James Steven Beverly

WHAT!! Now you don't want to meet with me? I'm crushed, Richie! Listen. Scorsese, by meet (NOT a "meeting") I meant say "HELLO" in the lobby should you HAPPEN to GRACE me with your presence at some point during the market because I THOUGHT it might be fun to talk to you in person instead of online.The main reason I'm headed to AFM this year (other than I enjoy it) is I'm gonna try and nail things down with other people I have working on this, so relax, you're safe. :rolleyes:

What you call "nerd-like enthusiasm", I prefer to call pearls of wisdom and solid, 24 carat gold wealth of knowledge expressed with masterful insight on the topic of film making. You are able to focus intently on a particular aspect of your craft and explain it clearly in simple terms that allow the uninitiated to grasp complicated concepts immediately despite the technical intricacies that might cloud a less skilled expert or tutor in the field. Setting aside you're honest modesty, you're quite good at this sort of thing.

LOL!! That ALONE makes coming to AFM this year an imperative, my friend! In all the time I've come to AFM, I've never attended a screening but IF any of your films are screened, I WILL take the time to go watch them. As for funding, I do have people looking, they all seem realistically positive, so we'll see what happens. They say it normally takes 2 to 3 years to find the money so when it comes through, I should be right on schedule. Worst case scenario, I shoot that script I pitched you a year or two ago, "thrill Kill" as a no-budget :"shot on video" feature and see if I can sell that. I also have a new script I just finished a few weeks ago called "Dollie" that can be done low budget to untra-low budget if need be and shot virtually anywhere so there is that. At this point, it's much more a question of "when" than "if". But all that is irrelevant. Just getting to meet face to face with the great and fabled Richard Boddington is worth the ticket price! I truly am looking forward to meeting you, sir! If the venerable David Mullen shows up, it'll be a TOTAL slam dunk!!

Hey, who's headed out to AFM this year?! I'm feeling confident and excited this year. You know what the say, " Third time's the charm!" In the meantime, I'm not sitting on may fat-asset laurels, we have a meeting to to discuss financing Thrill Kill scheduled for next week and several people are looking for money! It could always all come to naught, BUT right now it's makin' me feel good! I'd love to put some faces to the names so if you are gonna stop by (AND you don't need a pass to hang out in the lobby and meet people from Nov. 6 - Nov. 13 at the Lowes Santa Monica Hotel on Ocean Blvd. so what do you got to loose?!) let me know and we'll say hello!

Haven't you be paying attention to American Republican politics? Win at any cost is the mantra, nay, the canon of what determines a man's success in this great nation of ours. Far be it from me to cast dispersions on a bunch of billionaire playboys that spend millions on important things like having the fastest sailboat in the world as opposed to feeding the destitute, but hey, it's their money, stolen fair and square from America's middle class so why not spend it on such an important, earth changing endeavor as racing a sailboat a few seconds faster than your opponent. CERTAINLY something to dedicate your life to.

Why not, I've got nothing to lose. Worst case scenario, they both look like crap, but at least that way though, I'll know what I've got. Thanks for the advice, David.

OK, WEIRD deal, I was just given a relatively new, VERY low hours, native 16:9 camera, a Samsung Sc-Dc 164 DVD camcorder....Now obviously this is a consumer camera. It's got a single TINY 1/4.5 CCD, It's MPEG-2 (though the newest versions are MPEG-4 so maybe the software can be updated),The resolution is terrible-0.7 MP (basically a late 90s digital still camera), it's got a image stabilizer, There are several manual setting like shutter speed and f stop. It also has a 33X optical zoom (and a 1200X digital zoom) and a mini-plug for an external mic, (I have the adapters for an XLR to mini-plug) It doesn't have a progressive mode probably because it's a DVD camera (or Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO, Multi-Media Card, SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card which all can record some short motion footage). My question is (and I already know wat the answer is, but I got to ask) given that HD 16:9 aspect ration seems to be very important and cropping the image from SD 4:3 to 16:9, IS this good enough for shooting a DVD teaser to be shown on a computer screen? IF not, I can use the camera for a feature I wrote called "Thrill Kill" which was designed to use various cameras and formats so not a total loss and well worth keeping for that project if nothing else!.

