Did the DSLR's cause a revolution?

Revolution?

Yes. Absolutely.

Because an absolutely huge wave of individuals have crossed over the border of photography into video filmmaking. Complaining about it would be like resenting a tsunami. Every photographer I know is taking baby steps towards filmmaking. Montage today, small films tommorrow, longer films a couple of years from now. Vincent Laforet's cheap little "bad cologne advertisement" (to use his own words) - Reverie - was not valuable for it's content. It was valuable for what it meant symbolically. He did what a lot of other photographers have long been dreaming of doing.

If you are only looking at the tech specs, you are only seeing half the picture. The real truth is that it's about exposure and access. Something akin to opening the western passage up to new settlers. No one says the territory didn't exist before, but for the first time people could easily and cheaply go and stake their claim with their own resources. Sure there were plenty of adventurer's there before them, not to mention the natives, but for better or worse there was a new profile of the kind of individual that had come to take up residence.

So folks I might be arriving with only a horse and a wheelbarrow, but I have every intention of setting up digs.
 
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Stab said:
Ok after all your good replies, especially Barry's I am convinced it is a bad topic for a paper.
There is simply not enough evidence for the improvements in video camera's to lead to a revolution. After all, the camera / film is only a small percentage of the costs made in a movie thus not cutting much costs there. After thinking about it some more, I agree with Barry and DSLR's, AF-100's, F3's are just an improvement to video which is improving for decades. Soon enough it will surpass film in quality and ease of use, but then still not much will change I guess.

Someone maybe can shine a light on a similar topic that might be interesting enough to research and writer my thesis for? :)
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I think an interesting topic to dive into would be one that Barry touched upon....the not so gradual decline of a modern day person's attention span and how that has been fueled by technology as a whole. It's all around us....the not so mythic tale of a group of kids in a car texting each other rather than talking. People waiking in grocery stores "seemingly" talking to themselves, etc etc. Everybody's life on display on You Tube.
You could also do a section on how this has changed "ART" forever, because in many ways it has....and yes DSLRs are a part of that, just as are IPHONES, Flip Cams and many other new pieces of tech.
 
pulpfiction007 said:
I think an interesting topic to dive into would be one that Barry touched upon....the not so gradual decline of a modern day person's attention span and how that has been fueled by technology as a whole. It's all around us....the not so mythic tale of a group of kids in a car texting each other rather than talking. People waiking in grocery stores "seemingly" talking to themselves, etc etc. Everybody's life on display on You Tube.
You could also do a section on how this has changed "ART" forever, because in many ways it has....and yes DSLRs are a part of that, just as are IPHONES, Flip Cams and many other new pieces of tech.
Click to expand...
I personally think this is a fascinating and absolutely overwhelming trend. The nature of instantaneous communication is the real revolution we're experiencing. I don't know about you folks but I remember a time when you called someone and if they weren't home to answer the phone... well, you didn't talk to them that day. No answering machines, no texting, no caller-ID, no voice mail, no facebook, nothing like that. You called. If they didn't answer, well, that was that.

And that was the way the whole world worked.


Today, we have instantaneous communication that felled a dictator in about a seven-day period -- the facebook revolution in Egypt. Which has now spread to how many countries? Iran, Syria, Bahrain, and on and on... all because folks can now talk to each other, instantaneously.

Another thing I thought was rather interesting was that a revolution took place in media, and on one side you had the giants pushing blu-ray down the consumer's throats, saying that we wanted bigger and better and higher def and crisper... and on the other side, the people themselves spoke by turning YouTube into one of the biggest things the Internet has ever delivered. Proving pretty conclusively that people don't really go seeking after "higher quality" so much, as they do after "easier convenience." After five and a half years, blu-ray has finally penetrated maybe 17% of American households (and only if you count the PS3 as a blu-ray player). Whereas YouTube, seemingly "overnight", became a staple in how many households? 90%? I don't even know what the number is. And nobody was out there actively selling or pushing YouTube, it just... became huge, all on its own. People sought it out, while on the other side the biggest manufacturers and studios are all begging and pleading and pushing for us to adopt blu-ray, and the market has generally just shrugged its shoulders and said "meh." That, to me, is quite interesting. The people have spoken, and they chose the free/instantaneous/low-def channel instead of spending bucks on the biggest and "best" that the best in the world could make.
 
