Black Friday Specials

You get the call to do a quick shot.
You drive over.

30minutes to spare, but have to walk through a parking lot into a secure building, no crew, can only bring what you can carry.

You get to the room

lights are green. You don't have gels, your light is 95+ CRI daylight goodness. The station even paid extra for that feature. The dilemma is, you were told to shoot one person talking, now you have to have light for a whole group of people. Your subject shows up, they are haggard and not wearing makeup. Do you, use the available overhead green lighting, or do turn on your expensive 95+ CRI light to fill in the wrinkles and shadows of the person talking?

Now you are thinking, if only I could get back to the truck and get my other light, but that would take too much time,

**** it, we'll do it live!
 
NorBro said:
Everything is a meme, and everyone is a critic.

All it takes is for anything to go viral and plenty of fools think: "YES, YES, I agree!!! That's terrible!" Or "That's the best ever!!!"

Watch more news or the history of video production to understand that this is an art which has had hundreds of thousands of creative choices over the last 100 years because people are different.

For the record, I am not saying this is HOW it should have been, but that this is one choice that someone made and it works perfectly fine.
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These were probably the two most derided political speeches (for their format, not their content) of the last 4 years. I'm trying to think of what else is in the running... distracting digital signs in the background at the Politico sponsored debate... trump coming down an escalator to make his announcement (which I think was only derided by opponents, not allies unlike these 2 cases), four seasons total landscaping (ok that goes in the top 3 but just for choice of location, not film style)... not many political speeches become memes. As usual, you choose to overlook stylistic failures and exceptional brouhahas
 
James0b57 said:
You get the call to do a quick shot.
You drive over.

30minutes to spare, but have to walk through a parking lot into a secure building, no crew, can only bring what you can carry.
Click to expand...

Both of these shots were planned days in advance. The Beshear was a SOTU response, for crying out loud
 
Like I've said before...I can't teach you everything.

You need to learn for yourself and stop being critical about such nonsense.

You think it's so easy...and the video production crew(s) can just snap their fingers and make things happen as they please when they probably have only a few minutes with these people. Even if they were planned ahead, things might change. Were you there? What do you know about the shoot?

Half of the so-called pundits whom are criticizing them are doing so because it's their job to produce such content. And the other half have ulterior motives.

Do you think anyone really gives a crap about the video production? Besides people like you who have more negative than positive things to say about others' creative choices?
 
Such nonsense is what we do... make people look good. Create a style, communicate a message.

Maybe this was the best the crews could do with their resources. I'm not saying they're bad at their jobs necessarily, just that the product failed to achieve its objective.

However, central aspects of the failure were clearly intentional. In other words, things could have looked better if they had put in less effort or just aimed for making something normal and not superlative.

Basically every speech I see in the oval office looks fine. They look normal. They're not trying to reinvent the wheel. Sure, it's a smaller set and they film there all the time. Again, I'm commenting on the product and not the skills:

Screenshot_20201127-184646_Chrome.jpg

I generally like 60 Minutes interviews. A little moody and stylish, but not totally unrealistic and, CRUCIALLY, they are stylistically consistent across the frame. Why do they go to all that effort when you say that the Beshear garbage speech looked just fine, hmm?

trumpmain.jpg

Btw you're using 'whom' wrong. It replaces 'who' only as an object of the sentence, not as a subject.
 
Because it's just one production, bro. No one cares.

Since the beginning, they all started with the wide zoom in the office and pushed in.

___

When you do it in a hallway, it's naturally going to look different.

If they added more flags then people would say they were at a flag store.

If they stood apart more then people would say they don't like each other.

Everyone is an expert and always has something to say.

60 minutes is a multi-camera produced SHOW. Not a quick speech, address.

___

One camera. WS --> MS, slow zoom. Done hundreds of times in history.

Even with the one below, half of the WS frame has way too much headroom - but no one cares.

It was a choice, it works.

 
I would say that the reason the Eisenhower zoom from wide to close doesn't bother me is that there is useful info and a nice framing in the wide (it tells us he's in the oval) and the environment looks normal (as it usually does). Whereas chuck and Nancy were in a random hallway that didnt deserve attention, and going to the wide underscored the artifice of the flag display. Typically, 2 flags is the standard, flanking the podium set-up.

But I agree with you that the convention of zooming in from a wide shot is probably where they got the idea to do it. Doing it so slowly made it even more noticeable to me.

I like thinking about these things. and these decisions (staging, camera placement/framing, lighting style and deployment of limited units) all come into play when you have to create a shot.

Here's a shot that I thought looked pretty good (from the gop convention) and was only mocked because apparently she was shouting a lot:
1200x0.jpg

Chuck and Nancy could have taken turns at the podium, that's sort of the norm. One person stands off to the side
 
I just think strong criticism about people's creative choices is really the worse there is.

