fuzzynormal

"The media completely lied about the election forecast" Yet I was out here voting and worried about Harris winning. Why's that? All the reported polling forecasts I was reading about had it at a statistical tie. All polls were within the margin of error with many polls showing Donald trending to a slight lead. I was incredulous about it being so close going into election day because it's Donald, and, you know, all he does, how he behaves, and all the ridiculous authoritarianism he represents, but never thought for a minute the election wasn't a toss up. After all, eggs cost more now. All MSM I saw was reporting these fact. Lo and behold, look what happened. So, friend, where's the lie in that? What media do you consume that implies otherwise? And, bare with me here, could that particular narrative potentially be what is not true? The stories we tell ourselves. Ever curious. I suppose a good story always needs a bad guy?

There it is. As it was as it shall be. It's just fast as hell these days because of tech. I like to lean into Robert Persig's philosophy of "metaphysics of quality" outlined in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If true, then there's always going to be a cultural inherent yearning for things that transcend the bullshit. Now, I lean into it because I WANT it to be possible... But, as you say, (and Persig does as well) there's also always going to be people that can't appreciate it. Who wins out in this modern world? Hell if I know, but I know what team I'm on.

Well, I'll tell you what, there ain't no way I'm laying the blame at the feet of labor in regards to the state of the biz here in SoCal. Any objective analysis of the industry over this past decade will reveal a much more complex narrative than the recent labor dispute. There's a bunch of chapters of that particular story that should focus on the board rooms foremost. Funny how that narrative has a hard time sticking in the popular media landscape, yeah?

Gotta start making horror films @120fps.

I'm not watching the "myths" video posted here, but I really want to know how those differences in DR that are illustrated in the thumbnail would matter at all when it comes to storytelling? Not much, imo. DR important? Does it have roughly 12 steps? Good 'nuff for me. As for movies, I grew up watching $1 films at the end of their distribution run at the local "grindhouse." Movies always looked like shit in my world. Didn't care. Looked good enough to tell a story. Heck, one place I would go to that was built in an abandoned cotton gin had a single screen, and ran Pulp Fiction for 11 months straight. Guess what that projected film looked like on week 48. Also, the glory years of American cinema as an art form is the 70's. Y'all watch any 70's movies? They mostly looked like crap compared to the IQ of today. Watch Deliverance, for example. That's a more compelling movie than most anything that's been released from Hollywood in this current era. Excuse me. Got some clouds to go yell at.

You made it through an entire decade here. Impressive!

Yeah, small unassuming kit and crew can be much more productive than the opposite when doing doc production. I can bear witness to this. Anyone else willing to testify? As for me, if someone told me a GH2 was all I had to make something, I'd shrug and do fine with it. I've done it before. Moreover, it would be fun and nimble. Okay by me. Yeah, I'm kind of done with fretting about perfect colors and resolution when it's much more important to get decent well shot coverage. I swear to god, I wish I had footage off a GH-ONE in the hands of a competent shooter for this current doc edit I'm doing --rather than the piles of sloppy handheld crap from an ARRI "cinematographer" that I'm trying to stitch together. Oooooooo, your pile of shit footage in my edit bins has more dynamic range? You got to play with a bunch of neat-o gear in the field for a year? Hooray, you used a jib. You had a portable video village? A PA? You broke out the steady cam? Your prime lens package cost more than my car? La dee daa. All your footage sucks and doesn't cut together. Great. (just spent the day in the editing room)

The BBC exists in a different production and financial context than independent documentaries. Even there, if the option was to capture something on a GH2, or not get it at all, they'd choose the GH2. Lucky for them, they don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, depends on what you really want to accomplish. I'm a doc guy so my first thought is: capture it or it didn't happen. Without story, well, what are you looking at? At least that's my tact. If rez or skin tones are less than optimum, I'll cope with it later, but at least I got it.

I just watched Inland Empire. Now what?

Best I can do is a silver jumpsuit.

I'm in agreement! The irony is that I basically did exactly what you say "wouldn't have worked" 25 years ago. Betacam SX camcorder ops with torn rotator cuffs unite! My career back then was filming tourism video around the world using big 'ol NTSC camcorders, large ANTON batteries, and a massive tri-pod.

