John E Clark

I find it interesting that #3 is legitimate when many people in the Olympics are amateurs yet the best in the world at their craft.

There's a difference between 'un-professional' and 'not a professional'. The Olympic competitors are 'not professional', per the rules of the games.

'amateur' in the modern sense, has as it's core meaning, 'not paid' activity. As such, the 'quality' of work can range from Olympic performance... to Youtube worst of the worst... and then there's Uwe Boll... who seems to do better as an amateur boxer against his critics than as a filmmaker impressing said critics...

If you are shooting 'dialog' and there is a lot of it, you may want to reconsider shooting in a car, especially a moving car, especially a car powered by its own motor...

While others have listed a few camera techniques, dialog captured in a moving car, will have lots of extraneous noise from the motor, road, other cars, general 'city' noise, etc.

Back in the olden days, a car would be on a set, and with various types of projections, the car would be 'placed' on the city streets. Green screen of window areas could be used to give the effect using more modern techniques.

The other alternative is lots of ADR work for the in car dialog.

Have you heard of rainer werner fassbinder? Besides, a long wait between films so what?

If the goal is to make as many as they can, then I couldnt disagree more.

Fassbinder also died at a young age due to drug use... that probably propelled some of that productivity.

In other cases, because of the subject matter of some films and/or audience response, some directors either never make another film or only make one rarely. But that's not because they didn't want to, just never got the budget again after the failure.

Michael Powell lived another 30 or so years after "Peeping Tom"(1960), but only made 5 afterward, and only one that would match up to his previous theatrical films, "Age of Consent"(1969).

It is said that Hitchcock saw the response to Powell's film, and that was the reason he severely limited 'media' access to prescreenings of "Psycho"(1960).

Pluraleyes takes two audio waveforms and matches them together. So it requires a scratch track to work.

 

The scratch track wave form needs to match the separately recorded track in at least one spot. It could be a short piece of dialog from the person marking the shot with the slate. But there needs to be variation for it to work. You can't use slate marks or cue tones for instance, it doesn't know what to do with those.

I've never used PluralEyes... I did watch couple guys 'work' with the app to sync clips during a 48 hour film event... For 'narrative' work it seems to me to be a bigger hassle than just using a clapper and what's more one has the shot call audio wise, as well as the visuals and if hell breaks loose, one can recover what clip goes with what audio...

But for events, given that shots may be 'minutes' long, does Plural Eyes account for time drift between the video stream and the audio stream when there is no synchronizing time code generator driving both?

The era of "Harold and Maude"(1971) was 'zoom happy'... especially the zoom reveal or smash zoom... fortunately its popularity declined... Hong Kong Kung Fu films used it for a very long time.

Unfortunately a 45 year old film, that really wasn't a major film, probably has little tech info... you can probably get more info on John A Alonzo's other cinematography work done in "Chinatown"(1974) or "Scarface"(1983)...

I'd come, but with ringing irony, I'm in Los Angeles.

Post NAB sight seeing?

Screw interlaced video! I want my interlaced film! Pushing the hybrid analog/digital envelope once again, Carl.

 

There is the lenticular effect, often used as Cracker Jacks prizes for over a century...

Here's an image series of the effect, which could be done using these days with display panels that are long and narrow...

(I take no responsibility for the image sequence and what it may import to any one... any where...)

Its worth comparing the above image with this one. Here the pixels are exactly the same - on or off. But an entirely different result.

 

In film, if all the grains were exactly the same size this is exactly the sort of result you would get. This is why the size of the grains is just as, or more important, than whether they are on or off.

 

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There's size and orientation. I didn't join the T-Max bandwagon, but I recall one of the benefits of T-Max was finer but more 'regular' grain structure. B&W motion picture stocks where never 'improved' with modern developments, so there isn't much in the way of examples.

In color, given usual processing, the 'grain' is not 'sharp' crystals of silver but fuzzballs of dye, again, with random orientation and depth in the 3-d emulsion.

What most people see when they see 'grain' is glumps of crystals or fuzzballs, or in any case, 2-d projection of a 3-d collection.

With still printing one could use a 'grain focuser' to determine the print focus for the 'sharpest' grain effect... but for me... I sometimes felt that the resulting image was 'less sharp'... so I tended to focus by eye on the 'larger' print scale rather than the 'microscopic' level.

Okay, so lets say, hypothecitally, that I made a good feature. What determines it's worth? And who would buy it?

