Rakesh Malik

I studied that book, and got a LOT out of it -- and it caused me to think even less of our school, because the person teaching cinematography there didn't touch any of it. That book did help me to raise the level of my cinematography quite a bit! I obviously also recommend that book highly :)

Probably both. At my school, these subjects were only covered by allusion; the only thing we learned in school about blocking was that it isn't the same for cinema as for theater and the only thing we learned about composition was the rule of thirds, and the only lighting was 3-point. IMO the worst part is that most of these things don't cost money, and if your cast + crew are operating like a team, they don't cost much time, either... and yet they improve the perceived production value far more than jib and dolly shots... which require a lot more gear and a lot more effort to incorporate...

I don't agree that you don't need talent to edit with an NLE, because you do still need to know how to tell a story. An editor who doesn't understand what pacing and suspense are won't give you a good cut whether on an NLE or by splicing film. Too many people these days have it in their heads that directing a movie means pointing a camera at a bunch of actors and calling "action" without consideration to blocking, lighting, art direction, and composition. There's a book out called "Directing the Camera" that could be summed up as, "You're probably not naturally talented, so don't bother trying to be artistic, just pan the camera a lot." Most of the so-called DPs around here are really just rental bodies with cameras. They don't get involved in designing shots or lighting, they light the gaffers take care of the lighting, and for the most part, no one seems to worry much about blocking outside of action sequences and continuity. That's one of the biggest detriments to cinema these days. Indie films end up looking bad because the people making them usually assume that raising production value means putting the camera on a jib and keeping it moving, rather than about lighting, blocking, stage direction, portraying emotion, and art direction. It's disappointing, but hopefully it will allow people with the dedication to the art to shine amidst all of the... chaff.

When you're making a trailer for a film that isn't particularly inspiring, I suppose you have to settle for putting booties in seats instead of marketing a great film. The more money the studio throw at their films, the less creativity they show. I suppose that's why we're seeing so many remakes and reboots; the execs with the checkbooks aren't looking for good ideas, they're just trying to repeat past successes. Emphasis on the "repeat" of course. I don't think that many of the studio execs have put much thought into what made previous movies successful or not, they just see the glitz and explosions and a-list actors and think that they have a winning formula because it worked the last time, even though audiences are clearly tired of it. I was listening to Kenneth Duran's (not sure about the spelling, since it was a radio show :)) weekend review of the summer lacklusters, and it was comical, to say the least. He described the four biggest action films that were in the theaters that weekend, one after the other. His plot synopses were nigh identical, the only difference being the lead's profession (a cop who doesn't play by the rules... a firefighter who doesn't play by the rules... etc). Sadly, the hollywood movie scene seems only to be getting worse.

What you're seeing sounds like anti-aliasing. It's a common computer graphics trick that smooths out jaggies in graphics, and it's very common in almost every modern computing device out there nowadays. It's computationally expensive, so it was rare 20 years ago, but with modern graphic hardware, it's pretty trivial to simply turn anti-aliasing on for HD or smaller footage.

I've worked with two directors who had very little technical knowledge and experience, and we've gotten good films out of them. The trick is to avoid the gen-y's hero worship attitude... which is that directors make movies. The reality is that they don't. They get their team together, and that team is who makes the movie. What varies is how the director participates in the team effort. I always try to minimize distractions for the director, which includes not asking the director to work with the gear on set. Tthe directors I work with crew on other projects that they're not directing, but when they're directing, I want them to be able to concentrate on the actors + storytelling. We work together to block out scenes and design shots and lighting, which means that I discuss options and show them ideas until we're both satisfied with the shot design. To direct, you need to learn a lot about visual storytelling, story structure, and acting. You also have to know how to determine whether or not you can collaborate effectively with the DP + crew that you select, as well as the cast. You don't really need to know specifics about lenses like which focal length corresponds to a 50mm lens when mounted on a Super 16 sensor, but understanding how you can use a long lens to alter the shot's perspective and how the viewing angle affects the way that the scene reads would be very beneficial for working with your DP to design the film's look, shot to shot. To direct well, you should learn about the process of how to make a film, as much as you can. Even more important than classes on film making are classes on film analysis, IMO. Learning about visual storytelling will also help you plan shots that will edit together smoothly, and also make it easier for you to work with your editor in post. Writers CAN direct, but there's a lot to learn if you want to direct well.

The irony of SFI is that although the digital productions use consumer cameras (yes, not even prosumer cameras), they actually have students film one project on 16mm, and one optionally on Super16. That said, no one in the class learned how to use a light meter; I learned how to use a light meter from a workshop on large format photography close to 16 years ago, so the production I was on ended up using a super 16, but no one else did. I do suspect that the glut of new entrants into the field is contributing to the lower prices. One of the contributing factors to the glut however is the fact that so many schools have dumbed down their programs in order to keep people enrolled rather than emphasizing the quality of their education. Smart money would be to raise the standard for the school, even though in the short term you'd lose some tuition income because you'd end up flunking the losers, but in the long term you'd have a better reputation and higher demand, so you'd be able to get better students. Instead, they insist on keeping people in school, and dumbing down the classes to accomplish that. The US education system's race to the bottom knows few bounds, unfortunately.

