Scott Fritzshall

It's funny though since no one actually knows what the bill contains, and probably half of the people who oppose it actually believe those absurd "death panels" rumors. What's also pretty funny is there were a bunch of polls from a few years ago that showed that if you asked people whether they supported "universal health care" or "socialized health care," most of them opposed it, but if instead you just described what single-payer health insurance is but didn't give it a name, something like 70% of people actually favored it.

Ironically, I'm actually completely against the current health care reform bill as well, although for completely opposite reasons. I oppose it because it's essentially a gigantic handout to the insurance companies in exchange for them supporting the Democratic party against the Republicans. The Democrats get what they want- a health care reform "victory" in the public eye, as well as for the health insurance industry to stab the GOP in the back by shifting their support towards the Dems. The health insurance and pharmaceutical companies get what they want as well- the government will mandate that everyone in the country pay them. If someone can't afford whatever they decide to charge, they'll still get paid because the government will pay for it via taxed money. Everyone else in the country, well, we're out of luck. We will have a mandate to purchase affordable health insurance from companies who will have no mandate to provide us with affordable health insurance. The new alternative will most likely be the non-profit health co-ops or whatever, which are a compromise from the weak public option, which was a compromise from a strong public option, which was a compromise from a single-payer system. The whole point of the co-ops is to be a pretend alternative that have no ability to compete with the private insurance companies. There is very little in this reform that will actually lower costs. The result is going to be that more and more people will actually lose their employer-provided health care, which means that they will have to purchase their own insurance that they cannot afford, which means that even more slack will have to be picked up by the taxpayers, which means that costs will continue to rise. I oppose any reform which does not include at least a very strong public option. The vast majority of our problems are the result of the profit motive of the health insurance industry. Any plan which has no mechanisms to counter this are doomed to continued failure.

It's certainly a good idea, and I'm not disagreeing with you that one should have a contract or deal memo or whatever. But this doesn't prevent people from taking the money and running, even when it's seven figures from hundreds of people as in my example. If the people with the money want to screw you over, they're probably going to get their way, because they're the ones with the money.

But a deal memo or a contract doesn't necessarily protect you either. Check out this story: http://www.fxguide.com/article488.html Basically, Meteor Studios, owned by the company that owns The Discovery Channel, decides not to pay its effects artists for 3 months of work on Journey to the Center of the Earth 3d, including tons of overtime hours, claiming that it was just an accounting glitch and that they'd get paid soon. Everyone keeps working because they're dedicated to the project, and then as soon as it delivered, they were all laid off without pay. The company then declared bankrupcy, and then restarted with the same owners, same equipment, same technology. Over a million dollars has been owed collectively to the artists for almost 2 years now, and at this point Discovery Communications has probably spent more than a million on laywers to avoid paying it, and to cover the story up in the media by intimidating anyone who covers it, threatening to pull advertising, etc. http://www.fxguide.com/qt/1337/another-unpaid-workers-updateMore recently, the company has offered the workers 45%, then 63% of the total owed, not including overtime, which is an incredibly insulting offer. It was unanimously turned down by the former employees. The story is still ongoing at this point.

I went to Columbia College Chicago, if it's any help. You're right that their actual academics are pretty lousy, which is why you should definitely have at least a few years of general studies or a degree from somewhere else. Their cinematography program is, however, really good, and has been turning out a lot of really talented, dedicated people lately. It is, however, fairly pricey, and living in Chicago can be pretty expensive as well. The other thing is that, assuming you've got all of your gen-ed requirements taken care of, you can complete the Cinematography curriculum in 2 years and graduate, but in order to get the most out of the program, you'll want to take all of the advanced classes as well, and that will take another year. That's what I did- I had nearly all of my gen-eds filled from a different school, and it took me 3 years to graduate. The Core classes took the first year (I think they might be streamlining these a bit now, though), and the advanced classes took 2 more years. Overall I'm pretty happy with what I was able to get out of it. I'm currently in a job that I was recommended for by one of my teachers, and it seems like most of the people I had classes with are out here in LA as well, working in the industry in various capacities. You do have to be very self-motivated to do well at Columbia, though- it's very easy to graduate with no useful skills, knowledge, or connections, unfortunately. But if you put a lot into it and pursue your own opportunities as hard as you can, Columbia can really be a useful enabler. Brian is pretty much right, though, that you don't really need to go to film school to work in film. It's probably likely that if you're the sort of self-motivated person who would do well in film school and use it to get a job, you're probably the sort of self-motivated person who would be able to get a job without going to film school. For myself, I feel it was the right choice because I wanted to immerse myself in filmmaking and just learn everything I could, and meet other like-minded people. It's hard for me to say what's right for you, however I will say that most of the students who did really well were those in situations such as yours- a few years older, had tried other things already, and had come to Columbia determined to get the most out of it.