This is a question for every one who wishes to supply a product to a market... who would buy it, and where to get a distributor... doesn't matter if it's a film, pet rock, or iPhone...

You can do this in one of two basic ways... 1) Make the film, then find out long list of distributors, send an intro/promo package... and see if someone bites... 2) decide what 'genre' you like, what the 'market' is for that genre, find a list of distributors who cater to that market... make the film and submit the film to those distributors, or submit the film to fests where those distributors are likely to be in attendance...

At a fest, you can host a cocktail party or other event to encourage those distributors on your list to meet you and see the promo package.

Of course all of this is expensive, depending... and if one needs strippers or booze flowing like flash flood in the desert... it gets even more expensive...

Occasionally lightening strikes and somebody sells who only submitted their 'fine product' to a fest, got a viewing by a large number of distributors and got a deal.

Nicholas, since film grains are either "on" or "off" I'm not sure if it's really appropriate calling film "analog" unless that term now means anything that *isn't digital.* That kinda sounds like some tech-head Tweeting millienial hipster talk to me :-P

 

 

Remember digital is the technology that comes from video tape. It'd be interesting to see what analog video would look like today, had it not been killed on the vine in favor of digital. I think the Japanese did have HD analog tape briefly, in some sort of professional format.

Tape is crap... no matter how much data can be stored...

Film film is 'analog' in the sense that for any small value of the intensity of light, there will be a small amount of silver corresponding to that intensity value...

Now... of course you could claim that the silver crystals are either 'on' or off... but then by the same token one could claim that light is composed of 'photons' and so, those are either 'on or off'. In any case the silver crystals are not uniform in size, despite processes to minimize differences... nor are they uniform in orientation, since they lie in a 3-d space of the emulsion...

As it is a silicon 'sensor' is an analog bucket, in that photons interact with the electrons of the silicon material, giving rise to an electric charge that is continuous as well.

The 'digitization' is in the sampling of the electronic charge of the silicon cell.

The spatial quantization is performed by the number of such cells...

NEW DEVELOPMENT!

 

I've chosen to select a few phobias that are related to the subject, which could make for an interesting plot. Here is what i got:

- Ablutophobia (fear of washing or bathing)

- Athazagoraphobia (fear of forgetting or being forgotten)

- Haphephobia (fear of being touched)

- Rhytophobia (fear of getting wrinkles)

- Philemophobia (fear of kissing)

I would love to hear what you guys think about this.

The film cannot be more than 15 minutes. So just choose one and share your plot ideas! Or if you would want to share on more than one thats great too. If you know any other interesting phobias which you think might be relevant please share too.

Thanks!!

Philemophobia could be done as a subversion of the 'romcom' trope.

My mother was a ablutophobe... could be a study in self-isolation from the 'world'.

What do you mean, there have been a number of digitally-shot b&w movies released theatrically. "Ida". The two "Sin City" movies are mostly b&w and were shot digitally. "Nebraska". "Frances Ha". "Much Ado About Nothing". "Frankenweenie." "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night".

The Wife is out of town so I'll be able to watch "Ida"(2013) finally...

The "Sin City" films were heavily stylized, B&W with 'color' punctuation... "Frankenweenie"(2012) was good quality, but I didn't get to see it in theaters... I've only seen stills from the others...

I've contemplated submitting B&W, monochrome to fests... but alas, this year is probably going to be devoted to getting the Wife's Burning Man projects to the event... so no short films for me until after August... I have done several short films at Burning Man, but due to the restrictions, have never submitted them to any fest outside of Burning Man or on the media pages of my 'personal' not for profit, etc. pages...

For me B&W would both be an aesthetic choice, but also a relief from worrying about 'color' of light... since I don't have bucks to buy/rent better lights...

Chris - After I read your post I did a lot of looking through reviews and footage comparisons of the GH4 to the BMPCC. The GH4 seems to bring a more complete package while the Blackmagic has the benefit of recording in raw. I can't know for sure which one I like better until I can get my hands on a GH4 from the school's equipment room, so definitely will do my own testing with it.

 

 

I have a GH-1, and was anticipating buying the GH-4... but then when the Pocket came along, I jumped for it... ok, the 1/2 sale price helped in choosing the 'when'... like right now... couldn't pass up that deal... but even at list price the Pocket is a deal.

