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'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

[iainphilpott-blog]

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!

[iainphilpott-blog]

Wide Open Camera GoPro Cage

This is very cool. Fits all the GoPro models and is circa $80! Superb.

http://wideopencamera.com/products/

[iainphilpott-blog]

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.

[iainphilpott-blog]

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.

[iainphilpott-blog]

Following on from the previous post this little film I shot a few weeks ago as a little test has resulted in being booked to shoot two films. Sometimes the simplest of ideas work best. Really flattened off and desaturated gives it a certain raw quality.