Mark Allen

It is very common for film stock to go overbudget on smaller movies, the idea of this cost being more locked in appeals greatly to the people paying for lower budget films. The ability for the D20/Genesis type of cameras to drop in cost overtime will most likely outpace any drop in film shooting (which I doubt will drop much). Those factors will weigh heavy in favor of seeing more films shot in the digital method. I think the paradigm of the future world of filmmaking will be a lot more product with a lot less budgets. Many films being made for 500k or so hoping to break out. There will still be the huge ventures that are tied into mass corporate marketing - but those will be the event movies. In some ways it will be good news for production people as there will be more jobs - but the jobs will be shorter in time and maybe not union payscale jobs. Conjecture.

For that matter, why does one call an uncompressed HD edit an offline? An "online session" is said quite often meaning when you are at the facility pulling your material from original tapes - but the assumption is you've been looking at lower resolution. :) But - language has a function of conveying information and it naturally evolves when there are words which people agree on to mean whatever they need those words to mean. The nomenclature of film and video is going to change constantly and will always retain legacy words which don't make sense, but that's how language works.

Watch every movie talked about in the book Film Art. I'm going to take your "artsy" comment and put that secondary to "important" films.... just because I could list a ton of artsy films which I do not think were, in the end, very imporant. Here are some films off the top of my head that might be seen such that you are aware of what people are talking about when they come up in discussion as well as being important movies. I'm going to lean towards the contempoary entries 'cause of the last post and try to give a list of samples from various important directors. Citizen Kane (as the Orsen Welles sample) The Sacrifice (as the Tarkovsky sample) Modern Times (as the Chaplin Sample) Annie Hall (as the Woody Allen Sample) Easy Rider (cause people talk about it) Pulp Fiction (Tarrantino sample you've probably already seen) The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola Sample) ***see note below Watch at least one film by Igmar Bergman Eraserhead (the David Lynch sample) Blue Velvet (Mr. Lynch gets two samples :) ) Taxi Driver (Scorcesse sample) She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee sample - Malcom X is a better film, but She's Gotta Have it was important in the history of movies - especially black filmmaking.) Sex Lies and Videotape (While Soderberg has done a bunch of great movies since, this film was the beginning of today's independent cinema... in the sense that it was the first indie to break through - charming movie too) Stranger than Paradise (black and white... artsy ;) ) Buffalo 66 (artsy and recent) Exotica (Atom Egoyen's sample) Un Chien Andalou (Bunel sample) Breathless (as the Goddard sample) North by Northwest (as the Hitchcock sample) Wow... there are so many I could go on endlessly it feels like - but that should be a good start! :-) ***the note about Coppola - most people would say "The Godfather." Now, I thought the Godfather was "just ok" and that The Conversation was his best film with Tucker as maybe the secondary. Now, I know a woman who I talked into being an editor and helping me on my very first film project as an assistant. I just had a gutt feeling she'd be good. Well, she ended up getting some editing work and finally ended up as the Coppola's family editor (editing projects for all of them and living at their vinyard). Well, I told her my theory and she thought I was crazy - but apparently mentioned this to Coppola once and I very much respect that she actually came back to tell me that he agreed that the conversation was his best film and that to this day he really felt like The Godfather was just a job. She seemed disappointed, I felt hugely vindicated.

Keith - have you already or could you comment on what brought the choice for D20 vs. Genesis?

You should add that to your signature. :) :) :) By the way I thought adding the photo was a nice gesture and does have a puprose in that If you were to originate on film vs. DV and then even if you ran it down to a heavily compressed JPG - you can still see some difference of the origination. I look forward to seeing some Hi Rez images. Also, consider picking a few detail points and cropping down a whole sequence to something like 200 by 200 in full rez for detail analysis :) Cause motion does matter. I can provide some temporary hosting space if necessary and you're so inclined.

Thanks for sharing your experience. So, it has variable rates - good news. It can go to slower speeds (8 fps, 12 fps, 22 fps) as well? In shooting HD usually people have to spend a tad bit more time knocking down errant highlights. Did you have that experience with the D20? How simple was the set up to feed your powerbook, where you taking a direct feed or a feed from a secondary tape recording source or recording in live while they shot?

Very much looking forward to your thoughts on all aspects. Currently does the D20 do any fps other than 24p? Can it go to 22 or 20?

Depending on how basic you are going - there are lots of photography books that will teach things like "the rule of thirds." There is a book called "directing: shot by shot" which you might browse to see if it speaks to you as far as organizing a visual story. There's also a couple pages in the book "How to Draw the Marvel Way" (and I literally mean just a few pages) that compare their style with DC's and I think in the sense of making things feel "Hollywood" those few pages have a lot of value. Browse those at the library and see what you think. Just trying to suggest some things not mentioned so far.

