David Mawson

On 6/5/2019 at 9:18 PM, Will Montgomery said:

To make a 100' or 400' 16mm (or 35mm) cartridge system would add significantly to the cost of film because it would have to be MUCH more substantial than the Super 8 system to hold up to professional use

110 stills film performed waaay below what it should have done exactly because the film wasn't kept flat enough. That was one of the reasons Kodak introduced those weird disc cameras -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_film

Discs are actually the best system for keeping film flat. The only problem is that a 400 foot reel would become a 70' radius disc...

14 hours ago, Bruce Greene said:

I think it’s not necessary to go to film school and pile up debt.

You can learn filmmaking now with a phone and a laptop if necessary.

Sure. But that's not what most people do - they go to film school and pile up huge debt. So when you just say "Go all out for it!" without any provisos, you are NOT telling them to make a movie with a phone - you're telling them to rack up $200K of loans.

If you want to say, "Buy a few books and a cheap camera, learn to shoot while holding down a job, and then, if things work out, shoot a no-budget film" - then, yes, fine.

And that might have been the message you wanted people to receive, but it wasn't the one you were transmitting.

14 hours ago, aapo lettinen said:

18 hours ago, David Mawson said:

 

Did they manage to get in in the end? are they working now?

They're both recent posters on reddit asking about film school. (And the male example was watered down - the reality was much worse!)

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if wanting to do high art then the best film school will be very useful...

 

Because?

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if wanting to do movies for living then the best contacts are most useful. 

Yes, but very few film schools provide those. 

14 minutes ago, Bob Speziale said:

Mackendrick didn't do that in the long run. He left the business and became a teacher after a few decent movies and a couple of quick Hollywood productions (one with Sharon Tate).

This is complete BS.

- He was 60. That's a very long run for a director who started as a young man.

- He'd had a huge run of successful films in the UK (apparently you suffer from America Is The World syndrome - aka Plaid Syndrome from one of the more visible symptoms.) He's one of the directors in this very exclusive list at the BFI

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/17-rare-times-when-director-made-five-or-more-great-films-row

- He left film making because he hated the deal making required of directors in Hollywood and Ealing had closed down.

Honestly, it's no wonder you can't evaluate films objectively - even simple facts seem beyond you.

12 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

5 hours ago, David Mawson said:

 

Going to an expensive film school is worthless in my opinion.

As a general rule, hell yes. But, to be completely fair, I think you have to look very closely at the program.

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far better to buy a cheap digital cinema camera and experiment outside of school and make your inexpensive state school major, a backup career.

 

In general, probably. There are a very few programs that seem to beat the odds. Eg production at the AFI is said to have close to a 100% employment rate - actual decently paid jobs in the industry. But directing and writing at the AFI cost just as much and have nowhere that success rate. 

The other thing about "backup careers" and majors in something outside film is that if you go straight from being a teenager to film school and into the industry, what the hell experience do you to make films about? (Assuming that's your goal. If you want to make a comic book flick or Kill Bill, you'll be fine.)

46 minutes ago, Bob Speziale said:

Deciding something is "good" when you don't like it is a bizarre concept that I wouldn't know how to implement.

Really? You don't have any objective standards or knowledge to apply? 

Example, I hate the original Star Wars. I did even as a child (I'm more a Blake's 7 person by nature.) But I can separate my dislike of the film's hypocritical emotional beats and gaping plot holes (a pod doesn't get blasted because it has no life signs... in a civilisation full of robots???) from an evaluation of the editing, cinematography and  skilful emotional manipulation. I hate the film sincerely (like a lot of the more talented people who worked on it - Guinness, Ford, probably the Lucases themselves) but I definitely think that it's a great example of film making.

In short, I can judge the effect it has on its intended audience without being one of the audience. I'd suggest that this is a crucial skill for anyone who wants to be any kind of commercial artist.

It's not that different to people. I can think that someone is a good person without liking them. And sometimes vice versa. Is that really so odd?

44 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

It's called an equipment loan. If you have consistent clients, spending $40k on a camera is nothing. You can make that back in a jiff.

Yes, you can. But that's not the same as will. You didn't ask if the OP had such clients - and the chances are that if he was at that stage (which most people don't reach) then he wouldn't be asking for your advice.

Again, common sense, Tyler, common sense...

31 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

both of those sound like pretty unrealistic to me both as starting points and motives to want a film career. 

Both are based on real people. 

And the majority of people who go to film school in the USA are extremely unrealistic - because the each year something like 20 times more people graduate than the film industry needs. And if you're looking at the jobs that film school trains you for - director, editor, camera team, production - then the number is more like 100 to 1.

