George Ebersole

I think somewhere in IMDB's announcement was that they were searching for ways for "users to express themselves meaningfully." There seemed to be an implication that something would take their message board's place. I can't imagine Twitter, FB or whatever else serving as forums to discuss film story points and technical or story issues. Still, I'm glad it's gone. I was one of the first to use their BBSes, and it was quiet for years with me and maybe a dozen other people posting. Then the barbarians stormed the gates, and Rome fell. Oh well. ... I just get really disappointed that no one thinks to put some controls on, like this forum, to keep things on the up and up. Either way, I'm sorry it's gone, but I'm also eternally glad.

I'm reminded of the time I was loading up Del Monte food product out of a warehouse near the SOMA district for an industrial we were shooting at night up in Novato. I'm there with the warehouse doors open, by myself, loading props into my car, and I hear gunshots in the background. Yeah, the best stories.

It all comes down to the playback or rushes, and how much care the director is putting into his talent. If the playback or rushes look good, then you're on a good project. Every good DP I AC'd or dollied for would always ask me to push the dolly or readjust the camera he so could grab some coverage between setups. Your mileage may vary. Sometimes you have a real good symbiosis between the director and DP who intentionally setup a static shot or shooting style to accentuate the scene and performances. That's a case of being intentionally Spartan not for the sake of saving money and banging out the project faster, but for adding an artistic touch to accentuate the material being created. In both cases care is being put into the project. Just my experience.

Anybody with some tech and artistic training can. Though what defines "suck" has changed over the decades. These days there's a lot of technical competence with little story telling ability. Way back when it was sloppy or rushed film making of scripts that were okay to good, but could use a rewrite. Reliance on medium focal lengths, masters, little coverage, are all elements for quickly shot B-films. If you're not grabbing cutaways between setups, or if your director doesn't care, then that project isn't worth the hard drive space or stock that was used to shoot it.

And I guess that's maybe really my core issue. When the industry was more consolidated than it is now, it seemed like anybody with connections could make garbage and throw it up on screen, and yet really good indy films never saw the light of day. I think it's changed now. But "back in the day" it sure did seem like the insular nature prevented a lot of good product, and that that same insular nature made going into film very unappealing and unattractive, even if you had a solid idea. And it seemed like the people I had to contend with, who were (and are) based out of LA, didn't recognize that their industry was going to be fundamentally changed. They were still in the "star system" so to speak, where you flaunted A-list actors in big productions. All I ever wanted to do was make little indy stuff as is possible to day, and not deal with networking, cajoling producers to invest or to raise the money, and everything else that goes on in the pre-production field down in Los Angeles. I remember growing up and seeing big splashy productions on TV or in the theatre, and I kept wondering what was so special about the film if it was just name talent with lots of money. But that's what show business is all about. If you want to just tell some really cool stories, don't have some social psychological agenda, then you couldn't make your film prior to the 90s. And it's like the people I've had to deal with didn't know that, didn't know what they were part of, and probably only now just realize how ... different their perspectives were based on their life experience of working in "show business". Thank goodness for Silicon Valley and the Japanese. Science and technology rock, and trump egos everytime. I appreciate things like "The Dick Van Dyke Show" or "Eight is Enough" or "Cleopatra" or "My Fair Lady" and whatever other big name product that came out of the LA segment of media, but I think there's a disconnect with the powers that be and how technology has democratized media, and done so for the better. The flip side is that there's more racist and just bigoted material out there than ever before, but now people can look at ideas, good and bad, and examine them for all their worth and what they know or believe they know, instead of having the old guard keep out us barbarians who don't have any foul ideas, but would like to make good visuals ... just like any artist. Yeah ... we're living in a better time for visual media. Sorry for the rambling rant. I just had to get that out there.

I guess my real objection to a lot of films today is that when I was growing up films were made to satisfy the emotional needs of individuals. Today it seems like films are made today to satisfy the emotional needs of social groups; age bracket, sex, ethnic identity and so forth. So a film that I like will sometimes get panned, or my dislike for the big budget b-films (mostly superhero stuff) gets a wry look from other people because, no matter how technically good it is (say "Transformers" as an example) I still think it's trash.