Yes, that they are. There are some folks at SFI who are trying to improve their program, but they're not making much progress. IMO one of the biggest downsides there was the LACK of attrition. We had a few people drop out, but some who should have flunked out graduated. These are people who didn't have even basic skills, and a few who were almost invariably late for class as well as on set, rarely turned in assignments at all let alone on time, yet they got their certificates. SFI shares facilities with a film composing program that's almost the exact opposite. Those students are very good, and the work hard because they have to in order to graduate. My main reason for not going to a "top" school was geographical. There aren't that many options in my area, though I discovered fairly recently that some of the smaller colleges here have decent programs. That said, the person who was teaching post-production had masters in film from Stanford, and showed us some of her films. They were poorly shot (flat front light, busy, subject front and center), the editing was passable, but not stellar, and they weren't even properly color matched. It was sad.

The second was the Seattle Film Institute. I attended part time, and started with screen writing, which had a very good teacher... but production and post-production were basically a waste of time. The person teaching the production class was obviously focused on the least common denominator, which meant dumbing the program down to a level where even people who shouldn't have been able to get into the program would get solid grades, and the post-production instructor was a complete waste of space. Fortunately, the person teaching film history and film studies is stellar, his classes are completely worth taking. Fortunately I found myself an internship with a production company that had two feature films and two episodes of a web series under its belt in addition to post work on several other shorts. I learned a lot about editing and got started learning color grading while working there, and it's helped my cinematography a great deal. Of course if I'd known what the school would be like before joining, I wouldn't have bothered, but it apparently had a pretty good program before the new owner took it over. Then again, I've seen the work that former students and teachers from there do since I finished... and it's not impressive.

When the trade rags like American Cinematographer are little more than gear lists, what do you expect? Film schools don't teach art, they teach the easy stuff; any idiot can learn to operate a camera, but it takes actual talent and skill to teach people how to compose a shot. Film schools don't bother teaching skills either, at least nothing you couldn't learn from a manual. I went to two; I started at the local Art Institute, and got fed up with the fact that their program was oriented around "here's the stuff I take with me as an AC" and "here's the stuff I take with me as DP" rather than "here's how you design a film from a script." That was a waste of time... so I transferred to another school, and ran into basically the same thing, except that we had a film history teacher who actually cared about education. Production? Basically, an excruciatingly slow tour of the gear room that a motivated student could have gotten through with two weeks and a pile of manuals. Plus the rule of thirds, hardly worth an actual class to learn. Now instead of, "You have to render it on an SGI to get the quality you need" we have "You have to shoot it with a RED." Composition, visual design, visual storytelling... the millenials ignore those things, they require thought and effort, but buying expensive toys doesn't. That our "education" system is optimized around supporting this problem isn't helping. When the film schools basically teach you to that cinematographers are just camera monkeys and that directors do everything, you have an endemic problem. I saw a curriculum for a film school looking for instructors describing their directing program as getting people behind a camera immediately... I of course wondered if they might include directing in their directing curriculum, but obviously the people starting the school didn't know a thing about filmmaking, and were trying to hide their ineptitude behind a gear manual. Sadly, it seems that this is where the industry is going these days. It's making it difficult for people who are more interested in doing good work than in spending raftloads of money to get in the door, because quality doesn't matter to the average producer any longer.

On the other hand, you wouldn't choose the kid fresh out of school with no reel for a tentpole film project just because he has a Red Epic, either.

"Fake 'til you make it" isn't particularly good advice. Photographers have had their careers ruined by attempting this approach. Don't pretend to be something you're not... instead, go and start shooting and learning, and getting better. Find crews to work with even as a PA to get the contacts as well as to see how things work on set, and keep at it. Most of all, keep practicing cinematography. That said, getting a job in a rental house is probably a more rewarding way to pay the bills than a soul-sucking IT contract, though probably also not as lucrative. Of course, working at a rental house does have one advantage: they want you to know how to use the stuff that you're renting so that you can provide support to your customers...

There's a LOT more going on than just Magic Lantern hackery. The sensor isn't just a chunk of silicon. It has a LOT of circuitry on it in addition to the photosites and microlenses and Bayer pattern filters, and on top of that, other than in cameras, just about everyone does everything they can to make their chips SMALLER. Larger chips reduce yields because you can fit fewer of them on a wafer, you lose more due to defects in the wafers, and you lose more chips the more complexity you put into them... like the circuitry for pulling data off of the chip and transferring it to the camera's main system bus. Then you have to account for the fact that an Arri Alexa can do 240fps with no compromise other than a shorter exposure time (i.e. no windowing like Red does), which requires a HUGE amount of bandwidth (one reason that Red uses it). Then on top of that, account for the fact that an Alexa allows you to build a color LUT on camera, which is a pretty processor intensive task... and it also has to be quiet enough to let you record sound on set while filming... it adds up! And don't forget support. If you're getting an Alexa, I'll envy you... I'm stuck with Black Magic. :) They're great cameras for the money and they're enabling me to do phenomenal work, but their support is... lacking. It's a great starter camera though, a much better choice by far than a Rebel for casual filming, especially their Pocket camera. Don't forget lenses though... none of those cameras are much good without good glass in front of them. :)

My frustration has been the opposite. I had several directors work "with" me who showed no interest in working with me, involving me in shot design, and on top of everything else, did a lousy job of communicating their vision for the film. I personally prefer to work with directors that I can collaborate with, because I like being creative, but I also get a lot of inspiration from the director's vision.