19 minutes ago, Bruce Greene said:

David I will stipulate that your math is correct.

But, the odds of becoming a professional filmmaker if you don’t try are zero. If you give it everything you’ve got, maybe 5 - 25%.

And when you’re young, there is always time to reconsider and choose another path.

But my point is that for some people the odds are much less than 5%. In fact, they're less than that on average for film school graduates - the schools graduate as many people each year as work in the industry already.

And your generation could afford the "there is always time to reconsider" attitude, but you weren't being burdened by life ruining and inescapable debt. If someone is thinking about going to film school today - which is the default course of action for "give it everything you've got" - then they have to think very seriously. Because "Give it all you got" equals years in film school,  a mountain of debt, relocating to LA and working unpaid and low paid industry jobs for years to make contacts - probably while working a second job to keep up with student loan payments.

And if things don't work out, you still have the debt and you have one of the least useful and respected degrees to look for work with.

...Millennial have it very, very tough. They need to think much harder about what risks they take than their parents did. There is a good chance that loading yourself with this type of debt could ruin your life.

7 hours ago, Thein Win said:

Nice thing you point out Charles. I agree, it would have been better to have the actors face positioned in the window frame. They would pop out more. Wasn't aware of it during the shoot ?.

You'd have had to shoot from much further away, which I suspect wasn't possible, otherwise you'd have done it for perspective.

And look at the design of those windows - especially the upper curved part. If you put the subjects at the center of the windows they're going to have what look like spikes or rays coming out of their heads - it will be as distracting as hell.

Your first priority should always be avoiding this type of foreground/background alignment - the wedding photographer's dreaded "Lamppost growing out of head" syndrome.

On 6/16/2019 at 6:22 PM, Max Field said:

Richard Boddington (one of the few here with feature-length director credits) said something very similar to Tyler. If you wanna be a filmmaker/director then look into being a producer. If you control the budget no one can tell you that you can't be the director.

That has nothing to do with what Tyler said. Which is that "film maker" is used as a synonym for "producer".  You're confusing "Becoming a doctor is a great career" with "Medical career always means doctor (and never eg nurse)." Very different.

(Another example of how wrong Tyler's usage is: Robert Latham Brown uses it in exactly the sense that Tyler says is incorrect in "Planning The Low Budget Film" - and RLB is a producer!)

On 6/15/2019 at 11:02 PM, Bob Speziale said:

On 6/15/2019 at 10:02 PM, David Mawson said:

 

It's just my opinion and many see him as a genius, but maybe the emperor really has no clothes. To me Bustop was a masterpiece, and so was Moonlighting, and so was It happened One Night, and so was 2001, and so was One Eyed Jacks, and dozens more I could name, so maybe our tastes are different.

Actually, I'd say that one of the first things you should do to become good at any art is to sop confusing "What I like" with "What is good". You have to accept that people are different and that you can learn as much - or more - from excellent films that you don't like. I generally don't resonate with Orson Welles' work but I can separate that from my evaluation of its quality.

That's not to say that you should accept anything popular or critically adored as genius. But you should evaluate and critique your own reaction. Eg you called SSOS "melodramatic." But i. is this fair at all? a lot of the film is in subtle details. And ii. do you know anything about the milieu and real personalities the film was based on? Compared to Winchell's broadcasting style, Lancaster's character is almost softly spoken - the film would have lost all meaning and relevance without the element that you didn't react well to. "A good film" does not equal one that appeals to the tastes of a random viewer decades later.

21 hours ago, Bruce Greene said:

If you look at the odds, you’ll never be a filmmaker!

I think you've reached that conclusion because you don't understand how to look at odds.

Frank wants to be a director because he loves watching movies and wants to write and make an epic about a superhero character he's invented. He's of average intelligence. He learns to work a camera and shoot stills and video, but no one shows any interest in the results. He writes a kindle novel and it sells 10 copies and gets a 2 star rating. He gets accepted into Fullsail's film program. He'll graduate $120K in debt.

Jane has the same desire. She's has excellent grades, and a few months into shootings stills she is able to shoot trade for local model agencies. Her kindle novel sells several thousand copies - she can write. She has a choice between studying film at the AFI or her state university, which is top 25 rated for film and will cost her only $5K a year in fees, in which case she'll probably end up debt free at the end of her degree. She'd like to be a director but she'd settle editor or cinematographer or writer .

