Run&Gun
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There have been many days I would have rather been griping instead of shooting. If only it paid the same... Lol
C100: Canon layoffs
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There have been many days I would have rather been griping instead of shooting. If only it paid the same... Lol
When working solo- you can be director and grip; everything- which will you do the most, which do you enjoy, which are you naturally good at?
When working with a group of friends, for free, who directs, who grips? See how everything changes when doing things for free?
If we lived in a society where basic needs are met, where no one has to "work", where everything is done because people want to do the tasks (not paid), how does that change motivation and quality of the "work"?
scorsesefan
Veteran
My ultimate fear is that a HAL-like camera will take over, enslave professional DPs and force us to repeatedly watch bokeh filled pet videos...
Lol working on a bokeh-filled pet video now! Watching will be purely voluntary
While you can pine for a HAL9000 takeover, most are already slaves to human masters. How to become free? Start with your mind, think for yourself + learn what's really going on in the world (and beyond). Constructively challenge the status quo when you see better ways to do things. We're all in this together!
I've been on a large sets/studios and also worked in small startups to massive office buildings for billion dollar corporations, from an individual contributor to executive manager. The ego is always present, including this thread- clear every time a discussion is focused on the speaker vs. instead focusing on ideas and what is said. Did you watch the Alan Watts video? Here it is again:
Back to the point- what changes when we do things for fun vs. for money? Our current civilization requires accounting of value for energy/work in the form of money. What would change if it switched to straight barter- no money? Are there other ways to motivate people to contribute? What motivates and drives you to do anything?
Can someone with only grip experience direct? Maybe, maybe not. Why does the grip want to direct- can they do a better job or is it only for ego/money? The answer becomes clear when working for fun who directs, who grips, who lights, who edits, who acts, who writes, and so on. Gaffer/grip/light design/DP/director/even the writer = all related roles- so much emphasis on titles, status, and money (power & ego). In startups, everyone does everything, whatever it takes, the same as indie productions: titles don't matter, everyone helps to get it done.
Since everyone has a camera now and editing tools are free, there's no reason anyone can't do anything they want. If one wishes to direct a team (which is a management and leadership position), they've got to convince others to follow their direction- that's true when working for fun or when being paid. Sometimes people are asked to lead when they didn't ask for the responsibility. Sometimes it works out, sometimes is doesn't. From the Oracle of Delphi thousands of years ago: "Know Thyself", a worthwhile endeavor.
Those people would no longer get that gig, would they?
Let's examine your scenario- a couple jokers do a bad job. Someone like you who appreciates quality / doing a good job chooses to apply for the now open role, with a strong desire to make sure that doesn't happen again.Listen to the Alan Watts video, there's something deeper here. No need to watch, it's possible to listen in the background while doing other things.
Funny you brought this up. On YouTube, there's a Rick Beato (music driven) channel. Rick is a guitar player in his mid-50's but he also writes, produces, edits, etc., and has a very charismatic on-camera presence. Yesterday, he put up a half-hour video where his main theme is how computers and computer enabled editing tools are ruining - and, in fact, have ruined - rock music. His point is that, editing of the music files is now done by the technicians rather than musicians and in the most meticulous manner, so everything sounds far too perfect and indistinguishable from one another. I turned it off before he got into into his anti-AutoTune rant. I saw that one coming down the turnpike.
PS. Back story - in the mid 1980's, there was an article on the New York Times about the present and the future of popular music and the author was mostly complaining that the new trend was sonic perfection a la Dire Straits' "Brothers in arms" where the newly available digital recorders were capable of such perfect reproduction, the sound quality in and of itself was going to be the deciding factor in a popularity of a given performer or even genre.
In half a decade, the pop charts were overwhelmed by rap and grunge.
All that ranting could have been avoided had he read the manual about Groove Quantize lol. It's clear he made that video for drama/entertainment- he knows what he's doing.
Time and pitch quantization (Beat Detective and AutoTune) are just tools, which are used to create a style (I wrote a pitch corrector for MySpace Music Karaoke, using a real-time pitch detector and formant-preserving FFT pitch shifter- was a fun project). Machine-perfect is a style, as is the organic nature of a live performance with timing and pitch "errors", some subtle, some obvious. He noted that leading the timing of vocals added energy- so it's part of the language of the music. This could also be automated. Human style variation beyond randomness (Groove Quantize) can also be modeled with Machine Learning (ML => AI). All tools to communicate. Of course not at all why "rock died" (it did? I still listen haha!). Look at history, long before computers- tastes change over time as well as the people in control of the industry have a much greater effect on what gets produced and promoted (and is another rabbit hole for those wanting to dig deeper for the truth).
Back on the jobs topic- wouldn't just about everyone who wants/needs music for their production prefer to have live music recorded vs. synthesizers? (ok Hans Zimmer may be an exception
)Back in 1773, some dude wrote this chill tune when he was 17 years old- everything with ink and paper right out of his head! Then it had to be played by live humans just to hear it (sheet music copied by hand for everyone- no copy machines!):
I'm confident we'll get back to more people playing instruments and being hired for live recordings. Because it's work as play, and music will be great again- the sinusoid is swinging back up!
A long time Soviet/Russian megastar Alla Pugacheva (oddly enough, turning 70 today) was asked about lip sync (in Russian, it's called "fanera", a play on words from phonographic accompaniment and manufactured wood) that is the norm in many a Soviet/Russian show. Her reply was, "I can't sing live every night. This way, I can do a show after show and all with a perfect pitch".
