Tyler Purcell

We only take online submissions at the festivals I've worked at. We just force people to throw it on a private link on Vimeo or Youtube. It's far better then a bunch of disks floating around. Plus as the content maker, you know if someone ACTUALLY watched it or not! :) Some of the bigger festivals have switched to that method recently. I did a few Sundance submissions last year and they were all online.

Lightflex?

That's all I do when I'm on set Richard. I always tell my crew, if you want me, have someone visit the bathroom or crafty, those are the two places I'll be. It's the gaffers job to light ANYWAY! ROFL!!! :D

'Clerks' wouldn't even make it to a smaller festival in it's current condition. People don't jive on the B&W 16mm, home-made movie look anymore. Same goes for "PI", that would have been dumped as well in today's festivals.

I've worked for many festivals and generally each voting member gets a group of films to watch. Then they rate the films in a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is what dictates which movies move on and which ones are dumped. Now, is every frame watched? Heck no! Generally, I watch the first 5 minutes. If it holds my interest for 5 minutes, I continue to watch until it doesn't anymore. The last festival I judged, we had a few hundred submissions and we only watched 20 all the way through, that's how BAD some of the movies are. That's WHY I know how BAD these low budget movies are, because I've had to watch many of them. When it comes down to it, 80% is absolute throw away crap that's never watched. The next 15% are generally sent back with a nice letter that basically says "try again with your next project". The final 5% are the one's ALL of the judges watch and critique. Yes, only 5% are watched all the way through, by more then one person. At bigger festivals, I bet that number is even lower. I know people who vote for Venice and Berlin, but they have such high profile movies, it's really hard to get in edge wise. FYI, this year for the motorsports festival I vote on, there was only ONE decent entry for over 100. Yes, only ONE movie that stood above the rest. It was an instant prize to the maker of that movie, which was sad. I was really hoping for more like the year prior.

And Matt talked about shoots with technocranes. If you can afford a technocrane, you can afford to give your CINEMATOGRAPHER, the guy who makes your effin' movie look good, a $100 bill at the end of each night. Equality is really the big problem in the industry today, and the world outside. The low-end is lower then it's ever been and the high end is higher then it's ever been. The middle ground use to be good business, but today it's more like the ultra-low of years previous.

Nice, looks fantastic! :)

IDK about that... but it would be worth the poll. :)

But it sure pays the bills.

BTW, I never said "give away" labor as in FREE like Matt is saying here. In the case of services, I merely said make the business of fixing cameras affordable for consumers. Also, do you know this guy Matt personally? He says in the video he still works for free today on commercial and music video's. I also disagree wholeheartedly with his pay scale. There is much more to it.

Dang, I'll have to re-watch the Amelie extras, it's been a while. So maybe Delicatessen's look was done in camera then.

I saw this on my facebook page today from No Film School dot com and it REALLY pissed me off. My roommie heard it playing and even he was pissed off. https://youtu.be/4KJ5vzxefRw This is my response on youtube and facebook: It's kind of a vicious cycle. Kids go to college, they graduate and they're looking for work in the industry straight away. They may have a little reel, but most kids won't have a "industry standard" reel. With that said, isn't it better to work your ass off learning what it's like to be on a real film set, prior to really building your career? I think a lot of people go buy fancy cameras and think they can make it somehow, but it requires more then that. It does require hard work during your time away from set, it does require practicing your craft outside of being on a bigger project where the stress level is high. There are so many moving pieces and at the same time, you MUST survive as a person financially.

I'm absolutely going to say stick with the pocket camera. With the right lenses and decent coloring job, it can be made to look pretty filmic, especially indoors where you've got more control over the lighting. Also, knowing the material you want to shoot, I think film will be cost prohibitive in the long run. Everything adds up very quickly... even if you strike a deal with Kodak (.32/foot) and Cinelab (.38/foot), I think each short film will cost around $1500 - $2500 to make, depending on if you want more coverage. This is the reason why the broadcast industry went towards video in the early 80's for ENG shooting, the cost to do little stand up shoots was getting out of control. Plus, delays on getting the film processed in time for the 5 o'clock news, was always an issue. Since your doing so many films, the delay on not being able to see your material right away and fix things with such a limited schedule, may get you into trouble. When you have such a limited amount of time to do something, good digital is absolutely a better way to go. It's not like you have a $10k budget for each show and two weeks to do each one. It think you'd get tired of doing a short every week and dealing with film. It would be great for select shorts which were maybe more cinematic then others, something you can do more prep with. But for those every day shorts, it maybe a bit over-kill.

