How many 'films/videos' do you 'publish' per year?

[SteveV4D]

On 3/6/2021 at 1:01 AM, kye said:

Wow..  someone answered 360+ !

 

That was me.  🤣

It's hard to be 100% sure, but going by 2017 to 2019, I had approx 107 clients booked each year.  Approx 16 are non Weddings, making 91 approx Weddings a year.  Each one gets 3 videos, a 1 min Trailer, Full Length and Highlights.  Some of the Weddings (about 50% of them) have 30 minute videos, Marryoke, Guestcam and Video Messages.  About 10% have all of the above.  

Non Wedding includes parties, where they get a Highlights and a Full Length.  Even my Corporate work, I'm doing several videos a lot of the time.  Such as a Promo video and separate Drone video.  

Plus I do a few of my personal videos in my time off.... 🤣🤣🤣

I can't say it's that much more than 360, but its around that mark for sure. 

[Emanuel]

Contribution added.

Interesting poll but, the majority of replies to the question number 2 IMHO shows little merit to none on a fair understanding how complex this business is (E :- )

[Emanuel]

 

A former instructor of mine from Lisbon film school was used to say: a film is only 25% shooting.

Let alone the good ones, I'd say... LOL : D

 

BTW, his master is still listed and world acclaimed as one of the most influential filmmakers of the history of motion pictures.

[kye]

12 hours ago, barefoot_dp said:

Watching other people's mistakes is a great way to learn. Much better than making those same mistakes yourself.

True, but I find that there is a real lack of detail available on other peoples mistakes.  

I guess the whole premise of this thread is that true knowledge is understanding that a decision I make here, in this particular shot, at this particular moment, will generate these particular choices in post, which leads to this particular type of edit, which leads to this particular type of finished edit, which leads to this particular type of overall outcome (customer satisfaction, etc).

As an artificial example, perhaps I go wide on a shot of someone entering a location.  I have made the decision to prioritise their entry in the context of the location, putting the event in a wider context, but distancing me from their reaction, when the alternative was to go tight and get a closeup.  This choice means that for this sequence I already have a wide, so then I would probably cut to a closer shot next, before the sequence evolves.  That's how that framing has impacted the edit mechanically.  
Aesthetically, and I'm just making this up for example sake, this will give a certain feeling to that sequence.  I've read about other 'patterns' where you do the opposite - start tight to get the reaction, then go wide to show what the reaction is to.  The way this sequence is edited may have larger impacts to the structure of the finished piece, as maybe this style of editing means that you want to hit a certain beat in the music and you have to do it earlier or later, meaning that you have to cut or stretch the surrounding sequences, impacting the options on their structure, and on the overall aesthetic and style of the whole film.  

Knowledge is making that wide/close decision with the knowledge of what it will do to your sequence, edit, style, and final customer reaction.  The only way to really understand that is to be present and see what was shot, what wasn't shot, the detailed process of editing from selects to finished edit, and the customer reaction.

Yes, this kind of information would be available if you were working with someone and sat with them through the whole edit, and it's available on YT in very very very limited supply.  For example, the YT channel Wedding Film School released a series of videos of a wedding edit from start to finish, which has been taken down now, but IIRC it was 10 x 1-hour videos and included the doc edit and highlight reel, and you saw everything including audio issues, people standing in front of cameras, and all the editing decisions and things that didn't work.  Those are stupidly rare.

11 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

Watching others mistakes can be satisfying as to remind you that you're not alone in making them.  As a lesson to stop you making them, it can have limited value.  I've learnt from my mistakes and I learnt quicker that way, than hearing about them from others.

There's a visceral sense to making mistakes that I find is difficult to get from others.

I also have basically no access to other people shooting and editing, so it's all self-discovery.

11 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

That was me.  🤣

It's hard to be 100% sure, but going by 2017 to 2019, I had approx 107 clients booked each year.  Approx 16 are non Weddings, making 91 approx Weddings a year.  Each one gets 3 videos, a 1 min Trailer, Full Length and Highlights.  Some of the Weddings (about 50% of them) have 30 minute videos, Marryoke, Guestcam and Video Messages.  About 10% have all of the above.  