I think story is a part of everything. When you think of every aspect of what you're creating, you are thinking "What is the story there?" When you are talking to your set decorator and she's asking you what you want want for this living room shot. You have to think about the story... what are you conveying about these people? Who lives here? How does where they live tell their story? When a prop maker is distressing a hero prop, he's doing it because it tells the story about the character who is using it. I believe as a director your job is to know how to share the core story and break it down for every moment for everyone who needs to know (including the cinematographer) such that each of these people can understand the purpose of this moment and then bring their skills to the table to help you convey the story of this moment which builds to tell the story of this scene which is a block of the story of the movie. The story is where the drama is and the drama is where desire is. Now, when I was starting out just out of college I had this crazy idea that I wanted to make movies without stories. Just visuals - a montage of images. I'm not sure why I was so story-rebellious, but it really hindered me for a few years. It may have been my own insecurity and fear of not being able to tell as good a story as someone else. I actually did sell one script in that time but I labled it "Hollywood" and almost scoffed at people's interest in it. Well, eventually, I realized what story meant in a different way - and in a way that meant something to me. I realized that everything I wanted to do with movies WAS telling story - even if it was just a montage of images - those images and their juxtoposition were going to tell a story. Story is hardwired into our brain. That's why we have dreams - we're making stories out of flashes of memories and thoughts. If anone is interested in waxing philosophic about story in cinema, I actually have a little discussion group about story here: cinemastory.tribe.net if anyone is interested in chatting about story there. It's not heavy in traffic, but it is very specific in purpose.

I would like to direct an epic fantasy film. I have a science fiction trilogy (from which I borrowed a lot of the feeling from for the little short I directed www.leastlikely.com) it has a story like lord of the rings (has nothing to do with "least likely"). But for as many meetings I've had with different studios this year, it looks like my first film will actually be an indie which is in the horror genre - but not the slasher type.... more like "The thing" with less gore. I also feel like I could do a good "Jacob's Ladder" style movie with bending reality. And I have one project being considered by a studio which is a movie like American Beauty. I wrote it over 10 years, it's very personal yet... has a bit of a genre throughline. I don't mind genre movies though. I think the genre can act as a vehicle and whoever you are comes out in the the interactions between characters. this isn't usually how they are done though... but they could be. Hitchcock was great at using the genre as a medium for his communication. A note about silence in movies. I was on the cover of DV magazine many years ago because of a little project caled "The Shapemaker." Because of the cover I got some meetings - but the movie has no dialogue - it's set in a future where fear of punishement has led people to stop expressing verbally at all. Well, that seemed cool to me and made the movie very visual - but every meeting I had ended with "Can't they just say a few words?" This entire last year while I was being sent to meet studio execs by my manager, he wouldn't even let me talk about this project. :) But after I have a couple hit films... just you wait... The Shapemaker will come to life. :ph34r:

Well, is the LA Film school that pristigious? I live in LA and haven't heard it spoken about much. Does UCLA extension offer cinematography courses? Are those reputable? (question to other forum members) I'm not going to say this as advice, but just as something to consider: I think you should consider as an alternative to spending so much cash - getting an internship so that you are not only learning and getting some real world experience, you are also making connections with people who really work in that industry. Then with some of the spare cash, start shooting things on your own to utilize things you've learned. If you are a likable person though - being around people who could bring you onto jobs in the future is pretty important.

Just to clarify - the songs in this spot are from the musical Dreamgirls (around 1981 6 tony award winner), not Rent. But don't think that the songs actually sound like that - they are much cooler than these very dry souless performance. Yes, and I must also say that this spot is pretty amazingly bad and has officially subtracted 10% of all the great things Baz Luhrman did to modernize the musical genre. I wonder when theater owners and distributors will notice the fact that more ads are playing in theaters and less people are going to theaters. Don't they want to enhance the theater going experience? A couple trailers is one thing - not a bad thing. But these ads, in my humble opinion, are up there with people talking in the theater which is driving people to stay home and watch their DVDs. Just wait until everyone has huge screen HD DVD players at home.

I'm sorry for not answering your question directly - but since you will certainly have enough glory and responsibility directing, have you thought about finding a 1st AC or gaffer who wants and is ready technically to move into the DP role and just have them act as DP. You still get to control the images as much as you like and they get a chance to get a DP'ing job and will bring all their knowledge to the table willingly and excitedly most likely. Just a strategy thought. Unless none of your 5 people were going to be camera or lighting people.

www.in24p.com

You're absolutely correct. But I blame it on the seminar and even the Panasonic rep who kept calling the camera "the P2." I was referring to the HVX200 (I think that's the number) - and I was mostly meaning. If it was like a 1" sensor I'd be willing to pay 3 times more for it and be excited as I could be about some plastic and metal. :) What ist he sensor on the current varicam?

