Max Field

I mean starting off with that mentality early on can lead to clients/producers exploiting people for free labor under the guise of "oh well I never heard of you" or "oh you're not THAT good". Seen it a million times unfortunately.

That's dangerous territory. All labor has a cash price, it's all about what you have the leverage to negotiate for.

Where is this ending up? Sometimes the client really doesn't care about what the product looks like when they aren't willing to adjust things for the shooter's needs.

Brand new in box, asking price is $4400 or better offer. A producer we know bought one but then changed their mind months later. PL mount Please PM or reply if interested!

Honestly the biggest knock about it is that I took a significant pay cut to direct the thing.

BIG UPDATE I went back on Sunday for the award ceremony. All the intern kids were very happy to see me, asking to follow my insta etc etc. Hung out there for literally 12 hours, talked it up with the camera crew. Turns out that festival was the first in the country to have the Blackmagic 6K pocket on demo. I looked right at it up close. they asked if I wanted to try shooting a little B-roll with it but I declined out of laziness. Then there was some 20 year old producer for a film called Burning Cane. It was a big deal because the Director is 19 years old. They were all teen kids from New Orleans. At the Q and A I asked them if they felt like the Lil Wanye of filmmaking and I think he was too young to understand who Wayne was (from NOLA, signed record deal at 14) so didn't get the analogy. THE AWARD CEREMONY ITSELF So I went into the theater trying to find my producer. He's sitting at the very back row with a bunch of other people so I'm unable to sit next to him. A couple ladies asked "would you like me to move" and I was like "Nah I'll sit in the front like I'm expecting to win an award" ..... 15 MINUTES LATER WE WON BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY So I go up and get the trophy, they ask me to say a few words. First I thanked the producer and then I said "Shout out to the interns" causing ALL the interns to start loudly screaming from the back row. Then I got up even closer into the mic and followed it up with "they're not getting paid" and then the producer was like "Okay dude we gotta go now". NOW HERE'S THE PART I WANT YOUR OPINION ON The trophy had MY name on it along with the title of the film, no one else's, AND THE PRODUCER took the trophy home. Is that supposed to happen? I know if it just had the title on it, it's the producer's take home. But my name being the only one engraved in it makes that situation different?

I might go back Sunday and give the Cinematography forums gang a shout out!

For the record, I am the crazy person. Let me explain. So I went to my very first film festival as a director. The producer submitted it so I had a free VIP pass so I figured "why not?" I meet up with the crew, go into the VIP lounge and see people taking themselves way too seriously. It's a film festival so comes with the territory, but they had the nerve to cater the lounge with JERSEY MIKES COLD SUBS. For our international posters; Jersey Mikes is a more pretentious Subway. Literally the only good thing they do is hot subs, but they gave us cold subs.... The big positive before showings: I MET SINBAD AND ASKED HIM IF HE'S STILL GETTING CHECKS FROM "JINGLE ALL THE WAY" So now it's time to enter the theater to sit through a bunch of other shorts I don't care about so I can see what I worked on played on the big screen. 45 minutes of poor audio, bad acting, confusing narratives, and cliche visual choices later: The documentary I worked on played on the screen. I gave the producer 2 different final files. One was studio-levels, the other was computer-levels. I was let down to see the projectionist (guy with a Macbook) chose the wrong version, so the final image was overly crushed and had odd compression waves in the shadows (let me know if that might've been my fault, I hadn't seen it on ANY screen/projector I played it back on beforehand). Skip to this section for the best part of the festival hijinks So a couple of us get out of the theater and there's a suit that walks up to use who needs us for some mock red carpet interview.... here is my chance to promote this project The following is 90% accurate of what was actually said: Interviewer: "So how did you and the producer come together for this project?" Me: "I just found an ad on Twitter.. I showed up to Newark, New Jersey looking forward to being murdered by an internet stranger. Unfortunately that didn't happen so here we are." Interviewer: "So were you the writer too?" Me: "It was a documentary, there were no writers." Interviewer: "How did you guys creatively gel" Me: "Honestly really well. I had been using R&B for montages and transitions for years, so I could make this doc feel like an Osmosis Jones transition." Interviewer: "Did you see any of the other shorts?" Me: "Yeah they were boring except for the one about Cricket" Interviewer: "So you're nominated for an award, any advice you'd like to give your fellow filmmakers?" Me: "Festivals are cool but no one actually shows up to these things so focus your time and energy on building an audience via social media. Also film school is a scam, do not go to film school it is a debt trap, your parents are wrong, they know literally nothing about this industry" UPON SAYING FILM SCHOOL IS A SCAM THE ENTIRE CAMERA CREW WAS SILENTLY CHEERING ME ON and then after we walked off the red rug, 2 of the festival helpers (all of these were high school kids) called out like "Dude you're awesome I was trying to figure out if I should go to art school!" I went up and talked to the guy, next to him were 2 girl helpers all fascinated with who this guy saying hella real stuff was. I told them I was a filmmaker who built my audience via social media, my work had gotten over 100 million views and at one point Youtube star PewDiePie stole a clip from one of my videos and had to email me to resolve the issue. Soon after, like 8 of the high school interns were crowded around to hear me talk, it was like a fever dream. At one point in the gathering I asked what they were getting paid to help, they said they were all unpaid interns. I responded with "I heard unpaid internships are illegal now?" That had them pumped up to just walk out during the middle of the festival. "OH MY GOD THANK YOU" one of them said. Another said they had to be waiting up at a door to make sure no one would sneak in. I told him "Dude you're at a film festival no one wants to sneak into this trash, you aren't even getting paid they can't force you to do anything." Their supervisors walked by reminding them to return to their posts and the kids were all reluctant to listen after my pep talk. Yes, I single handedly destroyed the morale of a film festival's entire working staff. So the lesson to be learned here is I am a universal entertainer and someone better get me a show deal before I turn actually crazy.

