Carl Looper

While one might certainly entertain use of a single binary digit (on or off) to specify whether a given 'grain' remains in the developed image, this information alone, is insufficient to code the image. To what location in space is the specified grain to be assigned. To what size (if not shape) is the area of the grain to occupy? In film these attributes are physically quantified rather than digitally (numerically) so. The term "analog", used in relation to photo-chemical film, is to distinguish the image it codes from that which digital film codes. Whether it is the right word doesn't really matter. Usage governs meaning. But it's historical meaning is also quite apt. C

The variation in a photochemical image is analogous to variations in the density of the silver, the components of which are variations in the position and size of the silver, the numerical value of which exceeds the capacity of finite binary (on/off) values to specify.

Came across this today (from 2014): Its an example of how filmmakers beat an entirely different path to feature films from their predecessors. If we take "short films" to traditionally mean those films shown before a feature, we all know that such films no longer exist (the rare exceptions proving the rule). Of what use is the phrase "short film" if it refers to that which no longer exists? And so while music videos and ads are not the traditional thing that comes to mind when speaking of "short films" they nevertheless constitute an alternative path that filmmakers have taken (and can take). They constitute a much wider definition of short film - out of necessity (the mother of invention). They provide that which a traditional short film previously provided: a way of learning one's craft, building one's reputation, and earning an income - as a film maker. It is the filmmaker, treating their work as a short film (whatever else it might also be), that defines what "short film" will henceforth mean. http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/feature/a556875/jonathan-glazer-10-stunning-music-videos-and-ads-from-under-the-skin-director/ C

The model I was using for anamorphic bokeh is a bit too clumsy. Its really quite a peculiar thing this anamorphic bokeh. I've managed to put together a more robust model. The cone of light emerging from an iris behind an anamorphic lens in camera space is more of a four dimensional hyper-cone than a regular three dimensional cone. The tip of this cone (the focus 'point' of the wave) is stretched out into a line along the cone's axis. Bokeh becomes a 2D cross-section of this 4D hypercone. Bokeh in the near foreground I'm finding should be horizontally stretched. At the beginning of the cone's tip the bokeh becomes a small line. Half way along the tip it becomes a small circle and then at the end of it's tip it becomes a small line again, before stretching out into a vertically stretched oval. I've yet to test the model against actual images. C

Here's another example of Landons logic: While I appreciate a triangle, they are triangles for a reason. They generally don't have four sides, and as such, will find little success as a square. C

Thats like saying "While I appreciate the contributions that Donald Trump makes ... he is Donald Trump for a reason. His work is generally not for everyone, and as such, will find little success" While this actually sounds quite true, the real reason Donald Trump is Donald Trump is because that's what his parents called him. C

Obviously when Landon D. Parks uses the words "short film" he has his own personal definition of what those words mean. By "short film" he means a "3 act film told in less than half an hour". For the rest of us, these words "short film" have a far more general meaning, where they simply refer to any film that has a short duration. Not just 3 act films. A short film doesn't have to be any good in order to be called a "short film". Whether good, bad or ugly, a short film can be called a "short film". Now the actual duration of a short film, called as such, will vary from one culture to another. For example, here in Australia any film less than one hour is called a "short film". Anything longer is called a "feature film". These terms don't have any other more specific meaning. In relation to a three act structure, such a format allows for quite good work, as much as it does complete and utter garbage. And the same can be argued for any other structure. C

The mainstream is mainstream by definition. Not by reason. The three act structure is thousands of years old. But so too are many other structures, equally supported by various schools in Ancient Greece and come down to us through the ages. Throughout the medieval era was a practice known as "marginalia" in which monks bored shiteless of copying out the same manuscript year after year, decade after decade, century after century, began being creative and adding their own creations in the margins of the manuscripts (thus the term "marginalia"). This is experimentation. It's what happens when you get sick and tired of the same-old-same-old. It's not a choice. It's a rebellion. Experimenting is not just fine as a hobby. It also has an audience which sustains it. Films don't pay bills. Money pays bills. Be it money from funding, or from audiences, or from corporate sponsorship, or from government funds, or from some rich kid with money to splash around, or from a benefactor. The list goes on. A short film is just any film (video) that is short. Its as simple as that. C

