Keni
No title available
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
hello vonnie
The Bowery Presents
bliss lane
izzy's playlists!
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Origami Around
pixel skylines
No title available
Not today Justin
Sade Olutola
No title available
Andulka
Color Me Curious
Cosimo Galluzzi
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
shark vs the universe
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from Iraq
seen from Ukraine
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Morocco
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Brazil
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
@iainphilpott-blog
Transvideo OLED Monitor
The size of a smartphone this new monitor (pre-order during NAB2014) looks extremely interesting. With cameras getting ever smaller/lighter small pro monitor solutions are becoming more and more important.
http://www.transvideo.eu/StarliteHD
'Deluxe' Closes Motion Film Processing…..
The bell tolls once more to the fast and accelerating death knell of film processing. Yesterday (06.03.2014) 'Deluxe', legendary Hollywood film processors of over a 100 years, announced the closure of it's labs there and in London.
In a letter to customers, Warren Stein, chief operating officer of Deluxe Laboratories, said the Hollywood film processing facility will close on May 9th.
"The capture and exhibition of motion pictures has transitioned from film to digital in recent years," Stein said in the letter obtained by The Times. "Our processing volumes have declined sharply and as a result, the laboratory has incurred significant financial losses. This has forced us to make this very difficult decision."
Deluxe's announcement is the latest indication of film's phaseout.
Last year, Technicolor, the French-owned film processing and post-production company, closed a film lab in Glendale. That lab had replaced a much larger facility at Universal Studios that employed 360 workers until it closed in 2011. Also last year, Technicolor closed its Pinewood film lab in Britain.
The many diverse departmental 'post' areas of Deluxe will ensure it survives and contributes much to the motion picture industry but I have to say, historically, it will be remembered, me included, as a very sad day indeed. Some of you reading this will never have experienced the joy of shooting film. Film for me, whether stills or motion is a living breathing soul. It has a pulse. It talks to you. There was none of the instant gratification of watching what you had shot milliseconds after you called 'cut' that you have now. In motion, at best, playback was a very dodgy video tap. And on stills - well it was Polaroid that you spent the entire time telling the client 'Sorry, don't worry it won't look like that' while secretly wishing it would come back looking like that! There was a real need to be master of your craft because you couldn't actually see what you had shot till possibly the following day or later, long after everyone had gone home. You could not go back and adjust your exposure, your shot concept. You had to nail it, there and then, no second chance. On location, abroad, with no processing facilities it could be a week or so before you saw anything. Shoot it, fly the film out, get it processed, fly it back. In the 1980's Miami became a top worldwide location to shoot in if you needed sunshine. Why? Because a little work started there. Labs who had opened there observed what was happening and expanded, word spread, then clients came, then crews came, then models came and then, Miami became one great 'production lot'. But it worked. I would spend certainly six - seven weeks of the winter there shooting in excess of 1000 rolls of 120 EPR 64 a week. I'm not lying, there were probably 150 photographers a week from all over the world, putting through similar amounts of film as me through three labs. The labs were like churches as at the end of the day photographers, their clients, models and crews descended on their chosen place of worship with beers, bonne amie, possibly some drugs but certainly 'high fives' and coupious amounts of 'well done' all round. Go back to the hotel, shower and out for a luxurious dinner. Now I get back to the hotel and spend all night fighting with a shit WiFi signal trying to send back Hi-Res images to a client who has screwed the deadline so badly that the image goes to print as it's downloaded! And digital was supposed to make life easier?
And when the film came back it was like being reunited with a long lost friend. You then spent hours pouring over a light box editing. It was a relationship. Glowing skin tones, depth in shadows, and highlights that just rolled off with the softness of velvet - not like jumping off the 'digital suicide cliff of video'! And I'm not the only one 'harping back to a by-gone era through some misty rose tinted spectacles'. The 'film' medium, despite our technologically advanced digital acquisition ability, is still the first choice of Tarantino, Spielberg, Nolan and many others. Just sadly not enough of us to keep Deluxe Labs in business.
The reality though has always been that the labs never really made their money on processing the 'original' material. Their profits came from producing the 'prints' that went all over the world to a cinema house near you for projection. So, for a time, even when a film was shot digitally there was still a 'print' being made. All the key distribution houses have either already or are in the process of switching to digital projection. Films are now delivered from Hollywood on hard drives.