Phil is now Youtube famous, everyone!

When I call it a RED killer, I mean that the majority of people buying RED cameras aren't seasoned cinematographers. They're rich kids looking for a light gimbal compatible camera that can fill that 4K demand clients have. Most of them don't know what a light meter or setting exposure is, they just crank the ISO up and down.

All I know is the flare is awesome!!!!

If anyone has diffusion, star, streak, or other popping effects, please let me know, I'm looking to buy.

Got this in my email just now Full article here: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/video/news/blackmagic-design-announces-pocket-cinema-camera-6k-with-ef-moun I feel like this just killed every RED Camera.....

Do you think my CP2s will be worthless when random Rokinons can render better sharpness on every inch of the imager in 10 years?

Wasn't there some union thing against it? I feel like I remember reading something a few years back how the DoP isn't allowed to handle the camera on some bigger sets... could be wrong though.

It's just always normalized to 0db so way too loud I just do quick skims to see if the person is visually thinking on that level of framing, exposure, and controlled lighting. There's tons of Youtube era people with film study project level cinematography in their visual reels.

Literally the first thing I do every time I click on someone's reel is mute the music. Am I the only one who does this? Why do we feel the need to cram music in these things? I'm there for the visuals anyway.

Complete RED One MX packages are already below $3000 in some places. Won't be surprised if the Epic MX is $3500 in a year or two. A lot of the URSA stuff took a huge hit after the Pocket 4K stuff came out too. 6K might be the thing that holds value, but a 4K camera isn't as special as it was 5 years ago.

I follow eBay prices a lot and there's somewhat of a 10 year mark flagship cameras hit where they can't retain a value above $4,500, dipping as low as $1,500. Do you think very soon there will be a time where Red Dragons are floating around the market for $3,000? I can't see the resolution wars sustaining any higher than 6k-8k. Also because they manufactured so damn many of them I doubt they'll retain any kind of collectors value buffer. And if that happens, what the hell will it do to the camera departments of rental houses? They were lightweight 6k cameras, now getting in the hands of basically anyone. Why would someone rent the fancy new 6K camera when they can just get one for a couple thousand?

You have the right idea of counting the stops up and down from middle grey within the camera's native DR. Let's you go in and manually take care of thing if you find the Rec709 conversion to be too punchy. On the other hand, I really only ever meter when shooting film. A color monitor in Rec709 has worked fine as my meter.

DoP for animation is an interesting test of one's creativity. I've done it maybe 6 times for 3D shorts and the concept of 1 light and 100 lights costing the same budget really opens the gates.

There was an article saying he coined the phrase, but I seriously doubt he was physically the first guy to run bounce through diffusion.

Wanted to gather a list of the contemporary inventors in Cinematography. Whether it be gear or techniques. Like for instance Steve Cardellini invented his self-titled clamp. Shane Hurlbut created the booklight and man-cam (or at least the phrases for them) I'd like to broaden my knowledge on the stories of people who created what I use everyday.

What are the tiny cameras with big sensors that record to something better than H264 internally?? If the pocket had a super 35 sensor it'd be perfect for me.

So do all the Sony mirrorless cameras record to that XAVC-I codec internally? Or do they record to an even farther crushed codec?