Tim Sewell

I've read quite a bit of stuff on there in the past, but this was the piece I read just prior to subscribing: https://ascmag.com/articles/clockers-lee-sayeed?fbclid=IwAR13fMTIFuI_YENtrEBVtJQPvN3e-JUFv-61QmfazqxfDKWNWIhBY-0xdmk 'I'm also not particularly interested in hearing about what people do just because they're famous.' Well sure, but what's compelling, I find, is reading about how people at the very top of their game choose what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. The stuff in the piece referenced about the DoP's film stock choices, for instance, has relevance to how we (me and @kye, for instance) as enthusiasts, can approach our shooting and grading to achieve different effects and moods. Will reading stuff like this make us better film makers? Maybe. Is it worth learning how committed, creative professionals go about their work - I'd say definitely twenty bucks' worth, probably more.

I think I'm right in saying that there is no built-in anamorphic capability. I would be very surprised if there were user-customisable frames.

The cost for the print version outside the USA is fairly stiff, unless you're really keen to hold it in your hand. I think you'll find quite a lot of features from recent issues on the website.

American Cinematographer (the magazine of the American Society of Cinematographers) has a great offer on at the moment - 1 year's subscription to the digital version, plus full access to their archive (which goes back to 1920!) for USD19.95. I just grabbed one - perfect for filling those long lockdown evenings, I'd say. https://store.ascmag.com/collections/subscriptions/products/american-cinematographer-digital-subscription-1-year

From now on I will tell people that our 17 year old Honda Stream isn't, in fact, a 'beater'. No. It's a 'collectible'!

I really noticed that when shooting interiors. Not pretty.

I'm sure I read somewhere that Olympus's new owners have an update to the EM1X on its way.

Yeah - I work as a software developer - I'm a hobbyist film maker (or 'artist', as I prefer to label myself!). I had to do a month of work for free to secure a new contract back in March last year, then I had a month out of work when that one ended, but since September I've been ok. Jobs I've done in the past included wedding photographer, pub manager and trade show space salesman - all industries that have been virtually shut down, so I can easily empathise with our fellow EOSHDers who are having a really shitty time of it. Let's hope things start to improve now, but we should all learn from this that we only exist at the pleasure of nature and that something we can't even see has the capacity to bring our ever-so-modern lifestyles to a screeching halt at any time.

It probably seems a bit insensitive of us to announce that here, given your previous posts. I feel huge sympathy for Brazilians right now and feel very angry on your behalves about the asshole you've got in charge there - hopefully one day soon he'll face justice for what he's done (and hasn't done).

What's the app? Would love to have a play with that.

Me too - booked in for Saturday lunchtime.

£50 camera ordered. Inspiration inbound.

Very nice bit of work - especially nice to see those colours in freezing March!

You and every single other purchaser - myself included!

But what's your point? Does anything that you've just posted somehow invalidate the idea that films generally reflect the cultures of their times? Does posting a poster of a movie set in the far future (then) with a female president, then a comedy about the problems caused by proscriptive gender roles - at the end of which the female president resigns when she gets pregnant - in any way counter an argument that all films are inherently political in that they either promote or condemn accepted cultural and political norms? Or are you just doing that thing that climate-change deniers, anti-vaxxers, 911-truthers et al do, where they find one tiny portion of someone's argument that they can (kinda, sorta) 'disprove' as a way of discrediting that argument without having to expend the mental energy to actually engage with it and argue it on its merits? Better to stick to microphones.

Well yes - there's a reason why, in the *actual* film industry, nearly every DP started as an AC, every gaffer started as a grip/best boy, every producer (actual producer, not exec) started as a runner, PA and line producer. There is absolutely no substitute for hands-on learning surrounded by people who really, really know what they're doing.

😂

Well yeah, that really shows that I'm wrong when I say that films reflect the social mores of the societies that make them. Doesn't trade on sexist or heteronormative tropes in the slightest!

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).

Has your script actually been rejected by the funding body, @Stab?

Nice bit of research, but not really relevant to the point my use of that example was intended to illustrate.

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.

Film has always been political because film has always, unavoidably, reflected the politics, power structures, culture and mores of the societies in which it has been made. What a lot of people are finding difficult right now is that sections of western societies who had previously been ignored or stereotyped in cinema now demand the levels of representation, opportunity and respect that white heterosexuals have received since the medium was invented.

How was it a lie? That was certainly what happened here in the UK. Without lockdown measures the curve would have been steeper and the peak a hell of a lot higher (a nice way of saying a lot more people would have suffocated to death).

Kudos to you for taking the time to respond to someone who is providing, as a citation, a post from someone called wank_666 - I really couldn't summon the energy.