So how long is film going to last……..
I think given the vocal rhetoric coming from the likes of Tarantino it's possible that he will wade in with a group of like minded souls to keep one film lab going. It could prove easier than anticipated as in some respects it's already reaching 'Emperors New Clothes Status' because of it's lack of availability. "Darling you are on 'film' - you must have a good budget".
But probably history will prove that the writing is already on the wall. It could prove to be a short stay of execution or in great Hollywood tradition, extolling the virtues of the underdog, - 'Films Last Stand'.
It's like celluloid (that's 'film' Alex - my AS Film Studies teenage son - he will not have that word in his vocab) is in resus on the table in ER. The crash team (producers) are in place, injecting money, doctors (directors) at the ready, student doctors whimpering (1st AD's) but actually it's all too late. The gelatine is bleeding all over the floor, silver halide spurting up to the ceiling and there it is, her 'soul' floating, an out of body experience……. she knows her time has come.
I want film to stay, we all want film to stay but and it's a big but, we all have to die sometime.
RIP
Put The Phone Away
In light of the ‘Ellen selfie’ and an article by Mark C Oflaherty yesterday (BOF) my very dear friend Lynnette Peck (beauty ed, writer and entrepreneur of Lovely's Vintage Emporium), who I have worked with over many years was asking this morning about my thoughts on the explosive use of mobile phones at this season's fashion shows. iPhone pics were everywhere on social media. An explosion of ‘image hysteria’.
For decades professional photographers have covered the shows with equipment fit for purpose producing beautiful images that are focussed, sharp and correctly exposed. Their images, through their technical quality, respect the atelier’s months of intricate work and design. These past few weeks we have been subject to just plain crap from wannabe fashion people's phones. Phones take great pictures, in ideal lighting and relatively speaking close-up. What makes anyone think that a picture taken from the third row with the entire venue interior filling the frame and a tiny ‘Lowry’ type model, blurred, in the bottom left corner is either attractive or representative of a designer's blood, sweat and tears. What I also don’t understand is the sheer rudeness of people waving their arms in the air blocking other people's view. So, why do they do it? They do it because what the image says is ‘hey, look at where I am - the Gucci show’. Like anyone gives a damn. I spent three years shooting the couture shows for the Sunday Telegraph many moons ago with the fabulous fashion editor Geraldine Ranson. Editors, buyers and wannabees (yes they were around then too) would never have dreamed of pulling their own camera out. They would sit there with pen and paper making the odd note, the odd drawing. Quietly absorbing the experience of seeing, first hand, stunning clothes sashaying down the catwalk. That was glamour.
Why oh why at a fashion show where detail is so important would you want to watch it via a rubbish four inch screen when yes, incredible to think, you could watch it in real life!
It’s like at concerts. £100 for a ticket and people watch the show on the backs of their phones - why? Are our brains so frazzled that we can’t remember something unless we watch some dodgy sounding footage the following day or, like the fashion wannabees, to prove we were there, look at me, on social media?
The obsession with proving 'I was there' reached new heights at the Chanel show. Not content with force feeding social media dreadful unusable images of beautiful clothes the wannabes waded into Karl's 'supermarket set' and were filmed and photographed by other wannabes stealing anything that was not nailed down. Good God a whole new way of proving 'you were there' - a 'Wanted' poster! Truly shocking. All to strategically position an item in their apartment that hopefully some friend visiting will ask "What's that"? "Oh that…..Chanel show darling, I was there, did you not see my snaps on Twitter"?
In Mark's article he raises the question of should phones be banned at fashion shows. Yes is my opinion.
Please, next time you are at a fashion show relish in the privilege that you were invited, leave the photography to the pros and leave your phones in your Birkin's. Did you know you can download an app for that? It’s called respect.
How Cheap Is Too Cheap - Well It's Getty Cheap!
Hot on the heels of my rant on 'how cheap is too cheap', Getty has announced that a considerable portion of their images will be available for free if you include an embedded link to the picture, by way of a credit, taking someone back to the image on Getty's website.
