Hollywood Camera Work Dvd

Hi Kino Eye,

There's no reason for the price drop other than that $479 was always too expensive. Obviously, Hollywood Camera Work has taken tremendous effort to make, and it could only have been done on pure enthusiasm -- noone in their right mind would spend that amount of time and research creating a DVD set.

The logic behind the $479 price was that the nearest competitors charged around $389 for their filmmaking DVD sets, and it was a matter of pride that there was no way I would allow costing the same, as I think there's a world of difference in quality and level of ambition.

But in the two years it has been out, it has consistently bothered me that the price was just a little too high. First of all, people say all the time that before they bought the set, they felt it was too expensive (people are used to DVDs that are made in a weekend), but after they worked with the set, they felt it was a bargain. But first impressions matter, and it's been my feeling that regardless of quality, $479 is just a little bit too much for many people.

And I never wanted to put up a roadblock! The second logic was that for example schools (check out the list at http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/mc_testimonials.html) will expect an academic discount no matter what. If the price is $399, then they'll just expect 30% off of that. So we opted to leave the price at $479, give schools the 30%, and then be very liberal handing out discounts. This way, the price would maintain its dignity, but in reality, people would be able to get it cheaper.

But I'm surprised that even though it has been relatively easy to find discount on the internet (10 seconds on Google would locate one), it didn't occur to many people to look. So all they had to go on was $479, which is peanuts for DreamWorks Animation who have bought 10 copies, but not for someone else.

So I finally decided that the price had to be $399 -- so the DVDs wouldn't only sell to the absolutely most committed. And by the way, the set sells extremely well -- although almost everything is being put back into Visual Effects for Directors, which I hope will come out one day :) It's a gigantic project.

So pricing is really something you put a lot of thought into! Donald Trump says that "pricing is everything". In my opinion, Quality is probably everything, that's why these HCW DVDs take forever to come out, but after that, pricing probably IS everything. I wanted to lower it, so more people could simply say "what the heck, I'll get it", rather than have to think hard about it (which in the science of marketing is considered death).

I hope this answers your question, and I haven't given away things I shouldn't have!

Best,

Per
 
Hi Cynic821,

No, the price is $399, not $300. 30% discount is $120 off, so with the DVXUSER coupon, it's $279.

Best,

Per
 
Hi again Kino Eye,

By the way, I forgot to answer: No, there's not a new version coming out - except that at some point it will be subtitled in English, Spanish, French, German and Japanese. It's being requested all the time.

There will be an update at some point in the future, because I feel there are a couple of important things missing. But this will be a sort of 1.05 update, and the final version. I can't think of anything else missing. But there will be DVDs that branch out -- there's Steadicam, Helicopter/Aerial, Fight Staging DVDs in the pipeline. Actually, there's a ton in the pipeline, but I shouldn't say yet.

Best,

Per
 
God must be watching over me... I was going to order this sooner, but the
horrorfest put me out some money. I checked on this item today and bam,
nice savings. I ordered mine today. Thank you for the discount!

Sweet.
 
perholmes said:
Hi Cynic821,

No, the price is $399, not $300. 30% discount is $120 off, so with the DVXUSER coupon, it's $279.

Best,

Per
Click to expand...
That's a fantastic price. It was almost $500 when I bought it.
 
i would love this item but am wondering if my money will be better spent on a letus35?? i guess not BETTER spent... but you know what im getting at...
 
Hi Kyle,

Well, they're two very different investments. Certainly, at some point, you need 35mm-like depth of field, because the storytelling becomes entirely different. Actually, shallow depth of field brings so much to an image from a storytelling perspective, that the same framing you would have rejected as "something wrong with it" using a regular DV camera, suddenly becomes an excellent framing when the DOF is under your control. So it does make a difference, and in a sense, if you learned a lot of your framing techniques with a DV camera, you have to learn it all over, because things that didn't work before now do. With DOF under your control, you can make much more "ordinary" shot decisions, and really like the result.

