Gabe Spangler

Let's not forget the loss of light and the extra storage space needed ... or the faster processors on digital cameras ... or the fact that is just plain looks dumb. Film is NOT reality – it's FICTION. People want a fantasy world, something UNrealistic, a world NOT like reality that they can slip into for 90-120 minutes. Yeah ... not happening. Go make some more kids movies, Cameron & Lucas.

Adrian, you are wrong on a couple things. – You can use cine lenses. The CP.2 lenses from Zeiss are made for the Canons. Also, you can have a DSLR modified to accept any PL mount lens. – You can over-crank to 60 fps on most DSLRs. – Having a laptop and hard drives on set is not mandatory; it's just that most people feel they have to because they read too many magazines and forums. Plus, you are only listing the disadvantages. The advantages are you don't have to process the film or have it DI'd. You can see your footage right away. Small/cheap cameras afford the opportunity to use multiple cameras and to put the camera in small/tight places. Film is awesome, looks awesome, etc. But it's not the end-all-be-all. Neither is the new digital revolution.

Antti, those examples are the exception, not the rule. And I said "visually boring," not simply "boring." It's all about story and content. Technical stuff is always secondary.

I agree, David. I am not a Guillermo del Toro fan anyway. He's way overhyped, IMO. The only film of his that I really enjoyed was Cronos, one of his earlier films. He needs to get back to that style. He's falling into the Hollywood trap recently of thinking he has to make giagantic, big, huge films. And by the way, Tom Cruise would be incentive for me NOT to see the film. Any why del Toro like Ron Perlman so much is beyond me.

Excellent video, Phil. And I couldn't agree more. I shoot neutral with sharpness and contrast turned all the way down, which is still too sharp sometimes, and the color saturation is close to where I like it. This allows me to make small moves, not big ones, in the grading, keeping the image together as much as possible. It always shocks me when people want to shoot super-flat or super-contrasy in-camera. Middle of the road is the way to go.

The Academy has its own website, of the the first things that comes up when you search "Academy" or "academy awards" or "oscars."

www.google.com

David is totally right, Ryan, in all regards. Also, good luck shooting wide open on a 5D. Your depth of field will be skinnier than fly hairs.

Otis, I couldn't agree more. For some reason people think, because they have a supremely color-correctable image, they should correct the hell out of it. I have seen some nice, natural looking footage from Reds just massacred in post. The option is there to grade the image to a more natural look, but 90% of the time it's the opposite that occurs – going with jarring colors and an artificially sharp image. This current trend makes me sick. I wish the film mentality of getting it as close as possible in-camera and making only small tweaks later was used more often.

If you have a $500 palmcorder and a work light from Home Depot, you are a DP.

The old split screen technique is always a possibility. Shoot a locked-off shot twice, once with the foreground subject in focus and then again with the background subject in focus, making sure they stay in their parts of the frame and do not overlap, then combine the two halves of the images in post. I suspect this was done in major film projects more because there was a conscious decision to have, seemingly, the whole image in focus, instead of racking between two characters, in low light situations that demanded a wider f-stop. But I also suspect it was at times a stylistic choice. Of course, anyone who knows what to look for can spot it immediately. Doesn't stop me from liking it if done well.

I agree. No need for the mirror bounce. Experiment with the different lenses, getting the right punch and spread you want. And you are correct, the haze is what will make the rays of light visible. If you want warm, you may have to gel the light with like a 1/4 CTO and/or white balance a little warmer. Good luck with your shoot.

I owned an XH A1 for two years and now own a 7D. My 7D slays the XH A1 in low light, absolutely slays it. Even at 0dB gain on the XH A1, the image was noisy. The 7D is great up to 1250 iso and the noise is less obnoxious-looking. Definitely get a T2i or a 60D. Some 1/4" or 1/3" camcorders may be able to shoot in low light, but the image is terrible, in my opinion.

Use Highlight Tone Priority. Other than that, it's like Hal said, it's called lighting. If you do end up with clipped whites, a Proc Amp filter in post at about a -0.5 will make them look less obnoxious.

"Have I completely miss understood this whole thing?" YES.

This is almost never the camera. I believe this might be the resizing that is necessary to display the video in a little window when not in full screen. I own a 7D and I never have the horizontal lines you speak of. And I know exactly what you are talking about. It's not the aliasing or moire. It's quick horizontal artifacting. And like I said, I think it only happens when you have to resize video. Some people compress their video correctly for Vimeo, some do not. I don't believe it has anything to do with the original footage.

Almost no shots are literally "locked down." Even close-ups – the operator is subtly following the subject's movement. With the exception of wides and certain shots, almost all shots in contemporary films have movement of some kind, whether small or radical. Not trying to pick on you, either, John, but "putting the camera on a tripod and walking away" would most certainly create the most visually boring film ever made. About Black Swan: I think it's some of the best handheld I've ever seen. And compared to most handheld work, it's very fluid.