I should also apologize here. I didn't mean to say that all LA crews, people working out of the LA area, nor even the people posting here who live and work in LA are brash jerks. Truly, I know that's what it sounds like I said, but it's not what I meant. It just seemed like people in "show business" have a different and insular approach to making films that historically held back and still holds back better material. That verse the dude and dudette who just wants to make some rocking visuals for people to see.

Well, most of what I did was corporate video, and the companies I worked for always had a fresh approach to creating commercials or industrials. To me the talent was no less than the big name so-called A-list stars in LA and NY. The only difference was that they didn't have the name recognition and budgets for feature films. The other aspect was that in corporate video you don't have a lot of extreme drama nor "over the top" moments in performance. And it always seemed to me that the indy films that got recognized in new paper write ups or noted at award ceremonies, didn't have the same degree of energy by the actors put into their performances. The reviews would call them "more realistic" or some other descriptor. And it seems now that (thankfully) technology has reached the masses, that we are seeing better indy shorts via Vimeo or YouTube or even on indy websites. And it seemed like Hollywood intentionally cut those people off for decades.

But it seems to me that there was a time when indy films had staying power if they were good enough.

So, for the last 12 years I've had a lot of efforts put into getting me in touch with the Los Angeles film industry. Upon reflection the "powers that be" (to put it politely) who have tried to guide my life, knew a lot about the commercial feature film and television industry, but didn't have a whole lot of artistic film making savvy. "Show business", to me, is about promoting on screen talent for single projects or televised series by way of drawing attention to said onscreen talent to help bolster both onscreen talent and show's profile and reputation. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, like a few of you people here, I saw my share of "specials" of all sorts on network television, and never really understood why it was that there was such an emphasis on showing off talent instead of good films. I don't like "show business". When LA crews and talent would cruise into the Bay Area in the late 80s there was a kind of brashness that, to me at least, seemed unprofessional. Maybe it was because I had worked on too many corporate videos and commercials, but to me film making, even if you were shooting corporate video, was about conveying information in a tasteful and useful (and even perhaps artistic) manner. But the entertainment industry, again to my naïve mind, seemed more to rely on hunting for talent who could make art for whatever agenda they had in terms of projects. And there seemed to be such an emphasis on name screen talent that I often wondered why the whole thing didn't collapse. Just some thoughts from a hobbyist. p.s. for the record, I don't like "show business", I don't like "talent" with massive egos, and never understood the idolization of "big name stars". It's always been my opinion that competent talent, no matter how obscure, can make your project sing. Thank goodness for silicon valley and streaming. I think I'll go to that Carl's Junior across the street from YouTube tomorrow.

In the early 90s I remember seeing some experimentation with both commercials and TV shows being shot at 30 fps. My crazy "business partner" pointed at the screen one time and asked me point blank "Is that film or video?" I couldn't answer because I couldn't tell. I think it's always been around in some form, I thinkn it's just a matter of whether the production company wants to spend the extra money for the look.

Well, do you personally get more enjoyment from watching a 3D film?

Eh, sure, but I thinkn there's a bit more there, otherwise there'd be no point in experimenting with 3D. I think the real pitfall or false-promise of 3D is that our minds already can interpolate 2D images into a 3D virtual environment. I've got a movie running right now ("Just Tell me what you Want" with Alan King and Ali MacGraw). I'm experiencing a 3-dimensional environment by virtue of innately knowing the physical world in which the characters inhabit; office, apartment, cars, store fronts, etc. Creating a mechanism to create another layer of information for something my brain does automatically, is novel, but it's ... er, I think it's akin to putting two layers of frosting on a cake. Even if you have both vanilla and chocolate frosting on the cake of your choice, you're still going to experience the same sweet flavor. Ditto with 3D technology. It's novel and interesting, but unlike color or sound, we already experince 3 virtual dimensions. Sound was added because we experience the world with sound. Ditto with color. The 3D world is already captured in the 2D image. But I'm repeating myself here, and possibly rambling. Again, just my take. Sorry for the rant. I should be out grabbing stock city footage someplace.

