Justin Hayward

Keeping my kids quiet while my wife works from home is number one... Finishing scripts and short films... catching up on lots of movies I should have seen, but never have... Home theater.... Disney +... Prime... Netflix... The Food Network... BBQ... Reading the pictured book below on the making of "Chinatown"... Rewatched "Chinatown"... Homeschooling... Home hair-cutting, which is tough... Running... Jump rope... Bike riding... Taught my 6-year-old daughter how to ride a bike which was super freaking cute even if I do say so myself...

Listening to my favorite movie podcasts...

https://www.theringer.com/the-rewatchables

https://www.slashfilm.com/category/features/slashfilmcast/slashfilmcastshow/

https://dontpushpausepodcast.com/

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/

Cut together this little promotional thing I shot a while back for the production company I've been working with...

Today I listened to Ben Affleck rip on the movie "Armageddon" on the "Armageddon" commentary track, which is hilarious...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c1Ijuny9-w&t=1831s

Got off facebook... Trying to limit the news... Trying not to let my anxiety brain get the best of me...

I had a dream the other night that a stranger shook my hand... I woke up and immediately washed my hands... even though I knew it was a dream. ?‍♂️

Being and "Artist" is only a hobbie for most people, it's rarely a job that pays. If it does, good for you. 

7 minutes ago, Frank Hegyi said:

What's our stop?

Low... very low... ?

Quote

 

if you can nail focus by eye on a stills lens with a 3 inch monitor, you can do pretty much anything. 

I guess you could argue that I'm comparing apples and oranges...

 

If you're comparing getting focus on an apple hanging from a tree... to holding focus on an orange that falls from a tree and lands on the ground... then you are, by definition, rightly using the term "apples to oranges" in this comparison.??

4 hours ago, Gregory Irwin said:

Focus pulling is story telling. You need to get beyond the mechanics and academics of it in order to see past the nerve racking job. Once you achieve not having to concentrate on the technical aspects of the craft, it all comes  down to story telling and determining where and when to direct the audience’s attention. 

I was just having this conversation with an AC I was working with yesterday and how some people can do it and some people, just can't for whatever reason.  I mean, they can to an extent, but once you move past the pure technical stuff, and you're into instinct and hand-eye coordination, they buzz one out of five takes (and that's being generous).  It reminds me a lot of sports like pool or golf, where there is objective knowledge of the history combined with practice, but only mastered by a person with great hand-eye coordination and a overall talent that unfortunately most of us don't have.  It's a skill, and at Gregory's level, it's an art.

3 hours ago, Joshua Linder said:

looks great to me @Justin Hayward

btw i think he spells it Pfister

Ha!  Nice.  Thanks for the correction.  

My favorite kind of movie is what I call a "three-timer".  It's a movie I have to see in theaters three times, which is really difficult these days since I'm a "three-timer" of children. 

I watch the movie once and it fires on all cylinders. I'm immediately grabbed in the first five minutes and I've committed to the fact that whatever happens after that, they've got my attention.  Then the performances are more than just good, they're appealing to my taste.  I love the way the actors move in the frame... the way they talk... their mannerisms...  I love the lighting, blocking and compositions.  which also works in perfect convection with the editing.  Then the script, the performances, the music, the sound, editing and the cinematography climax into a perfectly unpredictable, but inevitable ending that leaves me exhaling with relief.

SO, that happens, then I have to go back a second time to attempt to figure out how the filmmakers pulled off such an accomplishment.  I watch it closely, shot by shot, analyzing everything technical about the piece... editing... lighting.... performance choices... specific writing moments that stood out...  

Then I take a couple days thinking about it and go back to see it again.  This time, I get the best experience.  I get to enjoy the emotion the film gives me combined with an understanding of the craft from what I've observed in the past couple screenings.  I love the feeling I get from that.  It's rare, but that's a three-timer for me and I freaking love it.

13 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

So is the problem predictability or unpredictability???  Seems like randomness isn't really a solution to storytelling.

I feel like the best movies are unpredictable, but inevitable at the same time.  I recently watched the 1990 Abel Ferrara movie, "King of New York" the other day and it had a scene so unpredictable, but so absolutely inevitable that I literally jumped out of my seat when it happened.  It took me a couple days of thinking about it to figure out how the filmmakers set me up so well.  If any of you haven't seen it, Netflix DVD's has a really clean and sharp blu-ray.

And yet you won't hire me as a PA on your crew.  You obviously hate men:)

I feel like still photography is a fairly neutral art form between Men and Women. (But I haven't done the research, so obviously I could be wrong) Point is, still photography is a basically a very low cost art form that most of us appreciate. Is there a statistic that says there are equal Women still photographers to Men still photographers? I'm guessing it's closer than cinematographers. 

Looks great.  Nice job.  