Brian, first and foremost, with a $10K - $15K budget, the project is not in the position to be buying any gear. $10K is about as small a budget as it gets. $10K films are stripped-down affairs with minimal cast & crew. Camera and grip gear is limited to what is already owned or what can be rented for super cheap. If a 5D is being considered (don't plan on shooting below an f4.0 by the way), then you will need thousands more to have a package that could really be used. 7D has more manageable depth of field, but again, prepare to spend thousands on top of the cost of the camera body to have a useable package. So by that reasoning alone, a DSLR is out of the question. You could spend $5K to $10K on a camera package and have nothing left, or you could make a real film that concentrates on all the departments in filmmaking (producing, audio, scouting, camera, cast, crew, art direction, production design, writing, hair & makeup, wardrobe, editing, score, blah blah blah). The EX1 is a great camera. And I agree, adapters are garbage. Tell your director that the EX1 is an excellent camera if you use it to its strengths. Find a good picture settings that gives you some good dynamic range and turn that sharpening down, unless you want it to look like a reality TV show. Don't over-saturate in-camera, either. Also, if you or your director doesn't have any experience shooting with a DSLR, a funded film project is not the right situation to "get acquainted with the technology" so to speak. A video camera is not a video camera. There is a world of difference between an EX1 and a DSLR. You don't want to make rookie mistakes with the format when money is on the line and people's reputations are on the line. Just a thought.

Box office sales are down because recent films are terrible, not because people don't enjoy going to the theater. Picture and sound technology (both digital and film) are the best they've ever been, making the theater experience more enjoyable than ever. But I can count the truly excellent films of the past 10-15 years on one hand. Films are truly swill nowadays. Really awful.

I agree, Ronald. The ever-increasing fetish for noiseless images is gross. There are so many green-screened movies with perfect (noiseless) backgrounds and full-on CGI movies, that the younger generations are coming to expect a perfect, noiseless image. This is in turn affecting the digital camera manufacturers to design cameras that have as clean an image as possible. As it stands now, the current crop of digital video cameras are VERY clean. Of course there are the people who don't know what they are doing and then blame the camera when they get an unsatisfactory image. They actually think the camera will do everything. It's the CAMERA's fault that they didn't artistically light the scene, compose well, expose properly or focus correctly. There are so many non-filmmakers out there complaining about, "This camera is noisy in the blacks.," or, "My new DSLR has noise at 5,000 ISO, WTF!!!" I want to ask these people, what camera exists, film or digital, that doesn't produce noise or grain? The amount and size of noise/grain depends on the ASA rating (or ISO value). Shoot at 100/200 = little noise/grain. Shoot at higher values = more noise/grain. Watch any live-action film, get close to the screen, at you will see the noise/grain dancing around, even if it might be barely noticeable. If a live-action film didn't have noise it would look utterly unnatural and ... well ... dumb. My favorite is the current obsession with HDR (high dynamic range). Who wants a distractingly flat image because the camera is able to capture a wide range of both dark and light? Have you seen a HDR image? It looks .. well ... dumb. But the endless critique of technology almost always comes from people who have a technology fetish and have no interest in the visual art of the storytelling that is cinema. Period. They're hobbyists. Don't concern yourself with these people. In twenty years they will still be shooting time lapses of the beach and doing high-ISO tests of downtown, nighttime cityscapes, all the while spewing verbal vomit on YouTube, such as, "I shot this night scene at 20,000 ISO, f1.2 then pushed the exposure 200% in post and it looks kinda shitty. This $500 camera sucks!" The simple fact is that 95% of so-called "cinematographers" have no business shooting on anything other than their iPhone.

I think we can assume one thing: the s35 Epic Light won't be $8,000 for the brain like the Scarlet was supposed to be. I'm guessing $15,000 to $20,000 now. Red really crapped the bed here. And "Epic Light"??? Really? That is the dumbest name I've ever heard. Epic fail.

You can't learn to be artistic. Either you are or you aren't. Anyone can learn to mimic what's already been done. But can you be really innovative with your cinematography? That is the trick. But then again, you aren't reinventing the wheel. Filmmaking has been around for well over a hundred years. It's very hard at this point to be innovative. Pick your spots to put your stamp on it, so to speak, but don't try to do too much. Stay busy filmmaking and your artistic style will develop over many years. But any book that claims to teach the "art of filmmaking" or "art of cinematography" is probably a sham and not anything I'd want to read.

At least we're getting close to a interchangeable lens/s35 sensor @ 1920x1080 (not a DSLR sensor line skipped to HD)/ decent codec/full XLR audio camera at a decent price. Panasonic almost did it with their AF100/101, but like the dummies they are, they chose a 4/3 sensor. God, what a dumb move. I've been saying this for years. The industry is screaming for this: – S35 sensor with 1920x1080 pixels (not 20MP line skipped to 1920x1080) – Interchangeable lens ability, with option of adapters for PL, Canon, Nikon, whatever – 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p and 60p frame rates - Full manual control of iris, shutter – Built-in ND filters – Capture to compact flash cards – Good, beefy codec (not AVCHD, HDV, etc...) – HD-SDI out for the option to capture uncompressed RAW – Dual XLR inputs with independent audio controls for channels 1 and 2 – Picture setting control This should cost $5,000 for the body alone, not $28,000 like the new Sony F3 (god, what a joke). Panasonic gets the price point, they just missed with their sensor and their codec. Someone will get it right soon.

I'm sure you're right. Still not too interested in this camera, though.

AVCHD – Blech! E-mount – Blech! Price $6,000 – Blech! For $6,000 I would expect at least XDCAM. Nothing I'd be interested in. For that price, I'd rather pay another couple grand and have a Scarlet s35 body when they come out. Shoot on a 5D or 7D until then.