Pat Murray

I did. I'm going to see this tonight in 3D. I saw it in 3D and my opinion is this...if you've enjoyed the 3D experience thus far on "tentpole" big budget movies, you'll enjoy "The Avengers" in 3D. If you've yet to see a movie in 3D where you thought it was worth the extra cost, see it in 2D. Good acting. Good job by the director, Joss Wheadon, to write and direct a story involving so many Alpha characters (as well as A list movie stars). It's very difficult to pull off a story with so many strong characters (true in any storytelling, novels, movies, plays etc.). The last act is too long, IMO, I believe less is more when it comes to act 3 final showdowns. See 3rd act Death Star battle in Star Wars IV for example of what I prefer. It's a well done paint-by-numbers formulaic story for its genre, so if you're into these kinds of movies it'll be an enjoyable 2 1/2 hours for you. Others here would have more insightful comments in this regard, but I thought Seamus' work looked great on the AMC (4k projection) screen. There was a noticeable difference in brightness when I took off the glasses, it's to be expected, but the presentation I attended wasn't nearly as dark as some of my previous 3D experiences. I thought the images looked great through my glasses compared to previous 3D movies in other theaters. The best comment I can make about the Alexa is the thought of digital or film never crossed my mind. I was focused on the movie and not thinking of the media used to produce the images.

Good advice, I usually go with this too. If you're near an AMC that does $6 movies before noon, IIRC, the 3D films go for $8 or $9. So I'd go see the 3D version during the $8-9 period and if it's poorly done, I won't feel as bad as when I pay $14. :)

I doubt that. You can't even come up with money to shoot two rolls of Super 8. If you're lucky enough to direct, and considering your inability to appreciate the images in that Super 8 short I doubt this, you'll be hired by somebody else to do the job. In that case, I suggest you be a better judge of who is the smartest guy in the room before you "let him" buy you coffee or whatever else you're willing to do to network and build the requisite contacts to get hired as a director on somebody else's budget. Personaly, I couldn't think of dumber advice on how to make your digital video look like Super 8. The first mistake you two are making is assuming the images are crap and then thinking that by making the crappiest digital video possible you can fool the professor. It's a moot point anyways. You cannot imitate Super 8 with digital. It's as pointless as trying to make a pencil sketch look like an oil painting. You cannot do it. Talk to your professor and do the assignment properly.

Strive for excellence, the pay will take care of itself.

Shooting Panavision Anamorphic has been mentioned a couple of times and I thought I'd highlight that point for you if you want to shoot a John Carpenter type film. Anamorphic lenses are mentioned because that's how Carpenter likes to shoot and he is, in my humble opinion, excellent at composing images for a wide lens format. For sure get a Producer together, but make sure your DP is competent with anamorphic lenses. Especially if you're going really low budget. Carpenter is no Ed Wood, if you catch my drift.

It was used by the KKK, but it isn't the intentionaly racist propaganda movie people attribute to DW Griffith. Based on Karl Brown's "Adventures With DW Griffith" and other sources, Griffith was surprised by the negative attention the movie received. He simply wanted to produce a historical epic and based the movie on stories his father told him. Still racist, but unintentionaly racist. Or historicaly naive, if you will. He thought he was actually depicting historical fact. I mention this because I think future directors and Hollywood in general has given Griffith a bad rap he does not deserve and should be remembered for the totality of his contributions to film history. DW Griffith was actually a civil libertarian by today's standards and contrary to what is commonly reported, "Intolerance", rather than being a response to or apology for "Birth of a Nation" was actually a very personal movie that expressed his POV about the treatment of the poor, the working man, the week, the downtrodden. If he were alive today, he would have been an active participant of Occupy Wall Street.

Pointless? I don't think so. Brevity is the soul of wit. No offense to the massive tome put together by the AIC and IMAGO, but I think it's a bit much (elitist?) to ask contributors to post at least one film from all the cinematographers you mentioned in a discussion board thread. It doesn't have to be a mic swinging exercise, if you get what I mean. Once Upon A Time In The West Children of Paradise Amelie Citizen Kane Birth of a Nation Faust Godfathers 1 and 2 Barry Lyndon The Thief of Baghdad (1940) Broken Blossoms Lots of wonderful selections in this thread. Bring them all together for a terrific bucket list of must see/own movies.

Would love to watch this, too bad I'm outside the UK.

