Royce Allen Dudley

Why oh why does the edit function not work on this forum ? Alas That's interesting. It would also account for the ridiculously low annual salary ranges listed in the same governmental statistics that are easily googled ( employment by profession and state ). Apparently full time employees make less than the average part timer. Series work IS regular full time employment on payroll, as is feature work; I am not sure how you think otherwise. Multiple employers is still employment. Please clarify your accounting. How can they differentiate between short term full time and long term full time ? And if Roger Deakins is unemployed, it's also like saying George Lucas is an indie filmmaker; which of course he is, but it paints a useless analogy. As for E V E R Y O N E doing this thing now; I did not make Los Angeles the mecca for film, it simply still is ( if in ICU and on a ventilator of state-funded tax bribe initiative ), and if you are here you will find massive unemployment among film crew; that is 1) vetted film and video crew who more years than not file tax returns as a film crew person, not a barrista; may be union may not - tons of SAG / non IA work at good livable salaries accross the industry 2) "filmmakers" ; self -titled equipment owners who occasionally see income from producing, editing, cinematography, wedding films, etc but are otherwise reliant on a day job, trust fund, girlfriend, etc to survive 3) The rest ; wedding cinematographers, web videographers, media blogger/ consultant / whatevers Not just L.A - go to Oakland and hang at my friend's cafe... several filmmakers on the couch all day on the computer sulking. How many coffee shops full of sulking filmmakers ? Boston, Omaha,... I have no "hatred" for DSLRs or their users ( I own / use them ); I have an observation about the watering down of all creative professions since the simultaneous perfect storm of the maturing internet / digitaI technology / global economic change; I can guarantee most of these mass of freelance people were not trying to do the movie thing before 2008. It has all changed forever. Fact. It has affected the way I do business and with whom I do it to be certain. Won't say what I do differently now because it works,and what used to be colleagues are in fact mostly competitors now; that's the sad part. In any case- back on topic- unless it is USC or UCLA or NYU and you are a superb writer director producer candidate and a superb player of human politic among peers, film school is largely overpriced for what you get out of it. And on top of that...to add an about-face ... I myself occasionally shoot thesis films , because it's great for a working pro to get the benefit of positive creative energy and " no limits" thinking from talented young filmmakers, albeit before they as a group mostly give up and become clock punchers outside the business. Yes, the energy of film school has some value, it just may not lead to work.

That's interesting. It would also account for the ridiculously low annual salary ranges listed in the same governmental statistics that are easily googled ( employment by profession and state ). Apparently full time employees make less than the average part timer. Series work IS regular full time employment on payroll, as is feature work; I am not sure how you think otherwise. Multiple employers is still employment. Please clarify your accounting. How can they differentiate between short term full time and long term full time ? And if Roger Deakins is unemployed, it's also like saying George Lucas is an indie filmmaker; which of course he is, but it paints a useless analogy. As for E V E R Y O N E doing this thing now; I did not make Los Angeles the mecca for film, it simply still is ( if in ICU and on a ventilator of state-funded tax bribe initiative ), and if you are here you will find massive unemployment among film crew; that is 1) vetted film and video crew who more years than not file tax returns as a film crew person, not a barrista; may be union may not - tons of SAG / non IA work at good livable salaries accross the industry 2) "filmmakers" ; self -titled equipment owners who occasionally see income from producing, editing, cinematography, wedding films, etc but are otherwise reliant on a day job, trust fund, girlfriend, etc to survive 3) The rest ; wedding cinematographers, web videographers, media blogger/ consultant / whatevers Not just L.A - go to Oakland and hang at my friend's cafe... several filmmakers on the couch all day on the computer sulking. How many coffee shops full of sulking filmmakers ? Boston, Omaha,... I have no "hatred" for DSLRs or their users ( I own / use them ); I have an observation about the watering down of all creative professions since the simultaneous perfect storm of the maturing internet / digitaI can guarantee most of these mass of freelance people were not trying to do the movie thing before 2008. It has affected the way I do business and with whom I do it to be certain. Won't say what I do differently now because it works and what used to be colleagues are in fact mostly competitors now; that's the sad part. In any case- back on topic- unless it is USC or UCLA or NYU and you are a superb writer director producer candidate and a superb player of human politic among peers, film school is largely a waste of money.

Film school is more about meeting people and getting rudimentary experience... the degree doesn't mean much to people who'd employ a DP. Now that the age of Digital Revolution is in full swing, the things film schools once offered exclusively ( knowledge and equipment ) are accessible anywhere. Save your money and get a job at a camera rental house or a lighting company- learn the gear, meet crew while getting paid, and you will work your way onto sets. It's a time proven route. Or buy a camera and become an overnight self -taught hero; not as smart if you intend to work for other people, but everyone is doing it these days. E V E R Y O N E. A quick googling of " worst college degrees" will get you lists on salary.com, forbes and elsewhere that all put Filmmaking and photography degrees about second from the worst return on investment and employment prospects. See for yourself.

