Gregg MacPherson

Hey Bill, I decided not to re-watch the film, so leaving my original impressions intact. As Mr Darcey says in Joe Wright's sublime Pride and Prejudice, "quite well is not very well" or something like that. I thought they almost had to carry this film on their own, so I'm not surprised that some one finds fault in the acting. Imagining if Robert Redford played the Dad or the Therapist or both and probably him giving notes on script and camera. Could be a nice little film. My personal re-imagined version of a film like this turns the actors almost into movable non speaking props that become part of expressive tableaus and sources of often minute expressive details. Overlaid with words as required to maintain the narrative. Cheers, Gregg.

After watching I noticed that it was a 48 hour film. I hate the 48 hour idea. Is this why you had so many operators? It's quite a normal and predictable feeling film to me. Under imagined. Inconsistently framed, commonly off or aimless in the framing. Being of very conventional form, it needs accurate compositions. The therapist's office had odd red skin tones. Otherwise I quite liked the light, colour, shadows there. The other world (therapy experience) was definately to me under imagined. Normal life with a filter. And even in this excursion into consciousnes, words and the actors faces stay glued together. More expressive and imaginative stuff please. The concept is ok, with potential to be quite nice. The actors basically have to carry the whole thing. They do quite well. But I don't know if any critique of a film made in 48 hours is really meaningfull. It's just such a bizare time constraint to accept. Why do it? Cheers, Gregg. PS. Did not enjoy the piano, especially in the other world part.

I looked at that page. There might be some kind of strange poling strategy to help refine the design of the little plastic action figures. By analysis of the ensuing social media chatter. Regarding that, this was the first time I arrived at a page with numerous looped thumbnail vids. All looking like epileptic fits or a glitch in the matrix. Are Sir Peter J. et al responsible for that? Decades ago I read someones idea that the world was becoming more and more full of progressively less meaningful things......

There are some themes and forms that (just like in pop songs) will never go away. Girl, boy, distance, finding each other. Just like real life. So, being a romantic, I'm predisposed to be sympathetic. But the music didn't help me. Maybe I'm just too old and non accepting of it. I had Bob Dylan's If You See Her Say Hello in my player so I ran that instead. I started the film from just before the first Him Her title with the jet planes.. Bill or Freya, If you try this you may need to pick your own music. It does feel a bit creatively inferred by some commercials I may have seen, which is a nice way of saying that it may feel a bit unoriginal or derivative. But if the final thing is good enough I don't think that matters. The pop song analogy again. Cheers, Gregg

Hey Peter, What makes you call the ACL II less reliable. Is this from personal experience or is it an educated guess based on something..... I always thought ACLs were a good camera to own. At least for indies or people making small personal films. If maintained, completely reliable, and should be much cheaper to maintain and service. It is harder to find technicians that know ACL now, and harder to find new parts. Cheers, Gregg.

I really enjoyed that. Partly because I loved turning pottery when I was a kid. I like the simplicity of your film, the fact that it is a direct, honest observation. They (the artists) blur the boundary between making craft and making art. I would happily watch the one hour version, with that idea expanded and a lot more impressionistic details of them, their life forming a collage layer. In this short version I felt the artists were a bit hidden. I couldn't tell if this was a function of your working process, how that might have limited what you were able to photograph, or whether you were deliberately suggesting a sense of anonymity. I would be happy if "reality TV" basically disappeared and was replaced with documentaries. I mean film that actually offers us some insight and learning. Here in New Zealand a "documentary" will typically have a minor celebrity trot their way through some new place or thing. Any chance of in depth observation or interesting idea is subverted by a lot of superficial, over personalized reactions. Cheers, Gregg

I wonder if it is a mistake to separate the film making from the cinematography. With the Festiwal Wcześniaka you have a finite piece of time to basically make observation and produce the most interesting possible images. To make exquisite images in this context one is using skill and perceptivity that may be of a different kind to what is used to shoot great drama. The best beginning point for an observational piece like this is to care deeply about your subject and to be very familiar with it. One needs a point of view, something to say. There are moments where you get lucky (3:11). The kids faces behind the microphones, the uncertain movement, the boys face (eyes) half aware of the camera. If you want to develop depth as an observational photographer then come up with a project that allows intensive development of idea and gives a relaxed timeline. Or work with a film maker who is developing a project like that. Similarly, with drama. If you want to end up with exquisitely crafted images that carry the spirit, emotion or narrative then invest a lot of energy in development of those images. Or put yourself with a film maker who does. The WKD film feels mostly undeveloped in terms of how the images express the ideas. This can be fine. A film like that can be fine. But you have a hunger for images that are more expressive and more developed I think. The G1+Lomo. I'm assuming that is all photography rather than image manipulation in post. He's a good photographer. He found meaningful compositions in that environment using available light and made a sort of poetic relation between them. A little film. It's based on his ability to see. His perceptivity. Ok, and some curiosity about the Lomo anamorphics helped him. As to whether one should be deconstructing the work of others, then reconstructing one's own version of that. Isn't it better to work intuitively, natively, according to where one really has arrived in terms of our ability to see the world around us. Where do I subscribe to the Don't Yell at Freya Society?

