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George Ebersole

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Everything posted by George Ebersole

  1. Has anyone ever worked on your own brakes for your car? How hard or easy is it? I'm thinking of replacing mine, but don't want to shell out over a grand to have it done.
  2. Well, one of the key issues of getting that 70's look is that chips organize light differently than tubes, so you don't get the same kind of flares. Digital gives a lot of vertical flare lines, where tube cameras give the starlight effect.
  3. No particular camera in mind. I was just generally curious.
  4. Does that allow you to run a feed off an old Ikegami or SONY to a hard drive?
  5. Well, the OP brings up "Scream", and shows screen captures of that film. A little known film, which I think is much funnier than Scream, is a little gem from the 80s called "Student Bodies". Where "Student Bodies" has more subtle humor, is a bit more intelligent and witty than "Scream" could ever hope to be, "Scream" is the better looking film. Just an FYI. *EDIT* I'm referring to the 81 "Student Bodies" film, not the more contemporary one.
  6. Well, it seemed curious that with all the closures that prices weren't coming down on glass. Tech has brought down the price of some cameras, but all the support gear is till relatively expensive. Whatever. Every time the economy adjusts I can't seem to find a bargain, no matter what. I do have to say that way back in the 1990s it did seem like there was just rampant consumerism almost for the sake of it. It's like everyone was buying everything for the sake of it. Then we had Enron, the banking crisis, and a couple of other economic crises. Every-time I tried pricing a camera package the prices always stayed the same, so I bought some used gear instead back then. Now my big choice was deciding whether to choose an acquisition or legacy format, so I went for the middle ground with a low end DSLR ... but lenses are still pricey like they were 20+ years ago. Oh well. At least I don't have to spend thousands on editing software anymore.
  7. Yeah, and I think that's the difference between the action genre pre 2000s or pre 90s verse what's on the screen these days. The last superhero film I saw was Guardians of the Galaxy, and where I knew I was not the target demographic going in, I had heard a lot about it, and the thing that struck me about the film and a couple of other superhero films, was that it wasn't serious in the least. To me that comes across in the shooting style. I don't think that makes all films look worse, as per the OPs opening post.
  8. Yeah, I get what you're saying, but if you compare Donner's high budget film with today's high budget stuff, Donner's film looks a bit more "artistic" and less plain than similar films in the genre. At least I think so.
  9. Yeah, that's what I was trying to say with my Richard Donner "Superman" example. A lot of visual artistry went into making that film, and it was not cranked through marketing team or a board of directors. The creative forces were given a task, and so we get a superhero film that has a lot of classic shots in it mixed in with some action sequences. Back to my Donner example, shot by Geoffrey Unsworth, we get some pretty dramatic shots. A long shot followed by a close shot of Pa Kent suffering a heart attack; young Clark Kent standing in a cornfield, or even the shots of New York (Metropolis) have an artistic flare. You don't see that kind of thing in today's superhero films because the target demographic is primarily kids, even though the film is marketed at dads, they wind up bringing the family to enjoy something they liked, ergo the idea is to make sure the film is visually easy to understand. At least that's for the big budget stuff. When I was growing up you saw a lot of mid range budgeted features that looked pretty good in spite of not having soaring budgets. You just don't see much of those anymore. HD/digital TV has done to movies what TV in the 50s did to movies; sap a lot of talent, and put an emphasis on weekly marketable product that's fast to shoot. I hope that helps.
  10. Wow, I didn't know Monaco was gone. That's major. Last year I found out that Gassers off Geary had shut down a long time ago, so I tried to hit the store downtown off 2nd, but you can't get a parking there for the life of you because of the Salesforce construction. So I gave up. But now they're really gone, huh? Wow.. Incredible.