All of this based upon the premise that people are using their images illegally anyway. So this, in some small way, may in the future provide a revenue stream.
I understand the logic - but it's too little too late.
Getty and the other major players like Corbis have engaged, for the past 15 years, in a price war. A race that quite simply has been a race to the bottom. And guess what? - they won! Hurrah hurrah hurrah! But actually there is no hurrah. There is no 'high fiving'. There are no 'pats on backs'. Their race to the bottom has meant their photographers have either left them, given up or are producing no new content. All three outcomes are disastrous for an image library.
I'm already hearing AD's and Picture Buyers starting to say 'Getty has no new content'. And we wonder why? Simple maths really. The moment a photographer can't recoup the money he or she has spent on producing a shoot they stop producing. Let me give you an example. From the deals Getty has done with publishers magazines can purchase a full page for as low as £25.00. Now rightly or wrongly you could say that was a reasonable price to pay, for example, a picture of a bowl of tomatoes that from a production point of view has cost the photographer £250.00 to shoot. But what if that shoot is a model, in a foreign country, with hair & m/u, stylist, flights and hotels etc. £25.00 is now sounding pretty cheap. By my rough calculations that shoot day is probably costing around £5-7000.00 per day. You've got to sell a lot of pictures at £25.00 to recoup that cost before you have even made a profit. Now some of you will say, "but hey you will make your money back in the ad sales". Sorry to disappoint but according to recent industry analysis less than 3.7% of sales in 2013 were above $1000.00 (Selling Stock)
What Getty is trying to do now is like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. Scrabbling around for loose change thrown in the dirt. Too little too late. Along with the photographers the photos have gone. Getty as a business model is doomed to fail. How long will their venture capitalist owners watch sliding profits because of a failing business model. Watch it being broken up and sold off.
What's the solution. Simple really if you want great pictures you need to pay a sensible amount of money for them. Photographers need to rediscover their self worth and go sell themselves. Picture Editors need to explain to editors and publishers why 'this picture costs more that this one'. I hear of publications that will 'only pay up to £100.00 per page' but then in the same issue there is a DPS from Trunk Archive at probably circa + £600.00? I do not believe magazines that 'do not have the budget anymore'. They do - it's just a question of where they choose to spend it?
The key mistake Getty and others made was lumping all photographs, regardless of production costs, into the same pot, to make the licensing model easier.
Bill Gates once said that "in the digital revolution imaging and media is the new oil". The trouble is oil runs out if you do not go out there and discover more. But its only worth discovering more If there is a profit to be made. Is the 'oil' now running out? No I don't believe so.
Once upon a time it was only possible to sell pictures if you were as large as Getty. Technology has now allowed everyone to be a 'Getty' - if they want to.
As I've said before 'content is king'. You just need to bring it to the surface. That's the difficult bit!
Pink, Pink & Pink!
I'm not being sexist but I know how most of the female (and actually some boys too) hair and make up artists I work with love a little bit of pink! Well when your next standing at checkin seriously envious of our rufty tufty black Peli cases safe in the knowledge that our kit will arrive in one piece you could be standing there feeling rather smug too! Peli have done the unthinkable and made a 'pink' case with wheels! It's the infamous 1510 'airline friendly' one. £140.00 the website says 'Limited Edition when they are gone they are gone'!
Stephen Mayes on Photography's Futures - We all need to fail to achieve?
This has just come to my attention and badly reported so two months later I'm posting it. Fantastic interview…...