Oh boy... I dread this kind of discussion and have sidestepped it for the past decade whenever possible BUT I must point out... First of all, gas or electric, you must know how to drive a car. Sudden access to any car does not make you a skilled driver. So it is with the democratization of cinematography through digital, wherein anyone with any recording device and a vimeo account is now a DP. If you ask them. OK... at this point in the game, digital capture can be ( not "IS", but "can be") indiscernible from film capture if done in the hands of a skilled DP and properly finished. It's a moot conversation, anyone who chooses to shoot in film and gets to must be studio elite or self funded indie auteurs, it's simply no longer a choice for most working DPs answering to a producer, period ! A point that is usually getting lost in this conversation which I find far larger than the shift from negative to chip itself was mentioned in the round table video and I am aware of it profoundly; the autonomy of vision and trust once afforded the DP through the need to wait for dailies is now gone. The paradigm shift in procedure, video village for everything, DIT on set, truly undermines many a DP's best potential work on the day by serving to continually water down or deviate his intention by group think. Aligning vision with the director who has the stones to let the DP be the Director of Photography and not merely the camera dude, that is now the focus for a DP, more than the medium itself. We are in a transitional time where there is much sound and fury... you know the rest of the quote.

From a 2013 Boston Globe article : "The major US multiplex chains (Regal, AMC, Cinemark, and Carmike are the “big four,” with about 17,000 of the country’s 39,500 screens) have for the most part already converted their theaters. Says John Fithian, head of the industry trade group the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), “32,000 of the total screens in the US are now digitized.” According to Variety , 75% of the screens globally are digital. Studios are helping to finance conversion in large markets foreign and domestic.

There are large wedding specialist companies who have a "presence" in major US cities. At the time I did a couple of those gigs to investigate the market, the going rate was $450 to the shooter. The company charged the client $1850 to book the job, receive the hard drive, handle the transaction and deliver the raw footage to client. It's a business model now widely accepted for all manner of shoots and spwaned of / entrenched in the digital revolution and the internet; interviews, small corporates, white cyc or green screen presentational videos... a goodly percentage of these are serviced by the new internet model where the wide masses got to a few sites to reach their local shooter ( hired by a similar wide net thrown out by the work broker ) and pay through the nose, often more than they'd pay locally. Ethical or not, I don't know. Crew brokerages used to take a small percentage of a high volume of work. No one complained. The only way to complain now is to not take the call. And when I didn't answer the phone again, some kid who thinks $450 was a score took the job. There is no way I was going to see more of the $1850, and the irony is that it's someone else's demos on the website that drew the client to the job in the first place. ( Brides see a pretty couple with pretty family and friends in slo motion in an Italian oceanside villa, and they hire that company. Never mind they are plain looking and getting married in Fresno). The money is no longer in the service, it's in the aggregation of service. Look at eLance , fiverr .... I suspect in another decade creative commerce and careers are unrecognizable.

George, everyone's own experience has anecdotal qualities. As for weddings and depositions; weddings have been a specialty for some videographers, and the rate per operator has been up to $1000- I have done them ( and a few where the rate was $450 although I was billed to bride at $1850 . I quit that nonsense) However, in recent years, again, everyone with a camera is doing them, so now the norm is chump change. Depositions are not really a professional videographer's work; that's a court reporting / stenography job and court videographers push a button and announce the time for the record. As far as no hack projects in the Bay, I understand your opinion, as it is a general truism that The Bay Area hates Los Angeles whereas L.A. has no beef with The Bay at all and in fact love to come up regularly and spend L.A. $ ;) That said, there are both scheister and hack filmmakers who live and work there, that is, among the minority who actually do anything as opposed to sit in cafes ordering free waters who call themselves filmmakers and harp about how everyone else isn't actually a filmmaker. Amusing scene there once you get outside the small circles of actual, working local crew. Not sure where your experiences are coming from, I respect them of course, they are your observations, but we must experience a different market on the same streets.

The P & A doesn't cause the budget to drop or cut into budget money ; (they rarely come from the same place), but rather the P&A is something that cannot be dropped as much as production because P&A are hard costs where production on micro indies can be deferred or simply interned-away. You are quite right they are making money in VOD TV and discs sales; absolutely. Even more than you may think... I know first hand it's very common for distributors to inflate the "estimated budget" on IMDb for a number of reasons related to their own sales (and often filmmakers do it pre-sale thinking the distributor will pay more, which is usually major delusion about the value of their work ); I shot a $16,800 film listed there as $100K that has brought the distributor almost a million, and another with a bunch of names made for $100ish-K that is listed as $500K. If you acknowledge those budgets as deferred owing or assigned value or whatever, it's all the more alarming that so little cash trickles back down, since a lot of newbs in Hollywood work for free to staff these films, and it buys homes and cars for others.

That's an idea which pre-supposes people would want it or care about it. When "good enough" has become the new "good" and everyone perceives they are just as good as the next, I don't think most people will care.