Yeah for sure. Music videos, as we understand them today, grew out of non-narrative experimental film making. The experimental film makers demonstrated that a film didn't need a narrative (in the traditional sense) to produce something that works as a film. Visual music one could it. Doesn't need to sell musicians. This kind of film making goes all the way back to the beginning of cinema, and Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera is a really good example. Myself I'm very much a proponent of narrative, be it linear, non-linear or some other kind of narrative. But I also have a very deep affinity with non-narrative work (so called). However it's not necessary to make experimental films just to re-invent the mainstream. There are plenty of other much better reasons. C

What interests me the most are not those films that allow you to make a living, but that living which allows you to make films - narrative or otherwise. C

Yeah that's a really good point. People make a living from television ads, music videos, wedding videos, corporate docos, and the list goes on. And they are all short films. And if we otherwise define short films as only those that don't make money all we're doing is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. C

Well no, because film and television (the theatre, the circus, etc) constitute a pre-digestive system. The powers that be are smaller than the audience. In social media the powers that be (in terms of content) are larger than the audience! The real powers that be in social media are actually the technocratic system behind the social media. To the technocrat, the content becomes irrelevant. The audience are making the content !!!! C

Yes. That's the thing. The majority of stuff will not be that rewarding, or making that much money. But the sheer size of youtube means there must be exceptions, ie. those who do make money. But it's the majority of material that defines the rule. In other words, as a rule, you don't make much money (if any). The rule works against you. The exceptions being just that: exceptions. TV and cinema are interesting because they form a pre-digestive system. Before a work reaches the screen, it passes through a kind of filter, that filters out, according to the rules of a much smaller group of people, that which it deems will not be viable (rightly or wrongly). The work is effectively curated (by the powers that be). It's the complete opposite of something like youtube, where it's a much larger number of people that determine what reaches the screen. But even in the cinema, investment can be in the form of statistics. So one might invest in x number of films of which one out of x will be the exception which brings in the dollars. One doesn't need to know in advance which one that will be. Diversity will be a good strategy. The idea is that the one that brings in the dollars will pay for the others that didn't. But of course, once you set up such a system you'll start seeing a kind of pattern in the numbers where a particular kind of film is winning the lottery more than others. A kind of get-rich-quick-system can take hold of the system - ie. one can start believing that one knows the winning formula and can dispense with funding x films and just fund the one - the one that will win. This can hold for a little while but a crash will eventually occur. Its perhaps a wise thing to move and back and forth a bit between these two models. Of course, only big capital is really capable of this sort of thing. C

Yes, crowd funding works according to your social network. If your social network is small then so too will be those visiting your crowd funding site. Of course if and when you do put together a crowd funding site that will tend to increase your social network a little, simply because those not already in your social network, can still independantly stumble across your crowd funding site. But you will increase the probability of success if you can drive more people to the site by other means - eg. by leveraging your existing social network. But keep in mind that your social network would need to (obviously) include those who might invest in your project. Your close friends are not going to be the best bet as investors. So you need to tap into new networks specific to your project. And promote your crowd funding site through those specific networks. A crowd funding site can also be understood as an adjunct to a traditional project proposal, where you otherwise, in a real world setting, target a specific group of people already understood as investors, eg. doing a show and tell in a board room. At the end of such a talk you can give out a card with the address of the online version of such: a crowd funding site. A kind of virtual version of your talk. It extends the scope of your talk and maintains it's viability beyond just the allotted time of your talk. I'm currently preparing a crowd funding site that targets a specific cultural network, but it will be from within that specific cultural network that the crowd funding site is promoted. Not the other way around. C