That's not even remotely close to being my experience with 35mm prints. My experience has been the exact opposite you described and rarely if ever experienced the problems you stated on first run movies, and especially on re-released restored classics. Now, when I watch a rare original 35mm release print of Fulci's "House By The Cementary" at a midnight showing, like I did last Friday, I expect what you described, but that's understandable and I actually enjoy it as it feels like I'm experencing living art - even if it's deteriotating over time - rather than the cold lifelesness of digital. That said, as I've always said, it shouldn't be a zero sum game. To be completely frank, to suggest one is superior to the other is just plain stupid. As stupid as saying oil paintings are better than water colours. It's a completely subjective exercise when it comes to artistic mediums. So it makes me particularly sick that people are being brainwashed into pushing for "Team Digital" by companies who only care about the bottom line over artistic integrity and choice. Luckily for me, there are 4 theaters in my city who have purchased digital projection systems, but will maintain their 35mm projectors, including two of them maintaining 16mm projectors for more rare film screenings.

Can somebody who understands manager speak translate this to English for me please? Is he saying they are about to release software that can convert any digital file format into any other digital file format?

Interesting that digital has made it easier to pirate films. That said, piracy has also helped film. Many films are still available today thanks to pirates. 9/10, when you hear about a print for a lost film being found in some private collection, that print is pirated copy. Taken from the cinema rather than sent back to the studios to be thrown in the trash. Granted, I'm mostly talking about the kind of piracy that benefits a film years after its commercial release. It certainly doesn't help the film industry if people can download Transformers 3 to their PC on the same night it opens in theaters.

In what way will digital be making movies that haven't really been explored before? I'm fine with digital, but statements like this perplex me. There are film and video - now digital - artists who've been pushing the boundaries for decades. Are you just talking about the popcorn sellers that show up at my local multi-plexes? I know artists who mess with the chemistry of film to change the ISO, they bury the film and then shoot it weeks later, they play with other chemicals on the film, they do all kinds of experiments. How is a cheaper digital camera format going to help them explore ways of making film they haven't really explored before? I guess the digital artists will be happy, but they've already been at it for decades now.

If the sound Blarney didn't work, how did you deal with the sound issues? I've been planning on shooting a Super8 feature for a few months now, so will be looking to pick your brain more later if you don't mind. Do you have a link for your archived interview? I'd like to listen to the interview.

I was thinking the same thing reading this thread. I don't think you can reproduce the look of E. Elias Merhige's Begotten on digital. I think each frame was photograped 10 times through an optical printer. Also agree with your point, Freya that process is important to film artists. Not everybody is in film to make millions producing blockbuster feature movies as quickly and as conveniently as possible.

I think it was John Waters who pointed out that you can't get a much cheaper means of production than a pencil and paper and yet the 20th century didn't produce a single Shakespeare. Cheaper does not equal better although I find it interesting that David completely contradicted himself when he said digital was cheaper and allowed better storytelling and then the next post described a hellish onset situation where a DP and/or director "let the actors get on a roll" with 8 or 9 or 10 takes and then experiment with long shots, short shots, experimental shots etc. Time is money on a set, who is going to pay for all that "jacking off" with the digital camera? And then there's the extra hours you're going to be paying the editor to sort through the countless hours of footage. Nevermind that kind of environment would just wear everybody out and kill their creativity. I was just on a digital shoot for a short movie this past weekend and I didn't find it cheaper and I certainly didn't find it more convenient. Actually, I had to go through many "That's perfect! but just one more to be sure." "Ok, good, one more to be sure." And that doesn't include the 3-5 takes before we get to perfect. Contrary to popular belief, Kubrick was not a maniac for lots of takes for each shot. In an interview for "Full Metal Jacket" he said he prefered to get each shot in the fewest takes. It was only when the actor was unprepared that he had to take 9 or 10 or more takes. Prepared actors usually only required 1-3 takes. So I don't understand this hard on from Digital proponents for thousands of extra unecessary takes. If Kubrick didn't think it was necessary..... Anyways, as I stated in my last post on this subject, it shouldn't be a zero sum game and it shouldn't be brainwashing marketing "get with the cool kids" with one medium losing out to the other. Film and digital should be viable together and offer storytellers choice. The argument that digital is more convenient and cheaper is pure BS. Just pick the medium that best suits your story.

