2023 In Review - How Did Your Year Go?

[Jedi Master]

AI will not remain static. It'll continually get better and better to the point where it will stop generating "dubious code" and generate code just as good, or better than what a human can generate.

[BTM_Pix]

Which is why I used the word era.

Of course it won't be in perpetuity.

 

[QuickHitRecord]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:36 PM, MrSMW said:

Then you assume wrong as I have been making a full-time living from photography and video for over 20 years…just not in the commercial world.

You've been at this for even longer than I have. But I feel that the lines of "commercial" shoots have blurred a lot. I used to think the category of "Commercial" was reserved for high concept crewed shoots that were intended for broadcast. There are still definitely those that fall into that category. But I'm seeing a lot more single creators with no crew and a mirrorless camera shooting social media spots for some brands (of course, it's all professionally color-graded). I personally do a lot of product videos, usually as a crew of two plus a producer, and never with a storyboard. I've never felt comfortable calling them "Commercial", but lately it seems like I might be able to. They are, after all, designed to sell a product. Curious what your thoughts on it are.

[KnightsFan]

I love seeing the reels that everyone has posted!

2023 was a fantastic year, just not for film or video! It was the first year since 2012 where I made 0 video projects. My hope is to spend 2024 getting back to narrative films. The difficulty is finding people with the time and resources to make movies for fun.

I did get to take some fun photos. I've used an A7rII for photos the last couple years. My primary lens is a 28mm Nikon AI, which it has been since I bought it 6 or 7 years ago--talk about good return on investment! I attached a couple pictures I took this year. The snowy one is a Canon 24-105, and the others are the Nikon 28. Importantly, my photography kit weighs just 2.28lbs/1.03kg with filter and lens cap, and fits in a pouch on my daypack. Most of my adventures include a lot of hiking, and some rock climbing, so I like a camera that is A) small and light B) not stored in front of me and C) can be retrieved without removing my pack.

I did also side/down-grade from a Zoom F4 to an F3 for audio. It's unlikely I'll work on proper productions any time soon. The F3's size and 32 bit are great for recording effects, and for production use I'll velcro it to boom pole next to an NPF battery sled (and then hope whoever is using it while I run camera aims it well). It's overall a better fit for what I do now.

 

 

For 2024, my plan is to make videos of all kinds. Narrative films, tutorials on video game design (my other creative hobby), videos about DIY projects, and maybe some animation. I'm also interested in building a projector-based virtual set--I did a proof of concept, but I'd need to invest in good backdrops to make it photorealistic.

Aside from virtual sets, I have all the gear I need. However, I do plan a couple new items.

- A couple lights for narrative films. Probably LEDs that can run off batteries when needed.

- Switching my video camera to full frame. Maybe a Z Cam F6 instead of my M4.

- Considering lens upgrades. I never owned high quality glass, it's always been borrowed or rented by the production. I might get Sigma Arts--I always enjoyed using them. I look at cinema lens sets every now and then, but honestly I won't get much more out of "real" cinema housings vs 3D printed gears, and you have to go waaay up in price before optical quality rises.

[MrSMW]

9 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

You've been at this for even longer than I have. But I feel that the lines of "commercial" shoots have blurred a lot.

24th year actually, the last 22 of which have been full-time and I’ve tried to get into food/restaurants, property, Motorsport, product…all kinds of stuff and tried various angles including; free, low priced, full price…but no joy, especially if money was involved because of course everyone was happy with free!

So over the years I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason, I could somehow make what I do (weddings and events though these days it’s purely destination weddings) very easily, but the above, what I personally call ‘commercial work’, not.

I’m long since past trying to figure out why and with just 7 planned years left in my part of the industry, have zero desire (or need) to look at anything else now.

If I was a 20 something, or even a 30 something maybe, but at 53, nah, I’ll just stick with what works for me and then at 60, after 30 years at it, not entirely sure what I will do, but plan on working part-time for another 10 years.

Maybe National Geographic will want me by then… 🤔🤪

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 1/6/2024 at 9:26 AM, IronFilm said:

I think perhaps going back to my old career as a Software Developer. 

(it was a loooong time ago, we were programming on stone tablets with hammer & chisels) 

 

COBOL guys are still needed everywhere. 😀

[IronFilm]

12 hours ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

COBOL guys are still needed everywhere. 😀

I wish I used to code in COBOL! (or heck, Fortran)

But sadly it's something far worse... FoxPro (both FoxPro 2.6 and Visual FoxPro). 

Well, FoxPro is definitely a much "better" language than COBOL. But I'd say its market value in terms of employability is drastically lower. 

[kye]

14 hours ago, IronFilm said:

I wish I used to code in COBOL! (or heck, Fortran)

But sadly it's something far worse... FoxPro (both FoxPro 2.6 and Visual FoxPro). 

