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Fairly regularly I see posts on here (and have on similar sites too) asking whether there's a forum that focuses more on the creative side of filmmaking rather than tech/gear. Because I've wondered about something similar myself for a while now I've decided to have a crack at setting one up. Nothing ambitious - just a bare-bones forum that is weighted toward the creative in a very open-ended way. Obviously for a forum to work it needs a reasonable number of enthusiastic members to begin with, so of course it's possible this won't even get off the ground. I think it's worth giving it a good try though as I think there is a gap online in this area, and it could be very useful to a lot of people. Let me know your thoughts please. I want to start a few threads on the forum before I direct people toward it. Does anyone have any suggestions for topics you might find useful/interesting? Threads similar to this one perhaps, or threads focused more on creative issues within your own work. Like I say, the idea is that the forum's agenda is very open ended. Thanks. :) P.S. If anyone is very keen on the idea and would like to talk about being involved with setting up the forum, let me know (perhaps send me a personal message). The more it's a collaborative thing the better IMO. EDIT: I ran this past Andrew and he's fine with this being discussed here. It seemed polite to ask ...

Thanks Maxotics and Julian. These insider tips are always the best. Same with music. Mainstream is often too predictable. A propos POV. Don't miss Enter The Void. It's a film with very many flaws and I wouldn't call it influential (at least not for me, who a least twice a year opens his 'doors of perception' as a recreative vacation). But that's imo what most interesting films have in common: They have something that makes them stand out for the individual, in this sense: Art is not so much about perfection than about bold exclusivity. The meanest and lowest mainstream movies can be more perfect (technically or in the closeness of narration and narrational form) than the masterpieces. Those tend to have some very strong aspects, but also flaws. Leonardo didn't know about materials, his Mona Lisa had the 500.000 crackles the moment the paint had dried (which took months though). Same with his Last Supper: The wall sucked the colors off, it weren't the farts of admirers over 500 years (source: Donald Sassoon, Mona Lisa). The numerous fakers know better than the master. Beethoven chose improper instruments for his symphonies (Bernstein said, none of his students would have gotten away with such an orchestration). Shakespeare had so many logic flaws in his (predominantly adapted) plays that a modern script doctor would despair.

it does make me chuckle when big companies try and capitalise on a current fad without really understanding why the fad actually became so. They've done what BMW did with the MINI. Take the essence of something great then remove all of the qualities that made the original great in the first place. Just how purists laugh at 'New MINI' owners driving around in their oversized Fisher Price car, The guys with the humble Sankors, Kowas etc and Helios 44's will laugh at the guys running around with these nasties on the front of their L lenses trying to get the look and feel of a lomo for a movie about a financial services corporation or tacky wedding.

That's true- JPEG supports 444, 422, 420, lossless, etc. However when comparing images the compression level needs to be the same (most importantly, the DCT quantization). The rescaled web images are likely 420 while the downloads could still possibly be originals. The point about 420 is that web-facing content is typically 420 (with rare exceptions due to the desire to conserve bandwidth and save costs). If at 100% A/B cycling we can't see any difference, then there's nothing gained since the results aren't visible (except when blown up or via difference analysis, etc.). Scaling an image down (with e.g. bicubic) then scaling it back up acts like a low-pass filter (smoothes out macroblock edges and reduces noise). I downloaded the 4K 420 image and scaled in down then up and A/B-compared in Photoshop- couldn't see a difference other than the reduction of macroblock edges (low pass filtering) etc. Adding a sharpen filtering got both images looking very similar. A difference compare was black (not visible), however with gamma cranked up the differences from the effective low-pass filtering are clear.

Whoa that is fantastic, if they are getting that much out of a D5100 so they could get even higher frame rate from the latest Nikon expeed camera. Imagine a 120 fps Nikon D3300 $ 600 Camera LOL. Another thing is that they are getting better knowledge of the code by the day and things like RAW is a possibility (would have prefered 10 bit high bitrate codec). 14 stop DR for $ 800/$1100 camera, that would be awesome. I don't know if the Nikon D5200/D7100 sd card interface would have the speed for at least 1080p raw.

Finally, a GH4 vid that doesn't look like 480 mush. Absolutely beautiful.

Fuzzy - how did you manage to sell the zoom lens? Isnt it only usable on the gm1? The stabilisation on it is absolutely incredible!

They offer their lens with a few different coatings. The most liberal coating, offering the most flare is still pretty subdued I think. This fellow might have got one with the really suppressed coating.

Extra Extra, 3 years old d5100 gets 1920x1080p 60fps mode thanks to nikonhacker. http://nikonhacker.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1814

That's correct. It was produced by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension) and the best film he's been involved with since coming to America, IMO. Yeah, Alan Ormsby (My Bodyguard, The Substitute, Popcorn) wrote the screenplay. His son Ethan died of cancer a few years ago, tragically. He and I hit it off pretty quick when he got his first job at DD and was assigned to my team on Strange Days. We both loved a lot of the same '70s and '80s horror and working late at night he'd entertain us with stories of his childhood as a Hollywood kid, his dad putting him in Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and the like. He hadn't had the same life as a Corey Feldman or anything but his experience growing up and the jobs he had were definitely a different world from most kids, stuff like being Alan Funt's personal assistant for a while, working for Charles Band at Full Moon, etc. Every year we'd gather at Ethan's come Oscar season because his dad would just give him the stack of screeners the Academy would send every year. I miss the guy.

These are movies I find myself watching over again The Red Shoes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040725/ The Grandmaster http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462900/ L'uomo delle stelle/The Star Maker http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114808/ Malèna http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213847/ La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano/The Legend of 1900 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120731/ La migliore offerta/The Best Offer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1924396/ Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amelie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/ La cité des enfants perdus/The City of Lost Children http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112682/ Micmacs à tire-larigot/Micmacs http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149361/ Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0344510/ Some are not yet available on Blu Ray, but when they are you bet I shall be watching over again :P

Remember back in the 1970's when guests on the American TV program "The Tonight Show" would sit at the panel with Johnny Carson while wearing those goofy stripped suits and ties and then end up looking like some kind of visual hypnotizing device? No? Just me? Hey!O!