fuzzynormal

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)

the 119mm works in the 24fps app. The 12ultra has a 1" sensor.

To be clear, I can pull back the demands and it'll shoot fine. BTW, the motioncam app cant access the 119mm lens on this 12sUltra, which is what i shoot with mostly, so RAW or not, that app isn't an option for me.

I have the 12sUltra. 256gb. Typing this on it now. Havent tried to shoot raw with it. FWIW, The 24pro app on this phone pushes the hardware to the limit and drops frames. boo. Not perfect, but one can dial in the image much better than the native app. I'll play with the motioncam app and see how it goes.

I haven't gone back through all the responses, but is the EM10iii listed? It's kinda small'ish. I use it and like it.

An option I've embraced that really keeps things simple is to forgo AF in video production. How I shoot is exactly how you say you'd like to shoot. It keeps it simple and once you train yourself how to be adept at manually focusing you'll find their are numerous techniques that'll carry the day. Also, there's something wonderfully organic about getting shots that float in and out of focus and then have a human hand pull it sharp. Now, to be fair, I am extremely short sighted, so it's actually a bit of a camera-operator super power I have. I can look at a LCD monitor 2 inches from my face and really see what's going on in perfect vision comfort. When I'm wearing my contact lenses and have to use "readers" eye-glasses to see things close the vision gets more challenging. Anyway. Manual focus. Something to consider anyway.

That bit pretty much sums up about any hobby. People that buy 20 guitars but can only play three chords. A dude that has a 40 year old Cessna airplane. The grandma that does scrapbooking. Model trains. Race cars. Dirt biking. Jet skis. Bowling. It's all 1st world luxury that even affords us the ability to "waste" our income. Beyond that, I make a living (somehow) doing this stuff for corporate so I guess I could be considered a pro at it in a way, but I still feel as if I'm a dilettante within it's sphere. The technology and techniques always outpaces my understanding. And the fascinating thing to me about making movies is that the people that truly excel in the business don't really chase the tech, they focus on the storytelling --and they let the technology specialists dig most of the rabbit holes. Wanna talk about "fundamentals" with all this motion picture stuff? Perhaps it's best to consider the notion of Art vs. Craft. Have any of y'all ever taken art classes during undergraduate studies? In my experience there was that there was always a person that's a marvel at drawing incredibly realistically...but sucks at making that work interesting or engaging beyond "oh, that looks real." Then there were people that could do one brush stroke on a canvas and somehow make it mesmerizing. Then the exceptional creatives do both. My issue with any kind of fundamentalist in a discipline is a narrow perspective that curbs imagination. It gets in the way to create something surprising. Like a Robert Kincaid, y'know?

Serious question, do you think you've been able to parlay your financial liberty into making meaningful cinema, even as a hobbyist? I ask because I think, even now, that creating motion pictures is a sandbox in which the affluent are more likely to be able to truly play.

24PEE

Maybe they're just being polite? 🙂

Dang. Now that I read it on the internet it must be true.

As a child of the 1970's would it surprise any of you to know that I grew up MOSTLY viewing motion picture images that were 60fps? And yet I still prefer 24fps. There's a little perspective from a person that's seen both during his entire life and is now an official old fart. So, just to say, that it's not as if younger generations are going to have a dissimilar experience when it comes to 60fps. My guess is that the legacy of 24fps is going to be a thing throughout the 21st century, and most likely will never actually go away; the reasons mentioned in this thread cover why.

Pffffssst. Just A.I. uprez the GM1 to 4K. Not because you should, but because it will give you an excuse to keep using the GM1. Man, out of all the cameras I've bought and sold over the years, why'd I let that one go? Still have it as my avatar all these years later...