mtheory

Some very interesting ideas about discovery fatigue and content shock. I find that internet in 90s seemed to be of better quality...what I mean by that is that the actual technical barrier to content publishing kind of ensured that only the most dedicated, motivated, competent people got through and that resulted in content that was very good and engaging...now we are in the era of casual publishing...where the barrier of entry is so low that people are literally live-streaming their breakfasts and lunches...that is a problem...I don't know how it can be solved really...only corporations can really cut through the noise now, it seems.

I find that Vimeo is a great concept but often lacks in execution. Paid content for example should not force viewers to get a vimeo account but pay/stream immediately the way Gumroad does it. The search still doesn't work, the point of channels vs groups is still confusing. Best thing about it is community...it has become a good version of what flickr used to be...a place where you can learn how to shoot and get valuable comments. As for Vimeo becoming Netflix....unfortunately Vimeo doesnt have the massive viewer traffic to do that.

I wouldn't say they have pushed any envelopes, they just made the action bigger and more intense, essentially using Michael Bay approach to action. If I have to pick the movies that have indeed been pushing the envelope I'd point to The Raid series, that was pretty much the only breath of fresh air in action cinema in the past decade.

​No worries, mercer, I take my words back too. Try not to worry what other filmmakers think, by the way, all that matters in the end is you, your film and the audience. If you can shoot a feature and finish it yourself, then distributors at film festivals will be even more willing to talk to you.

You make short films until you have the resources to make larger films. You publicize and promote them at film festivals, always carrying a screenplay with you in case you meet a producer looking for a new talented director. Either that or you go purely through Internet, do crowdfunding and hope you get millions of youtube views to be noticed. There is only one way to succeed. Use the the resources you have to impress maximum number of people with best work you can do. There was a time when even if you made your own film, you could only screen it to people physically, in a room, etc....now...you upload it once and if its good, it can reach millions. Filmmakers have NEVER had this option before. Ever.

​I meant this in a purely biological "they-follow-the-rules-of-physics" real people kind of way. Don't make me pull my arthouse creds to prove my realness, now.

Part II shows you the real meat of how grading is completely different from using LUTs.

Axel, don't confuse extra responsibility with extra authority, a moderator is not a cop / authority / father-figure but a dude like you who does a little extra community work by cleaning up spam and trolling when other users request so. If you see me as condescending its because you've put me on a pedestal, I'm actually speaking right beside you, not down to you. Mercer responded to an informative explanation with accusation of elitism...the great irony is that I don't even like color grading workflows myself, think they are outdated and clunky in its current form and myself detest the elitism of the expensive Flame / Inferno / Quantel Pablo hardware crowd. ( DaVinci and SpeedGrade were actually considered to be pioneers in making color grading easier from a previous generation of elitism that cost literally in $ millions, if only people appreciated it ) I eagerly wish color grading workflow becomes easier, cheaper and more accessible, - right now it is still a luxury that only a few filmmakers can afford.

Firstly, I think its your writing that's jumbled and unclear. Start with a central point first, then add sentences as supporting arguments. Secondly, my comment was not elitist. It's just that you are insecure about your skills and felt attacked personally when I explained the difference between putting a LUT and color grading. Using a LUT is like choosing a film stock...DOPs have been doing it for decades, it gives a specific look to the whole film....color grading is a further shot-by-shot adjustment of color and tone..its about deciding the look of each shot individually, guiding the eye within each shot, and colorists have been doing it for decades too. These two processes are complementary to each other and are optional to every filmmaker. You do not NEED to color grade. You do not NEED to have a LUT either. You don't even NEED lights in your film if you can shoot in natural light, how you distribute your time and budget across a production is always your choice and really what filmmaking is all about. In your case I'd also allocate some budget for emotional therapy before you step on the set though...