In case there is any confusion in the above, I'm using the term "focal plane" in the diagram somewhat incorrectly (and using the term "focal point" in the text somewhat incorrectly). The indicated plane (far left of the diagram) is just where a point in world space (and otherwise "out of focus" there) corresponds to a point in camera space (and likewise "out of focus" there). The focal plane, properly speaking, is the film/sensor plane, and the image in this plane corresponds to the image occupying the focus plane in world space (at a distance from the lens corresponding to the lens focus setting). C

Yep - so this model of a conceptual lens with two focal lengths is working. As a focal point moves away from the film/sensor plane, the difference in bokeh size, between the vertical and horizontal will diverge, with the vertical getting taller at a faster rate than the horizontal gets wider. Assuming a 2X anamorphic (one focal length is twice the size of the other), a focal point at infinity would see the vertical bokeh twice the size of the horizontal bokeh.

I should just add that by "same iris" I mean the same f-number (eg. 5.6). Insofar as the effective diameter of the iris (for calculating DOF or calculating bokeh) is a function of focal length divided by the f-number (eg. f/5.6), our conceptual lens with two focal lengths would then have a smaller diameter in the horizontal than it does in the vertical, ie. an oval shaped iris. This shape is just the "effective" shape rather than a literal one (for purposes of calculation). Another way of saying this is that the depth of field is larger horizontally than it is vertically. Or the image blurs more vertically than it does horizontally (the further away a point is from the focal plane on one side and the focus plane on the other side). C

I've got a rough conceptual model going on but it's not yet very clear. It goes something like this: So an anamorphic lens system can be regarded as an otherwise normal lens but with two focal lengths. A vertical one and a horizontal one. The horizontal one gives a wider angle of view than the vertical one. Or to put it another way the horizontal focal length is shorter than the vertical focal length. Now we know that for the same iris, the shorter a lens the smaller the bokeh. Or the longer the lens the larger the bokeh. And so using our conceptual lens with two focal lengths, the bokeh will be smaller in the horizontal than it is in the vertical. An oval bokeh. And this will be on top of the image squeezing and stretching that otherwise goes on in the same system. Since bokeh (or circle of confusion) is also related to focus distance there might very well be an asymmetrical variation between the horizontal and vertical as a function of distance from the focus 'plane'. Just need to test this with a mathematical model for depth of field and bokeh, ie. plugging in two different focal lengths and getting the corresponding bokeh size, for different focus distances. And seeing if this tallies with the observables. C

Ah okay. So the oval iris it's just a way of faking an anamorphic lens bokeh with an otherwise spherical lens. And Panavision can take from that there's no need to implement an oval iris (of the opposite orientation) in their anamorphic lenses. C

It's an interesting question why the larger the bokeh, the more horizontally squeezed it is. I haven't yet figured out how to model this. But given this as a visible effect, would not an oval shaped iris be useful behind an anamorphic lens? You'd make the iris wider than it is taller. The in-focus bokeh would then come out wider than it is tall, but being in-focus it would be too small to see (so no problem), while the out-of-focus bokeh (what we normally mean by bokeh) would come out circular - assuming this being a more desirable outcome than squeezed bokeh. C

Thanks Satsuki. Much appreciated. C

By which you mean, when projected back though the recipriocal anamorphic lens. Anyway the upshot is that as a point source becomes further away from the focus plane, the more vertically stretched (or horizontally squeezed) it becomes (in projection). Back towards the focus plane, the point source becomes circular (in projection) but also too small to see. On the film itself (prior to being unsqueezed) the in-focus bokeh (so to speak) will be horizontally squeezed (but too small to see) and the out of focus bokeh even more so. C

Ah okay. Thanks. That's making more sense to me.

I'm feeling very boketeru right now. It's back to the drawing board for me. C

What? Changing the shape of the iris and not the lens, squeezes the image? Is that what you are saying? Or it just produces oval shaped bokeh, and the image remains unsqueezed. I can understand the latter, or are you suggesting the former? I must investigate that. Its a hole in my theoretical grasp. C