Barry, you dont have some research paper left somewhere in your 'my documents' folder that I can buy from you? :D
I really like your (intelligent) way of thinking.
 
I definitely think it made it easier and harder for someone like me... I make music videos for small budgets which are done with the aim of being on major tv stations... so now a band with $1000 - $3000 can either hire me to do it, or the guy who bought a 7D or T2i who doesn't know what a kino is... and I'm finding the average person can't tell the difference between crappy DSLR video and well produced DSLR video. They just think it looks pretty. So I think for people trying to stand out it's way harder as the sea level has risen drastically.
 
Barry_Green said:
I personally think this is a fascinating and absolutely overwhelming trend. The nature of instantaneous communication is the real revolution we're experiencing. I don't know about you folks but I remember a time when you called someone and if they weren't home to answer the phone... well, you didn't talk to them that day. No answering machines, no texting, no caller-ID, no voice mail, no facebook, nothing like that. You called. If they didn't answer, well, that was that.
Click to expand...


I remember that! ( just kidding remark omitted for safety!)

Remember when phone's had cords!?? CORDS!?!?
 
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Back on topic. Did video DSLR's cause a revolution? imo YES! It paved the way for large sensor camcorders.

(and please don't anybody start on about RED. This is sub $10,000 rig marketplace that is being referred to)
 
I think it helped as much as it hurt. It's another tool in the toolbox.

Where it helped was providing a tool that was inexpensive and provided good DOF and a small package so the little guy could actually gain access a bit easier into filmic territory. Where it hurt I think stems out of where it helped, since many people now hold a 5D in their hands and consider themselves a grand cinematographer because they can rack focus from one object to another. Since the camera handles available light well and is good in low light I think more people have gotten the idea that lighting isn't important. While you can definitely tell a story with available light, some of the ease of use the DSLR's have brought could be a reason so many don't excell since their equipment doesn't force them to.

DSLR's have definitely given lots of people a door into filmmaking but it's created a lot of pompous and misinformed egos out there in 20 year old bloggers who still think a DSLR is like shooting Kodak stock without a shred of difference since "I don't see a difference on my poorly calibrated LCD monitor."

I'll just stop myself there before I get in trouble. :)
 
I'm with yoclay.
Sure to make a film that "looks like a film" with good lighting, sound etc still costs money but the fact is you can now take baby steps. You can get a camera and lens under 1k that shoots incredible footage. I come from a fine art/photography background. Ten years ago I bought a miniDV camera to make "video art". Compared to the images I got with my still camera the images I got with the video camera were awful. Sure in retrospect I shouldn't have let the camera turn me off filmmaking but the fact is that people now look at what a sub 1k camera can do and go "wholly smokes! That looks amazing!" and they start shooting "montages" and start learning... and they come on here and learn some more... And just because they are not entering the competitions on here don't mean squat. Maybe they are posting their videos on Vimeo? Or they are still in the learning phase...

Is there a "revolution" going on? Yes I think so. Of course it does depend what you mean by "revolution" but if you mean in the sense that there is a big change going on that will dramatically alter the future of filmmaking then yes I think so. In the history of filmmaking there have been a few revolutions of this kind: sound being introduced being an obvious example. I think most people can't see it because we are in the heart of the hurricane.

Over the next few years more and more zero budget feature films will be made and you will watch them on websites rather than at the cinema. And they will get better and better. And eventually if you make a film like this that's any good you will earn money from Advertisements or people subscribing to a website or whatever.

I think this revolution might turn out in retrospect to be VERY important. God knows that film has been pretty average since the 70s when "art" became a dirty word.

Okay so maybe it's a revolution with a small "r" but it's going to be interesting.