  11. Yeah, certainly e-commerce has put a crimp in a lot of things. But people still need to buy washers, dryers, big ticket items in general, or non-media items, and that's a little confusing to me. I still buy clothes in stores. Satsuki, I don't know if you're a bay area native or not, but from the 70s up to maybe 8 years ago or so, it was like you couldn't walk a few blocks anywhere on the peninsula without some store carrying some kind of camera gear. It was mostly consumer stuff, but in addition to those places there used to be quite a few camera stores, and now it's I have to drive either a half hour into the city, or an hour south to Keeble and Shcucatts to get to a serious camera store. That never used to be the case. Oh well. I guess I'm just waxing poetic.
  12. So, a few months back I was scoping out some lenses, or trying to, and I noticed that nearly all the camera stores in the Bay Area (where I live) have vanished. There's like maybe a half dozen or so, including one mom and pop shop sort of near where I used to live. I keep hearing the economy is okay, but then I see all the store closures, and if stores are going out of business, then how come I can't clearance prices on massive lenses? In this video the guy walks through a Payless Shoe store that's barely hanging on, and talks about the retail meltdown. The theory being that retail was overbuilt in the 90s, and now that the economy is slowing down, people (shoppers and retailers) are discovering that they don't need lots of the same stores all over the place. Result; store closures. I was just curious if anybody here had an opinion on this.
  13. We do tend to cherry pick stuff we like from the past. Pacing was also slower in previous decades for action films, so that might be a factor for the OP.
  14. Shot in the dark here; action films today (including scifi, superhero, fantasy) today appear to be shot with an emphasis on visual detail. If you look at the latest Fast and the Furious film you'll note that you can pick out every detail in the image. Rom-coms tend to have a softer or more traditional look, ditto with drama. If you look at those same genres in previous decades they were all shot with an emphasis on artistic detail, and not so much tailoring the image to the target demographic. That is to say the Donner's 78 Superman film had an artistic bent to it. It looks like much of the film was shot with a very light filter over the lens. Compare that with today's superhero films, and it's all about exposition of the characters and environment, and not much trying to artistically tweak the image to make it look "award winning". I think the idea being that that the target demographic for today's action films are aimed at an audience that isn't interested in aesthetic presentation but more the action and story. Donner's film was shot like a traditional American drama that had elements of comedy and action. Not so with something like the Spiderman films, or Thor or what have you. "What's your Number" or "One for the Money", both female rom-coms with elements of action, don't look too different from something like "Foul Play" or "What's Up Doc", both shot in the 70s, also both female demographic rom-coms. I'm not sure if that helps or not.
  15. What specifically do you think is bad? The framing? The lighting? The composition?
  16. Isn't bouncing light is also like opening the barn doors and adding a subtle diffusion at the same time? Or am I just imagining that.
  17. Has anyone heard of this? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4062534/combined
  18. Another reason not to have every single device you own hooked up to the net.
  19. I like the shot of the venue floor with soda or water on the pavement. I've never seen a camera get that kind of good detail of partially wet and dry asphalt. That's really amazing to my eyes ... not sure about anyone else. Wow.
  20. Wow, cranes and cameras have come a long way. Suddenly I feel old. Thanks for the link.
  21. Can you PM the details? I've done AC work, setup dollies, and everything else, but I've never loaded a magazine nor attach a lens, just sat behind the eyepiece and told what to do. Rigged lights, ran power, lad down track, picked up gear, done everything but be an actual certified DP.
  22. I KNEW it was Paul Newman :) .... and I kept crawling through YouTube clips, because I didn't want to just cheat and look it up. Okay. I'll let someone else take a stab. *EDIT* That's a pretty deceptive shot though. I kept thinking it was European, maybe something from France. Oh well. I got it now.
  23. Sorry, but I'm cheating right now. The film's on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't place it.
  24. Jonathan Tinsley; thanks for the heads up. I really didn't want to spend thousands on Adobe boxed versions. aapo; yeah, I can see that.
  25. I went to Adobe's website; http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html?promoid=PQ7SQBYQ&mv=other Interesting. I wonder why people are still trying to hock the expensive boxed versions.
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