That camera does not have selectable frame rates, so you actually can't do high speed at all. If you need high-speed, you may want to look into renting a camera that's capable of it for the days where you need it.

I think that you'll find there are people who either trust or distrust both ;)

What is your destination format?

PS: this is the level of understanding that most Americans have about healthcare and about what "socialism" means, and an illustration of just how effective the Right's constant stream of lies have been: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ST2009072703107

How about addressing even a single one of my arguments? The department of energy doesn't really have the ability to control where we get our oil from, as far as I'm aware. Especially because actual energy policy is basically written by the energy companies, who generally oppose anything that causes us to pay them less, such as becoming more energy efficient. I don't have the time to look up all of the functions of the DoE right now, but I'm pretty sure that it has a far larger scope than simply "reducing dependence on foreign oil," and that you citing it is pretty disingenuous. PS: The auto industry begged the government to buy them out, so that's not really a very good argument for you either.

Hey, I thought you wanted to go back to discussing cinematography ;) Healthcare is fundamentally broken because it runs on a profit motive. Everyone at every step is concerned only with how much money they can make, and not with your health. ~$.25 of every dollar you pay to insurance companies goes to pay for an army of employees whose sole function is to decide whether they would profit from covering you, and to find ways to weasel out of their contract with you. Your health should not be decided by whether or not someone else would make money from it. And I don't know if you've noticed, but literally every single other first-world nation on the planet already has the government run healthcare, and they have healthier populations and pay less money for it. It's not like it's some crazy new concept that no one has ever tried before, it's already a success story multiple times over. Partially because we spent all of our money to murder a bunch of Arabs. With the money we spent on Iraq, we could have funded UHC for a decade. Additionally, Britain implemented NHS right after WWII, when their entire country was in pieces, and it's been largely a success ever since (and yes, I'm aware that NHS has numerous problems, but it's nowhere near as fundamentally unsound as the healthcare situation in the US). The meltdown came about for similar reasons as the healthcare problem now- because of a complete lack of regulation. The response to it has also been terrible, again for the same reasons- because they would rather protect their billionaire buddies at Goldman Sachs than nationalize failing banks. Instead, they just pay off the banks' bad debts with taxpayer money, but then leave the people who made the bad decisions in place to keep making more bad decisions, and to get billions in bonuses paid by taxpayers in the meantime. The free, unregulated market failed completely and utterly. Even Ayn Rand sycophant Alan Greenspan admitted he was wrong about it. I think you're projecting. I think mostly they would shudder at the fact that we amended the constitution to include blacks and women. Private insurers ALREADY DO THIS! All of this paranoia about what the government might do, and private companies already do them!