One thing about these YT'ers and their marketing, they are actually offering looks at interesting imaging products, which does make things a bit of grey line in some legitimate film production. For instance, I just convinced a neophyte documentarian I'm working with to stop invading the space of his subjects with his "A Crew" Which is him, his cinematographer with a RED and all the rigging gak-gak that goes with it, a sound guy with boom pole and harnessed multi-mixer, an RF video village, and assistant producer. Trying to parachute in and get useful naturalistic footage of a person ON A HALF DAY SHOOT with that nonsense? C'mon. By the time they're in and out they maybe put in the can only about 30 minutes of footage, it's all stagey as hell, and if there's 10 seconds that's compelling it's a minor miracle...they got lucky with what the subject's personality delivered, not with the process of their craft. RED gear and crews are built for certain situations. Docs of a certain type? I say nope. No, just allow a savvy and talented 1 man band w/a mirrorless to go into the situation and keep it chill. Trade the marginally and slightly more advanced IQ for BETTER F'IN FOOTAGE. If an image looks better, but is inauthentic, what have you accomplished? Not much. The easiest path to some sort of normalcy in cinema veriti doc filming is to do one's best to mitigate the disruption of that normalcy. Boys and their toys. Always thinking that more is better.

What's better for you in general? Playing with gear or actually making motion picture stories with gear? Personally, I don't fault either. I'm more the former if I'm being honest. If you're tech head and like get excited about that, go for it. If you're a true creative and that's your priority, that's fine too. I have my biases about online freelance marketers, but a few of them seem to have eventually evolved into trying to be real filmmakers and left the influencer game behind. Curious about your perspective.

All hobbies are like this.

TL/DR: Old man+lawn+upset. Funny to me that this video is considered a "spill the beans" kind of deal. The information super highway has become what it was always destined to become. It's novelty gave it value. It's coasted on the early-year-legacy when it was a bit of a legitimate gathering space and access was a bit difficult. Even then, late 80's early 90's, I was interviewing corporate folks that were manipulating content. With the advent of Mozilla and Netscape they really began to realize the scale potential of things. Data tracking was a goldrush and they knew they'd be in front of the zeitgeist of citizen's respect of privacy. Yeah, privacy used to be a thing. People valued it. Anyway, as we all know, but seldom really grok the extent, we are the product. If you can segregate from Web 2.0 or find safe spaces, like this one, then you can remain slightly objective. But it's pretty hard. In this world right now the 99% of us are just things to be exploited. I mean, we were back in pre-80's as well, but there was a useful skepticism to marketing, it wasn't AS insidious, and it was a lot easier to avoid. I keep expecting a backlash and a shift in culture to forgo this intrusion into life, but then I look around and just end up typing ellipses ...

I've done this for our film festival screeners. 6 or 7 movies in a block? Put 'em on a single 60p timeline. The tech from the submissions are all over the map and it's best to rise above it all. Let it look as the filmmaker has made it.

I always wondered if this film was a ploy by the energy industry to keep legacy fuel sources economically viable and knock fission out of the market. Hard to think about those things with my tinfoil hat on, but I do try.

Well, I dislike HFR as much as the next guy, but the reason he's abandoning it is because of the ecosystemic/economic context within the movie industry which doesn't want to take visual risks with their production investment, not because Ang personally doesn't like HFR. Aside from that, never been sure why he's enamored with the look. I've read his rationale, but it still doesn't jibe. HFR pulls movies way too close to visual "reality" and narrative film are stories. Make 'em ups. Pretend. The nature of 24p's look is a huge asset.

4k acquisition, 1080 delivery. Save for a few slowmo 240fps shots that require 1080 resolution, it's all 4k 24p. BTW, I had the GX85 for a stretch. Liked it okay. However, my favorite LUMIX camera is/was the GX7.