Non Wedding includes parties, where they get a Highlights and a Full Length.  Even my Corporate work, I'm doing several videos a lot of the time.  Such as a Promo video and separate Drone video.  

Plus I do a few of my personal videos in my time off.... 🤣🤣🤣

I can't say it's that much more than 360, but its around that mark for sure. 

Yeah, I don't think we need to quibble and make you go count them or anything!

I was thinking of people like yourself.  Even doing simple edits still counts as that loop where you make a decision and then learn what effects that has.  D4Darious is a big believer in making lots of small films rather than only a few larger ones, or trying to make a feature and never finishing it...

I typically shoot my camera tests as real projects, in order to get the benefits of going through the whole editing process.

10 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Contribution added.

Interesting poll but, the majority of replies to the question number 2 IMHO shows little merit to none on a fair understanding how complex this business is (E :- )

The business of film-making is complex.  This thread is about making the film, not about making money.

If this thread was about making money, I'd suggest people get off the camera forums and spent their time in the business forums, or better yet, working on their businesses 🙂 

[barefoot_dp]

18 hours ago, SteveV4D said:

I've learnt from my mistakes and I learnt quicker that way, than hearing about them from others.

  

6 hours ago, kye said:

The only way to really understand that is to be present and see what was shot, what wasn't shot, the detailed process of editing from selects to finished edit, and the customer reaction.

I think you've both missed the context of my post which was that working as an AC does allow you to see the mistakes in real time. I wasn't talking about watching youtube or reading blogs to hear about other peoples experiences.

I was talking about being there, seeing the decision making process (even being a part of it), seeing the outcomes on screen while you're pulling focus and again at the DIT station, and seeing the final edit later on. You feel the weight of the mistakes because they impact your role as well (eg the DOP wasted time on one shot, so now you've got to work twice as fast/hard moving all the gear to the next setup), but at the end of the day the responsibility lies with someone else.

My overall point was that working under other people (even if they're not necessarily better than you) is a great way of learning, certainly much faster than going out and shooting the same vlogs over and over again.

[kye]

3 hours ago, barefoot_dp said:

 I think you've both missed the context of my post which was that working as an AC does allow you to see the mistakes in real time. I wasn't talking about watching youtube or reading blogs to hear about other peoples experiences.

I was talking about being there, seeing the decision making process (even being a part of it), seeing the outcomes on screen while you're pulling focus and again at the DIT station, and seeing the final edit later on. You feel the weight of the mistakes because they impact your role as well (eg the DOP wasted time on one shot, so now you've got to work twice as fast/hard moving all the gear to the next setup), but at the end of the day the responsibility lies with someone else.

My overall point was that working under other people (even if they're not necessarily better than you) is a great way of learning, certainly much faster than going out and shooting the same vlogs over and over again.

I would suggest that unless you're there for the entire editing process, and seeing the reactions of the clients who the film was commissioned for, then you're only seeing part of the full picture.

Sure, you can see when someone missed focus, or missed exposure, or anything that is a "mistake".  However, if you're not seeing the editing process, and you're not seeing the client feedback then you're not seeing how the decisions made earlier in the process impact the final result later on in the process.

In a larger production I get that you're a small cog in a big machine, and that someone else is making lots of the decisions.  However, if I film some stuff, edit it, then show it to people, and they don't like that I made an action film out of the funeral footage I shot, then I get that feedback first hand.  If you got told to shoot some shots of people attending a funeral, you could expose them well, shoot them as directed, and do everything you were asked to do, but that's not film-making, that's operating one step in the a production line of how films are made.  Yes, it's difficult and creative and requires all kinds of skills that single-operators don't have to know because typically single-operators aren't creating quite the level of production that larger teams are setup to create, but it means you're missing out on some of the lessons on film-making in general.

One thing about watching is that it's easy to see when the person makes a mistake, because you're not using 100% of your capacity to do all the things they're doing right, because you're just watching.  Do you learn from those mistakes, sure, although watching and doing can be quite different.  I could watch any master craftsperson work, for years if I had the time, and I'm sure that I'd learn some stuff, including from their mistakes, but when I turned around to do it myself, I'd probably still deliver rather lacklustre results.  Probably not as bad as if I'd never watched them at all, but probably not as good as if I'd spent a lot of that time actually doing it myself.  