Well, FoxPro is definitely a much "better" language than COBOL. But I'd say its market value in terms of employability is drastically lower. 

In my Comp Sci degree, we reached a point where we realised that after learning 3 or 4 new programming languages in first year there were no more programming units after that.  Unfortunately we got a shock when we arrived in second year at the start of a unit called something like Numerical and Computational Methods and they told us we'd spend the first 8 weeks learning Fortran, then we'd be using it to program all sorts of horrific mathematics-related things, like converging and diverging algorithms, L-U matrix decomposition, path-finding, etc.  The lecturer had written a small book on Fortran that was very well written and absolutely essential because the lectures weren't enough to learn it and so we had to keep the book on hand to refer to while doing assignments etc.

Apparently in subsequent years they worked out that the lectures weren't enough and that students were teaching themselves from the book, so they shortened the Fortran lectures from 8 weeks to 6, and eventually to 4 weeks.  

After that we arrived at the start of each unit thinking "what they hell are they going to sneak into this unit that wasn't included in the unit outline".  Sadly, that wasn't misplaced paranoia as subsequent units involved more additional programming languages than I can remember, and even open-ended assignments where you had to accomplish some goal in a programming language of your choosing.

After all that, if I had to pick a programming language to work in, Fortran wouldn't be it!

[Jedi Master]

I learned FORTRAN in high school. It was the first high-level language I learned.

At university, the first CS class that every CS major had to take was a FORTRAN programming class. I was an EE major, but I took it anyway as I could see that's where the industry was headed. The work was done on a CDC 6400 mainframe using punched cards.

The second CS course, which I also took, used Pascal, which was a big improvement over FORTRAN, although even some of the CS majors just couldn't get their heads around the concept of pointers (they seemed natural to me). 

After that, everything was in C, which is the language that I use to this day when working on microcontroller projects (as a hobby). My professional work mostly revolves around working with hardware description languages, primarily SystemVerilog, and the various tools used for simulation and verification.

[kye]

14 minutes ago, Jedi Master said:

I learned FORTRAN in high school. It was the first high-level language I learned.

At university, the first CS class that every CS major had to take was a FORTRAN programming class. I was an EE major, but I took it anyway as I could see that's where the industry was headed. The work was done on a CDC 6400 mainframe using punched cards.

The second CS course, which I also took, used Pascal, which was a big improvement over FORTRAN, although even some of the CS majors just couldn't get their heads around the concept of pointers (they seemed natural to me). 

After that, everything was in C, which is the language that I use to this day when working on microcontroller projects (as a hobby). My professional work mostly revolves around working with hardware description languages, primarily SystemVerilog, and the various tools used for simulation and verification.

I started just after The School of Computing had formed and separated from the School of Engineering.

In first semester they taught us to program in Pascal via the "it's like a recipe" -> pseudocode -> Pascal path.  In second semester they kept going with the theory in Pascal and also taught us C and assembler too, so by 9 months in we were coding double linked-list databases in assembler.  Some kids hadn't used a computer before the course....  welcome to computer science!

After that I have vague memories of Java, Javascript, Perl, Fortran, Visual Basic, etc but the main language was always C.

[IronFilm]

9 hours ago, kye said:

Unfortunately we got a shock when we arrived in second year at the start of a unit called something like Numerical and Computational Methods and they told us we'd spend the first 8 weeks learning Fortran, then we'd be using it to program all sorts of horrific mathematics-related things, like converging and diverging algorithms, L-U matrix decomposition, path-finding, etc.

Love it! That's my jam. 

9 hours ago, kye said:

After all that, if I had to pick a programming language to work in, Fortran wouldn't be it!

lol! Don't blame PTSD from then as reasons not to use Fortran today 😛 

8 hours ago, Jedi Master said:

I learned FORTRAN in high school. It was the first high-level language I learned.

At university, the first CS class that every CS major had to take was a FORTRAN programming class. I was an EE major, but I took it anyway as I could see that's where the industry was headed. The work was done on a CDC 6400 mainframe using punched cards.

Wow, our posts are bringing out all the older times from the woodworks! 😮 

Punch cards... I thank my lucky stars I never had to do that. (although I did have one Physics lab, stretched out over multiple 3hr sessions, where I was literally flipping switches so as to enter in my program I'd written in binary to then run it on their hardware)

Anyway, Fortran of today in 2024 is very different to the Fortran you'd have used back then! 🙂 

Fortran is even a Top 20 language, in terms of popularity in the world (currently at this moment it's ranked #12):

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ 

8 hours ago, kye said:

Some kids hadn't used a computer before the course....  welcome to computer science!