Your vid caught me at an unguarded moment. I had these thoughts. Philosophy and film experience rather than digitography. This is a quite brutal piece of eye-lolly propaganda designed to convince us that self gratification is the most important thing in the universe. But of course most of us are already convinced so this is a maintenance exercise, just going a little bit harder, brighter, faster, whatever it takes. Neurologically, it's a kind of force fed sugar rush. Do we need to prep for this experience by doing jazzercise, or getting jacked up to follow the image count. Or drinking Jack to get numb and just letting it wash over us (i.e. not really seeing it). Even the ants crawling along my kitchen bench have got the message loud and clear. This vid confirms it. African American men want money and sex, now. Cheers, Gregg.

Does anyone know why there are so many Red Rock Micro follow focus units on eBay? Multi choice answer? A) They were oversold to the market somehow, with a brand perception higher than the percieved value once used in real life? Translation, they sold lots, but they weren't as good as people hoped. B) They are no good? C) They are not much better than some similar and cheaper Chinese FF. D) Everyone is upgrading to the next RR Micro model? It's making fun a bit, but also serious. Cheers, Gregg.

Robert, That's a good price! Shame you are so far away or you might get some jobs from New Zealand. US$0.36/ ft here, only one lab left. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey Borris, I'm not finished on those mags yet, including the final test for the jamming on the drive sprocket problem. Meanwhile they take up space. It's about 17 years since I droped off film at a lab. Now the lab in Auckland has closed. Only the Wellington one left that I think Peter Jackson owns. They charge about US 36c/foot for basic neg processing 16/35. So did the Auckland lab. That's hard for any micro budget people. Meanwhile a lab in LA was US 13c/foot.. For tests I might find my Lomo tank and convert a projector to S16. I have a few 200' spools. Do you have some magic trick that can let you test several mags on the one roll. I didn't understand that unless ypu are rewinding the film or something.. For the light leaks I was just going to put a short piece of B&W in the mag, and yes we have lots of sun, even in winter. Maybe one of these mags has a broken nose seal. Did you try the French chap Arts Media? I can't not share this next thing. I bought a 400' French mag on the internet for a little over 100 Euros. Really low use and good shape except needing a full lube. Feeling lucky, I bought another one, from someone else, Dr Helmut Diewalt in Germany for 100 Euros. Score! But, it turned out to be English, with a French nose part, some odd modifications and a missing rubber door seal. It was shipped without a nose guard, just a layer of bubble wrap over that. Opening the take up door a little piece of spring steel fell out that almost looked like from the pressure plate spring. All the rollers etc felt worse than bone dry, some badly worn. ....Humbling. Funny I guess. Cheers, Gregg

Yea, cruel, but really funny. I was LLOL (litterally laughing out loud)

At art school in the early 80s I think my sculptor tutor, the late Tom Taylor joked that when sculptors get together they discuss metaphysics, space, singularities, but when painters get together they discuss where to buy the best turps I guess the lesson for us then was that ....what artists of different kinds chose to talk about or were able to talk about was no indication of what they were able to achieve. We could apply that to film makers, but film making normally comes with a heightened conscious awareness of process, for both development and execution. Unless you are Salvador Dali and you just.....threw that camera up into the air while it was running (as he did). But hey, maybe he planned that all really carefully. I'm with you completely that there are great film makers who can defy categorization into genre. Actually, I think genre is a really odd concept in the way it is being so universally applied to film. Given enough time, does the new simply become another category (genre). Is that what really happened to the avant-garde. Is there is no real avant-garde, just a history lesson? (not asking, just talking) On a personal level, hopefully without shifting the axis of the thread. I have seen a little of Dereen, Cocteau and yes Svankmajor. He I thought was a very original guy and a master of ideas. Cheers, Gregg

I didn't master this multi quoting from multi quoted thing. I tried. Blade Runner was the most useful, personal to me and widely understood illustration I could think of. Accessible meant we could all go and see it in the cinema if we really wanted to when it was released. At least that was true here. I'm really interested in what people think happens in this magical gap between the level of the creative impulses in an artist, the formation of "idea" and the devolvement into story or poetic form, a fusion of those, or whatever it becomes. In terms of film. No, I don't think you are being careless, but there is potential for carelessness, not necessarily from you, on some of the other threads up at the moment. That's one of the reasons why I made a new thread. But that issue is not important to the subject. Cheers, Gregg.