Here is a man that crosses representation of Damien Hirst through being a founding director at Getty Images and Director of Archive at Art & Commerce. He has represented the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel and David LaChapelle. Credibility gets no larger - these are Stephens words as of 16th Jan 2014 recorded by Stephanie Cabrera
"Social media is impacting our work in so many ways it’s hard to know how to pinpoint any single aspect of the changes that we’re experiencing. But fundamentally, everything has changed with the emergence of a visually sophisticated population that uses imagery as easily as conversation to exchange ideas and to express themselves. Facebook users casually share pictures to tell us how they feel, where they are, what they’re experiencing… This is new and it’s exciting. Suddenly everyone is fluent in the language of photography and we can really push the limits because anything we do as professionals is being read in new ways by a sophisticated audience that understands as much as we do about the image. I think that the imperative to experiment is personal to each of us and we all deal with change in different ways. But there are very few photographers who are so securely established that they can afford not to experiment in order to adapt to the new rules, if any. I would go further to say that failure must become an essential part of all our work; if you’re not failing it means you’re working in a comfort zone and as the visual world changes at breakneck speed, to live in a comfort zone is itself a failure! However, don’t bet the ranch on any single experiment: try many things and be prepared to fail often but in little ways. The impact of stock is hugely undervalued, even by those of us who work in the industry. Stock imagery is designed to reflect social values so that it can be a vehicle for commercial communication. But actually the production of stock imagery is a circular process that both reflects culture and also shapes it. It’s inevitable that the values we express become reinforced through the massive distribution of our work; our imagery seeps into every pore of society and our messages slowly push the boundaries of how society views itself. This can be as small as showing a new hairstyle, or as significant as representing racial minorities in authority positions or same-sex couples bringing up kids. What we say is absorbed effortlessly into people’s consciousness and the world moves a little bit every time. No single stock image will change our understanding of the world (although I recently heard an awed reference to Getty’s Gandee Vasan who was the first person to create the image of a goldfish jumping from a small bowl to a larger, which is now an everyday cultural reference) but collectively we’re rolling the ball uphill. Have you heard of Snapchat? Today in December 2013, it’s the world’s largest platform for photography with 400,000 image uploads every day; and the strange thing about Snapchat is that every upload exists only for 10 seconds after the recipient opens it and then the image vanishes. What does that mean for the future of photography?… Every day I’m amazed by what’s happening".
Bloody riveting stuff - thank you!
How Cheap Is Too Cheap?
It never ceases to amaze me how some clients believe 'if it's cheaper it's better'. Whether or not budget savings make the Commissioner's or Picture Editor's bonus larger I have no idea but I have just seen a classic example of why cheaper is not always better. iVillage is a huge online publication that on the whole I love. According to Quantcast traffic to iVillage is 5.5m visitors per month. Yes 5.5 MILLION! Yet it seems to me, despite whatever ad revenue they are generating, that their photography just gets cheaper and cheaper. Is that good or bad management by the publishers? I guess on the one hand it's good because investors see a greater profit and therefore higher return. If circulation (hits) continue to rise their financial cheaper choices regarding 'quality of publication for the target audience' are validated. I'm not sure I am the target audience of iVillage but I'm about to pull the plug on my subscription because to me it's production quality is just getting worse and worse. Not just in pictures but content to. I'm presuming that budget cuts in photography are being carried across to editorial?.
What's brought me to this point? Well there is always a tipping point for everyone. For me it was today's iVillage 'newsletter' into my inbox. Nothing that is particularly life or death just an image to illustrate a story….
iVillage Newsletter :
Even Another Polar Vortex Is No Match For These Skin Soothing Tips
Copyright PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
This is the image they use to illustrate the story - '……skin soothing tips…..'
What does this image do for skin soothing tips. I suggest nothing. And I'm sure the iVillage Art Dept think likewise but I'm sure the iVillage Art Dept are asked to suck on a contract with Getty (drawn up by the bean counters) to 'buy everything' as cheap as possible?
I shoot, I would like to think beautiful images. As image makers whether stills or motion we all believe we shoot beautiful images. It's our self belief that enables us to persuade others to employ us to shoot pictures that promote their products in a way that the publics enjoyment and belief in our images increases sales.
And here is my problem. iVillage no longer does anything that visually stimulates me or makes me want to buy into reading an article because their imaging (that and headlines is what draws you in) is just awful. I shot a picture similar to the one above a long time ago.
Copyright : urbanlip.com
Image No: AB_101182
It's actually available for purchase with a specialist health and beauty agency called urbanlip.com which I should declare now my wife and I are directors of.