I definitely agree with you that great talent doesn't necessarily translate to great oration or great teaching HOWEVER, David seems to possess all three. Just from our online discussions, I have learned so much about the craft. I saw some of the video clips of him speaking film and was duly impressed with his encyclopedic knowledge of all that is cinema but was particularly impressed with his technical knowledge of his craft. I'm headed out to AFM again this year but unfortunately won't be in LA for his talk, but I may be moving back to my beloved city in the near future so, we'll see what happens!

Was there ever any doubt?! :D Guy's amazing. EVERYTHING I've ever see shot by him seems perfect. I hope to get the chance to work with him soon before he gets recognized for the superstar cinematographer status he so richly deserves and is priced out the range these features I'm working to get financed are able to afford!! B)

Jinny, this is a PROFESSIONAL forum. As per the rules, you are required to use your REAL, FULL NAME. so unless you were stranded on a desert island by pirates, left for dead until a pack of hyenas took you in and raised you as one of their own but, BEING HYENAS, lacked the verbal skills to impart to you, your proper sire name, which left you in the untenable position that you couldn't POSSIBLY know what your ACTUAL family name is so, instead of creating what you knew would be a lie that would haunt you for the rest of your live, leaving you broken in shame, you took a solemn vow to never have any legal name other than "Jinny" until you are able to discover your TRUE identity....you need to change it.. B)

http://www.cfmediaview.com/lp1.aspx?v=6_1081357411_50558_10

Hey MAN, will you please quit making all those beautiful images, don't you know, film is dead?! :rolleyes:

VERY interesting!!

Well, that's something, not much but at least something. IF push comes to shove, I'll use whatever tricks I can come up with to give it as cinematic a look as I can muster and hope it works. In the meantime, I'll keep exploring the HD option and see if this guy comes through for me. I'll just have to figure it out and decide the best course for my given circumstances, little else I can do, so I guess I'll live with it. I do appreciate all the advice though and if there are any other tips you all might want to impart to me, I'll be all too eager to listen.

VERY COOL!! I'll check it out. Thanks!

I figured there should be software out there that could do that as well. I haven't done any research on it yet though.

I'm curious about this. The GY-500 has 3, 1/2 inch chips in them. They used them as a broadcast camera for some smaller television stations back in the day which was the reason I bought it in the first place. It was the cheapest broadcast camera I could afford. I'm wondering if that fact would make any difference to my situation as far as shooting either a narrative teaser or a narrative, no budget feature that I expect night go straight to DVD if I were able to sell it?

Well, we're exploring that option as we speak, but unfortunately,As always, it will come down to cost. It's a good plan though. If I can make it happen, I'll take your advice and do so. I'll have to upgrade my editing software to HD, but hey, it had to happen eventually UNLESS there is some free software out there that can do HD editing :rolleyes:.....ANYONE? :D

That's a thought, depending on what the lens costs.

OH, and thanks for the information, BTW

Huh, well, I guess I'll have to frame for Academy then until I can get something better. As I mentioned, the picture is really beautiful for what I paid for the camera so shooting something for "straight to video" should be fine. The JVC uses (as you probably already know) three 1/2in chips so I don't know if it could be modified or not, although I suspect the cost would be prohibitive. I think I've read somewhere that there is software that can convert interlaced to progressive but I'm not sure. I'm not really a video guy so much, I'm more of a film guy but for these low end, no budget, shoots, one must do what is necessary and unless I shoot 8mm or 16mm (and my 16mm camera is wild and consumer level so that's not really an option), I'll need to shoot on video. I DO have a friend who\s looking at picking up an HD camera but we'll have to see what happens. I'll probably just shoot the "Dollie" teaser on SD as is as my workflow is already geared to SD. I'm thinking of tying 4 computers together for a small render farm to make things quicker

I just very recently was able to get a camera I've had for a while, working again. It's a JVC GY-500. I thought I have ruined it several years ago so I boxed it up to send off to be repaired but never got around to repairing it. A friend of mine with experience in electronics took it a few days ago after lying dormant for 7 or 8 years and had it running in 2 days. (Imagine how stupid I felt) The images are beautiful for a camera I bought 9 years ago, and there are literally not 20 hours on it of course though, it's an SD format. I planned to use it for teasers and low end stuff but with the prevalence of HD, I wanted to look into uprezzing the images I shoot. I did some research and learned there of course can be problems with the procedure but most of the information was dated so I wanted to know first of all, what is the latest techniques for uprezzing and what problems to expect. I'm expecting that this camera will be used for DVDs but Bluray again are becoming more prevalent so I may want to learn this as a stop gap measure until I can afford a newer camera. Please share whatever you can on the subject. Thanks-Steve