May I suggest that by your cutting that quote short you are effectively miss-quoting me. I said "...landmark educative piece on film as art, poetry in an accessible form". Accessibility is a factor in this so please pay attention (and that, is a joke).. Maybe I should have written more carefully. Ridley Scott only made this one film that I absolutely adored. I think he could have retired after that. I had a perod of maybe 20 years where I was uninterested in films so I haven't seen all his films. I have seen Gladiator and Blackhawk Down and thought they were great works by the great man. I didn't see Hannibal and didn't really think about it. These kind of themes are really ugly to me. Re whether you have to respect Ridley Scott or not. We can all say what we want, but if we are careless about it we will take some heat in the end. I can't separate RS from the one masterpiece he did. Thats how I identify him. It infers the identity or selfhood of the artist, not bounded by the present moment or the momentary condition of the ego or the body (age). Anyway, back to the thing about what underlies "story" yea? Take care, Gregg.

I know that gushing about Blade Runner is like preaching to the choir, but I don't think that gently challenging the primacy of storey in film making is. What actually spurred me to this post was a message of yours in one of the Prometheus threads where I think you said something like "story is everything". So I wondered if other people thought much about this. I'm sure most working writers, directors and DoPs can do their job really well without thinking about it. There will be a few deranged artists and intellectuals who can't help but think about it, and a few visionary film makers (R. Scott, A. Tarkovsky) who understand it intuitively and maybe didn't need to think about. When you say "core concept" that a "story gets built around" what do you mean? Are we taking about themes and short hand for the narrative. If we think of the core concept for some of Tarkovsky's movies, maybe it sounds like poetic, transcendent experience. Is it more of a quality of experience than a concept? Not asking, just thinking. Gregg. PS Shamelessly gushing about Blade Runner yes, but it's an important illustration for me, and we may not all have the same experince when seeing it.

I was almost going to join in the discussion here and stick up for Ridley Scott. There are a few threads about Prometheus. Then I had some thoughts that are mostly illustrated by his work. I started a new thread "Poetry...Story...Bladerunner...Prometheus" in General Discussion section. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=56599

There is a lot focus on the notion of story amongst film makers. I think it's symptomatic of the style of thinking that human beings have at this point in history. Everything broken down into manageable parts. In film people are looking at the units of construction in terms of story. I'm think that this doesn't give an adequate insight into some truly great films I need a language to help imagine what underlies story. And what's hidden while we focus on story. I think "story" is founded on "idea". Idea is bigger and more potent than story. In turn, underlying idea are those fleeting, rapidly morphing notions that reside in the deeper consciousness of an artist. With Blade Runner the artist directly infused the film with those deeper layers. The film is so rich in poetic intention and idea that it becomes a sort of education in experience. This film is the landmark educative piece on film as art, poetry in an accessible form. Even the limited success it initially had fully validates its being made. It's influence on creative people was immediate. I think when we watch a movie we flick some switches in our head. We like or dislike. We respond or not to different layers in a film. I think our head can be too full and one layer can disable another. It may be that with Prometheus Ridley Scott has missed the mark, but we have to be respectful of this great artist. The idea for Prometheus is great. If it had as much time, talent and creativity oozed into it as Blade Runner I think it could have been great. I'm imagining him shooting 2D, on film, the medium where he is a master. When I looked at the documentative footage of Hampton Fancher, the original Blade Runner script writer, there was an amazing sense of creative ntensity to him and committment to idea. It was strange but somehow logical, I imagined I felt him in the movie. Prometheus feels like a movie founded on a much lower level of personal intensity. Cheers, Gregg PS. Just to be clear, I saw Blade Runner when it was first screened in New Zealand. All us young artys were stunned, in awe. Thank you Mr Scott.