Or the difficulties surrounding the shooting of Jaws before the Steadicam. Taxi Driver was no walk in the park either as the cinematographer and director shot many scenes crouched in the back of a taxi cab trying to use as much natural light as possible. It's a shame that art would be disrespected by such issues as money and convenience, even if it is the reality. The way it should be is both mediums should thrive giving movie artists choice. If it was just about convenience and money, we wouldn't have oil landscape artists anymore, people would just shoot a picture with a digital camera. It is, after all, cheaper and more convenient. How would we like to visit the Louvre and be confronted with a digital print of the Mona Lisa? The original trashed because it was too expensive and inconvenient to maintain as the artist intended. To a true artist, it should be offensive all this talk of money, convenience and the underlining "get with the cool kids" attitude the companies producing digital are pushing/brainwashing onto their consumers to sell more and more product. True, for the majors, it is show BUSINESS, but that shouldn't be considered acceptable to an artist and more needs to be done to promote film as art and not just a means to sell popcorn. The ideal situation is not a zero sum game, but an industry where all mediums are available to the artists so that they can use the medium (digital or film) that best suits their project. I don't want to live in an all digital world, nor do I want to live in an all film (analog) world.

It is too late for your current project unfortunately. For the future... I know of three plugins/solutions in digital post-production for low budget filmmakersd who want the "film" look. They are called, Super 8 camera, 16mm camera and Super 16mm camera. You pick one, shoot with it and then transfer your footage to digital. If you want digital, shoot with digital. If you want film, shoot with film. Kind of like an oil painter asking how he can get the water colour look.

Whatever. Film is art and this would just be another way to present it. We are obsessed with seeing things on a screen because it is still a fantastic way to view that work of art. I'm not bothered by this kind of technology so long as it doesn't become a zero sum game. I don't want to be forced to only experience and view film art through a machine fastened to my head.

Ha! The old "white coaters". I bet he made a pretty penny off those films. A little bit of movie trivia, in "Taxi Driver" Travis Bickle takes his date to one of those films from Sweden. Note the men in lab coats at the beginning and the sombre voice over during the sex acts.

I believe it's been mentioned already, for every well intentioned bomb or just plain stinker, you also have crazies with money who want to make a movie. I salute you for wanting to avoid the Tommy Wiseaus.

:lol: Too funny. Chance, what are the titles of your movies?

Congrats, Richard. I've got Netflix at home (I'm assuming Canadian Netflix too?) so will put it on for my niece/nephew the next time they are over. How does Netflix work? Do they give you a royalty everytime somebody watches the movie or did they pay a flat rate for the right to stream the movie for subscribers?

I think he means mise-en-scéne/set design. John Carpenter learned by analysing the films of his favourite directors like Howard Hawkes. I recommend you do the same and closely analyse Spielberg's movies.

Self-Marketing for what? He's an actor. Actor's act.

I don't think Peter's post is arrogant, I just consider his opinion an indication that he is undereducated in the wider breadth of his choosen field of study. It is like a University Math student asking, why 2 + 2 = 4 or, "what's the use of algebra?" I don't know if this is due to the film school he's attending (I didn't just see the films of the greats, I also saw B films, low budget films made by Carpenter, Kubrick, Hitchcock et al and even took a whole semester course on American exploitation/grindhouse films circa late 60s to early 80s). Or, maybe Peter is an excited student who just finished his first year and decided to go to film school because he grew up watching A list Hollywood actors and Hollywood studio films and wants to be a part of that aspect of the industry. To him, quality could simply mean big budget like "Pirates of the Caribbean", not necessarily quailty such as "Psycho"; a low budget "B" type movie at the time. Other aspects of the industry and the history of film in general was of no interest to him before going to film school. This isn't a negative judgement, everybody has their reasons for wanting to be in the film industry (or digital video industry these days). I do hope that in future courses and through life experience in the film industry Peter will come to respect, understand and enjoy the rich history of B movies in the history of the motion picture industry. Heck, a widely respected genre/period today, Film Noir, mostly consisted of films regarded as "B" by studios at the time. I'd also take Carpenter's "Assault On Precint 13" and Corman's "Death Race 2000" over many of the big budget quality films of today. That said, I saw Bill Murray being interviewed on TMC last night. I didn't recognize the interviewer or the program, but Bill was making a similar argument/rant as Peter. Bill was talking about his experiences in France during his hiatus in the mid 80s and how he watched this program that started with the earliest silent films. He was awestruck by the quality of the films and wondered how we could justify making inferior films with superior technology. Although I think he was mainly attacking the Hollywood system and not B and low budget films. Peter, some great stories have been told through the "B" movie industry. Check it out. You're missing out on a gold mine.