Yeah well Orson had been trough a Hell of a lot by that time and I'm PRETTY SURE, it wasn't his first choice for the last role he'd take. Disney dealt with studio heads of the 1920. That might have had something to do with his antisemitism. DW, was a guy born in Kentucky in 1875. Birth of a Nation was made in 1915......given these facts, he was a bigot SURPRISES you? My point is, these people made GREAT FILMS, INCLUDING Birth of a Nation, despite it's obvious racism and bigotry, which no one condones nowadays except idiots. It was the artistry of it's expression that made it great. The film was the blockbuster of it's era. You could say the same about Triumph of the Will. It was a PURELY EVIL film but a great film from a film making perceptive. I know Spielberg executive produced the Transformers. My only answer to that is he knows what will make money in the film industry and if you're head of your own studio, that's kinda the priority. As far giant robot feature films made from Saturday morning cartoons, it's probably the "best" I suppose. I liked Megan Fox in it....but honestly, that was more because of the way she looks. I really didn't care whether she could act or not. Thanks for the Yiddish lesson though,I apologize for the mistranslation. It's not my native language, I just like it. It expresses in a way, that can't quite be achieved by any other means. I also like Italian and French, BUT I digress. My point is, I can forgive many things, but a REMAKE of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ESPECIALLY ONE THAT COSTS TWO HUNDRED MILLION U.S. FREAKIN' DOLLARS.....is UNFORGIVABLE!.

You wanta know what my problem is? I'm allergic to stupidity. I have a fierce hated of the dumbing down to the lowest common denominator of American entertainment. I find it insultive to be so starved for intellectual stimulation that the level of film making I am willing to watch borders an the edge of retardation. David actually put it well as he often does. It's fine to see a stupid movie every once in a while for fun but scarfing down Micky D's everyday ruins your health and in the case of cinema, rots your brain. AND $200,000,000 BUCKS for a cartoon movie REMAKE???!!! ARE YOU KIDDDDING ME?? The last really smart, really good film I saw was "The Social Network" . It cost $40,000,000 and it was nominated for Best Picture! The King's Speech which was also VERY GOOD and won that year cost freakin' a mere $15,000,000,BUT let's talk apples to apples, Action adventure, MY specialty, Live Free or Die Hard! Cost $110,000,000 the best of the series and one of the best action flicks of all time, The Dark Knight, cost $185,000,000 one of the greatest performances in the history of the genre! BTW, I/m NOT that old and I've SEEN the cartoon, it was cute....NOT TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLAR cute, but cute. The guys I mentioned up here are REAL film makers. Drivel like these Saturday morning cartoon turned movie film fiascoes insults the integrity of their art.

Why do I keep flashing back to my rant about giant robot movies. A multi-million dollar movie remake about irradiated turtles that are trained as samurai by an Asian sewer rat. Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa. Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini,Howard Hawks, Ella Kazan, Michael Curtiz, Sergei M. Eisenstein, George Roy Hill, F.W. Murnau, James Whale, John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, John Huston, Sidney Lumet, Samuel Fuller, Hal Ashby, Victor Fleming,Josef von Sternberg, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Walt Disney, Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, Roberto Rossellini, Otto Preminger, Ingmar Bergman,Nicholas Ray, George Stevens, Jean Renoir, Leo McCarey, Cecil B. Demille, Busby Berkeley, Goerge Cukor,Stanley Kramer, John Hughes, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, Sergio Leone,Joseph Mankiewicz, Vincente Minnelli, od Browning, John Cassavetes, Arthur Penn,Anthony Mann, Michelangelo Antonioni,Terence Fisher, Robert Bresson, D.W. Griffith, Preston Sturges, Georges Méliès and Edwin S. freakin' Porter are SPINNING in their collective graves and the ONLY reason that Spielberg,Lucas, Tarantino, Scorsese, Coppola, Stone, Lynch, Scott, Nolen, Truffaut, Cameron, Carpenter, Cronenberg, Cravin, Raimi and Jean-Luc freakin' Godard are NOT spinning collectively in their grave is they're not DEAD YET!! Is this what we've come to? A remake of a cartoon inspired radioactive travesty? Al I can say is "Oy Vey" which translated from Yiddish to "Woe is me".