That was basically me too! My family didn't own a computer, or even a TV. 

[Jedi Master]

6 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Anyway, Fortran of today in 2024 is very different to the Fortran you'd have used back then! 🙂 

Fortran is even a Top 20 language, in terms of popularity in the world (currently at this moment it's ranked #12):

I didn't think FORTRAN was too bad back when I used it. The alternative (at the time) was BASIC, which was quite popular, but I never cared much for it.

Yes, punch cards were a real pain! The basement of the computer center had about a dozen IBM card punch machines, and they were always in use during the day, so lots of people, including me, did our work at odd hours to avoid the rush. The biggest fear we had was dropping a card deck and having to put all the cards back in order.

The first design I worked on after university was a custom bit-sliced CPU. It was microcoded and I wrote the microcode assembler in FORTRAN on a Data General Eclipse minicomputer.

FORTRAN is still pretty popular among the scientific crowd, who use it for things like modeling dynamic systems.

[IronFilm]

18 hours ago, Jedi Master said:

Yes, punch cards were a real pain! The basement of the computer center had about a dozen IBM card punch machines, and they were always in use during the day, so lots of people, including me, did our work at odd hours to avoid the rush. The biggest fear we had was dropping a card deck and having to put all the cards back in order.

Even I have nightmares about that happening!

18 hours ago, Jedi Master said:

FORTRAN is still pretty popular among the scientific crowd, who use it for things like modeling dynamic systems.

Under certain circumstances then Fortran is faster than C

[PannySVHS]

Anyone shot any narrative work besides @PPNS ? Are you allowed to share some footage?

[PPNS]

11 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Anyone shot any narrative work besides @PPNS ? Are you allowed to share some footage?

I’m working on a new reel and website. I had a weird year.

Jan 23: got fired from my full time job

feb - sept 23: got fairly depressed due to being rejected after around 350 job applications.

at the same time i tried out freelancing while searching for a new job, done a little decently paid corporate work, a lot of barely paid and unpaid work as a dp, gaffer or colorist on short films and music videos.

oct - dec 23: got lucky due to a cinematography bootcamp i followed and ended up working as a DIT on a feature.

income wise it ended up being almost the same as 2022, so hopefully the freelancing thing will pick up more steam. I’m going to try making some spec ads with some directors i know this year, so we could get work that way.

 

 

[IronFilm]

14 hours ago, PPNS said:

a lot of barely paid and unpaid work as a dp, gaffer or colorist on short films and music videos.

oct - dec 23: got lucky due to a cinematography bootcamp i followed and ended up working as a DIT on a feature.

income wise it ended up being almost the same as 2022, so hopefully the freelancing thing will pick up more steam. I’m going to try making some spec ads with some directors i know this year, so we could get work that way.

It's a tricky life freelancing, where just one or two little things going the other way can make or break a year. 

[PannySVHS]

Thank you for your honest and vsluable post and glimpse into the hardships of an upcoming DOP @PPNSHopefully your hard work will pay off a big deal this year! I had a branch fall on my head when setting up a butterfly with the gaffer. Whenever i was being the gaffer i took great care of my lighting people. That accident made me decide to stop working on sets of narrative features in the low budget world in Germany for sure as most of the films made here are not dear to my heart at all. Wish you the best and good choices and instinct regarding projects.

[IronFilm]

Cranky Camerman (one of the youtube channels I quite like, as he is very willing to show what life is like behind the curtains, the real world aspects of being a mid level working pro) just released a two part series of how 2023 was for him (goes into the financials too, as well as the gear aspects. He's saving up for a Sony BURANO next!) : 

 

[Clark Nikolai]

On 1/6/2024 at 8:55 AM, Emanuel said:

This is the fine example of a juicy thread ; ) Pity we cannot express all the feelings we have towards what we read. A special mention though to a couple among my favs now @QuickHitRecord@kye despite to never undersestimate the contribution of everyone of you... : ) I think it's one of the flaws here when people tend to neglect any of the voices heard. Every simgle one of you always have something to bring for our lives, so take care of each one of you. Your milestones, presence, daily life, even your beloved ones and part of your being, expressed in your stories posted in these lines, reach some other people here. Maybe not everyone but the ones to count.

I believe a bit more of love and compassion for the other one is never enough either.

To read this or that had this or that misfortune is something we should meditate about and feel sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings of others, as well share their achievements and joy with zero envy. As much as possible. Even though how human this flaw is, unfortunately.

- EAG

I've taken almost a month to respond to this. I wanted to get it right. Now I'm just doing it even if it isn't. I find this website sometimes is the only one that has some careful thought anymore. I appreciate what many of you write here. I like that I can contribute.

 

[PPNS]

finally finished that reel.