AVC Codec - Can someone ask Graeme Nattress

Well yes, and no. If you work often, a go-anywhere cam like Red can be a good investment. Even if half your jobs turn your cam down and have you work something else, you will make a profit on rental days, and help your yearly bottom-line.

Then you have Red to use whenever you need it for demo, personal projects etc., and likely you can make a bit of extra cash renting it to other prods and shooting stock in your spare time. Plus you'll have time to do extensive tests. It only takes a year or two to amortize soem items - things don't move THAT fast.

It is smart management, also, for a boutique prodco to buy what they use all the time. At the end of the year, you have more money in your pocket. Things like small Kinos, a CoolLights LED, and so on, we've would have paid for many times over if we were renting them. that said, buying what you almost never use, like curved dolley track, is foolish.

I agree 100% that no one should define themselves by their gear, and that gear ownership is not necessary at all to get work except maybe in an area with no rental facilities. BUT gear rental or ownership is a financial decision that can be wise either way, depending on the item.
 
In bigger productions there is often a complete separation of a budget. A DoP is hired on one budget, and the camera equipment on another - and there's all sorts of service expectations with that equipment, even if the DoP owned the same camera they wouldn't hire it because as the DoP he's not available to provide the support they require, he has his own stuff to worry about.

I know DoPs who own lights (specialist stuff) but none who own high-end cameras.
 
DylanReeve said:
I know DoPs who own lights (specialist stuff) but none who own high-end cameras.
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And why should they? They get the most modern stuff through rental.

There may be a difference with the AG-AF 101 though, as it will be the tool for small independent cinema on one side but can also work as a back-up and 2nd unit tool - for getting establishing shots, when you can not have "real" equipment waiting for the right weather or some shy animal to appear. Or you need to be small, hide you camera and/or need to be fast & dirty. There are a lot of "in-between" situations even for a DoP that may make him think if he shouldn't make this investment. And the AG-AF 101 is something even a DoP may want to "play around" with in his free time of have it with him "just in case".
 
At that price point, yes that can happen; James Cameron used his HVX200 for some things on Avatar, Levie Isaacs ASC was so intrigued by the HVX that he was considering getting one for small stuff (I don't know if he did or not) and I trained Peter Jackson on how to use his HVX200s for his personal documentary projects.

But in general I agree with tipota and DylanReeve, DPs might own the non-changing stuff (like lights) but rarely do they buy their own cameras. And the older they get, the less likely it is that they'll have their own lights either; hauling around heavy stuff gets less and less fun as the chronometer racks up miles on the old bod.
 
True and false... True, narrative cinematographers rarely own their own equipment, unless it's people like Haskell Wexler who used to customize his Eclairs for personal use (rental house frown on that) - you can't even own a Panaflex. However, documentary cinematographers almost always own their own cameras because precise scheduling is not an easy thing to do if you're following a subject.

Occasionally I get to rent, usually for commercials and usually 35mm - but for documentaries I depend on what I've got in my closet. That's where changing technology can really be a problem (I commented on this in the HPX500 forum). I'm going to buy an AF100 after the dust clears, like February or March. Since the DVX100 I have been a great believer in Panasonic getting it right. I'm not worried about the codec, but I am worried that the pundits (like those that comment on politics) will deem it obsolete before I can get a film finished with it.
 
Mac said:
True and false... True, narrative cinematographers rarely own their own equipment, unless it's people like Haskell Wexler who used to customize his Eclairs for personal use
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Actually I have come across situations quite often when it was advisable to have something like a 2nd or an own camera at hand. Even - or especially - outside the set for a narrative film you may stumble into a "magic" situation you may want to shoot from the hip. German DoP Thomas Mauch ("Aguirre" / "Fitzcarradlo") nearly all the time has his own old Arri 35 ST with him to shoot material in run & gun situations. And some of the nicest shots he or an assistant took with this camera have made it into a film in the end.

He was, btw, also the guy who would dismantle his Arri until it was only a carcass, a mere small metal box, he then led swirl around one finger of his hand and shout at us students: "Less respect, please, it's only a tool...." Wise man, me thinks.
 
Homunculus said:
dop16mm why need vitali when we have Barry Green, you realize Green is a computer programmer who has programmed everything from codecs to some of the top games in the world (Westwood studios, creators of Command and Conquer Red Alert series amongst others) and has also been nominated for the Emmy award 4 times and won once.
this guy is using the af100 as his main cam on his next big budget feature film. who would YOU trust?
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Westwood? Really? The game with patrick stewart's voice? Wow. That takes me way back. So almost twenty years later, one of the baddest-ass games, that i completely forgot about, and Barry? SAme guy? this just made my morning.

Lands of Lore. I remember being an adolescent and saying, DAMN LOOK AT THIS INTRO IT LOOKS LIKE A MOVIE.

Barry Green, I miss my mom's house now. I salute you.

Damn. Westwood studios. Long time.
 
On that note, I remember once on reduser someone asked mr david mullen asc what he owned as far as 'gear-of-choice', he said in all bad-assness 'I have a square cardboard frame for a viewfinder and a couple of reflectors'.

Mature.
 
And I forgot to mention lenses... Many long-timers hang on to favorites - In my case, after years of shooting film, I have 7 lenses ranging from an excellent Cooke 10.4-52, an Angenieux T.95 zoom and a much maligned Canon 12-120 (which I personally like, and have had since 1973).