Event Horizon; stuff for teenage boys ... lots of violence and swearing, and some nudity, not much on story with a haunted house plot in space. It could have been a better film. Silent Running;​ decent enough, but again there's a better film to be made here. That and hearing Joan Baez's tune every few scenes got a little annoying. Spoiler Alert; I think a better film could have done without the murder stuff, and just let Bruce Dern's shipmates die off from the hazards of space, and I think that might have made his final act at the end more ambiguous and perhaps poetic. A film that got major thumbs down from a lot of people when it was released, but that I think is quite good, is Coppola's; ​"One from the Heart"

Macks Fiiod​; sorry to hijack your topic, but one of the reasons I went into film was that back in the late 80s I noticed that more and more tasteless humor was creeping into mainstream culture. There's always been jokes with swearing, sexual jokes, even the racist joke that no one wants to admit to hearing or telling. But in the mid 80s it really started to creep into mainstream television. Well, okay, I thought to myself as a teenager and young man, you don't air Vegas shows unless it's on HBO or Showtime, where adults can appreciate sexual humor without damaging their young kids' development. But it's like sitcoms aimed at families were next to sitcoms aimed at College and older audiences, and the bleed over in humor styling seemed real apparent. It could be I was, as I am perhaps now, naïve when it comes to tasteful comedy in mainstream media, but it really got me fired up that you couldn't go to a theatre and see a good G-rated or PG-rated comedy that wasn't aimed strictly at kids. In the mid to late 80s the topic of the large number of R-rated films made the news, and it bothered me. No one was making the likes of "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" or some other well meaning, funny ​or at least entertaining film that could be enjoyed by everyone; the high school or college age couple, the family with two kids, the single dude and dudette, the older retired folks and young kids with an allowance to spend. No one was making them anymore. And they still don't make 'em. Science Fiction, my favorite genre, seemed to be the last genre holdout where you could experience that kind of film (though scifi had its share of sex and violence, even in the 80s). It's like the majors were employing talented film makers who had no taste or no regard for taste, and so made films that they thought would help the audience vent social frustration (as films are aptly designed to do). Right now I'm just a hobbyist (washed out loser, so to speak), and probably don't have the right to complain, but it's like I remember even the "sex comedies" I grew up with ... oh, something like "What's New Pussycat", could be viewed by kids because the sexual material would go over their heads. I guess I still get fired up about this topic, and some of it comes from my dissatisfaction that I'm not seeing good films with clean humor made these days. And it can be done. And used to be done. What the criteria is for making any kind of film for commercial release, at least to me, has me baffled. Ergo, I'm a hobbyist now, and not a grip, PA, AD, AC or whatever.

I think I'd like to take a page out of Susuki's posts and add some more pertinent info; I was at DunDracon, a gaming convention, this past weekend, and I asked why there wasn't more support for games and support for current games didn't seem all that sophisticated as opposed to the 70s and 80s. The response I got was that "In case you hadn't noticed, this isn't the 70s or 80s. There's simply no money in it." I think the same can be said for movies, and specifically comedies. Example; "9 to 5" (1980) with Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton had sexual humor, but it wasn't oriented around body fluids or flashing nude bodies or put downs. Compare that with "Teen Movie" where the shock value of the edge humor is the salespoint to the audience. I'm thinking that the studios believe that making good smart comedies is a risk with no or little return, because the marketing data shows that teens like tasteless jokes. And yet if you look at the two most successful comedies in the 1990s, they were "Frasier" and "Seinfeld", and I guess more recently you can toss in "The Big Bang Theory". Compare that with "Meet the Fokers" or "Get Hard". The demographic dictates the comedy style. I think the audiences today have different expectations because the studios think the audiences are different, but "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" have shown this not to be true. And yet no one makes better comedies. Oh well.