Bare in mind this was one of their lead stories today. Instead of the nasty cheap image they did use that says nothing about 'Skin Soothing Tips' or feminine sensuality, indulgence or pampering they could have used my significantly better image (well I would say that wouldn't I?), or one of many others out there if only they gave their Picture Editors time to look, to illustrate the story to their 5.5million viewers. How much would my pic have been? £49.00. That's cheap. "Yes but what is cheap?" I hear you say. Cheap is the best price you can get without compromising the story. In my opinion they took a good story and compromised it. It lost all of it's 'shopfront appeal' and got buried somewhere between a review of Jeremy Kyle and the rising cost of pastry cutters. I'm not suggesting they were wrong (well I am!) but at what point does cheap become too cheap and quality should start to count.
I guess when people start to unsubscribe and the 'bean counters' ask why?. Well before you fire the editor look at your content. Whether print or e-commerce 'content is king' - trust me.
For me iVillage has gone 'artistically cheap'. It gets no lower. It gets no cheaper.
The Selfie Takes Over From The Pro's
Here is a great article from A Photo Editor courtesy of
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2014/03/04/the-selfie-heard-all-around-the-world/
The Selfie heard all around the world
Paul Melcher
If any one needed a confirmation of where photography is heading, last night was a prime example. Relegated to taking full length fashion shots behind barricades, or shooting the stage from a balcony, pro photographers were by far outclassed by attendees taking and publishing their own images using their cell phones. They could only watch as publications worldwide went to twitter to find and publish the best images. If it wasn’t for the glamour aspect of having rows of Tuxedo dressed photographers continuously flashing the red carpet as celebrities bathe in the sweet flow of mass admiration, it is probable that the Academy would dismissed them all and let the participants photograph the event. After all, they make no money from the pictures taken and it does cost a lot to organize their presence.
This is probably the first year that a cell phone pic taken by a participant of the Oscars has more views than any of the professional images taken. However, it’s success certainly guarantees that we will certainly see more of it in the coming years, not just the Oscars but probably every other award ceremony. And after all, why not? No one has better access than the celebrities themselves and they certainly know everyone around them. But this is also a serious blow to any publication that rely on pro images to get their coverage. Cell phone photography escapes their control and end up being seen on social media long before they end on their website, making them obsolete and redundant. They are no longer the first and only place to see those images not seen on TV.
Last night most tweeted selfie was far more than a Guinness Book record. It was a huge cannon-shot in front of the bow of the already seriously crippled pro photographer/media relationship to its audience.
Paul Melcher
Wide Open Camera GoPro Cage
This is very cool. Fits all the GoPro models and is circa $80! Superb.
http://wideopencamera.com/products/
Pharrell Williams - GIRL
Sitting here retouching listening to a freebie 'listen only or pre order' from iTunes of Pharrell's new album - GIRL. It's fab! It's totally soul infused with a little bit of Prince, Earth Wind & Fire and the Jackson 5 thrown in for good measure. I think it's going straight to Number 1 and is going to be there for some time. Out on 3rd March. Pre order on iTunes.
With what will be serious 'plays' over the coming weeks in the studio I might well be hating it very soon!
DaVinci Resolve 10.1.2 Released
Every time I hear BM rumours about updates I'm hoping and praying that it's a firmware update that solves all the camera problems! But hey any improvements on any product are always welcome. Guess I need to pray harder!
Peter Chamberlain, DaVinci Resolve Product Manager, announced this morning,
Hello all, we are pleased to announce the release of DaVinci Resolve 10.1.2 for Mac, Windows and Linux OS, and DaVinci Resolve Lite 10.1.2 for Mac and Windows. All are available from the BMD support web site and are no charge upgrades. The update includes: • The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Film to Rec709 LUT • Support for simultaneous video I/O for Resolve Live, when using Desktop Video 10 with a single DeckLink or Ultrastudio • Support for SLog3, SGamut3 and SGamut3Cine for Sony Raw • Support for Sony SLog3 to Rec709 1D LUT • Support for Sony SLog3-SGamut3Cine to Rec709 3D LUTs and of course general performance and stability improvements. Peter
You can download the Mac update here.
The 10 Commandments For Directing & Writing Comedy From Director David Dobkin
Courtesy of Directors Guild of America
Really good advice!
The Church of Comedy
The director of Wedding Crashers and The Change-Up learned The Ten Commandments of Directing Comedy through trial and error—not divine inspiration.
By David Dobkin
I'm not funny.