Thanks :) They don't, in fact, support socialized healthcare (well, unless you count the socialized healthcare the military gets). They're pretty much in lockstep against anything that doesn't benefit the insurance companies. Most of the Democrats are actually with them on this. They aren't worried about the system failing, they're actively trying to dismantle it so that they can 1)cut taxes for their constituents, 2)punish poor people for being poor, and 3)transfer public programs to private businesses, who of course give them healthy contributions for the favor. Also Republicans are mostly against Welfare in order to pander to their racist Southern base: many welfare recipients are black, and by campaigning against welfare, they are indicating that they oppose blacks. I'm not making this up, either, it's been a prominent component of the GOP's "Southern Strategy" for decades, and those who originated it, such as Lee Atwater, openly admitted that this was the reason for opposition to welfare. The US already spends more in taxes on healthcare than any other nation on earth. A UHC plan will actually cost considerably less in taxes than what we pay currently, with the bonus that you'll no longer need to buy healthcare on top of what you're already spending. UHC would be incredibly beneficial for businesses. Paying for insurance is a huge cost to them, and it causes them to be less competitive against foreign companies, who can do the same work for less because they don't have this burden. The CEO of the company I'm at right now is a huge proponent of UHC for exactly this reason. Our competitors in London don't have to pay for their employee's health insurance, so they can charge less than us. For small businesses, the cost is even greater, and an even larger burden. I'm not quite sure what David's angle in this is considering he refuses to support his arguments with anything but bumper sticker slogans, and I'm honestly pretty sure he doesn't even know himself. But there actually are a lot of people who argue against UHC on the grounds that they believe that certain people (typically "lazy or unproductive people," or in other words, poor minorities) don't deserve health care in the first place. Many more believe that the only reason that they themselves are able to enjoy good healthcare is that other people are denied it. There are many ignorant arguments against UHC, and there are also a whole bunch of arguments that are flat-out malicious. I'm going to disagree with you here, it's actually a pretty awful plan, because it's actually a Democratic conspiracy to uphold the free market (ie, they're being paid off by the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries). It's basically going to mandate that you give money to the insurance companies, but will not mandate that they actually offer you an affordable plan, or require that they actually cover you at all. It's a gigantic handout to companies that are already making huge profits by hurting the rest of the country. It puts an even greater burden on employers, and will cause more people to lose or drop coverage. Prices will skyrocket, because you are required by law to pay whatever they charge, and if you can't then everyone's tax dollars will pay it, and there are no caps on prices for at least 3 years. There is almost no chance at this point that we will end up getting a solution that is better than the current one; most likely we will hurt the poor, the working class, and the middle class in order to preserve the profitability of a handful of companies.

You're clearly making no attempt to even provide an argument for your side, and it's becoming increasingly apparent that you don't even know why you support what you do. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have argued against socialized health care with such brilliant arguments as "it will cost too little and be too good, and private insurers won't be able to compete," which pretty much makes my point for me. And on a personal level, David, I'm really kind of irked that I spent all that time writing a fairly detailed explanation of why I supported single payer health care, and you couldn't even bother to come up with an response other than "haha you really want socialism? lol you're crazy! :blink: "

Hey whoa I just read the Constitution as well, except I actually read it instead of just claiming to, and look what I found in Section 1, Article 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" The public health of the nation is unquestionably encompassed by "general Welfare," and Congress can tax to provide for it. So the idea that it's somehow unconstitutional is completely false. The uninsured who choose not to buy health insurance is a portion of what makes it so expensive in this country. Healthy, young people balance out everyone else in the risk pool, which means less cost for everyone. This is just one of many reasons why single-payer health care is the cheapest possible option- because it has the largest possible risk pool. People should not be forced to compromise their whole lives in order to pay for medical necessities. You portray people with health care debt as irresponsible, yet most of these people ended up in these situations through accident or illness. Putting them massively in debt to the point where they've got to sell their possessions to survive severely compromises their economic positions, which hurts the economy overall, which actually hurts you. It's cheaper for you just to pay taxes to help them out than to suffer the indirect economic effects of their mass bankruptcies. To give you a personal example, 6 years ago I developed a condition called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which required a weeklong hospital stay and an eventual invasive surgery to correct. This was not brought on by any sort of irresponsible behavior on my part, but was the result of an undiagnosable genetic predisposition, combined with the fact that i was exercising a lot. The total bill came to nearly $70,000. Had I not been covered by my dad's insurance plan at the time, this would have bankrupted my entire family. My Dad works full-time at a credit card company, my mom owns her own business, I went through 6 years of rather expensive schooling and currently am fortunate enough to currently work full-time in my chosen field, and my brother just completed college at a prestigious and expensive private school. Each of us are productive, responsible people who work and contribute to the economy, and I'm pretty sure that if you evaluated our lives according to the David Rakoczy "are-you-making-the-right-choices-o-meter," you'd probably put us collectively at a 9 out of 10 (we're likely not religious enough for your liking, sorry ;) ). Despite my dad's insurance, we were nearly on the hook for that $70,000, because they found some technicality that they used to try to argue that they didn't need to cover me. It took months of arguing before they would agree to fill their portion of the bargain. Had we not been successful in getting them to cover me, my family would have lost everything. And because the economy is a complex web of interrelationships, our loss would have ended up being your loss. Not to mention the fact that it's fundamentally unjust to be punished so heavily for something that was out of anyone's control. A single payer plan is the only way to ensure that everyone is covered , and it turns out that it's also pretty much the cheapest possible option. The government already handles many areas of our daily lives, and does so relatively well. The roads you drive on are socialized. The plumbing infrastructure that brings you your tap water is socialized. The post office is socialized. Police and fire departments are socialized. Federal agencies that regulate food companies to make sure your food isn't full of animal feces are socialized. You don't even think about these things because they just work. Many things are, in fact, most efficient in the hands of the market, but large infrastructural things such as those I mentioned are frequently not. Placing a profit motive on your health only serves to make it worse and more expensive, because it gives insurance providers an incentive to cut your coverage while raising your rates. You can bring up narrow, legalistic interpretations of why you shouldn't be forced to be a decent human being and care for those around you, but mountains of evidence show that it is in everyone's favor, including your own, for you to pay taxes to pay for socialized medicine.