There's a principle that you learn to do something right by learning all the ways to do it wrong first, but if you're just watching someone do things mostly right then you're not learning the mistakes they didn't make.

Are you going to learn how to be a great AC?  Sure.  But film-making is more than just that position in a much larger team.

[Emanuel]

23 hours ago, kye said:

The business of film-making is complex.  This thread is about making the film, not about making money.

If this thread was about making money, I'd suggest people get off the camera forums and spent their time in the business forums, or better yet, working on their businesses 🙂 

One of us is or both of us are lost in translation : ) Filmmaking is often labeled or seen as business without necessarily mean a way to make money. Because of the price involved on such complex "business"...?

Well, maybe with the exception of the mainstream aka hollywood at least, earlier the current streaming age, the most part (if not everyone I've met in this "business") is alive and kicking because of a strong feeling of enthusiasm for this "business", nothing about money as matter of fact. Or filmmaking is not the best location for. Reason why certain people choose forums like this one ours here?

So, seems pretty clear to me such newish controversy is much ado about nothing :- )

[IronFilm]

14 hours ago, kye said:

Are you going to learn how to be a great AC?  Sure.  But film-making is more than just that position in a much larger team.

Many people have no desire to be a director. 

Thus if the experience they're gaining while a 3rd AC helps make them become a great 1st AC (or DoP), then that's perfect. 

But even so, I think if more directors spent a year as a 3rd AC on a wide variety of productions, I think they'd be a better director!

[barefoot_dp]

On 3/8/2021 at 8:01 PM, kye said:

Are you going to learn how to be a great AC?  Sure.  But film-making is more than just that position in a much larger team.

Yeah... again, I think you've kind of missed the point of my posts.

My point was that, even as a DP, still working as an AC lets me see how other people do things, where they were more efficient or more effective, and where they were less so. There's many ways to skin a cat and if you get caught up in your own ego and think that your self-taught way is the best and only way, then you're severely limiting yourself.

You can go out and shoot endless films by yourself but if you're doing the same thing over and over and over you might just be getting better at doing things in a less effective way.

 

On 3/8/2021 at 8:01 PM, kye said:

Sure, you can see when someone missed focus

This comment makes me think you have no idea what a 1st AC does.

[kye]

23 hours ago, Emanuel said:

One of us is or both of us are lost in translation : ) Filmmaking is often labeled or seen as business without necessarily mean a way to make money.

Everyone is lost in translation.  

However, I'd be curious about a definition of 'business' that doesn't involve 'money'.  Maybe you mean 'profit' instead? 

22 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Many people have no desire to be a director. 

Thus if the experience they're gaining while a 3rd AC helps make them become a great 1st AC (or DoP), then that's perfect. 

But even so, I think if more directors spent a year as a 3rd AC on a wide variety of productions, I think they'd be a better director!

I get your point, which is that learning by watching other people on a film set is a worthwhile endeavour and can make you better at your own role.

However, the point that I was making, and might be beyond the culture and mindset of the film industry, is that everyone is making decisions that impact things further down the line, but the lack of exposure further down the line means that the decisions are made not knowing how those impacts happen.  

Learning relies on feedback, which is always imperfect when it has to happen between people.  If this wasn't a thing, then why are there articles from the people who work in production that are focused on how they can better educate the people who work in pre-production to avoid creating problems they have to solve in production, and articles from the people who work in post that are focused on how they can better educate the people who work in production to avoid creating problems they have to solve in post?  
Yes, there are feedback mechanisms, but until you're forced to solve all the problems that you create, you won't have a full exposure and thus won't have full learning.

The biggest challenge in working as part of a team is that when the project isn't a success, everyone thinks that the problems were someone else rather than with themselves, when typically, everyone contributed to it, at least in some small way, so the opportunity for learning from that is lost.  

Think about a great director, and how having a great director can really energise and really focus the team to making a great end result.  Everyone knows examples of that.  But there will also be examples, probably less publicised, where the 1st AC was great and really impacted the whole production, or the 1st AD, or the 2nd AD.  I would wager that there are examples, if you could somehow google every film set that ever was, where someone great was able to really make a difference to the whole production and final result, from every position on a production, pre, prod and post.  The things they did really well probably aren't learned because there's no feedback and everyone has a SILO'd mentality that what they do impacts things only so far, and not beyond that, which is due to a lack of feedback.

