Are 7D owners amazingly talented or...

Some people seem to just get caught up in the technology and neglect the reason for it all, the content.
 
In the end, the only thing that matters on the finished product is what is on the screen. Whatever camera is used can be argued about to the end, but in the end, the only thing that matters is the quality of the picture on the screen which will make the consumer or client happy.

Then you also have the other side of viral video.....nobody gives a crap what camera shot these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/videos?lg=EN&s=mp&t=a
 
philiplipetz said:
Film is finally moving to reflect post-post modern philosophy. Postmodern philosophy, particulary Baudrillard's Simulatactra and Simulation, says, among many other things, that we have moved into a era where we prefer simulations of reality to accurate portrayals of reality. The emerging post postmodern aesthetic leaves behind the nihilism of postmodernism and says that simulations are fine as long as they create a new aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence. Anything that lets each viewer create a new unified experience is acceptable as long as there is both art and continuity, if you have these things then any new reality can be accepted as long as it is pleasing. This will be the playground of the hybrid DSLRs and their totally arbitrary, but aesthetically pleasing, new view of reality.

Look at today's aesthetic experience. We are surrounded by simulations, one crashing on the other in a cacophony of experience so intense that the most boring person of today can carry more sensual memories than the most vital person of yesteryear. Television and movies allow us to soar with heroes and cry at tragedy. Advertisements routinely craft small islands of perfection that constantly beguile our consciousness. Computer games create entire worlds that respond instantly to our wishes. Disney World and Las Vegas transport us from “real” life and place us in fantasies that allow us to experience things our ancestors would have considered to be magical.

We have become a culture of experience junkies who constantly seek greater and more intense experiences. Our addiction is simulations of life – heroic movies, romantic comedies, pornography, computer games, vacation resorts, fantasy telephone services, and New Age idealism. Sony Play Station expressed this best in their advertising slogan, “Live in your world, play in ours.”

What we cannot experience directly, we experience indirectly through simulations of real life. Just look at modern television and you can easily see “reality” shows that are anything but real. What is most important about these shows is that even though they depict artificial situations and feature people acting for the cameras rather behaving naturally, these shows are accepted as a valid way of living that millions of people emulate. We have entered a time where simulations are more important than “true reality.”

We move in and out of different simulated realities so often that there is no one reality to the way we live our lives. Our experience tells us that every reality, everything we see, is an illusion. We know, we feel, that today’s world is creating a new truth that is independent of the single reality of the old scientific and religious worlds. We expect to be able to choose our reality.

Will the hybrid DSLRs create the film that reflects post postmodern sensibilities? It sure looks that way - and it is an exciting prospect.
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I'm not sure this is accurate. If anything the younger (and future) population are asking for more reality media (as opposed to artistic interpretations of reality) and only look to fictional media for their science fiction, horror and other genre-based goods. You're saying that people are aware that they're watching simulated reality when they're watching shows like The Hills or Laguna Beach, but I assure you they're not. The younger generations want nothing but absolute reality, so long as it's not their own reality, and they believe they are getting it when they watch Paris Hilton go shopping.

And, for the most part, most reality shows do exist in real circumstances with people not "acting for the camera" (Amazing Race, So you think you can dance, Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen to name some where big money is at stake -- something far more valuable to these people than a performance of any kind).

I think the person you're getting your info from would like to believe reality-based media is somehow trending in reverse, but Bravo has bet an entire network against that notion.

But that's the problem with most philosophy -- it's about as useless as statistics.
 
If you think that Amazing Race, So you think you can dance, Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen are not staged and the participants always aware of the camera then I want to talk to you about my Ponzi scheme, sure fire - 100% guarantee. reality is boring, reality shows cannot be boring. End of story.
 
I think it is semi-reality because certainly people are acting to some degree for the camera on those shows. But often when things get emotional they stop acting and it becomes real.
 
philiplipetz said:
If you think that Amazing Race, So you think you can dance, Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen are not staged and the participants always aware of the camera then I want to talk to you about my Ponzi scheme, sure fire - 100% guarantee. reality is boring, reality shows cannot be boring. End of story.
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I don't think someone being aware of a camera means that they are incapable of behaving naturally. Have you spent much time watching these kinds of shows? The camera is the LEAST of the contestants concerns.

And "reality is boring" is the reason WHY reality television exists, because most people's lives suck so they want to watch someone else's life -- someone whose reality is NOT boring.

IMO if reality is boring, you're doing it wrong.

Ever since method acting was invented people have been attempting to re-create reality. With shows like The Real World and the invention of the famous person who is famous for nothing, the species' got its wish. Bored, lame ass people (and even some people not so lame) induldge in reality television because it either IS real or they believe it to be real. They are not watching a bunch of nobodys run around because they think it's fake. Survivor lost a HUGE portion of its audience when any of the contestants hinted that there was food and medical care available to them.