I really liked the idea, and the way that this turned into a story, a narrative. Idea and story are not the same thing. Don't let the bullshitters fool you. I like the idea of the community of artists, all slightly skewiff characters when you see them. I guess all the characters are in that category. There are flaws, but my attraction to the idea sort of over rode them. I thought that all the dialogue should have been post recorded, even if you had to improvise that. And much of the dialogue could have been over MOS pictures, more of a free montage approach. Like someone else observed, the chess game scene stands out. No real reason why all your immages could not look as good as that. There were some where (I hope I remember correctly) I didn't like the colour cast on the skin tones. Why only two days for the main production? If you don't have money to employ a lot of skilled people, don't you need more time. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey, A fellow New Zealander! I really liked the intro bird images over multiple screens. But for this song and these musicians I thought the multiple screens idea, as executed, was misapplied. Sort of rigorously misapplied. The music feels real, the people feel real, but I'm not learning much about them. Feels like my head's in a vice and I'm doing eye exercises. Interesting formal concepts are often seemingly randomly applied in MTV and if people think it's cool then all is OK. I thought this song deserved some seriously intimate observational photography. Some diffuse excursions into the texture of their lives would be interesting. Cheers, Gregg.

Hey Erkan, If it has to be simple and cheap you could make the support plate long enough to go from the camera base to the support point under the lens. Just a length of say 80x10mm or 12mm or thicker aluminum plate with a line of counersunk holes for the camera and another line of tapped 3/8" threaded holes under the lens axis. The camera base 3/8" hole and the lens axis are offset about 9mm. Or just make whatever hole pattern suits. This idea is simple to do if you have a workshp. It's a bit heavy and bulky, but the plate needs to be stiff enough otherwise it's not useful. The NPR idea I've only seen photos and it doesn't look good for supporting a heavy lens. If you want to swap ideas about custom making a plate you can contact me direct at viz(at)xtra.co.nz. Cheers, Gregg.

Can you get a dovetail plate with 19mm rods? Can you fit the Arri one to the ACL? Then you could support the lens and get the balance. Or you could make a basic cheese-plate yourself out of 10mm aluminum plate and adapt the lens support. I don't think supporting the lens from above with a plate bolted to the top handle mount is a good idea unless the camera is being suspended from above at the balance point. The top handle mount isn't stiff or strong enough to react loads (moments) from a big lens. The lens mount would take all the load. I was just recently doing some drawings to design a baseplate for ACL II that would take 19mm rods, handles etc. With 19mm rods in the correct position I found that the base of the ACL camera itself would interupt the rod on the left hand side. Cheers, Gregg.

It's a Proaim brand, marketed by Cinecity and sold by various resellers on eBay for about US$550. Made in India. I'm also curious to hear from someone who has used one. Hope they speak up. This FF is almost the only cheap one (Cavision also do one) that lets you put the drive gear above the rod clamp rather than offset. Cheers, Gregg

If you search "16mm syncroniser" and "hot splicer" on eBay in the Cameras Photo section there are some quite cheap. You could also try to find an out of work neg cutter to do the job. Or at least to give you some advice, maybe lend you some gear. I did a neg cut on a 1/2 hour film I shot years ago. With the best advice and proper gear, but I still heard from the lab later that a couple of my splices didn't hold. I would only do it yourself if you're really broke, or really interested in the process. Cheers, Gregg

I think I drank a double brandy and outed myself re this film vs digital issue on the Indietalk forum. Rather than link to that I'll paste here. Quoting myself with a few corrections for typos: "....In the limit (as in a mathematical proof) the medium of film I believe will have an evolution into a medium for artists only. Think Lynch doing Erazerhead or Chris Marker doing La Jette, but imagine that history haden't yet happened (in order to guage their significance). It (film) may be wasted somewhat on narrative film makers as a medium. If film makers and thair audience can't tell the difference between film and digital it (film) may dissapear quickly as a mainstream production and exhibition medium. We live in a world where we are told that everything can be expressed as a collectiuon of discrete parts. The world is deconstructed. An image is encoded as a matrix of zeros and ones that are transposed off to somewhere else. But like the frog that we may have been forced to disect in class, the analysis of parts is an exercise that can easily end the life force or whole value that glued all the parts together. When light collides with a piece of celluloid it is a kind of total event leaving a vivid record. Analogous to the way all impacting experience on us (mind/body/physiology) leaves a record. These impressions don't easily dissapear. even if they are undersired. I think we are obliged to find or make images of significance or unavoidable fascination and then learn how to deal with them. I think there will be some artists who will linger in the world who will find film as a medium a fascinating loadstone in this respect. There is a line that is being crossed as film dissapears from our experience in the mainstream cinema. It's a validation and reinforcement of the completely eroneous idea that only the surfaces matter. If we make digital look like film, who wiull ever know or remember it (film). But consider this, if you could have a rubber doll that looked , sounded and did everything in an identical way to your life partner, would you accept them as being of equal value? To accept that (the rubber doll) are you really even human enymore. So please go ahead and enjoy film medium while you can....." Cheers, Gregg.