Personally I don't see why I can't make a feature film every two years with no outside funding, paid for through my day job. The price of film alone would have made that a very difficult dream once upon a time. Sure I could have made a "credit card" feature but if it did no business I would have been in 30k debt and there wouldn't have been any more films...


yoclay said:
Revolution?

Yes. Absolutely.

Because an absolutely huge wave of individuals have crossed over the border of photography into video filmmaking. Complaining about it would be like resenting a tsunami. Every photographer I know is taking baby steps towards filmmaking. Montage today, small films tommorrow, longer films a couple of years from now. Vincent Laforet's cheap little "bad cologne advertisement" (to use his own words) - Reverie - was not valuable for it's content. It was valuable for what it meant symbolically. He did what a lot of other photographers have long been dreaming of doing.

If you are only looking at the tech specs, you are only seeing half the picture. The real truth is that it's about exposure and access. Something akin to opening the western passage up to new settlers. No one says the territory didn't exist before, but for the first time people could easily and cheaply go and stake their claim with their own resources. Sure there were plenty of adventurer's there before them, not to mention the natives, but for better or worse there was a new profile of the kind of individual that had come to take up residence.

So folks I might be arriving with only a horse and a wheelbarrow, but I have every intention of setting up digs.
Click to expand...
 
I think DSLR's are part of a bigger revolution in the music industry, newspaper industry, photography, publishing, computer application industry etc as well as Film and TV. The means of production and distribution are now very widespread. So we have moved from industries where a small number of full time "professionals" produced stuff, very large corporations controlled the industries through the control of physical product (CD's, Newspapers etc), and huge audiences of "consumers" watched stuff, listened to it, read it etc, - to a situation where we are all producers and consumers. Like on this website, we write the posts and we read the posts. In the moving picture space - camera phones, DSLR's, digital camcorders and NLE's are the tools of production - the internet the distribution channel.

Whether what we produce and consume is Samsara or Nirvana is another question.
 
Searcher said:
I'm with yoclay.
Sure to make a film that "looks like a film" with good lighting, sound etc still costs money but the fact is you can now take baby steps. You can get a camera and lens under 1k that shoots incredible footage. I come from a fine art/photography background. Ten years ago I bought a miniDV camera to make "video art". Compared to the images I got with my still camera the images I got with the video camera were awful. Sure in retrospect I shouldn't have let the camera turn me off filmmaking but the fact is that people now look at what a sub 1k camera can do and go "wholly smokes! That looks amazing!" and they start shooting "montages" and start learning... and they come on here and learn some more... And just because they are not entering the competitions on here don't mean squat. Maybe they are posting their videos on Vimeo? Or they are still in the learning phase...

Is there a "revolution" going on? Yes I think so. Of course it does depend what you mean by "revolution" but if you mean in the sense that there is a big change going on that will dramatically alter the future of filmmaking then yes I think so. In the history of filmmaking there have been a few revolutions of this kind: sound being introduced being an obvious example. I think most people can't see it because we are in the heart of the hurricane.

Over the next few years more and more zero budget feature films will be made and you will watch them on websites rather than at the cinema. And they will get better and better. And eventually if you make a film like this that's any good you will earn money from Advertisements or people subscribing to a website or whatever.

I think this revolution might turn out in retrospect to be VERY important. God knows that film has been pretty average since the 70s when "art" became a dirty word.

Okay so maybe it's a revolution with a small "r" but it's going to be interesting.

Personally I don't see why I can't make a feature film every two years with no outside funding, paid for through my day job. The price of film alone would have made that a very difficult dream once upon a time. Sure I could have made a "credit card" feature but if it did no business I would have been in 30k debt and there wouldn't have been any more films...
Click to expand...

I agree 1000000000000000000%
 
I think the worst thing about DSLR's is that most of the time, they're not good tools for beginning filmmakers based on how awful the picture styles are. The reality is that if the style is contrasty (realistic look) it sacrifices all sorts of blacks, and if it's flat, it doesn't look at all real. Weren't old HV Canon DVD-R camcorders better at light equality than DSLR's even are?
 
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