I'd agree on that. They nailed it with the Pocket, I actually prefer shooting with that over the BMCC for the most part. The main exception is record times, but that's only an issue now and then, and it's solvable with an Atomos or Convergent recorder, which would be nice to have anyway for the extra metering functionality and focusing aids and all that anyway.

The concern isn't really the fact that BMD keeps releasing new cameras, as much as the fact that they appear to be ignoring bugs and firmware limitations (specifically missing functionality, as well as in some cases genuine bugs) because they're working on new cameras.

I mostly use my BMD cameras in dual-system situations, because most of what I'm working on is scripted narrative films. However, I also use them in situations where having on board sound is very convenient, and for those it's annoying to have to guess at the levels, and it would save setup time if I could just run the microphones to the camera, instead of requiring a mixer also. I'm with you. I can't believe that anyone's making excuses for the lack of audio metering on these things either, it's not just a huge omission it's a reflection of a systematic contempt for sound at BMD. Their entire post workflow shows it; I can't even import the audio that I record on my field mixer into Resolve because it supports ONLY 48KHz audio, and that forces me to use other software in all of my post work, even for work that I would otherwise be able to do entirely in Resolve. Every other editing application I have tried out so far supports high resolution and high sample rate audio, so for Resolve to be so broken in that regard is frustrating as well as contemptible. Add to that the fact that it's been now three years and BMD still hasn't gotten meters figured out on their cameras, and the conclusion one comes to is that they just don't care about sound, any more than they care about their customers.

If it had audio meters, the Pocket cinema camera, in a relatively innocuous rig, would make a pretty good ENG camera, because the on-board sound recording is actually pretty good... if you get the levels right. I like being able to use on-camera sound recording for interviews as well, just because it saves time, and for interviews dual system sound is overkill. For film production though, dual system is definitely the way to go. :)

This is something I've been running into a *lot* lately, because in my neck of the woods it's pretty much standard practice to assume that the DP isn't much more than the person who provides the camera... and as such, there are a lot of productions that make their DP choice based on the type of camera that they own. Of course, these folks aren't paying, and most of their footage isn't particularly well lit or shot, but it's shot in 4K! It doesn't help that the film schools around here encourage this mentality. They don't teach squat about cinematography here; just "here's camera, let me tell you about the rule of thirds, and now go shoot a film." (This is the extent of the cinematography coverage we had at my school.) Don't fall into that trap; instead, keep pushing yourself to develop your lighting and composition skills, and do your best to keep producing quality work. And show it. It's not useful if you don't show it to anyone ;)

I'm still at the getting started phase as well, so I'm not significantly ahead of you... in fact, I'm still taking classes -- I have film history yet to complete (and that is a great class). My suggestion would be twofold. First, start looking for internships. Most schools have contacts with some production companies and will generally try to help you land an internship with one. Also start working on films as much as you can with friends, and take advantage of relationships you've made in film school to pull together like-minded crews. And network. That's the big part, something I've been historically not very good at, but I'm improving. Clearly it's working; I'm not getting paid for my cinematography on a regular basis yet, but I do get paid for it, and I'm also working on several films as DP and in some cases camera operator, and doubling up as a gaffer and sometimes also as sound recordist. One of those films is a feature comedy. No budget, but it's a feature. IIRC we have 3-4, possibly 5 weekends of production left to complete, but I'll have to double check with the director/producer.

That's one of the strongest reasons to get yourself teamed up with a good DP early on - after all, there are aspiring DPs also starting out who would want the experience. When you're starting out is the best time to start learning to communicate your vision to the rest of your team, and if you're planning to be a director, you should learn to concentrate on directing while on set. So far, only one director I've worked with has done a good job while also being camera operator, and that had a lot to do with the fact that he talked his actors through almost every scene (we were shooting MOS). In every other case, when the director has attempted to be DP + camera operator, it's been a disaster. The director didn't know how to do what he wanted to do, no one else knew what he was trying to do and so no one was able to help him as much as he needed, and no one was really paying much attention to things like the actors' performances and glaring continuity problems.

No MFT isn't sad, it's logical since MFT lenses won't cover a super-35 sensor. That said, e-mount or starting with PL mount would have been far more logical than EF mount, since both would have included everyone who had an interest in a 4K camera, rather than limiting their market to Canon SLR users.

You lose light when you increase magnification, whether it's from getting closer to the subject or increasing focal length. Hence long lenses are either slower or bigger than shor lenses. :)

I've done still shots like that using extension tubes, is there any reason that this wouldn't work well in cinema? Extension tubes have the advantages of being inexpensive, zero adverse impact to image quality, and flexible since you can use them on all sorts of lenses.