...Frank's chances are less than average. Which start out at about 1/10,000 for becoming a director. So pulling them down for someone in the bottom of the talent pool... 1/100,000? 1/1,000,000? 

Jane's are waaay better than average. Which start out at about 1/1000 for the roles she willing to consider, and probably jump up 1/10 or better for someone with her demonstrated talent and the degree she'll receive. 

Frank's cost for a 1/100,000 shot will be about $200K - combining debt and lost income. Which means, crudely, he'd have to expect cash and intangibles to be greater than $20,000,000,000 from becoming a director for the risk to be worth taking. 

Jane's risking maybe $75,000 in lost income. Modify for a 1/10 chance and that comes out as a $750,000 risk. Which is inside her tolerance level because the cash and fun she'd get from her chosen career easily add up to the equivalent of several million.

..Taking long odds is fine. But you have to calculate HOW long they are, what the cost will be, and what the reward. Most people don't, and they get badly burned.

20 hours ago, Max Field said:

The bigger question to ask yourself is "Am I actually interesting?" "Are the things in my brain legitimately divergent?"

Those are two separate questions. Any self-obsessed freak can be odd. There's nothing more common than an odd bore -

 Interesting is another matter. You can even be fascinatingly ordinary, like Jimmy Stewart. 

11 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

There is no business sanity to filmmaking. 

Or maybe you're just not capable of it? People who actually make a living doing anything have to think about costs, whatever your fantasies are.

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I know many cinematographers who make a killing renting their Amira's.

Did the OP ask about setting up as a rental house? And I suspect that you have no idea whether people are making "a killing." What you know is they are renting cameras and maybe how much an hour. But the hours rented per year and costs, no.

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Also Netflix approved cameras only benefits people with "netflix" on their paychecks.

The point is that the camera meets a minimum standard, Tyler. If Netflix will approve a camera, are you really like to have a client who won't be ok with the image? (Really - this isn't rocket science..)

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How are you supposed to hold any of the C series cameras with a decent zoom lens? They're so front heavy with any lens, it makes them completely impractical to use. Like the Red and Alexa mini cameras, you wind up spending gobs of money building rigs with add-on viewfinders, shoulder kits, counterbalance battery adaptors, yada yada yada.

 

You're talking about a $30,000 price difference. The things you're talking about about can be done for 1/10 of that. Calling a spend of $1-$3K "Gobs of money" when telling someone to buy a $40K camera goes beyond hyperbole and into hysteria.

8 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

Yes I wasn't criticizing it.. and I didn't know the constraints ..  just pointing out that generally the key is nicer from the across the line..

You were very polite - I definitely don't want to imply that you sounded critical! My point is that lighting primarily has to serve the purpose of the "story" rather than looking "nice." If you light a scene so that the broad side is dimmer then you're sending all sorts of messages to the watcher. In particular, you're generally creating emotional distance and a more serious tone.

21 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

o what camera package to own for both ENG Doc work and Commercial work? The Alexa Amira would be top of my list.

The Amira is $40,000. A Canon C200 - a Netflix approved camera - is $10,000. Buying the Amira as a camera for documentaries is against all business sanity unless you can show that the camera will provide a spectacular amount of extra revenue.

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I'm not much of a Canon C series fan. I don't see the purpose of holding a camera out in front of you all day and when you add a zoom lens, it's pretty cumbersome even with a shoulder rig.

The camera you're trying to sell weighs, what, THREE TIMES as much as a C200 and you're talking about "cumbersome"...? Ok...

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I don't like the XAVC codec, even though it works nicely with Avid, it doesn't work nicely with anything else really (I use it a lot). I don't like Canon's menu system either and I think the camera over-all is very outdated in the way it functions

 

So you don't like the C-series for subjective reasons. Fine. But why is that a reason for someone else - who is buying the camera for them, not for you - to spend four times the amount of cash???

And that's before considering that C200 has the world's best autofocus, which can be bloody useful for documentary work. And the whacking great reduction in weight.

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However, it looks just like the Alexa, so you can shoot b-roll with an Alexa and interviews with Amira and you've perfect matching images.

Or you can just apply a colour profile to the C200 and no one watching will know you saved $30,000...

13 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

Looks fine.. yeah generally (although no rules )... having your lights on the same axis as the camera.. will of course give you a very flat light.

But the light in those shots is not "very flat". Not everything should be lit like a film noir. More balanced lighting is typical of a rom com, which is a good model for a reality dating show. And lighting the wide side makes expressions easier to read and suggests openness - which is probably vital. Lighting should fit purpose. This does.