In the olden days, hiding a camera and crew behind solid black ( or white ) or the like carefully placed to the reflection can work. I did it a couple times in the ancient era of last August. Showcard and duvetyne is a lot cheaper than post work. I learned to light and shoot super reflective objects long ago, studying door hardware brochures. You could look at all the carefully placed refelctions in the photo of a doorknob and often find a little black square with a lens in it. Less is more, often

That is used for essentially for webisodics, and it is used as a way for non union actors to join SAG. Talent is another arena completely overrun ( polluted? ) and watered down. People try to produce features under it but the minutiae makes them unsellable as such just as did the old SAG Experimental agreement. My first 35mm feature with names was done under that, and then when Miramax wanted it, the deferred talent fees and required approvals killed the deal. See also: film in the garage, on a shelf forever. Plenty of ways to waste money and make a film that goes nowhere... amazing how people think they are smarter than the lawyers retained by the unions and guilds and studios. A friend and mentor of mine in the 90's was the late director Larry Buchanan. A shlockmeister, but very smart and reasonable gent, and not jaded or cynical in the least ( he has a wonderful autobiography called IT CAME FROM HUNGER, chronicling an earlier era in indie cinema ). I asked him how to succeed in filmmaking. He said the only sure way, and it was a 100% guarantee, was to become an entertainment lawyer.

I would agree with Chris's observations. It would be hell to be starting out right now, and I am always mystified by crew members new to me who openly share they are DPs, but sparking or gripping for the week, or who color and edit as well as shoot. I also just saw an ad for DP who can edit and compose a score and mix. Now obviously this is an uninitiated producer, but it shows the mindset of the new melange of efforts that seem to be acceptable. I fear the crafts dumb down and we lose the skills as a group. It's like homeowners who watch remodeling shows and decide they are contractors. They screw up their house and the actual contractor cannot feed his family. But Lowe's and Home Depot are making a killing off it. in the past 10 years DPs have gone from getting day rate plus kit fee to all in for one price and then that rate has eroded to the ridiculous. It is often the camera package getting hired at less than market rate, and the DP is thrown in. The preponderance of people who have become DPs overnight by buying a camera is mind boggling. I would not say they are as a whole professional but among them there are those who went a similar route to mine decades ago, doing their damndest to learn and be mentored and to achieve. Today the learning curve to basic abilities and basic shooting is shortened because of mass access and we know how this business likes the young... there is also a perfect storm timing with Millennials being the ones who value dollars less than job satisfaction, and are choosing to freelance in this way. Their values are different, they do not respect or appreciate experience, only results, and hence the idea of true apprenticeships is an obstacle not an opportunity. I have told sound mixers that no sound mixers with kit would touch an indie for under $500 a day in 2000 with Nagra and boom, and they look at me like I am from Mars- they have the cart and the 4 wireless and ComTechs and all the proper kit and are getting $175 in 2014. The camera situation is similar. I have also seen a serious disempowerment of the cinematographer to the point many projects do not have one per se, and the DP / camera owners go along with it and come on as cam ops, or the production dispensing with DPs entirely... 2 features this week I watched trailers for that looked all over the map and had no DP credit but several operator credits and director as A -camera operator. There is something to be said for barriers to entry to a field. With the democratization of film making, perhaps a bigger barrier to quality and success will exist for those same masses. Strange Days , indeed.

Thanks Greg. I wish the two threads could be merged. Great discussion all-in-all. LLP is Larry Levinson Productions- they shoot I believe a lot of Hallmark movies. As far as I know they have yet to be organized but I could be mistaken. In any case... I have said for some long time now if I had it to do over I would have been sweeping out a camera truck in 1980 and never looked back. The independent route is simply not a way up and in for most from what I have seen, and it has only gotten exponentially more so. Cheers

There are far more that are not, trust me. Indie budgets are usually based on cast, and therefore the SAG contract they fall under. It used to be common to see films made under the Modified Low Budget - under around $650K; all these I have seen or heard of or been involved in never started IA but I think one flipped around 2005... cannot name it. There is a tremendous amount of business done under the SAG ULB contract which is under $200K. You can find recognizable actors in these films working at $100 per 8 hour day. Rather than point out the great life available under IA, can you explain what makes IA perk up and organize a show ? Also, why do the semi-permanent crews of companies like LLP constantly refuse to organize ? Mr Irwin you are truly among Hollywood's elite crew members ( your resume reads like a multiplex marquis). As such you may have a tinted view of the bigger city full of film folks around you, and I get from the gist of your posts that you suggest everyone join the unions... even though you also used the word " competition"... at what point do colleagues become competitors? I'm all for the good life.... but I suspect there would be far less work available and that few crew could maintain the hours needed for benefits. It would never happen, but maybe the industry in L.A. could use a good, grinding halt.

Satsuki, I work SF as well... I think it's safe to say $1000-2000 per day for DP non union labor only is near the upper end in the market, surely not the average. Good corporate gigs can be $650-800 per , maybe plus gear. But I am certain a good volume of work there is under that, with no extra pay for kit. I don't want to name companies but let's say major hi tech companies and others have discovered " tiers of service" and pay very poorly for some gigs. We also have DPs being replaced with the new terms "junior shooters " and " corporate film makers".