I've hung on to these, even though they're Aaton mount, hoping eventually a camera would come along that I could use them on.. unfortunately this jump to 4/3 sensor means I've got some nice glass that I'll probably never use again. Oh well, I still have the Aaton they fit. If wishes were horses.
 
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greymog said:
Westwood? Really?
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Yes, that Westwood. I was the first employee hired, back in 1985. I was there when it was just the founders (Brett Sperry & Louis Castle) and me, working in Louis's converted-garage bedroom with no air conditioning and only a ceiling fan in the summers in Vegas. And I was there through the meteoric rise, up until they sold the company to Electronic Arts; I left it at that time, in 1998.

The game with patrick stewart's voice? Wow. That takes me way back.
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Yes, we did that one, but I wasn't on that team, that was a different team.
The teams I was on were The Lion King on the SNES, Command & Conquer (orig, Red Alert, Aftermath, etc), the BattleTech games, World Games, Winter Games, D&D: Order of the Griffon, D&D: Hillsfar, tons of SSI titles, stuff like that. And I did a lot of the core technology for the sharable graphics libraries and sound libraries when we started out -- because we started out doing conversions, taking a game from the Commodore 64 and converting it to the Apple II, IIGS, IBM MS-DOS, Windows, NES, SNES, TurboGrafx16, Sega Genesis, and on and on. Worked on nearly every platform and have published titles on nearly every personal computer that came out from the original Apple II all the way up to Windows 95.

So almost twenty years later, one of the baddest-ass games, that i completely forgot about, and Barry? SAme guy? this just made my morning.
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Good morning! :D

Lands of Lore. I remember being an adolescent and saying, DAMN LOOK AT THIS INTRO IT LOOKS LIKE A MOVIE.
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That was due to the artwork of the great, awesome, masterful, and dearly departed Rick Parks, who everybody loved and who was frickin' amazing.
 
Barry_Green said:
...World Games, Winter Games... I did a lot of the core technology for the sharable graphics libraries and sound libraries... taking a game from the Commodore 64 and converting it to the Apple II, IIGS, IBM MS-DOS, Windows...
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Hard to believe that was over 20 years ago... I worked on the C64 -> Apple II ports of World and Winter Games for Epyx, and IBM PC versions of California Games. Eventually wound up on the Japanese NEC-9801 port of The Manhole by Cyan, just before they came out with Myst.
 
lpowell said:
Hard to believe that was over 20 years ago... I worked on the C64 -> Apple II ports of World and Winter Games for Epyx, and IBM PC versions of California Games. Eventually wound up on the Japanese NEC-9801 port of The Manhole by Cyan, just before they came out with Myst.
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Really? That's wacky -- I did the Apple IIGS version of World Games, and I did large portions of the Atari ST and Amiga versions of Winter Games, and I was on the team with Mike Legg who did the Amiga version of California Games. So we were working from the same source code, at the same time...

What a tiny world! :thumbsup:
 
lpowell said:
The IIgs, what a monstrous kludge that was. I still remember what it was like debugging graphics RAM bank switching with a hardware logic analyzer...
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Yeah, well, imagine trying to scroll full-screen on a IIGS! The C64 version had those nice scroll registers and character graphics, and I had to try to shovel an entire screen through a woefully underpowered 65816... for Cliff Diving I went with a magnified window, to minimize the amount of area that had to be updated...
 
Barry_Green said:
Yes, that Westwood. I was the first employee hired, back in 1985. I was there when it was just the founders (Brett Sperry & Louis Castle) and me, working in Louis's converted-garage bedroom with no air conditioning and only a ceiling fan in the summers in Vegas. And I was there through the meteoric rise, up until they sold the company to Electronic Arts; I left it at that time, in 1998.


Yes, we did that one, but I wasn't on that team, that was a different team.
The teams I was on were The Lion King on the SNES, Command & Conquer (orig, Red Alert, Aftermath, etc), the BattleTech games, World Games, Winter Games, D&D: Order of the Griffon, D&D: Hillsfar, tons of SSI titles, stuff like that. And I did a lot of the core technology for the sharable graphics libraries and sound libraries when we started out -- because we started out doing conversions, taking a game from the Commodore 64 and converting it to the Apple II, IIGS, IBM MS-DOS, Windows, NES, SNES, TurboGrafx16, Sega Genesis, and on and on. Worked on nearly every platform and have published titles on nearly every personal computer that came out from the original Apple II all the way up to Windows 95.


Good morning! :D


That was due to the artwork of the great, awesome, masterful, and dearly departed Rick Parks, who everybody loved and who was frickin' amazing.
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kudos sir. I'm grinning like a ten year old at my screen. It really was a fantastic time for gaming. I liked that time. who remembers zork? it just popped in my mind.
 
Barry_Green said:
Yeah, well, imagine trying to scroll full-screen on a IIGS!
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We just generated a complete set of 7-bit pixel translation tables and cranked the original C64 sprite data through it via a 16-color LUT. I faked full screen scrolling on BMX by redrawing only the tops of the wooden posts. On the PC CGA card it was fast enough to actually sync the screen update to the vblank interrupt, but that could induce vertigo so we canned it.

Remember Epyx's "More-Color" mode on the 4-color CGA card? I invented that with an hblank palette swap between 4-color modes midway down the screen. That allowed us to combine a blue sky with a green lawn on Hackysack. ;)
 
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