On 1/31/2020 at 2:48 PM, Miguel Angel said:

Brilliant one @Justin Hayward!!

Nice, thanks Miguel.

Thanks Stephen, I really appreciate that.  It was actually a really great job for me all around.  Good on time and budget and a very cool agency to work with.  Only comes around every so often for me.  Thanks again.

So I did this commercial where sunlight was incorporated, but not the key light or anything.  Curious what you all think.  This set was built on a stage, so everything is artificial.  We used 2k xenons for the background and fairly simple big soft sources for the foreground (with a 5k at the top of set backlighting everything.)  I specifically had the windows built camera right to push all the lighting from that direction.

It's also the first comedy (ish) commercial I directed.  I've done some comedy in my short films, but never with commercials.  (note: I didn't shoot the food, just the live action, although I think the food looks fantastic).  

On 1/6/2020 at 8:56 PM, Robin R Probyn said:

Justin.. I know exactly how you feel..  I thought it was meant to get less stressful .. you learn some tricks to get out of hairy situations of course .. but thats it really ..  but its also sort of part of the thrill .. for camera we have new gear also to master or at least know about .. dont worry about it .. from what I've read even the greats like Roger Deakins are a bundle of nerves on every new shoot .. 

Thanks Robin,

Sorry I didn't respond to this before.  I wander on and off this website.  But you make a very encouraging point.  I'm literally procrastinating writing something right now that I've been working on for years, because I think it's bad.  There are those moments of some sort of artistic accomplishment we have, but they're so few and far between (for me) that it's hard not to dwell on the failures.  If that makes any sense...  But hey, that's first world problems.  I also have a four bedroom house that's heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer.  I have a finished basement with a bathroom that includes A FULL MOVIE THEATER?  I have a perfect wife and three beautiful children that constantly remind me how good my life is, simply by their existence.

So a few artistic failures are nothing in comparison to everything else... In my opinion.  

3 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

 

The job interview is the time to find out if you're on the same creative wavelength so the earliest discussions of the approach happen then.

Sorry to berate this, but it's just interesting to me... Have you ever read a script that you really liked before you were hired, then met the director and backed out?

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

It usually takes multiple meetings.

Have you ever had several meetings before deciding you weren’t right for the project or had too many creative differences with the director that you pulled yourself out of the running?

edit: my question is referring to discussions with the director before you were hired.

thanks

21 minutes ago, Richard Boddington said:

You have all the box office data?

Why do I get into these discussions with people on the internet is the larger question????????

R,

 

 

? 

"Cats " is a weird movie to lump into an obvious flop, because the filmmakers made such bold choices and took such outrageous risks with millions of dollars.  It's the kind of movie that would take a filmmaker this strong to make something this terrible.  That's something nobody can predict.  But to quote the late, great, William Golden on why a movie is a success or a flop, “Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

5 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Tony Scott is great. 

This Quentin Tarantino review of “ Unstoppable“ is really great.

https://www.theringer.com/2020/1/9/21057968/unstoppable-with-quentin-tarantino-bill-simmons-and-chris-ryan

This is really good...

https://www.8hours.com/essay/how-kubrick-spielberg-and-inarritu-stage-their-scenes

2 minutes ago, Richard Boddington said:

Ain't a whole lot of women on that list....oooops.

And how on earth does the Irishman have 20 producers!! Good grief what could each of them have possibly done?

R,

 

At $200 or $250 million, I’m guessing 20 people wrangling the production in many different ways seems fairly reasonable. But I’m not gonna pretend I know more than you do about producing.?

11 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Sometimes you want to compress the space and make a far background object loom larger, and other times you want to stretch and expand the space and make the background recede faster.

For sure.  It's just wider lenses used on close ups to continually show off the set I worked hard on designing, tends to not flatter the actors... ya know.  I remember Adam Frisch talking about getting really far away and shooting wide shots on long lenses, but shooting close ups on wide lenses.  I freaking love that in theory (and have done it).  But in practice it's a little tougher.

3 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Even with complete freedom, you pick a lens according to how it renders a subject so it depends on the subject and how I want it to look.

I did a job a few weeks ago where I mostly used wider lenses, even for close ups, because we built the set from scratch and it looked good and I wanted to see as much of it as possible in every shot.  I've seen the commercial air a bunch lately and some of those close ups should have been on longer lenses... ya know why...  Live and learn.

On 1/4/2020 at 11:16 PM, David Mullen ASC said:

But also at some point, you start to see that some criticism is off-base, it's just someone's personal taste being expressed that has no connection to who you are.  It's like when you shoot something stylized and someone complains that it isn't realistic enough. You can't please everyone.

For me, negative criticism doesn't bother me when I disagree, but it really upsets me when I totally agree. That's when I get mad at myself, especially if the issue is too late to fix. 

Weird thing is, I've lost confidence in my abilities the older I get.  I thought it would be the opposite.