So the answer is two fold: there are a bunch of dumb people in the world and there are a bunch of bored people in the world. What there is not is anyone watching reality television for anything else besides (actual) reality.
 
One of the French New Wave autuers, Jean-Luc Godard has some brilliant quotes about cinema....

- Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.
- Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.
- A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end . . . but not necessarily in that order.
- Editing is the transformation of chance into destiny.
- To me, style is just the outside of content, and the content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can't be separated.
- All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.
- A tracking shot is a moral act.

Cinema IS simulation of reality. Whether it's an imagined reality or not doesn't matter, because cinema is not the reality of 'a place', it's the simulation of the human mind, using light and camera technology to achieve this.

All cinema has it's roots in human psychology. And this is where simulation gets interesting. If you simulated a human being, down to the exact molecular structure and chemical building blocks of an actual human being, would it be human? Or just a simulation? For me it depends on what technology you use to build the simulation with. If you built 'it' with flesh, blood and DNA, then in our perception that human becomes a 'reality', not a simulation. But that means there is no strict difference between the two. The line is blurry.

One day, technology might become so powerful that the human mind is transferred from biological existence into a machine, built by man. There, due to the programmable nature of the machine, the normal physical constraints of the real world might break down and a 'film' or 'simulation' might become the reality. There are some theories which say the whole universe is actually mathematically structured software running inside a 'system' of some kind. Reality as we know it might already be a simulation.

I wanna watch more of French cinema and Jean-Luc Godard. And not just because he shoots chicks like this:

Mylifetolive.jpg


I also like the work of Jean Baudrillard who writes a lot about post humanist theory and simulation and I like J. G. Ballard a well (Crash, Empire of The Sun) and his dystopias.
 
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commanderspike said:
One of the French New Wave autuers, Jean-Luc Godard has some brilliant quotes about cinema....

- Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.
- Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.
- A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end . . . but not necessarily in that order.
- Editing is the transformation of chance into destiny.
- To me, style is just the outside of content, and the content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can't be separated.
- All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.
- A tracking shot is a moral act.

Cinema IS simulation of reality. Whether it's an imagined reality or not doesn't matter, because cinema is not the reality of 'a place', it's the simulation of the human mind, using light and camera technology to achieve this.

All cinema has it's roots in human psychology. And this is where simulation gets interesting. If you simulated a human being, down to the exact molecular structure and chemical building blocks of an actual human being, would it be human? Or just a simulation? For me it depends on what technology you use to build the simulation with. If you built 'it' with flesh, blood and DNA, then in our perception that human becomes a 'reality', not a simulation. But that means there is no strict difference between the two. The line is blurry.

One day, technology might become so powerful that the human mind is transferred from biological existence into a machine, built by man. There, due to the programmable nature of the machine, the normal physical constraints of the real world might break down and a 'film' or 'simulation' might become the reality. There are some theories which say the whole universe is actually mathematically structured software running inside a 'system' of some kind. Reality as we know it might already be a simulation.

I wanna watch more of French cinema and Jean-Luc Godard. And not just because he shoots chicks like this:

Mylifetolive.jpg


I also like the work of Jean Baudrillard who writes a lot about post humanist theory and simulation and I like J. G. Ballard a well (Crash, Empire of The Sun) and his dystopias.
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Or everything is reality and nothing is simulated. I think it can be argued that a dream is no more a simulation of life than is actual living, just like a film can damage or enlighten us. This idea that everything filmed or photographed is a simulation of life is just the transpirings of people with too much of nothing to do. The camera is not simulating the person. The person is there and the camera CAPTURES that moment, be it a simulated (scripted) moment or not. No matter how many lights or directions occured, what the camera recorded actually did occur and could only be considered a "simulation of life" if we are to say that only moments when we've personally existed in the space are "real life", which is elitist bullnana and bears no truth because there was SOMEONE in that moment when the camera was rolling, hence making it quite real in evry respect.

People who think everything touched by a camera is fabrication probably believe life itself to be a fabrication of an individual's perception of life -- which it is not. Life happens, it exists, it occurs, there is truth, regardless of whether you see it on celluloid or with your own two eyes.
 
Johnny Cola said:
There are a slew of arguable points here especially about frame rates but in the end it's not about the amount or accuracy of information being recorded it's the aesthetic that matters to me more. I am just as stupid as my audience when it comes to watching videos. And all this talk about these cameras failing and sucking and putting me in danger of losing work... well only if there was a chart you could measure that on, the argument MIGHT stand a chance with me and the people who watch my videos.
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I completely agree with the chart stuff. It's small issues compared to the overall aesthetics of the image which these cameras can give us, which is amazing.

But what you don't want, is something 'weird' that will pull your audience out of the film. Something distracting. (Like moire or mud).

