Justin Hayward

I love blue cheese the way I love Quentin Tarantino movies; I find it delicious, but I totally understand that some people might hate it. Taste is subjective and nobody is wrong. ?

My seven year old son and some neighborhood kids make little movies with an iPad and they call it "filming" a movie.  The other day I heard a young medical student in her early twenties refer to someone shooting her with an iPhone to stop "filming" her.  I think the term "film" or "filming" regarding shooting any format is going to be around for a while.

That's a good point, thanks Bruce. So if there were an operator there that was paid, then it might be okay for me to jump in, but since no one got the job, I shouldn't have touched the camera.  The MC operator is a computer guy and has never touched a "manual" camera, so he wouldn't have done it if I wanted him to. 

It's a tough situation for me, because I want to be hired by them again and it's hard to explain to people that want a simple close up with very simple camera moves, that they can't have it because the production didn't hire an operator before I got there and nobody other than a hired operator can touch the camera... I'm not sure how to explain that without sounding like I'm telling them they can't eat the dinner they payed for at at my restaurant because I didn't pay someone to pick up their fork.

I have to find a good way to explain this kind of stuff if I'm in this situation again.  

Thanks again.

Last week I was brought onto a commercial fairly last minute to direct the live action portion of a table top commercial.  This was a union job, but since I was basically second unit, I had a gaffer, but no DP.  There was a motion control set with a MC operator and a dolly set that was supposed to all be locked off, so just one AC.  On the dolly set there were several different focal length locked off shots of actors doing different things.  The commercial agency story boards included extreme close ups of mouths and eyes, but with the actors still slightly moving around.  With the camera locked off in those close ups, the actors quickly moved in and out of frame and it obviously didn't work.  We had no operator and the AC was very busy trying to hold these extreme close ups in focus, so I jumped on the camera and operated to keep the action in frame.  Again, I was brought in last minute on this job and didn't even know what I was shooting until I arrived in the morning, so the idea of hiring an operator wasn't even something I could have considered if I wanted to.  Anyway, later that day I was read the riot act from a camera union guy that I shouldn't have touched the camera cause of the union issues.  What was the right thing for me to do in that situation?  Thanks.

On 3/26/2019 at 10:02 AM, Bruce Greene said:

Lastly, you may find that adding sharpening to the entire image also sharpens the parts of the frame that are already in focus, and this will still give the sense that your people are out of focus. So, you might try adding a mask/vignette so that you are mostly sharpening the area of the frame that contains the faces, and not the entire frame.

To further your point, if you're already windowing the area you want to sharpen, then it would likely help to de-sharpen (or pull a little out of focus) everything else even more to make what you want to sharpen "appear" more in focus?

In the commercial world, it's actually going the other way. Today every job I shoot, they want to be able to extract a square cut for Instagram.

A friend of mine shot a commercial with anamorphic lenses on the Alexa mini framing for 2:40 of a six person family spread out across a big couch watching TV, but he had to shoot 1x1 safe. So the entire family was crunched into the center of the 2:40 aspect ratio And everything outside of the 1x1 was just set dressing. He sent me a screenshot of the monitor. It was hilarious.

I tell people all the time that if I were to shoot a movie now, it would likely be something the majority of people would see on their TVs, laptops, or phones. So as much as I love compositions in the widescreen scope format, I would have to take into account the image real estate, and shoot 16 x 9 for the largest image possible for home viewing.

I totally agree. It seems weird when an artist tries to pigeonhole a specific approach to any part of the craft.

 

 

As for the notion that one can't improve on reality, it begs the question of why reality is the highest goal in all types of filmmaking

 

I'm often reminded of Jay Leno on "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" when he's talking about how he loved the movie "Gravity" but how so many people online were complaining the space science was all wrong and he said, "You know, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney aren't astronauts either..."

 

Or when Robert Zemeckis was questioning Dean Cundey about where the light was coming from in the cave in "Back to the Future 2" and he said, "Same place the music is coming from."

Of all the categories in the Oscar telecast, cinematography is the only category that literally makes movies exist.

Flickering lights background...

Long lens wide shots.

If I'm honest, I have a hard time watching any of these new comic book movies. I've seen maybe a handful of them and I don't remember which ones. As soon as they get to one of the all CGI battles, I feel like I'm watching one of my kid's cartoon shows and I completely tune out.

 

So in that sense, I understand not wanting to watch something you find boring. Also, back when the movies we're talking about were made, the collective attention span wasn't nearly as short as it is today. So, movies were allowed to take their time setting everything up before really getting into the meat. Nowadays you really have to jump right into it and grab people before they have time to check their texts.

