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No one tell him about "Birth of a Nation"

I don't consider it one, it IS one. So is the Varicam, Sony FX9/Venice, EVA-1. Despite what people claim, the a7SIII and FX3 are NOT dual native ISO. They are dual gain. As is the RED Gemini. Basically, dual native ISO is that there are two actual circuits underpinning each photosite and it will switch between them. With dual gain, the process is happening in a second ADC, but each photosite still has only one circuit.

Unfortunately it's a feature of this world that when one wants other people's money to do something, one has to do it in a way they want. Submit your script, once you have a producer. It may well be the case that if there are no aspects to it that are exclusionary and they like it they'll be interested. Diversity doesn't have to be explicit as in - this character is a black lesbian - but the corollary is true - we can't have 'this character is white'. At the end of the day, however, it may be better to try to find purely commercial funding for movies that don't fully satisfy the wishes and/or mission statements of publicly-funded bodies (which generally exist to fund projects that can't attract commercial funding).

is upscaled 3.2 k to 4 k, on the FS5 at 1.3-1.4 x magnification was not bad, beyond was very digital.

I'm sorry, but that's simply not the case. There may not be any overt political content or intent, but any cultural product will reflect the politics and generally-accepted ethics of the society that produces it. If a society routinely ignores the experiences and existence, even, of - say - black women, then black women won't be cast because it will never occur to the creators that an individual role could just as easily be played by someone whose ethnicity is other than white. If, when I think of a doctor, I think of a late middle-aged white man - which would reflect my formative experiences of interactions with doctors - then unless I confront that intellectually I wouldn't even notice that I might be being exclusionary in my thinking. Up until this year, the USA had never had a female Vice President, much less one of colour. If I had been in the happy position of casting a movie about the Presidency back in 1989, would I have even considered that possibility? If I had done and I had cast the role accordingly, would I have been subject to the same criticisms of 'wokeness' that are aimed at people who advocate for a black James Bond, or female Ghostbusters? Likewise, the vast majority of mainstream films take it as read that the only model of political economy that can be considered normal is that of globalised hyper-capitalism. Any movie that takes that as its basis (which isn't even a decision that gets made) is inherently political, whether we like it or not, as it helps to perpetuate and normalise a system that many could argue, with some validity, is detrimental to both the planet's condition and the pursuit of human happiness. Likewise the countless movies set in suburban nuclear families whose members fulfil the genderised and economic roles expected of them without comment. I'm not saying that there should be comment, but one has to recognise that those movies, as a part of a popular culture, both maintain a status quo that many find stifling while at the same time excluding or invalidating the many alternative family models that we coexist with, or experience, out in the real world. Shutter Island looks at, among other things, concepts of insanity, the treatment of the mentally ill, notions of personal autonomy and responsibility, corruption and medical ethics. It looks at those things in a period setting, but through the prism of more modern attitudes in those areas. It may not be a film about politics, but politics, past and present, inform its milieu in every possible way.

So true! Often we think this artist / book / film / fashion / song was so amazing, because we experienced it at a formative moment for ourselves when we were teenagers or in our twenties. While as we age, all this "modern nonsense" seems repetitive and boring. I bet if this current moment in time traveled back to our formative years and we experienced it fresh and brand new, we might very well feel differently about it.

I get it, you're a professional and use purpose built tools. I watch your beard...I mean vlog occasionally. This would be for chasing my toddler around and maybe a few other fun things I'll hopefully think of along the way.

Not at all, otherwise I wouldn't have linked right to the article discussing it. They literally created quarantine centers where hundreds of thousands of people were made to quarantine, which contradicts your original point. Instead of acknowledging that fact you've decided to try and play semantics which doesn't even help your argument anyway. I don't even need to push a "Vermont narrative", the facts and statistics speak for themselves.

Not the FX6. It has an essentially 4K sensor so can't do a 4K S35 crop (you can do 1080p). Seriously head-turned by the camera though.

That was at its borders. But you intentionally remove the word "border" to make it support your Vermont narrative.

There ain't much of any kind of shot I capture that you can't find something very similar to it elsewhere. I think that's true for most people, even the pros. In fact, I was watching some of Roger Deakin's work from Sicario earlier this week and realized there's an almost identical shot from the David Lean's 1946 "Great Expectations" that's a direct copy. (soldiers defending into darkness, shot by Guy Green) Pretty cool homage/rip-off. But, even still, every combo of shots and audio is definitely a new context. So what we do with those shots is what matters. Often I get paid to create mundane context, but it's context the client wants. I'm okay with that. I'm not super creative. No genius stuff here. Ultimately I'm rock and roll, not progressive jazz.

Same sensors maybe, but different bodies and company tech applied, different lenses, tweaked settings, filters, profiles/film sims/different logs, 10 bajillion LUTS (get my set for ONLY $17 from my on-line shop sorry sold out!!), differently calibrated screens, phones, tablets, laptops... I couldn't tell you what end result came from what sensor only if I like the end result or not.

Get your facts straight. There's a difference between losing somebody else's funding (for a whole year! terrible!) and not being rich. She had six figures for her first feature. Where do you think it came from? Who paid for NYU film school? Do you know how much that costs a year? And what did she live on the rest of the time? Prep? Post-production? The festival circuit? And Taika Waititi, to answer another here, is not comparable. Completely different backgrounds/circumstances. Are you saying all minorities are the same? How racist! Success in the movie business will always require outsized luck, connections and (usually) money. But if anyone really believes that "Chloe" was offered a $200 million movie on her pitch alone and in the absence of any relevant experience, he/she is in the wrong business.