There IS a suspension of disbelief. I don't believe that a computer animation for example, is reality. It's electricity and maths - those are physically real and we as humans are in no small part alive due to both - but as far as our perception of reality goes, on screen it's all lies designed to convince us otherwise.

The skill of the film maker is to tunnel the audience's focus into the film, and make them feel like they're actually in the film, wired up to the emotions of these characters. It may be cheesy and mainstream but I love the way James Cameron achieved this in Titanic. It's hyper-reality in the way you connect to the emotions in it, the expressions on the actors faces is totally uncontrived, but hyped up just enough and dramatic in a way that bridges the gap between the audience and the screen. You become invested in the story, your own emotions start to blend with the story. It's like a 'comic book' take on a tragic disaster but because of that, it's accessible and has a direct impact. He's doing it again with the performance capture for the aliens in Avatar. Their facial expressions are as good as the best actors. CGI has come a long way. The aliens in District 9 had a similar thing. They're aliens. How are we supposed to feel for them? Answer is, to make them as human in their behaviour and emotional expressions as possible. But it's all simulated... it's not real at all.

It's our perception of reality that matters. If your own eyes saw moire in everyday patterns then the 5D / 7D would be lauded for it. Without moire the images would look plastic and unreal.

It all depends on perceptions of reality, not reality itself.

So the best cinematographers have a style which allows the audience to be tricked into a place where their emotions run wild.

If you have a jarring or distracting style, and overuse 'unreal' affects (like a fisheye lens or tilt and shift), the audience can't get past the style to the content.

'A tracking shot is a moral act'.

The shot, in the way it looks, has to convey the necessary emotions - like chords in a song. The best films are visual poetry.
 
I thought this forum was full of fellow video/flim geeks that I rely on for technical insight--now I think I need to take a few film appreciation courses on-line because I'm too dang old to remember all that I learned in college 28 years ago. damn. You guys are really smart and I enjoy learning something new from you most every day. Thanks for sharing opposing and common ideas so freely, and for the most part, being civil about it.
 
Telling a story is what it is all about, not what codec you are using.
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning. - Steven Spielberg
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The technology shouldn't get in the way of how you tell a story. Going to basics is always a good thing in my view.

A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values. - Steven Spielberg
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Buying the best lens or the best matte box isn't necessary to tell a story in my view. Neither is buying the best camera.

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark? - Steven Spielberg
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Nitsuj said:
The technology shouldn't get in the way of how you tell a story.
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I thoroughly agree. Which is why it's distressing to see new technologies invented which keep progressively painting the cameraman into a smaller and smaller box. Long-GoP, rolling shutter, and now heavily-aliased imaging, have all caused constraints on the ways these cameras can be used and the type of shots that they can be used for.

On the flip side, those technologies have also brought about much lower price tags and smaller equipment, inventing new types of shots or making these new types of shots easier to pull off, and providing access to new users.

Two-edged sword.
 
Barry_Green said:
I thoroughly agree. Which is why it's distressing to see new technologies invented which keep progressively painting the cameraman into a smaller and smaller box. Long-GoP, rolling shutter, and now heavily-aliased imaging, have all caused constraints on the ways these cameras can be used and the type of shots that they can be used for.

On the flip side, those technologies have also brought about much lower price tags and smaller equipment, inventing new types of shots or making these new types of shots easier to pull off, and providing access to new users.

Two-edged sword.
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Ah yes but there was a time that if you wanted to be a filmmaker you had very limited choices. Now there are so many tools to choose from it can distract you. The HDSLR's are just one of those tools. The big picture says there is no reason somebody can't go out and make a picture. There was a time you could only do it through the studios or film school unless you were extremely lucky. Might be a double edged sword but I think one of the edges is dull.
 
Barry_Green said:
I thoroughly agree. Which is why it's distressing to see new technologies invented which keep progressively painting the cameraman into a smaller and smaller box. Long-GoP, rolling shutter, and now heavily-aliased imaging, have all caused constraints on the ways these cameras can be used and the type of shots that they can be used for.

On the flip side, those technologies have also brought about much lower price tags and smaller equipment, inventing new types of shots or making these new types of shots easier to pull off, and providing access to new users.

Two-edged sword.
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Completely agree. In the name of marketing and marketable specs, HUGE compromises have been made. 99% or more of us don't need freaking 20megapixel plus cameras, but 100% of us understand that 20 is bigger than 10. And in order to get specs up and still be viable with current cheaply and widely available processors and storage devices a lot of bullshi* math got thrown into the equation and we have what we have... But I personally feel we are still further along because of it and have high hopes for the next generation of precessors and storage devices which I think will allow these cameras to come into their own and also drag traditional video cameras kicking and screaming into the large sensor arena which is where I ultimately want to play.
 
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