I totally understand not wanting to do stuff I don't like. I don't like crowds, so I don't go with the family to watch fireworks on the fourth of July. I figure I'm a grown man and I can choose not to do something I don't want to do.

 

What I don't understand is wanting to make movies, but not wanting to watch the movies that shaped modern movies. It's like being an architect who lives next door to a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but actively won't look at it. I don't understand how you wouldn't be curious.

Copy that. Well, I look forward to your very original pizza and I promise I won't stop eating after 30 minutes. ;)

It's rare a feature keeps my interest, I turn most movies off after 30 minutes.

 

But you want to make them?

 

Edit: Both my mom and my step mom don't like watching movies, so it would be weird if they told me they wanted to make one. Who says they don't like pizza then opens a pizzeria?

 

There's another thing though: being obsessed with other's achievements, and being an expert on what has been produced by others, but not really getting out there and doing your own things.

I'm guilty of that, no question.

This may be a discussion for a different thread, but would it be crucial for a filmmaker to figure out the seed for their own style before flipping through tons of movies for analysis?

 

I don't know. I just really like watching movies. And I love breaking down the craft as far as I'm capable. It's been my favorite thing to do since as far back as I can remember having a favorite thing to do. The first thing my parents let me do by myself was walk to the movie theater and see whatever was playing. I didn't even know what I was watching half the time, but if it was PG, I bought a ticket. I just turned forty a few days ago and all I asked my wife for my birthday is to let me BBQ and watch a good movie on my projector in the basement. That's a perfect birthday in my opinion.

 

So... when someone tells me there was a movie made almost eighty years ago that was so good it's influenced new movies ever since... it's hard for me to understand not wanting to watch it.

Also, it's just a plain old good movie. So if you like watching good movies, I would recommend it. And now with 2018 availability to many old movies that weren't available in the past and with the technology to watch these old movies on bigger screens again, now's a better time than any to catch up on the classics that came out in theaters before we were born. I watched "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" for the first time last night on a 10 foot screen in my basement. It was great.

 

But all that aside, I'm sure Mr. Mullen has said this plenty of times in the past, but it's worth finding out who your favorite filmmaker's favorite filmmakers are and watching their movies to learn what your favorite filmmaker's influences were. I really like Martin Scorsese films and he talks about his influences all the time... I have "The Red Shoes" sitting in a netflix sleeve as we speak. I just listened to an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he talked about how a review of one of his favorite Jean-Luc Godard films inspired his entire point of view on writing. Who knows what will inspire you, so why not watch as much as you can?

Very very nice. Most impressive when you can pull off that level of style while still somehow feeling totally natural. I really like it a lot. Why 1.33?

 

One thing that non-Brits don't seem to get is "split the difference" which is not film terminology but has confused French, Japanese and Americans in my recent experience, and it's not a language problem.

 

For reference, it's a directive to use something halfway between two recently-discussed options and often comes up when positioning people - "Take a step to your right, no, too much, split the difference."

I hear "split the difference" all the time. (American)

 

I also became a father 2 years ago and between family life and work, it's very hard to get away to the cinema these days. I think I've been twice last year, which is shockingly bad for a cinephile. I have huge gaps in my film watching from the last 5 years, which didn't use to be the way.

 

Yes, with three kids I'm extremely picky about how I waste time. In the past year I've made it out for Blade Runner, The Last Jedi, and Phantom Thread in 70mm. Comic book movies aren't even a consideration. Nice thing is my wife lets me go down in the basement almost every night and watch something on my projector for an hour or so. Last night was Kill Bill.

 

And no matter how good it is, if a movie isn't shot in a style I like, I won't see it in theaters.

Huh...

http://www.slashfilm.com/unsane-trailer/

No matter whether the camera is a phone or an IMAX rig. Doesn't change the fact that in most cases, you're going to want a decent lens, mattebox, rods and focus wheel on the front of it. This fact hasn't changed in over 100 years.

So my hunch is after he puts it onto a beastgrip with all of that, it's going to look like any other rig. Minus an orientable viewfinder. Why do that to yourself?

 

This is the first thing I thought when I read about this the other day. Is he going to use the automatic focus or block so he doesn't have to pull focus or light to a stop where everything is in focus? Once you retrofit all that stuff to the phone, you may as well just use a normal camera.

it always looks like poop. Hey, the client appears to be more than happy, .

I hope they dont read this forum! ?