I am STUPID when it comes to digital cameras. All of my training has been on film. I am leaning towards the blackmagic, however I don't really understand the difference between the CMOS and the super-16 sensor and why the blackmagic footage on youtube always looks crisp and dynamic and the footage I've shot with the JVC (while beautiful) has a lot more digital noise and looks flat (despite tweaking settings to try and get a better look)

 

I know this is probably an easy question to answer for most of you (and once again, I am S-T-U-P-I-D when it comes to digital, so please explain in baby terms), but is it just a matter of the color-grading and adding filters in post (I didn't do any color grading to the JVC footage), or is it just that the Blackmagic is a better designed camera for the purposes of shooting with a cinematic/film style (super-16mm sensor w/ external lens vs CMOS sensor with built-in lens)?

I'd strongly recommend the Pocket. I don't have any comparison with a JVC, or other 'video' camera(ok I do have a DVX100B...). I tend to compare the Pocket with material that was produced on film or with much higher end cameras which were directed to 'digital film'.

On the one hand, many of the 'video' cameras are packaged such that one need not have any other external devices. So they have XLR imputs for sound... not necessarily stunning sound... but more convenient than doing a dual system setup.

The other issue with 'video' packages is lenses. In many cases one is stuck with the fixed lens, and again, despite being 'good enough' does not allow for either creative lens choice, or just better lenses, either thru purchase or rent.

For me I liked the fact that the Pocket has a RAW mode, and I will pick RAW and dynamic range over 4K, given the 1920x1080 out of the Pocket is reasonably close to 2K...

I have seen a short 48 hour style film I made last year on the Big Screen, and I was not embarrassed about image quality... story... acting... sound... but not the image.

Wim Wenders is another great example and it'd be useful to look at some other European cinema, too.

 

David mentions the 1960s, this is also the ending of the B&W TV era, so many programs changed to color after that. Even documentaries.

Never had a color TV in the era... so my recollection of "Star Trek" or other 50s/60s classics is in monochrome... when I see episodes in color... I'm think' 'wow so that's what color the set/prop/people's hair was'... etc.

 

I think the artist could have been a lot better if shot on real B&W stock, it looked very much like a color movie converted to B&W. It's a real shame some indy film got the last Plus-X stock. If 'The Artist' were my movie, I would have shot it 16mm reversal. :)

I was glad that "The Artist"(2011) got awards for breaking to 'conventions', B&W and Silent... but yeah... I wish they had do a bit better on the 'simulation' of B&W...

You missed the British humour in that. It's called irony and you have just provided more evidence in support of the theory that Americans don't understand it.

Americans are irony deficient. There has been some talk of providing irony supplements, but due to the lack of a social medicine infrastructure, the US will have to wait until a pharmacorpse firm finds a market and exploits it.

Tri-X b&w reversal Super-8 is already pretty contrasty and grainy, are you sure you need more contrast and grain? I found it hard enough to nail exposures for Tri-X with regular processing due to its high contrast. Underexposing it by two-stops and pushing it will pretty much give you a hi-con film effect and, no shadow detail, just hot grainy highlights.

 

You're going to have to shoot some tests, you may find that 1-stop underexposure with a 1-stop push is all you need, if that.

I got an 8mm Bolex a while ago with the intention of shooting a few rolls of 'film' just for the exercise... but then I found that it seems there is only reversal Tri-X for 8mm (I think there may be/have been a service to take 16mm Tri-X negative stock and punch the requisite holes for 8mm use...).

Anyway... I read also that if one skips the reversal pass(whatever it may be called in B&W...), that Tri-X reversal is 'really grainy' negative...

Would that be a 'solution'... in terms of stills I've always avoided slide/reversal film for the very reason that it is very sensitive to exposure and processing... unless one is intentionally mucking up the look.

I guess it depends on definition, but people are making good money on music videos and commericials, and I think we could agree that they both are short films.

Yes people make 'good' money, doing commercials and music videos.

But 'end product' of a short film is the film... the end product of a commercial or music video is not the short film, it is the product or singer/music. And I think many 'music videos' are written of as 'advertising'...

In a completely coincidental thread in a different universe... I ran across this website...

http://www.the-numbers.com

And in particular the table of 'distributors vs box offices' over the last 20 years... the list is pretty long with Warner Bros. leading the top.. with umpty-ump gazillion. and a company called "Lavender House Films" at the bottom... with about $400...

http://www.the-numbers.com/market/distributors

Don't know how many are based in LA or just around... but after the top ten, the list is 'mostly unknown'...

I'd suspect someone who would like to 'sell a film' could use that list in some way to find a distributor that may be interested... if they have a site to describe what they are interested in...