Run the magazine with test film and NO sides on it. To me, it sounds like you've got something skipping. Whether it's the pulldown mechanism or magazine, I think there is something more serious wrong. You can generally tell if something is wrong by watching how the film is tugged from the supply and pulled for the takeup. I bet you can see the problem pretty quickly with dummy film loaded.

Limits are for lenses that don't have repeatable focus, like modern still DSLR glass. If you use real cinema glass, you don't really need limits. On remote/wireless follow focus, they automatically calibrate to the lens to find the two furthest points. This way you know where your at when pulling remotely in relationship to the glass.

Great example, so is Amelie. So riddle me this... why couldn't the look of Delicatessen been done in camera? Do you know if they did a writeup in AC about it? I bet they did, it's such a magnificently shot film.

I just bought and watched the new Star Trek 2 bluray, wow it's quite amazing. I was shocked they didn't do any cleanup work what so ever. You could see the matte lines and everything, quite cool if you ask me. I was also amazed how many soft shots there were. I have unfortunately never seen it on film and the older VHS, Laserdisc and DVD I still own, don't hold a candle to this wonderful new transfer. Really great to see Paramount is holding true to what the series is all about and not mucking about like so may others have done in the past. The very few added shots were seamless as well. Great recommendation David, really recommend it to any other trekkies.

Looks gorgeous, I'll for sure check it out. This is the directors 2nd movie, so fingers are crossed, I really liked whiplash.

Richard is right, it's a separate entity all together. I've done the math and tried a few things on various shoots. I think the best way to do crafty is the more traditional way, hire someone whose done it before, knows how to shop properly and pay them $150/day labor + $150/day for food. I think it's a mistake to mix breakfast, lunch and dinner into "crafty". I've tried that tactic before on set, but it makes for longer breaks. People want run and go food during the day, so a table setup and some easy/simple food on it, works great. I'm very much into fruit and vegetables in small coolers, healthy run and go snack packs (which crafty makes each morning) and of course, the typical chips and stuff. The big mistake people make with crafty is not spending enough and buying sugar treats, that just kills it for everyone. Also, the "dinner" part would not be every day. Most day's we'd just serve left-overs from lunch for dinner IF we don't go overtime. It would be for the strike crew only. On days we go over, that's when a full dinner will be given prior to strike.

There are guys who shoot this way, absolutely... But I think there aren't very many. I have yet to work on any project of any kind related to digital where the color correction process wasn't intense with multiple nodes, mattes and trackers. Heck the two shows I'm cutting know, we're lit very well but the color out of the camera is so far off and doesn't match shot to shot, thanks to camera shifting day by day, it's hard to watch the rough cut. We have scenes shot with two identical cameras, matched in the rental house, which fall out of sync with one another as the days of production moved on. It's been an absolute nightmare, and it's going to take weeks to color.

1.33:1 or 2.35:1 anamorphic.

Welcome to the Internet... And you do know, this is an Internet forum, a place to share your opinions on things, right? There are millions of people bitching and moaning about everything on the Internet. That's just the reality of things. Most of them probably don't have a clue what they're talking about. At least I've got a little bit of one.

Why are you picking on me? John is the person who put you in your place related to catering, I was merely agreeing with him. Richard did the same thing when it came to "good" movies, earlier in this thread. I merely agreed with him. Stop the "beef" dude, it's getting old. I posted a "workable" budget, based on actual data that took time to compile. What have you done? Why don't you read it and learn from it, instead of blasting one minuscule part?

Right, so when you're on location somewhere random, there is a huge building to protect the crew from the sunlight during that ONE half hour break they get every 6hrs? Ohh and surly crew will eat soup and crackers, that's the "standard" meal eh? You had to pick two movies with pretty much no crew, being shot on weekends for fun, in places where nobody cares, more then 20 years ago. Times have changed and I have no interest in making a feature with my buddies on the weekends for payment in pizza. You pay to make it right, or you're not ready to make it.

I'm sorry, but even though a "student" could cook the food, that doesn't mean they have a box truck ready to go with all the KEY accessories necessary for catering. I see your confusion, John touched on it above. You don't grasp/understand the complexity of catering a meal what so ever.