Disclaimer: I'm an old. Also, this rant is completely contextual to two concurrent projects I'm doing. I'm gonna blow some steam here. So, been making a no-budget passion project documentary with my wife and have found myself grabbing my (2017) EM10iii more than half the time to capture our 24p footage. We have a FUJI XT5 --as well as our (also long in the tooth) GH5 that specs wise does a lot better, but here we are running around with a device that is technically inferior. The issue is that it's not technically inferior by much when you get right down to it. For what we're doing, the divide between 8bit video and 10bit video isn't such a big deal. We're on manual lenses, and, honestly, the image from the EM10iii+our lenses is dang good. Paid $300 for this camera. Seems hard to imagine a cheap cam would be what's used over more advanced gear, but we are certainly doing so. Funny thing is, I can't rely on the XT5 (and it's admittedly gorgeous colors) because it overheats(!), and while I like the GH5 results, I don't like using the camera as much as I like handling the Oly. Perhaps it's a mix of things. Size, ergos, what we DON'T need from the feature set, knowing what'll ultimately work for our particular production, and a weird little feature of the Oly has (2x punch in) that the GH5 does not. Anyone else holding onto (and often using) old inferior gear because it's good enough and not really chasing new tech anymore? I'll testify without irony that we've achieved better footage with this little camera than another million dollar + doc film I'm working on which used an ARRI. Why? Because subjects in a doc don't really give a shit when it's a single unassuming shmo running around with a small modest camera like the EM10. People DO give a shit when they're in front of a giant rigged out ARRI and a crew of 9 self-important shmos flitting around with their serious demeanors and a gaggle of mobile video-village gear in tow. And people in a doc behave correspondingly: Not naturally. They're performative. I'm left editing a bunch of dry useless footage from the ARRI shoot. Additionally not much actual quantity of footage because they were so damn immobile. Lame. That's a hill I'll die on regarding doc film making. When filmmakers put their gear fetish above good content acquisition. Sometimes that requires big sophisticated gear, sometimes not. Gotta be honest with yourself about that. Anyway... Finally, the doc we're working on will be mastered in 1080. If anyone can successfully convince me that's not good enough for a doc screener, I'll entertain the argument, but 1080 24p is fine to my eyes. /rant.

You can make a video shot on a 1980's VHS tube camcorder look pretty if you have elegant, soft, and nice lighting. When the light in a scene doesn't have a harsh spectrum, it'll look decent. Thats why exceptional shooters get up at 3am, get ready, and "chase the light". There's a very good reason they do a lot of their work during the so called magic hour. I could send you URL's of promo reels from camera products released 15, heck 20, years ago and it'll blow your mind. Cameras with 6 or 7 stops of DR looking freaking awesome . How? Pro cinematography with good light. I love playing with the tech side of cams, but i never accomolished great shots 'til i broke out of the teccentric mindset. Anyway, enough soap box. Will leave you be...

I don't know what's going on in your world, but I can tell you it doesn't matter how you fiddle the menu on a camera that leads to good shots. All the real work that happens with a good shot starts outside of the camera. The camera is honestly one of the LAST things you should fret about. I swear to God, you can be a better shooter by visiting a museum full of Romanticism Artistic movement paintings. Study how light affects a scene, and you'll become a more sophisticated videograper that way. If you can't train yourself to "see light" you're always gonna struggle. I'm not being flippant here. It's the cheat-code. Skip all the tech BS and learn light. Take a classic art appreciation class. Learn composition skills. These are the things that actually make a difference. Train your eye to be a shooter and a person that can paint with light. Sure, you can be a pixel nerd, but that has a low ceiling of accomplishment and, honestly, advanced tech makes those acomplishments not a big deal to begin with. And look, when you study art, you'll learn more about the human condition along the way, maybe even some philosophy. Win-win.

I used the gx85 for a documentary series. Sure it's 8-bit, but if you shoot clean it looks clean. My opinion is that a bad shot can't be saved regardless of what camera you use. So, you know, don't do that.

My wife uses Fuji and I'm on that system occasionally using her cameras for video. Yes, slowing the shutter to 40 makes a big difference. In general I use slow shutter to mask the digi-ness of these hybrid cams (and phones)