Ran across this article on dp calling out Quentin regarding digital cinema, he and Chole are certainly an interesting pair to look out for. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/framing-the-wide-open-spaces-of-nomadland

Maybe the dopamine hits of social media are to blame? Is there a point anymore for a young twenty-year-old Herzog circa 2021 to beg, scrape, and steal to make a film? When you can just make a tik-tok? Get a million followers. Move on? Maybe social media takes away precious free-time that you need to concentrate to come up with, as David Lynch says, "catching the big fish?" Or maybe the social anxiety of life pre-Covid - the mental-health insanity of it all - left little time to be happy and creative? Or maybe with the movie theatres all about to die and the rise of netflix and movies being "content" as Scorsese calls it - maybe that has sapped everything that forces someone to work so hard to make their own feature. For me I was born in 1981, and movies were the only thing I knew up even past college in 2003 when I could have started a filmmaking career. Netflix was just a mail-order DVD service. There was no social media yet, except maybe Friendster. Now nearly twenty years later - what do young people who want to say things do? Do they have that precious time to be creative? Especially now when in 2021 young people graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt vs the 1970s when young people had barely any debt and could have a decent life and buy a home with little money and had room to wander and explore?

Was discussing this with friends a few days ago. Nowadays, there are still good movies, even they are much harder to find between the tons of garbage that is being released. The majority is being produced by a formula where corporate product placements (yes, this used to be done in the past too, but not to this level) and it has to be ultra politically correct. Every movie has to feature the most possible diverse cast, preferably with the most stereotype behaviour. I understand people want inclusion, but you can't have Martin Luther King played by a white guy, just as you can't have Joan of Arc played by a black woman. This is just pure, woke retardation. Look at the action stars of nowadays, compared to the ones of in the 80's or the 90's. Yeah, Dwayne Johnson is a big dude, but he's al lovable. Remember when Charles Bronson was murdering people left and right and didn't smile once in a full movie? When Jack Nicholson was intimidating? When Lundgren looked as scary on screen as offscreen? Nowadays, the male action hero is gone, as it intimidates the new generation of weak men and feminists too much. Instead we have cute women that can fight off the most roided up males. And the woke crowd loves being so woke, they tend to turn a blind eye when it comes to China deleting a black actor off a poster or censoring anything that might seem to come close as anti-china. Also, back in the day, many movies weren't backed by corporate sponsors so much so they could basically say whatever they want without offending any possible shareholders.

Sure there is more crap than ever being produced these days, but I think there is relatively more good stuff also. It’s choice really and I choose to block out the dross whenever and wherever I can whether it be Netflix, Prime or ‘big screen’ releases. But then that is not always so easy when you have a teen who has different interests and tastes so I also get exposed to some right old shit 😶

As we all get older... the excitement of things - because we have experienced it already.... wears down and wears thin. So we seek for those original thoughts, pieces, discoveries, explorations to reignite that excitement. But, we also like to share that excitement, we show & share the same things that excites us with friends and family - we like to see that face and/or reaction on the uninitiated. Thereby reliving the moment that you first discovered it! I guess thats why those "reaction" videos do well on Youtube. I love those moments when I show stuff from my childhood back to my kids and/or wife. Anyway, anyone try MUBI? It delivers curated films - carefully selected arthouse films... something like 20 movies a month. I'm paraphrasing.... I've never used it before thats why I'm asking.

One aspect that is driving so many of us nuts these days in cinema (both for theater and streaming serials) is the excess of political correctness. It seems film studios have a Rule Book which requires every new series or movie to have a quota of actors which represent white people, black people, hispanic people, oriental-looking people, a woman, someone in the LGBT+ community, someone with some physical handicap, etc. This is simply ridiculous, the real world does not function like this and it drives me (and it seems, most of my friends and family) mad. And the worst is that if someone complains that James Bond should be played by a British White Male (as it was conceived by its author) instead of an American Black Female, we're called racists. This is getting ridiculously out of hand...

Welcome to the world of woke cancel culture. You can't take risks anymore. Can't offend people. Can't say un-PC things. It already destroyed comedy, especially stand-up acts. Used to be college campuses were where this thrived. Now it's shunned. Maybe we'll be able to laugh at ourselves again in another 50 years.

Really spot-on observations Andrew, great article. “The Golden Hour” interview/podcast was just as enjoyable BTW. Considering the topic of this piece, I firmly believe that ideology is polluting the movie industry. I’m puzzled by the amount of resources wasted on today’s content that always seems to be pushing some strange agenda, that in the end, doesn’t influence or change opinions. A good and entertaining story is often overlooked.... except for Ford/Ferrari (that was a kick-ass film 😆✌️) I noticed last week, my son and I watched Braveheart and his first comment at the end...“you know, they really don’t make movies like that anymore”.

I got this,...

Hello everyone,, I know that anamorphic lenses warp the image, which would mean that you can't play a take back to see how it looked. How would you shoot this way? Do you basically just shoot like you're shooting it on film (by making sure that the scene looks as good as possible, but getting the coverage needed, just in case)? Or, how can/should you shoot on anamorphic?