Exactly, it's this weird entitlement that I can't figure out. It's like someone is holding a gun to his head to produce Hollywood visuals and he complains how hard it is...as if respect and glory are some human rights being denied to him and should be given automatically instead of being earned with years of hard work. Bizarre. Its simple...if you don't have skills...if you don't want to have the skills...and if you don't want to get someone on your team who has the skills...then don't worry about expectations, I doubt anyone will expect much from you.

You complained about being "expected to have the same level of quality" as big budget productions. By whom? Who is pressuring you?

Why not? Not every surgeon is a millionaire, so a professional colorist might work with expensive hardware at his full-time job at a post company, and cheaper/no-hardware at home for freelance gigs, but he/she will still use SpeedGrade or DaVinci as software because thats where the core skill is. I think you are overestimating Adobe Dynamic Link....you may edit a short film or a music video with ease on it, but try anything really complex and it becomes unworkable. This is why large projects still use XML and EDL formats, because they work.

​The original Fast and Furious was basically a cop show about a guy infiltrating an illegal racing gang and bonding with them in the process, essentially a bad "Pointbreak" with cars, but at least it was a real movie about real people.

No, no, I don't mean fantastic plotlines like King Kong or time travel, I love em...my point is how HUMANS are increasingly handled in movies now...there is a tendency now to make every protagonist a superhero with superhero powers...even looking back at traditional larger-than-life characters like James Bond and Indiana Jones and even Rambo, they were exaggerated but ultimately they had human limits... From a storytelling point of view...it's important for the element of danger to remain in the film for you to really be invested in the action...superhero films don't follow those rules...that is FINE, we expect Superman to fly....but why is Vin Diesel now able to defy the laws of gravity too with that final helicopter sequence? I'm just noticing that the superhero genre is creeping into the mainstream action genre, maybe it's due to the popularity of Avengers, but its kind of spoiling the experience for me personally.

If you do not consider yourself a pro, noone is expecting anything from you. A pro can work in an indie or corporate environment, and will get the job done no matter what tools he/she works with. And if you can't scale up your skills then get someone to help you. Noone owes you anything, man, seriously.

Grading is far more complex than color adjustment or color matching that people do with LUTs, it is primarily working with tracking masks and creating hierarchies within the shot that guide the eye. Premiere and even AE don't have the tools to do such real-time adjustments and tracking. LUTs are basically like instagram filters, they're just there to give the overall image a punch. They are like a sledgehammer while grading is like surgery.

I disagree, - even blockbusters were alot more grounded before, look at the original Jurassic Park for example, - aside from the cloning the dinosaurs the film was strongly grounded in reality..not a single human in that film ever challenged a dinosaur and lived...whereas in the new Jurassic World reboot I fully expect the main character to uppercut the T-Rex at some point...I mean..look at the poster... ...he already tamed the damn Velociraptors. Its just bizarre.

1. Get a warehouse. 2. Get a logo. 3. Spend the rest on a sales team that will bring clients through the door.

When this franchise started it was about kids having fun with cars and doing illegal races...now its a damn ensemble superhero film ala Avengers...did anybody notice that? I can totally see them doing a crossover "Fast & Furious Transformers" in a few years where Vin Diesel is riding a car that transforms into a robot dinosaur, then teams up with Marky Mark to save the planet... Keeping it real is no longer cool in Hollywood...

Snyder thinks "darker, grimmer, broodier" refers to the color palette, not the emotional tone of the film. Even if you made Man of Steel black and white, Superman was still a damn cartoon character bouncing around the screen like crazy, it undermined whatever drama was in the film.

I'd prefer if A7S II was an evolutionary upgrade...i.e really fix the blue light issue, improve rolling shutter, increase battery life. When these companies rush to market without proper QA time consumers end up losing out. The best camera is the one you forget about during the shoot, no matter what the specs are.

​KineMINI4K + KineEnhancer

​Did it occur to you that they might not care about weddings? This camera is already being used for advertising commercials in China, - they are gunning for RED's market more than anything.

Can you change life exposure by several stops with Cineform Raw? Does it keep the information?

I noticed that most of the China scaremongering is coming from RED fan boys. They should name their next camera "RED Neck".