High key is just as "cinematic" (American Psycho uses it superbly and it's Wes Anderson's default) as low key but it's harder to get right. I think Thein did extremely well.

Contax. Minolta/Rokkor - they built and designed lenses for Leica, after all. Many of the Leica R lenses are rehoused Minolta designs and the Minoltas definitely have the sharp-but-organic look... But, no, you said you wanted EF mount - and Minoltas won't convert without some extra glass. Shame - they have exactly the look you want:

https://phillipreeve.net/blog/minolta-md-50mm-2-review/

1 hour ago, Bruce Greene said:

 someone is going to make the movies. Why not you? 

Someone is going to win the Lottery and the World Poker Championship too. But before investing time and your life's savings, you should examine the odds. What are the base odds? What's the potential rate of return? What assets do you have that will move the odds in your favour?

People who don't this tend to end up working in telesales, wishing they'd studied accounting. 

7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

What is this grade school? 

From the way you behave, very possibly.

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.... assuming we're discussing director of photography. The OP wants to know the steps to becoming a filmmaker. As you probably know, the role of a filmmaker is actually producer more than anything else.

No, I don't know that. That's your own invented fact. Certainly Martin Scorsese would disagree, judging from his introduction to Mackendrick's book. 

And more importantly and appositely, I'm very sure that the OP wasn't asking how to become a producer when he started this thread, yes? Common sense, Tyler, common sense. (And checking facts, and not carrying resentment between threads...)

14 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

1 hour ago, David Mawson said:

 

Obviously you didn’t read the other part of my post which stated that in the end, the most important part is story.

Yes, I did. I just felt you'd embarrassed yourself enough without my pointing that your logic was inconsistent as well as just plain bad.

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 This isn’t a forum for writers, so I wouldn’t expect anyone here to need advice on writing. 

Which is another example of bad logic. Having already made one jaw dropping silly statement, you've now made another. Story telling in film is NOT just - or even mainly - about what people say. The camera department's task is not to get the prettiest images possible but those that best convey the story. Good dop's are collaborative storytellers, working with the director and the script to do this - this is one of the major points the book makes. The main responsibility for this is the director's - but a competent dop needs to understand the director's aims and needs to work with him.

In general, Tyler, it helps to know what a book says before declaring that it isn't relevant. Oh - and double score for ignoring the title of the book, which is "On Film Making" and not "On Film Writing"...

But, of course, if you were more cautious then we'd not had the special joy of having you lecture us on why Potemkin, Caine and Bout De Souffle aren't worth studying.

Have you thought of starting a kickstarter so you can lecture at film schools? I'd contribute if I got to watch the streaming video of your debut. Do you fancy starting with UCS or the AFI?

On 5/25/2019 at 3:15 AM, Kyle Kearns said:

Hey guys, here's a still from a law firm video I shot.

Let me know what you think could be improved. Don't be afraid to be hard on me, I need to learn!

 

The background is awkward. The black lamp shade is too close to his head and at eye level, the poster is directly behind his head and the same size. Distracting. I'd have removed both. And the black thing coming out of one shoulder. His tie and suit look messy - you might want to carry bulldog clips and some fabric for paddings. (Old fashion shooter tricks.) Something very awkward is happening behind his left (ie camera right) arm.

The flowers are a minor problem by comparison - always start your Foreign Object scan with the talent's head. Then check the eyeline and the rest of the body. Elements as far away as the flowers are much lower priority than objects actually distorting his silhouette.

Lighting is nice. Centring the subject is best for building empathy - good call.

The guy looks like a natural to play Lex Luthor - probably an asset to a lawyer...

16 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Right now, I’m on a shoot where the director wants me to explain how some shots in “I Am Cuba” were done...

Well, at least it wasn't Triumph Of The Will...

(Which is, of course, one of the most skilled pieces in film making history - it certainly has to take the prize as the best advert. But still.)

4 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

 A writer shouldn’t know anything about Dickens or Joyce?

...Because neither of them used a word processor, presumably.

I think that there is a terrific amount to be learned from watching silent film. As Hitchcock said, if a director needs to rely what's said to carry the story then he's not really making a film at all - he's illustrating a radio play. The director's and writers of the silent era were forced to know their craft in this regard by the need to keep captions to a minimum.

Some of the silents were among the most sophisticated and knowing films ever made. I the only films you saw in your life were The Battleship Potemkin, Intolerance, and The General, you'd still know everything you needed to make a film. In fact the only thing I can think of that you'd really be missing from the modern film maker's arsenal would be the jump cut. (Perhaps I'm missing something?)