Never have been and, as far as I can tell, I never will be.
For a guy who’s made a living for the past 20 years in comedy, that’s an odd thing to admit. I was a dead serious little boy. I was never the class clown. I was not born with the gift of comedy like Judd or Todd or many of my peers whom I revere. That said, I have always had a propensity for irreverence, to speak what’s on my mind without a clear sense of what’s appropriate.
In truth it’s more like Tourette’s than comedy.
Like a million other kids, I found God when I saw Star Wars at 8 years old and decided I was going to disappear from my melancholy suburban life and live as a devout cleric in the great monastic discipline of making movies. When I came to Hollywood I thought I was going to make films like Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon.
LAST LAUGH: Dobkin isn’t a funny guy himself, but knows what makes an audience laugh.
Jump forward many years, and eventually the first door that opened for me was, very much by coincidence, in comedy … and when God opens a door for you in this monastery, you don’t renunciate. You run through with a smile on your face. I had no training in comedy. And as far as I knew, I had no sense of it. So I learned comedy on the job. These commandments were not handed to me on a mountaintop. There was no burning bush, no goat to sacrifice. I received them the hard way—through a boatload of failure, and more failure, and then more … and eventually, through success. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DIRECTING COMEDY 1. “KINDA FUNNY” MEANS IT’S NOT WORKING Laughter is binary: It either happens or it doesn’t. As each joke arrives in the course of a film, the cavernous space of the theater is either filled with joy and laughter, or with the quiet of cringing embarrassment. Every time you step to the plate to make a joke you’re going to experience one or the other. “Kinda funny,” or in other words, chuckles and smiles, are basically comedy blue balls: a failure to launch. People pay to laugh, and laugh big. 2. IT ONLY LOOKS EASY WHEN IT WORKS Comedy, when it works, is light on its feet and has the illusion of complete spontaneity: as if there is no film, no camera. You are standing there experiencing it all in real-time. This illusion, I believe, is why so many people think comedy is easy. (“That actor is so funny!!!”) People tend to disregard comedy as “art,” and somehow downgrade it into a sub-genre of filmmaking referred to as “entertainment.” 3. IF IT’S NOT FUNNY, YOU HAVEN’T GONE FAR ENOUGH When you make a joke, and it doesn’t land, what happened? In the kind of comedy I practice, which is irreverent comedy, if a joke isn’t getting the laugh, you have not stretched the joke far enough. You need to surprise people with just how far you’ll go. It’s funny when the guys from The Hangover wake up completely wrecked from their first night of partying. It’s very funny when a chicken walks by and we see the hotel room totaled. But it’s fall out of your seat hilarious when we discover a tiger in the bathroom. 4. IF IT’S NOT FUNNY, YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR Now, there’s also the place where you’ve gone too far and you lose your audience. You mostly do not see these moments, because they are on the editing room floor. Admittedly, they are some of my favorites. In Kingpin, Woody Harrelson performs a sexual favor on his super gross landlady because he can’t pay the rent. I couldn’t stop laughing. The other half of the audience were covering their eyes, and was very much not laughing. For some directors (and studios), this is too far. For me, if you do this right, the half that are covering their eyes are hopefully still having fun with it, because it’s fun when the roller coaster goes a bit too fast (as long as you’re not tossing your cookies). 5. GREAT COMEDY HAS GREAT DRAMA AT ITS CORE The more invested the audience is in your characters and the drama of what they are going through, the more they will laugh at the comedy. This is obvious in films like As Good as It Gets and Tootsie, where we cry as well as laugh. But even in more contemporary work, this commandment applies. In Knocked Up, we all really want to know how the hell this schlubby guy and hot girl, who don’t even know each other, are going to have a baby together. And because we’re invested, when the guy’s father gives him advice that is so shockingly honest and hurtful that it only makes things worse, it is crazy funny. Because life is like that for us, too. 6. COMEDY IS HARDER THAN DRAMA (OR SO SAY US WHO DO IT) This is simple. When you are making a movie, oftentimes there may be tension, and even fighting, on set. This is due to many factors: the pressure of time and money, creative disagreements, a clash of personalities … whatever. It’s called “making movies.” When one is making a drama, you can’t tell in the dailies, or final film, that everyone wanted to kill each other. The performances are intense and alive and crackling with emotion. With comedy, if the set is not free and fun and flowing, if the talent feels tight and shut down, what you get are constricted performances. And constricted performances are not funny. That illusion of “easy” we spoke about earlier does not happen. So, yes, it’s harder. 