fuzzynormal

You can get all sorts of cool old cameras on eBay for not a lot. Those early Panasonic cameras with their proprietary SS drives? P2 was it? Maybe look those up. Probably only a few hundred bucks or so. Man, I shot an unashamedly horrible joke-horror movie on a XH-A1 years ago. Such a bad movie. I love it. Not only for how truly Corman-esque it was, but the fact that it was shot on a small sensor camera. Looked good, in a bad way. Or is it bad in a good way?

Same. I'm wrapping up a big project now and getting ready to sell off the PC gear I built up for it. My wife and I are going to live 2017 on the road in an RV, so a laptop is in order. We were considering a brand new PC or Mac laptop, but have realized that our workflow for post is actually leaning on proxy-editing more than we would have first imagined. Proxy editing is NOT demanding on a computer. This reality informs us that buying a used laptop, like you did on eBay, would be more than adequate --and save us thousands of dollars. (...and if anyone wants to buy a loaded PC for 4K editing in February of 2017, just let me know)

Oh yeah, most definitely. Self distribution is the new (only) way to go for filmmakers like myself. Sundance gets a ridiculous amount of submissions (tens of thousands) from earnest people unable to be self-critical. I'm working with a producer now that shipped off a proof-of-concept video I did with her to Sundance. It was ridiculous. I wouldn't even think of putting it into my own festival --and I made the thing! I thought it was decent...for a corporate video, but that was the extent of it. So, yeah, knowing the inherent value of your work and being self-critical seems to be a tricky skill for a lot of people. Trust me when I say that exploiting such naivete is the financial backbone of many a film fest. Those submission fees add up.

I made my last doc for basically free. Just my wife and I doing everything. Paid for flights to and from Japan, that was pretty much it. As for the current film festival circuit: They're a legacy thing. Back in the day festivals had clout simply because they were a bigger deal. Now-a-days they exist to prop up the purveyors on the things and, maybe, actual filmmakers every now-and-again. BTW, I'm a film festival producer for our local shin-dig here in SoCal, and I also helped (years ago) to launch one of the current premiere film fests in the mid-south, such as it is. Ultimately, fests are like everything else these days. Everybody's doing it since digital made it easy. It's not a problem to get into some sort of a film festival. However, it's not easy getting into a good one. I just got back with my film from a rather lousy fest, that had no serious networking, horrible screenings, poor attendance...yet it was a lot of fun. My wife and I even gleaned a great nugget of financial info from one of the panels that was wildly invaluable, so you never know... We have our last one in Toronto coming up, and it's gonna be the most "legit" festival we got into. Still, that might be a lesser experience than our goofy no-budget fest we just attended. We enjoyed our time at the goofy fest. We made some new friends. If you can do that, that's the main thing. Just be gracious, try to get on the same wavelength as the interesting people you'll meet, and you'll be fine. At the middle rung and lower rung of festivals, these things are just glorified parties -- if you're lucky! (Some aren't even that) That's the best you can hope from it. Having fun and meeting some good folks. There's really only two or three festivals where industry stuff actually happens and films get "launched." Because of that, there's only industry films represented. Unless you're a creative wunderkind that made something uniquely awesome (and entertainingly so) you're probably not going to get into any serious festivals on your own. Actually, in spite of making something awesome and new, that actually would probably get you rejected from most film festivals. The reality is that most selection committees are community regular-joe/jane types. They're not savvy about film. If subject matter floats in front of their eyes that they can relate to, they'll ignore all the shortcomings of the flick and give it a big old bear hug, filmmaking craft be damned. Arguably, this happens with "savvy" festivals as well. Three actors and three crew. Make something with that situation. Learn how to be smart with your time and talent. It WILL pay off; creatively and professionally.

Could it be a circle of confusion?

If using drones is part of the vocabulary of cinema these days, it's damn close to becomming a tired catch phrase. Be careful how you use it. Cliches' can cheapen one's efforts pretty quickly. With that said, I'd worry less about what you're shooting with and more about if you can narratively justify the shot to begin with. I had my romance with aerials. It's seductive, but it's not enough to build a healthy narrative relationship. More like a fun make out session.

