Studio (which pisses me off because I paid retail and could have gotten it for free had I waited for the camera purchase) but such is life.

I recall a lot of that around the DVXUser/RedUser era. Truth be told, there was a lot of misunderstandings on both sides of the heated debates. Their perspective was a defensive one from feeling that some on the film side came off as "elitists" or like old men yelling at the clouds. The film side was trying to defend something that they loved and saw the inevitable decline of the global supremacy of film and fought hard. Film will always be with us but there is no denying that it will never be what it once was. I absolutely love the look of well shot film but I do not want the workflow anymore. I don't even believe that digital is the first decline of image quality we have seen. I think even film stock has declined in beauty since the technicolor films back in the "Golden Age". I will jump on any technology that one day gives us the ability to make films like "The Sound of Music", "The Ten Commandments" (Heston/Brenner version), etc. As a computer nerd, I look forward to the day of a digital cinema camera that has an open source interface that allows me to poke into raw sensor data and write my own codec and/or image processing. Not sure if anyone is even thinking about such a thing but I would save my pennies for such a platform.

I am not a "digital person", I am a real human being. I guess you need to stop and look at things from other people's perspectives instead of your own. It took me years to do this (which is why I stayed away for a long time because I used to be a jackass on this boards and am grateful that Tyler never banned me; Admin Tyler, not Purcell). People get into cinematography for a wide variety of reasons. For me, this isn't my livelihood; I do it as a side thing and mostly shoot my own projects (although I have done some low-no budget stuff for others). I am a Lecturer of Computer Science at Uni. by trade so most of my efforts to feed my family come from that perspective. I enjoy working on projects and I try to take a balanced approach to them. I could go on and on about how the film vs digital is humorous when many projects have subpar sound which is still the other half of the experience. Also talent, location, script, etc all are, in my opinion, far more important than if one shoots film or not. I have seen a few ultra low budget projects buy into the film hype and spend the lion's share of the budget to shoot it only to sacrifice the integrity of the entire project...for what? To get bragging rights for using film? If you watch YouTube and talk to Gen Z'ers growing up, most of them think film looks "degraded" or "flawed" and don't understand the love affair with it. Perhaps, we were all brainwashed from looking at it so long? Not much different than people in music production that are still obsessed with the Neve 1073 when much cheaper preamps will yield far lower noise and accurate sound reproduction. I shoot because it gives me down time to think about something other than primary work, students, and computational algorithms all of the time. I enjoy the socialness of a film set. I also love to edit and mess around in Davinci Resolve since I respect a solid software program (knowing how much work goes into making one.) Reducing the entirety of filmmaking down to whether one shoots digital or film seems like such a small argument anyway. I cannot believe this is still a thing in 2021 (I had to check my calendar and make sure this wasnt 2007 again and we were arguing about the Red One camera but this time I ended up on the other side.) Edit: Still waiting on that film budget to establish that film is affordable.

The arrogance of film purists. If I was ever like this, I apologize and recant my rude past. No one needs to justify anything to you or anyone else. To suggest otherwise is the pinnacle of hubris. I see why this place is a dying forum.

I keep hearing this argument but it just doesn't shake out at a certain level of the indie world. Look at a camera like the pocket 6k or even the Sony a7siii. What level of film shooting can you do that is going to work around that price point? And some of you may scoff and laugh at the images but there have been A/B tests between footage from cameras like this and cameras like the Red Komodo where people cannot tell the difference. Maybe YOU can tell the difference but the majority of people can't and wont care anyway. When I last looked into shooting 16mm film, it was near $200/ 400 ft for raw stock from Kodak. Add processing and that was another $150 (it might be more now; not sure.) We are already at $350 for 11 minutes of footage and we still cannot edit the footage digitally yet (if that is your goal which is reasonable in 2021). That is a bit over $30/minute. This doesn't count shipping, a camera body, lenses, support structure, anything else. You say "clients pay for film" but you have no clients when you are learning. And it doesn't feel right (at least to me) to learn everything on someone else's dime. I don't want to charge until I know what I am doing...at least somewhat. When learning, which way can learn faster and cheaper? 16mm film or BMPCC 6K or Sony a7siii? I would love for someone who says "film isn't any more expensive" to post an actual (realistic) budget of how film (even 16mm) can compete financially with even the Ursa 12k cost and workflow? Would love to see it because maybe I am missing something.

I am not "all pissed off" that I cant shoot film. I am completely fine with it. You seem to be the one that is ticked off that some of us want to emulate aspects of film in our work.

This entire post shows how out of touch you are with the majority of indies in the scene. I will just continue to use my "garbage" gear and "useless" LED lights. And here I thought Apurture lights were a nice idea. I am grateful to you, Tyler, for setting me straight.