7. YOU ARE ONLY AS FUNNY AS YOUR CAST No, people who do not have funny in them are not funny when they read funny lines. Sorry. Just doesn’t work that way. Seriously, this is the biggest rule of all. You live and die with your casting decisions. Your actors are the heart and soul of the whole thing. Without brilliant actors, you will not have a brilliant film. Great talent makes the magic come alive. 8. YOU ARE ONLY AS FUNNY AS YOUR SCRIPT No, the actors don’t just walk onto the stage and make up jokes. Get real. You need a good story with well-drawn characters and solid comedy throughout, just as a start. Without a good script that works at least most of the way, you can’t make movies that work, either. 9. IF YOU’RE LAUGHING ON SET, BE WORRIED I don’t know why this is true, but I can attest to the fact that I have laughed my ass off on set during certain scenes, and later found they were not nearly as funny in the edit as they were on set. So, don’t take laughter on the set as a sign of anything. In fact, it can be distracting from what you may need to really make the scene work. 10. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE UNTIL YOU ARE DONE EDITING When you get to the edit and watch your assembly, you will want to cry. Almost nothing works. That’s because it’s not a movie yet. It’s an assembly. And the process you go through between that moment and a finished film is where you find out what you really have: the magic you’ve captured, and the magic you’ve missed. 11. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE UNTIL YOU PUT IT IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE You didn’t make the movie for yourself, and you will not know what you have until you show it to an unbiased audience. Unbiased means people who don’t know you at all. Too many times people show their friends and think they know what they have, only to get it in front of a real audience and have it destroyed. They laugh, or they don’t. They like it, or they don’t. This is how you find that out. And it’s brutal. I know, I know, there are more than 10, but those are the commandments, more or less. And all I had to sacrifice to learn them was my self-esteem, my sanity, my body, my relationships, my family, my childhood, and my manhood. You’re getting them for free.
But when the lights go out in the theater, and those first jokes start dropping those opening lines of this comedy sermon, and the seats begin to rock hard with laughter that’s louder than bombs … I smile to myself, knowing all the fun that’s heading our way over the next 90 minutes. At that moment, it all seems a small price to pay.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
BVE Feedback - Kit I Liked
Whether new or not (kit I have not physically seen before) here is kit I saw that was really good.
Image stabilisers whether electronic or manual was one of the items I was keen to look at…..
Movi - Just amazing, what can I say. Not the cheapest by a long way but I guess you get what you pay for. I was really hoping to see the new lighter weight M5 but it's not ready quite yet. I wonder if they are saving it for NAB? I did learn that it will retail for around £3,400.
Vincent Laforet has posted a couple of films showing just how jaw droppingly good this piece of kit is. Watch them here and here.
A new kid on the block from Cambridge UAV were showing a 'not quite finished' electronic stabiliser that I was very impressed with. It has more powerful motors than the Movi which should ensure that it handles more weight than the M5. At £2800.00 it looks mighty impressive - watch this space.
An interesting mechanical one, Orbit, at approx £900.00 was interesting. The one I tried didn't seem completely balanced to me and then the battery died in the camera……… I'm not convinced about mechanical. But I am sure we are going to see an absolute proliferation of these and I came away thinking that rental is the way to go at least until the market starts to show all its cards over the next 12-18 months. I wonder how all this development will affect Steadicam? I'm sure they won't be taking this lying down. As the 'stabiliser experts' they could enter the frame and just blow everyone away?
Some interesting sliders/dollies. I particularly liked the offer from Sk8plate. Well made very smooth, very versatile, DSLR up to Arri Alexa, and all in a nice kit bag that you can through on your shoulder and fly with. It comes with rails but will fit any diameter which you could purchase cheaply when you arrive at your destination. Show offer £1475.00.