There was a rumor going around a month or so ago that the director and producer were both fired- don't know if that ended up being confirmed or debunked...

I don't know what your actual budget is like, but you could try calling up Fletcher to see if you can work out a deal. Maybe you can end up getting a Varicam or HPX-2000. If not, I suppose I'd say to look at the EX1, which has fairly decent image quality for a cheap camera. It is heavily compressed and subsampled, though, so that will make it a bit more tricky to work with for compositing. My personal opinion is that lens adaptors are silly and cause way too much image degradation, but some people insist on using them either way, so it's going to be your call. Similarly, I think that using a dSLR as a motion picture camera is really silly and causes you to jump through all sorts of hoops during production and post, but some people do that as well. Anything in your price range is going to be compressed and subsampled, though.

Healthcare is a human right and should be available to everyone. Forcing businesses to pay for their employees' healthcare is actually the complete opposite of socialism- it's mandating that everyone give money to the insurance companies.

Because it typically looks like ass unless you do a bunch of noise reduction, which is undesireable, or downsample it significantly, which contradicts the whole point of shooting on a larger format to gain resolution. I actually just looked up the tests of the 5d MKII (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/CanonEOS5DMarkII/page21.asp), and it actually does perform reasonably well at higher ISOs, but again this is largely attributable to noise reduction and to the fact that it's got higher resolution which is being downsampled.

Which things that the union bargained for were too much? Reasonable working hours? Safety standards? Lunch breaks? Health care?

You pretty clearly implied that it was terrible for skilled laborers to lose their jobs but not when it happened to unskilled workers. I don't know what you're getting angry at me about. But sometimes, as in your examples, and as in a ton of other recent examples, the money IS there, it's just going to the executives. Gosh, we just don't have enough money to pay our workers anymore, we're going to have to lay all of them off, but we'll give our executives another few million dollars each for being so smart and making such hard decisions. You can ignore that it's the rich vs. the poor all you want, but that's the way it is, and that's where their money comes from. Maybe the executives should slash their own salaries first if they care about the company so much. They don't though; they just care about how much money they can make from it before it crashes and burns and they hop over to the next company they can run into the ground. And with them, the days of the working and middle classes having any sort of say in their own futures. Wages for the middle class have stagnated for the past several decades while GDP has risen- where has that extra money gone? Into the pockets of the wealthy. This correlates directly with the decline of unions in the US. They're going to send work overseas regardless as long as they are able to find populations they can exploit. But meanwhile they'll continue to pay off their congressmen to pass legislation here that weakens the power of unions even more, thus expanding their own wealth at the expense of the rest of us.

None of that really addresses what we were saying though.

Yeah it's pretty crazy that people should be able to earn a livable wage and lead a modestly comfortable life for performing a necessary function. Do you not see how the argument you're making can be turned around and used against you? "Wow, Karl makes $__/hour? All he does is _____! I can't believe I'm paying him that much!" Not when unskilled workers lose their jobs though. They and their families deserve to suffer I guess.

You're going to have some difficulty with either of them due to the compression and subsampling. I haven't used the EX1, but I have done some keying of HVX footage, and it was unpleasant though manageable. Definitely turn off Detail like Stephen said, no matter which camera you use- it will damage your edges beyond repair. I guess my vote would be for the EX1 overall, just because it's got higher image quality, but I'm saying that without having taken a really close look at it, so I don't know how useful my advice would be.

Because Mr. Wiseau is a gigantic nutcase. Here's an interview with him from The Onion's AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/articles/tommy-wiseau,29598/

Umm, white collar workers aren't "the bosses;" they're workers too. That thousands of them are getting laid off is more proof of what Brad was saying- that those who are actually in charge, ie the owners and executives, will lay off thousands of workers before taking a paycut themselves.