Of course it could be the case that all of them have notices "We are not accepting submissions at this time"... or something like that...

I think honestly it's become more to do with reasons not to do stuff in LA, which, to be fair, can be quite valid for small or very small productions.

I went to a potential customer's home, which in fact is his office/studio/production facility... nice tax write off that...

Anyway, the guy produces infomercial content and has set up his operation such that he can provide broadcast quality content.

Now... he was a former ABC exec... made a pile of money in that... then decided to leave LA... and his studio/home is about 5 acres in a 'gated' community were most of the homes sit on 5 acres or more... most, including his, have horse stables, and the usual sort of things one expects from that class of people...

After the meeting... I came up with an ad campaign for my product... Network plumbers... we fill in the butt cracks of your wireless connectivity... but anyway, the operation was impressive that he could do this... and there is no reason why it can't happen many places...

 

If you read about Brad Peyton, from Gander Newfoundland, do you Americans know where that is?

 

Just a bit north east from where Cajuns come from.

 

I was wondering if I could send you my recent medical tests and have you give me your expert opinion?

 

If you send x-rays and your innards look like printed circuit boards, I can probable evaluate you for solder bridges... if they look more aircraft wings and looking for corrosion I may have to brush up... if they look like an airbag 'explosive' device... it's only if you blow up that anything about the x-ray become important...

 

No risk, no reward. How would a person volunteering on a short, student film, music video, etc. get "caught"? I can't see the INS or the IRS agents swooping down on a film set, ever. What would they be accused of, charged with?

 

The problem is this... 1) for the H1 and related limited work visas, the visa holder is only authorized to work for the employer upon which the visa was issued... so no, in general 'volunteering' for other 'work opportunities' would be classified as illegal...

There are a few categories of volunteering that would be allowed, and the general restriction is that if the position was not a paid position in the first place, then the volunteering would be legal.. that is 'no US citizen or Permanent Resident' would loose a job opportunity by the volunteer work provided.

Many church organizations have volunteer work for which there is absolutely no expectation of pay... Other non-profits may have a cadre of volunteer categories for which there is no pay.

Since most student films are totally below the 'radar' no matter what... sure, probably 'get away with it', and if 'caught', could claim that the activity did not displace any form of US worker in the least.

In any case there would be lawyering to be done to prevent deportation...

Not to be political... but here in So. Cal, and most of the southern border states we have a lot of people who may not have official work visas... each year some number get caught, some number of 'sweeps' occur, and net some number of people...

Now... in terms of 'profiling'... a northern european looking person, in all likelihood would not be 'swept' up, unless there was a specific operation to target say 'canadians' or the like... A southern european... possibly.

Where most europeans are 'found' is at the ports of entry... for example here in San Diego area, if a foreign national goes to Tijuana Mexico, they may have problems reentering the US... depending on their visa and status. (Happened to a german teacher before she got her Permanent Resident visa... and at Dulles for Swedish friend whose student visa had expired... etc.).

I'm currently in the process of submitting my short film to film festivals - both locally and overseas. So far I have been accepted into one festival. I keep hearing about the presence of media companies and distributors at festivals and the chance of getting signed up by them for home video release etc. However, I'm assuming that they would mainly be interested in longer films - like 30 minutes or longer. Would that generally be the case? Would there be much hope for short films? Would the genre of a short film make much of a difference at all in attracting distributors? By the way, my film happens to be extremely short - running at 8 minutes so don't really know about my chances with this sort of thing.

 

I don't suppose there are instances of short films being picked up by distributors for use as filler material? By that I mean being used as bonus content alongside someone else's longer film on a DVD etc? I was also wondering - do distributors usually bear the costs of manufacturing, packaging, and making multiple copies of the VHS tapes, DVDs, Bluray discs etc or is there some other company (link in the chain) that organises and pays for that?

Short films are 'filler' for fests to close the gaps between the feature films being shown. There are specific fests for short film, but in general they are not something that sells.

As far as I can tell, short films should be viewed as calling cards to meet people, but even then, no big budget projects will be based on a few short films... lightening does strike occasionally, and someone gets a gig offer from an award winning short... but in general... no financial value...

The only people I have heard of getting some value for shorts, is on youtube... From this site's list of 'top viewed'...

http://www.reelseo.com/top-youtube-channels/

Unless you have Justin Bieber in your representation portfolio... or produce something like "Masha and the Bear"(Russian) at #5 on the list... forget that...

"Masha and the Bear"...