If I'm not mistaken, it is the sign of the apocolypse. Could be wrong, just a guess.

Are these movie files? (avi) If so - AWSOME - they're broken up into takes already. If they are image files and you want something more like a captured tape... not a problem. With QTPro.... File>Import Image Sequence. (Select first File in sequence) File>Export Quicktime Movie. Now you have a movie. Or, just use them as an image sequence. My one gipe still after seeing the P2 and it's footage is... 1/3" sensor = a depth of field really bad for narrative stories.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts. I thought I'd post some follow up information after having gone to a res fest LA event about HDV. The seminar I was at compared the Sony Z1, the A1, The Canon XL HD1, The new JVC HD offering, and the Panasonic P2. They demonstrated footage from every camera except the JVC because they had nothing to play it back. Of course, the footage was from totally different DP's at totally different locations for totally different purposes - so there is no true comparison. I will say this though. The P2 is in it's own class I think. It's four times the bandwidth, it uses intraframe compression, and the silly engineer's test they were showing... well, it looked really good. I could totally see that playing with the colors and such in post I could be quite happy with the clarity and color reproduction. The thing I will not be happy about is the 1/3" sensor! I like depth of field limits, I think it looks good and it's a fantastic tool for focusing the audience's attention on what you want - keeping them "in" with the actor and not on the passing by extra. This makes me sad because even as I'm seeing the latitude increase, I'm seeing the depth of field increase as well. Guess I could shoot in zoom - that might help. But at 1/3" - not going to help a lot. The other surprise was this. The A1 looked really good. Yes, I think it had more of classic video look than any of the other camera's shown, but it was really sharp.. It's cheap and tiny and I think it's going to rule the consumer world without question. It only shoots 1080i. And did I mention it's tiny? They claim the P2 will do 24p in both 720 and 1080. I had a chance to pick it up and it felt fine to me. Felt like the DVX100a which I used a few weeks back. Didn't really pick up any other interesting information in the 90 or more minutes except that The estimated price of 8 gig P2 cards by the time the camera releases is $1,200 (not the current $2,000) and that internally the camera is doing something like 680 mb/s though it is only writing 100 to the card for the video. The presumption is that this is for future expansion. I can't explain it anymore than that as it wasn't discussed in depth.

Bernie Mac is single camera comedy shot on HD.

Anyone here actually seen raw footage from both? I think as much as paper information is great, sometimes it doesn't quite correlate exactly to the aesthetic experience. If not, I'll try to add it to my agenda to go check out both I've seen the Genesis, but not the viper. I'd like to see unprocessed Genesis footage actually thought too.

I haven't been following the camera developments for a while and I was wondering if anyone could tell me what cameras are coming out in the HD realm that are more affordable to rent or buy than the F900 or the Genesis, but are delivering good quality PROGRESSIVE images. I've seen some buzz about the Panasonic P2 - is that the thing? I'm familiar with the Kinetta (on the CML for it but doesn't seem likely that will be seen this year). Others? Thanks in advance.

The genesis looks better and costs 3 times or more the money to rent. My comment is if you can afford the genesis, you'l probably be happier with the look. If you are in Los Angeles, schedule to see the genesis (and maybe some F900) at Panavision.

Finding out information about Kinetta is very difficult. The best source is the cinematography.net kinetta list. my advice if you go there is to just wait for infromation, don't jump in with a "when will it be ready" because that just annoys people and unlike here, they're very strict over there. Watch for a month first. Based on what I've read on the list and my personal guessing. I suspect the first versionw will be selling mid 2006 for $60,000 for a working package. Total speculation. This is like a 16mm version and there will be a 35mm version which may end up in the several hundren thousand range - or at least high enough that it has been suggested only rental houses will be buying them. There was SUPPOSED to be something ready in November.... and last August... and.... etc. But, they're on the cutting edge and waiting for technology (sensors) to catch up to them.

Keyword is "Form PA" - look that up at the government site.

if you are doing this for education - all you will learn from dvcpro or dv compressed footage is what the limitation of that format is for compositing. I would recommend getting your footage telecined or scanned to hard drive - perhaps fotokem or cci digital in Burbank can do this. Then, try it uncompressed and compressed with dv and you'll learn something extra too. The folks that do composites are using either - keylight, primatte, or ultimatte - and they make a difference - keylight is what we mostly use. Some folks are using custom keyers or noding in Shake as well. Perhaps there are demo versions of these softwares - even if they put a big X through it - you'd still see your composite results. Then compare it to final cut's keyer and you'll learn even more - though it's possible to get an okay key with final cut.