What is wrong with keeping elements of film that are worth keeping? I am a guitar and bass player and I love tube amps; I really do. But I never disparage players who, for one reason or another, want to use solid state. There are "modeling" amplifiers now that attempt to model a tube sound. Does it sound just like a vacuum tube? Nope. Is it pretty good? Sure. It is awesome that people respect the past while trying to adjust to the future. The fact that people desire "aspects" of the film look is a high compliment to film. Not too many people want to model the less nice aspects.

Having shot film and digital, the only benefit of the film is the particular look of it. I defended film for over a decade (on this forum and others) but I am downright sick of the "diva" characteristics of shooting film. I don't miss huge camera rigs, massive tripods and gear to support said rigs, noisy motors to deal with when trying to record sound (never could afford an Arri 435), big and hot lights connected to mains power, massive dolly, etc, etc. I never could afford a camera good enough to get a rock solid image either; always had that "bobble". Digital workflow is simply so much better. I have a set of LED lights that are battery powered. Never in my life would I have imagined that we would reach a point where you can power a video light with batteries. And you can get 4k+ cameras that can be rigged up lighter than a Super 8 camera back in the day. The whole supporting structure can be done cheaper, safer, lighter, and more fun with digital. Film is a terrible workflow now that we know better. I don't miss shooting on it. I only miss the image (when things went correctly and I didn't have a hair in the gate or some registration problem.)

So you find it impossible to think that someone could appreciate the look of film but not have the money to practice a ton with it? Film is great but the workflow is slow and cumbersome for a newbie trying to learn. We don't all own labs or know someone that does.

I don't understand your logic here. Are you saying that people who want to learn filmmaking but are poor are "failed"? I am sorry if I am misquoting you but I am trying to understand what you are getting at.

This kind of attitude sounds great for a business to take. I am reminded of the Carl's Jr in Idiocracy.

As someone who has a personal collection of firearms (but hasn't worked with them on a set), I am a bit confused of the term "armorer" as someone who handles safety on set? In the firearms world, we tend to refer to an armorer as another term for "gunsmith" and the safety person would be a "DOJ Instructor". Are set armorers actually DOJ Certified Instructors? It seems to me that you would want both a safety instructor and a gunsmith (someone who can safely repair arms, clear jams, etc) on a set? But that is just one guys opinion. Please correct me if I am in error.

I have been spending the last 6 months obsessing over color grading in Davinci Resolve. I have worked a lot on my digital footage and gotten decent results once I started shooting color charts but my old film footage leaves a lot to be desired when I try to grade it. I found a beautiful 16mm clip on Vimeo and this is a screen shot of it. I really want to know what techniques the colorist used to get this look. Any help would be appreciated as I think I have been looking at footage too much lately and am losing perspective.

I shot the first part of a feature this way. The actors hated me and I still ended up getting maybe 3 minutes of footage for every 2 rolls of 16mm. I would not recommend doing things this way unless 1) you have an awesome storyboard and 2) your actors understand what they are getting into and are fine with it.

I had no idea...that is funny actually! Fair enough, Stuart. I have become a grouch. I apologize.

Well, I imagine I should alert Donald Trump of who his running mate SHOULD have been.

Am only playing by the rules that Sir Stuart has set. I would prefer more diplomacy these days but I suppose I am in the minority on that front.

I was a fan of the CP16r. It was a neat camera once you figured out its quirks. My bane was always the issue with the shutter not being in sync with the pull claws. I did finally (thanks to this forum actually!) learn how to overcome that problem and check it out every day before a shoot and it became just as customary as checking the gate for hair. I never could get the Mitchell mags to run as quiet as the ugly square mags that came with the camera. That was sad because I had to choose between aesthetics vs silence on the set. Silence always wins though.

And we also have to be prepared to be called out for being an butt and making childish comments using words as "stupid" to refer to someone else or their ideas. No matter how intellectual one here is, there are others whose knowledge and skills far surpass ours. We should consider how we would feel if one of our betters came here and trashed our ideas to the stone age.

In a time period where shaming is generally frowned upon (fat shaming, victim shaming, etc), I would hope that people do not need to have it explained to them why such demeaning talk is wrong.

You are playing semantics. Let me put this another way...can you imagine a teacher telling their student that. not them, but their argument was "dumb, ignorant, or stupid?" If so, I cannot imagine this educator would last long teaching. I realize some here have an axe to grind with Tyler (myself on occasion) but resorting to demeaning terms is not the way to handle it for people who "fashion" themselves as professional.

What the hell is wrong with you two? Cant you get your point across without being insulting on a personal level? I think you both show a lack of proper reasoning if you must resort to Ad Hominem attacks to prove your point. It is a sad day when discussing aspects of filmmaking leads a group of creative people to become hostile with one another. At the end of the day, who really gives a crap? Time for everyone (myself included) to calm the hell down and take a time out.