My first student film was a comedy about the world's worst hit-man. It was inspired by my crew's student producer from the previous semester who put on a quick shtick with a squirt gun and trench coat. The man was a natural closet comedian, so I wrote a treatment about him. My friends were pretty good as actors, especially my lead who was (and still is) a natural comedic character actor. The problem wasn't with the sight gags and slap stick, but his narration. Student audiences, no matter how hip they are with what's in their cultural niche, don't have enough life experience to laugh at some of the more sophisticated jokes. Some of the older people I showed it to thought it was decent. And I think that's how audiences tend to break down, though I think I would add that the bar for sophistication has been tragically lowered over the decades. One of my favorite comedies is "Kiss me Goodbye" with Sally Field, James Caan and Jeff Bridges. That film came out when the average and mean age of the movie goer was around 35 or older. Compare that with a couple of films I saw a few years back; "What's your Number?" and "Our Idiot Brother". "Our Idiot Brother" was the smarter of the two films, but even there the jokes skewed towards the edgy demographic with a lot of swearing. "What's your Number?" was nearly all about raunch jokes about sex. Not smart quips and truths, but a kind of "punching down". To me it seems like the big comedic shift over the last 30 years has been from setting an example of appropriate and tasteful humor to the biggest audience, to catering to every taste (no matter how foul) by making films for niche audiences. I'll also add that the film demographic is now a comparative ghetto to the computer game industry, so Hollywood probably also feels it has to cater to juvenile or tasteless material to recapture younger audiences and recoup revenue lost to teenagers buying games.

I shrug my shoulders at it now. Early on I realized that not everyone was a connoisseur of comedy, in spite of all the classic comedies that were shown on TV during the 70s and on up through the late 80s. These days anything goes, and to me it seems like people aren't any more civil than they were in past generations. Films are used to inspire and set examples, and when you let the tasteless genie out of the bottle, you're going to get a kind of wish fulfillment from people who think all that kind of tasteless stuff is okay and normal. And that's just kind of the way things are.

I learned absolutely nothing on that board in terms of technical aspects. All the info I got from there was essentially box office stuff and studio tweaks. There was a technical forum, but it was abysmal at best. That place was just one big giant pre-teen hangout. 10 to 12 year olds spouting off the most horrific vitriol on everyone and everything. Good riddance.

Well, I thought if I could easily make something, then I'd do it real quick before the "flood waters" rushing through neighborhood subsided. It was only meant to be a small project so I could get back into the swing of things. Speaking of water, the rocks lining the creek side are now spanking clean. And, they were invisible because they were submerged. I never realized just how much water that channel handled on an annual basis. Incredible.

Does 6" PVC even exist?

Be cool, guys. Update; I went into the local Home Depot yesterday with my DSLR hanging around my neck, and wouldn't you know it, my Nikon is just a hair too big for the largest sewer line PVC. Which means that if I want to go ahead with this project, then I have to whip out my middle school skill set for working plastic, buy a heat strip, level, and some kind of miter to make sure I bend and cut the plastic at the appropriate angles. I'm thinking I'll just double wrap the thing in a couple of splas bags, get some wet weather clothing, lie on my stomach and grab my footage. Oh well.

Yeah, just show up at 5AM ... shoot depending :rolleyes:

Yeah, the guy said you can't go too deep with the rig he kludged, but it's just for the river and local beaches. No "Shark Week Learning Channel" stuff. I'm thinking I'll rig a tether to it.

AJ, Satsuki; I guess. I think scifi and fantasy films lend themselves to audiences that nitpick. Films made for mainstream audiences probably can gloss over details more. I guess I've not heard enough feedback on corporate video to give anything other than an uneducated guess. To me the tell tale sign of success is if you keep getting called back to shoot more stuff. It's been my experience that the nitpicking from VPs and other corporate types tends to be content, and not really whether the lead was wearing the same tie from shot to shot. Fans, on the other hand, no matter what genre, will notice stuff like that. And the more popular your film, the more fans, and the more nitpicking there is. Just my take. Typically the client rep on the set catches product content flubs, or so has been my experience.