Like of course you don't have to like it, but concluding failure (when there is none) without knowing anything about the production or the people involved is pretty lame.

But I guess that's Hollywood.
 
I dont think I can exercise creative choices myself without having feelings, sometimes strong ones, about what I see. Without that interest and sensitivity, I probably wouldn't be in this field in the first place.

I'm not trying to say they're bad at their job. Maybe circumstances were changed on them at the last minute. Maybe they executed their orders perfectly and whoever was calling the shots had a bad idea.

I critique my performance after every shoot, going over the successes and failures in my mind. Sometimes, I screwed up a move or a focus pull in the execution. Sometimes I made a bad conceptual choice at the outset for how to stage or light an interview. I kick myself an awful lot (mentally)

In these speech examples - I am personally a target audience member. If it fails to communicate the message to me, it certifiably fails at least for one person. And in each case, I was clearly not alone in disapproving.

I think I give a lot of positive feedback to fellow dvxusers. And if I disapprove, I try to give constructive feedback or just say nothing. I'm not a total negative nancy. And if I were talking directly to the people responsible for those shots, I would definitely try to soften the blow.
 
I love you Abe, but you got to chill on slipping politics into all of your posts. I don't want you to get banned, my man! I saw another guy go because of less.
 
ahalpert said:
Both of these shots were planned days in advance. The Beshear was a SOTU response, for crying out loud
Click to expand...

That isn't on the camera person necessarily, it is on the person planning the shoot. But yeah, I always had a set of plus and minus gels in my bag, even when I shot local news, so that I would never have this issue. But news people are different, if setting up a gel takes an extra 5secs, you get the reputation as the slow perfectionist.

JPR, my friend, JPR.


You may also be more worried about it, because you have more invested in the success or failure of that particular setup.
 
Isn't style ok? People on this forum have to film politicians and political content. Whether or not you agree with the message, you have to try to create effective propaganda
 
What going on here. I had to take break to finish producing that ballet shoot I was talking about. Looks like I started fire
 
James0b57 said:
That isn't on the camera person necessarily, it is on the person planning the shoot.
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I never meant to imply that the cameraman did a bad job, per se. Just that I didnt think the end result worked.

Like if I said The Matrix was a great movie. There's an assumption that the directors get the most credit for its success. Ok, but which director is responsible for what? How much of the script was changed by the actors? How much of the goodness is creditable to the DP? Obviously, the formula is complex. At the end of the day, I can only dissect the result and how the visual presentation impacts me
 
ahalpert said:
Isn't style ok? People on this forum have to film politicians and political content. Whether or not you agree with the message, you have to try to create effective propaganda
Click to expand...

Sure, once in a while, but look at your multiple threads and posts, and this is a Black Friday sales thread for goodness sake.
 
In my defense, the Beshear shot stuck strongly in my memory as an example of an ill-filled background that got a huge negative reaction. It linked to a memory of the chuck/nancy speech as a counterexample where the lighting was good but had other problems. Then NorBro said I'm always critical, so I found other political examples that looked good. Never at any time did I consider the actual political content of the material.

But politics these days is inseparable from film form. I took so many classes in college where we studied the films of Leni Riefenstahl as a positive example. and she was Hitler's chief propagandist (and brilliant and groundbreaking)
 
ahalpert said:
I never meant to imply that the cameraman did a bad job, per se. Just that I didnt think the end result worked.

Like if I said The Matrix was a great movie. There's an assumption that the directors get the most credit for its success. Ok, but which director is responsible for what? How much of the script was changed by the actors? How much of the goodness is creditable to the DP? Obviously, the formula is complex. At the end of the day, I can only dissect the result and how the visual presentation impacts me
Click to expand...
I understand that.


But do you know what I don't understand? I don't understand how Hot Rod Cameras can be offering such amazing Black Friday deals!!!! Wowza!!!
https://hotrodcameras.com/black-friday-cyber-monday-deals/
 
I apologize for derailing the thread. I admit I have a hard time letting things go.

Not sure if this came up yet - mpb.com and keh.com are 2 used gear sellers with 10% off thru 11.30
 
As far as savings, in corporate retail they say every day is now "Black Friday". (Seriously, they do.)

Obviously today's Friday has the title, but the general thought being everything is always on sale, or can be at any given time.

Even if it's not ask for a discount. Send a nice message to the company and ask for one. You just may receive it.

___

Here's a tip for anyone interested in hearing one:

Financially-savvy people barely ever pay the prices that are publicly asked for unless the products cannot be found at another smaller business.
 
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