8 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

Yeah... again, I think you've kind of missed the point of my posts.

My point was that, even as a DP, still working as an AC lets me see how other people do things, where they were more efficient or more effective, and where they were less so. There's many ways to skin a cat and if you get caught up in your own ego and think that your self-taught way is the best and only way, then you're severely limiting yourself.

 

On 3/8/2021 at 5:01 PM, kye said:

Are you going to learn how to be a great AC?  Sure.

 

17 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

You can go out and shoot endless films by yourself but if you're doing the same thing over and over and over you might just be getting better at doing things in a less effective way.

Absolutely.  There's visible problems and invisible problems.

If you do so something that results in something you know is bad, like crunched audio, then you have a standard already set, you know you didn't meet that standard, and you probably know a way to do it better next time, or can google it.  But if you do something that results in something that you don't know is bad, like doing things a less efficient way that still gets the job done, or making decisions that are creatively non-aligned with the emotional tone or motivation of the project, then there isn't something you can point at and know you need to change things to get an improvement.

26 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

This comment makes me think you have no idea what a 1st AC does.

You said "seeing the outcomes on screen while you're pulling focus".  I was just replying and including an example you gave.  

If you think that me replying to an example you gave means that I don't know very much, then I guess that's unfortunate and difficult for you, but I guess that over time, with patience and hard work, you can get better.  We can all learn new things and improve 🙂

[Emanuel]

4 hours ago, kye said:

Everyone is lost in translation.  

However, I'd be curious about a definition of 'business' that doesn't involve 'money'.  Maybe you mean 'profit' instead?

Business as meaning of activity, craft, occupation, industry... If industry is often connected with profit, art is broader, I believe. Profit is usually the last purpose of making art.

[Emanuel]

...if any (E :- )

[barefoot_dp]

6 hours ago, kye said:

I was just replying and including an example you gave. 

In the example I gave I'd be pulling focus.

You said I can see when someone else (ie the operator or DOP) miss focus.  😉

 

[Tim Sewell]

On 3/8/2021 at 5:15 AM, barefoot_dp said:

I think you've both missed the context of my post which was that working as an AC does allow you to see the mistakes in real time. I wasn't talking about watching youtube or reading blogs to hear about other peoples experiences.

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.

[Emanuel]

Fair enough Tim, but the opposite POVs expressed here between 'business craft' and 'art craft' (not a trading mark of the gaming industry for sure LOL) don't necessarily mean every filmmaker will have to run the whole steps of the career to succeed and see the outcome popping up. The same way a filmmaker is the one able to have 'product' 'to be published', no matter where he/she is coming from.

Especially today along the digital age. There is world in the lens-based media outskirts. Lots of 'digital filmmakers' get outstanding achievements without the old school standards. A lot has changed. Let alone with the streaming now.

As @barefoot_dp adequately nailed and clearly illustrated from those words above-posted, I just can't stand that shooting ad nauseam in a daily basis is a much faster learning curve for this craft/business/industry/art/whatever we want to do or call it : )

 

Shooting is just a part of the process, filmmaking is much beyond to have a camera setup in hands (E :- )

[IronFilm]

15 hours ago, barefoot_dp said:

This comment makes me think you have no idea what a 1st AC does.

Yup, I mean the 1st AC basically runs the details of the camera dept... freeing up the DoP to look after the "big picture" and interact with the Director / Gaffer / etc

[barefoot_dp]

22 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

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.

I'll just add that I am in no way looking down on people who aren't in the 'actual' film/commercial industry. Most of the time I am not there either, and I'm doing corporate work or branded content for local businesses. The resources and gear available today make it possible to create amazing content even as a solo shooter.

However when it comes to improving, those times when I do step in to a larger crew - even if it's just a 1 day TVC shoot, are without a doubt the times when I learn the most.

 

[IronFilm]

Exactly, this is one reason why recently I've had a change of tack and I'm trying to get more jobs as a Boom/Utility rather than a OMB Mixer. 

Although, not quite working out like how I'd have hoped on the current 12 week long job, as I'm a more knowledgeable/experienced drama mixer than the guy I'm working under.