Most American shows are technically live ... but, going as far back to his 1983 tour, Ozzy's voice was so compressed, echoed and reverbed that there was very little human feeling left in it.
Most American shows are technically live ... but, going as far back to his 1983 tour, Ozzy's voice was so compressed, echoed and reverbed that there was very little human feeling left in it.
Barry_Green
Moderator
What are you talking about? Live is live, man...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kpxA-TOLmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfJXpBKR7d0
scorsesefan
Veteran
Oh no. Poor Ashley :crybaby:
Oh, this is a small fry. Back in the early 90's, right after the breakup of the USSR, there were several popular boy bands over there. One of them had six touring ... sub-groups but all went under the same name. They never performed live and no one knew what the actual rosters were. All sounded and looked identical because none of them actually spoke or sang. In other words, something like Boys II Men or NKOB would be simultaneously "performing" in several towns at once and no one in the audience was wiser for it (mostly tweens and teens anyway). That's a top notch scam artistry ... I mean, artisanship.
There were similar all-girls bands, who became known by the moniker of the "singing underpants" due to their performers' rather short, ahem, hemline.
Now, onto the real visual technology - Maria Calas, Roy Orbison and Ronnie James Dio have been performing as holograms long after their deaths.
Basic technology behind it.
Roy Orbison (shot by an audience member on a smartphone)
[video]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-future-of-the-smartphone-camera-is-here-its-not-apple-and-its-disturbing-2019-04-15?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo[/video]
A smartphone with a 50X zoom. The end of the stand-alone camera era?
OK, this is Huawei and it's semi-banned in the US. But, as I had mentioned in the old days, the periscope camera inside the smart phone could pretty much destroy anything and everything that's not pro level gear.
A smartphone with a 50X zoom. The end of the stand-alone camera era?
OK, this is Huawei and it's semi-banned in the US. But, as I had mentioned in the old days, the periscope camera inside the smart phone could pretty much destroy anything and everything that's not pro level gear.
There was a Midwest retail chain - it went under early this decade - that was big in the 1970's - 1990's with its "get a bike" series of promotions. "Buy a couch, get a free bike". "Buy a VCR, get a free bike". "Buy a refrigerator, get a free bike", etc. The bike giveaways were big in the spring and the summer but, during the colder months, the chain had to include other items - a free boombox, a free VCR, a free recliner. When I worked there briefly in the mid-late 80's, I was informed that the salespeople from a department that normally sold the "free-be" item hated that weekend because, while everyone was making huge chunks of cash, they had almost no traffic. That was common sense. If your chain was giving away a free VCR with certain purchases, it made little sense for a consumer to buy a stand alone VCR. Well, the smartphone companies are "giving away" a free camera with a phone purchase and I agree with the gist of the above article that the phone/video business will be driven into bankruptcy since the new and subsequent generation of camera-phone combos will meet or exceed the needs and the technical skills of the majority of what could have been potential users. Furthermore, it will kill the lens manufacturing business. And, if the consumer market goes, there'll be no one interested in the pro gear either.
I'm going to clip and paste from Mirrorless Rumors, who clipped&pasted it off Canon's own release.
ILC's are down 19% year-to-year. The camera business is imploding.
https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/
https://global.canon/en/ir/index.html
ILC's are down 19% year-to-year. The camera business is imploding.
https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/
https://global.canon/en/ir/index.html
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Run&Gun
Veteran
Everything else being equal, I’m good with that. I said I missed the Beta days in a way, because it seemed like you bought one camera to cover it all and it lasted almost a decade before you really needed to upgrade to something better. I guess I just missed the ‘one camera to cover it all’ thing, because looking back now, my tape VariCam saw service for ~9 years(bought in ‘06, still works perfectly today), my P2 variants bought in 2011 are still working today(8yrs)(both actually going on shoots today and tomorrow) and my C300(original) still sees service(used it yesterday with my F55). My F55 has “only” been in the fleet for about four years, but it’s still very popular and fortunately Sony hasn’t really replaced it.
For sure, less revenue means less development. I think we are also reaching the limits of what is useful in a camera and television. Many of us question the value of 8k, so where do you go from there? Meanwhile, companies like Z cam pop up with inventive efforts. Is there enough business for them to make a go of it?
The camera market has been tanking since 2010, but that is because the consumer market dried up quickly. The average Joe has moved from Instamatics to Coolpix to their phone. There was a pretty good market for DSLRs and mirrorless for amateurs. That's what is drying up as phone cameras continue to challenge the need for big lenses and fast f-stops. In the professional side, there has likely been some decent business due to the explosion of Youtube channels and also due to the large expansion of production going on by Netflix, Amazon, and every idiot company that thinks they can get into the streaming business. This of course, will be followed by a major collapse in production once the streaming business has sorted itself out.
https://petapixel.com/2014/12/15/ch...al-camera-sales-getting-hammered-smartphones/
The camera market has been tanking since 2010, but that is because the consumer market dried up quickly. The average Joe has moved from Instamatics to Coolpix to their phone. There was a pretty good market for DSLRs and mirrorless for amateurs. That's what is drying up as phone cameras continue to challenge the need for big lenses and fast f-stops. In the professional side, there has likely been some decent business due to the explosion of Youtube channels and also due to the large expansion of production going on by Netflix, Amazon, and every idiot company that thinks they can get into the streaming business. This of course, will be followed by a major collapse in production once the streaming business has sorted itself out.
https://petapixel.com/2014/12/15/ch...al-camera-sales-getting-hammered-smartphones/
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