I dunno. choreograph dancers doing indentical specific movement inside the suits and out side the suits? Superimpose the normal dancers into the chroma key dancers of numerous outdoor static shots. The slightly off set nature of the movement would create really odd, distorted, but fluid images at the same time. Or maybe, if you want to be metaphoric, have wildly gestulating dancers "inside" the shapes of people acting "normal," like shopping, banking, socializing, etc. the inner id of people that's not allowed to escape, for example.

What's wrong with the share? I'm glad I watched it. Just pointing out how the too-fast-shutter pulled me out of the narrative.

Well, regarding that "woman" video: whatever gains are accomplished with using the lens are destroyed by the inability of the shooter to properly control the shutter speed. That was a bit odd.

Buy an old laptop. Mac or PC. You may not want to use a laptop, but it's reliable and cheap.

Guilty as charged. I can't escape it in the corporate video world.

Not that I'm aware...Once the recording starts, that function is locked out.

Yes. Normal. Thus, worthwhile? In other words, since the thing is easily do-able and many many people are capable of doing it, what value does it have? Should one use it just because one can, or can the visuals it offers be implemented creatively? I had a corporate client demand it on a recent production "just because," and I felt it ultimately looked ridiculous. Ostentatious for no particular reason. It actually was detrimental to the video. The shots had no motivation. They were just there because the client thought it looked cool.

I do wonder if, instead of debating about the tool, we should consider that the value of aerial shots is overrated?

Fair enough. Good luck.

Simple is better, until it isn't. I'd suggest trying the proxy work flow a few times and compare. Those 2 or 3 second delays when dealing with h.264 footage tend to add up over the course of a longer edit. It does, and I do utilize that feature, which is nice. Still, when things hum with along proxy footage it then becomes rather difficult to go back to a slower workflow; even if it's not a lot slower. Why exactly are you wanting to export h.265?

I'm not taking the tinfoil off my head for anything.

I couldn't get optimized media to work reliably with h.264 footage in Resolve. Maybe with raw it's better. I'd like to know your experience with it once you give it a shot.

Agreed. Not sure how small it can be made, however. Still think it would have to be a substantial piece of glass.

Directly editing h.264 just stinks. Even on a zippy machine. It'll work --and I do it all the time for short TRT projects, but I still like to edit with transcoded files. Or, better yet, edit with proxies. Once you start doing that, a modern machine will slice and scroll through stuff without much effort. It's pretty cool. Lagging video when trying to set heads/tails or just previewing a clip is the worst. Premiere CC 2015.3 has been very effective for me with proxies. My assistant editor even does work on our 7 year old Mac with LUMIX UHD footage. Works great. With proxies you can use cheap slow drives for editing, so it's a great way to stretch a budget and still be productive. FCPX is also well regarded in this area too. Resolve also does "proxies" by creating "Optimized" media, but I had a hell of a time making that work. Too buggy. Moved onto Premiere. Not my fav editing platform, but it's robust enough to handle my documentary workload. Decent media management tools too, I think.

You can certainly get there if you're willing to go w/speedbooster. Although, something like this would be physically too big and too expensive after the speedbooster... https://www.amazon.com/Sigma-Aspherical-Macro-Aperture-Cameras/dp/B00005RKSO The expensive speedbooster opens up a lot of other lens choices. Besides, at a certain point they're battling optical physics. You can only make it so small and keep it fast, right?

Yup. 'Tis true.

What is a "current panorama"? ...and do I have to be standing on a mountain to experience it?

Yeah, the max I can push it is to use my canon fd 55mm f1.2 on a speedbooster. Shooting 4K I can run 3200iso and get a clean useable exposure when delivering for 1080. Does that make sense? Anyway, that'll pick up some pretty low light scenes. Not perfect, mind you, the glass gets soft wide open, but low light is there if I really need it. 99%

The GX85 seems like the best value on the market if you're a shooter desiring 5-axis stabilization. It's a cheap cam with good IQ and the 5-axis works quite well. Who can argue with that? Would I say it's a great camera overall? No. But it's an AWESOME camera if you're buying it to do what it's strengths allow you to do --'kuz you get more for less.