I hadn't seen in the flesh Polecam until yesterday. I have a Kessler K-Pod and Pocket Jib system which I love but has limited reach. I think Polecam could be a fantastic solution that all packs down into a Pelicase and is moveable from shot to shot (from breakdown to ready to go again) in I reckon 10mins. Effortless to set up, with no tools required. I'm certainly going to rent one and try it out for a day.
If you are in the market for a recorder the new Atomos Ninja Blade just blew me away. Having bought a Nauticam housing for my BMPCC I was about to purchase a Ninja 2 as Nauticam produce a waterproof housing so you can not only record externally but also have a much better monitor. Now I'm going to hassle Nauticam to make one for this new model. Bigger screen, higher resolution and given the problems of exposure with the BMPCC a waveform function to. Just superb. I cannot speak highly enough of this little piece of magic.
A quick mention on Alexa. I love the Alexa image. It might be only(!) 2K fighting against the tide of 4K but there are certainly enough top DOP's who would rather shoot it over 4K. Away from film it still remains the No1 camera of choice by Hollywood. I'm really interested to dry Dragon giving what a lot people are saying about the improvement to skin tone over Epic. But at the moment For me the skin tone beats everything out there. I can't wait for the 4K Alexa.
Lastly the boys and girls from Soho Editors ran a fantastic series of intro tutorials. I'm going to be signing up for the Resolve courses!
A wish list for next year - I would just love more of the American manufacturers to attend with their product line ups. Kessler, Zacuto, RED, Redrock - are you listening!
BVE Feedback - 4K Everywhere! The Good, The Bad and the Unexpected.
What a great show. What's the over riding vibe - 4K! 4K was everywhere you turned. Either 4K products, 4K compliant workflows or 'our software has now been optimised for 4K'. Interestingly I started off in the Sony sponsored 4K theatre. First James Bennett MD of Televisual showed us a short film of a twilight shoot over London that he shot with the F65 and 55. Beautifully rich colours and incredible detail. I saw some motion blur and was wondering whether it would have benefitted from a higher frame rate - I think it would. Having shot a fair bit with RED Epic I think 4K really benefits from higher frame rates which I guess reflects Ridley Scott's, Peter Jackson's and Baz Luhrmann's views as to why they have been shooting higher frame rates. Whether you like that particular style or not it really does assist in reproducing the highest quality detail you can from 4K. As more people shoot 4K that way I guess it will become the norm and that 24FPS/180 shutter will possibly seem so 'last year'?
My thoughts were actually born out by the extremely talented Geoff Boyle cinematographer who followed on from James. Geoff has been a pioneer working with digital cinema since the late 90's and has won awards for his workshops around the world. He showed a 'real world' test of various 4K cameras including a very interesting 'stress test'. I'm always very nervous of camera tests as results can always be swayed in one direction or argued strongly that the methodology was wrong in the first place. This seemed to me a pretty straight forward way of working out which image you prefer. Results can be seen here). And I think that is key. If you don't like the image don't shoot with that camera - simple!
One statement he made was somewhat of a shock. He said that it didn't matter whether you were upscaling or downscaling a 4K image to get to the size the 4K project required but once scaled no camera image was either more or less sharp than another. Maybe I'll stick with Epic over the more expensive Dragon?
He also mentioned how much better Neat Noise was at dealing with noise on 4K over HD. With so much more detail to sample there was a much less reduction in sharpness/quality so therefore if you preferred the image of a particular 4K camera that was noisier than another don't dismiss it. Test it!
Interestingly both Geoff and James both agreed that it was pointless sitting at the back of a cinema to watch 4K. The only people in the audience who really benefit from 4K projection is the first few rows. Geoff added '4K will be at it's best on big TV's in peoples homes'. I agree.
BVE 2014
Off to BVE Expo! I wonder if there are any nice goodies there to bring home!
bmcc.tv was created to be a repository of all videos related with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. We are very excited about the release of this camera, and will attempt to gather the best footage sample
Now the proud owner of two BMPCC's this website could be interesting?
Development of Adobe Creative Suite 7, and all plans of future creative suites have been discontinued. The only option going forward will be the...
I am sick to death of CC. With a new MacPro coming I will have to sign up until some wonderful company brings out a rival to Photoshop. I don't need any of their other programmes……please sign this petition!