Learning to block is an entirely different matter, and something you absolutely have to do whether you're a DP or a Director. For practical reasons, disorganized camera work is an enormous drain on your budget and shooting-schedule, but this is the language of visual storytelling -- a language that everyone understands but relatively few speak. As a Director, this is your primary responsibility (that, and working with the actors). As a DP, you have to know blocking if the Director doesn't, but your primary responsibility is the *look*, i.e. lighting and tone.

Whether you learn blocking with HCW, learn it by watching others, or just play around until you have enough techniques accumulated that you feel comfortably articulate when you're directing, I would absolutely make it a priority to get really good at blocking.

Regarding DOF adapters, you should know that the expense doesn't end there -- you have to get lenses and rails and follow-focus, and with that, your camera rig becomes heavier so you need a bigger dolly where the A/C can ride along. I've seen DOF adapters look great, although because of the way they work, they tend to flare up with heavy highlights, which happens often outdoors.

But regarding DOF, I think the main thing to consider is that the RED camera seems to have a 35mm exposure surface natively (the CCD is the right size), which means that you'll never need a DOF adapter again. The DOF adapters are meant to solve a problem that, bizarrely, none of the camera manufacturers have though important enough to solve -- that DOF on a 1/3" CCD stinks. I'm very happy to see camera manufacturers finally embrace a larger CCD, and with that, you can do 35mm storytelling on a digital format. But it also means that eventually, DOF adapters may become obsolete. On the other hand, 1/3" CCD probably won't go away for a long time, and DOF adapters will always improve that.

Best,

Per
 
I'm SO tempted to buy it! But judging from the samples... I don't own 4 cameras! =) I have a dolly that I built, I it certainly would be hard for the tripod to pan the camera left and right as the dolly was being pushed. I'm not sure but I think this dvd set would be more useful to me if I had the right gear.
 
Hi Kyle,

Just a quick note, HCW is all single-camera blocking. The reason that 4 (or 10) cameras are shown is that the best blocking comes when you think of the blocking as a multi-camera shoot, even though you're obviously shooting one camera at a time. But the course is strictly single-camera blocking -- otherwise, many of the "cameras" you see would be shooting each other.

One of things the course works with a lot is to learn to block in "parallel", which simply means that you're planning multiple camera sites at the same time, as opposed to breaking the scene up into a bunch of "snippets" that you glue back to back on the timeline. The latter could be called working "sequentially" (i.e. with a storyboard-mentality), because you're imagining the final cut, and then based on that you shoot all the short snippets that you need. Unfortunately, that often results in blocking that doesn't stick together, has *way* too many camera setups, and if a single shot fails, you possibly can't edit the scene (very bad). This approach also tends to force you to do locked shots, and not really utilize what's possible in blocking.

In parallel blocking, you're planning the scene *as if* it's a multi-camera shoot, which means that you have maybe 5 "cameras" that work together. So while you're shooting one of the cameras, you know in the back of your mind where all the other cameras are (e.g. "OK, this camera stays wide, and then pushes in halfway through, ending up matching the locked close-up I have from the other side"). You can only think like that when you've planned all the other cameras -- and even though you're shooting one at a time, you know where the other "cameras" are.

It's important to understand that you're almost always being forced to think in parallel, whether you know it or not. For example, if you're just shooting 2 over-the-shoulders and one master from the side, you're pretending that each of these cameras are shooting the exact same moment in time, even though they're shot hours or days apart. But since the actors repeat their performances, and you do everything else to maintain continuity, you effectively have the same thing as if you had shot the whole thing with 3 cameras to begin with -- but with the important exceptions that you can execute very complicated choreography because you get to do one camera at a time, that cameras can shoot each other because it's not actually a multi-camera shoot, and you get to tweak the lighting on a shot-by-shot basis, which is why film can do better lighting with *much* less equipment than if you were actually doing a multi-camera shoot. Besides that, blocking done from a parallel mindset becomes *much* more organic and fluid, and you can edit it almost any way you want -- the scene is covered from multiple positions that each have a small camera choreography, but even if a "camera" fails, you can edit it with the other "cameras". And finally, editing happens in the editing-suite as it should, instead of being done on the set without even having seen the performances -- that's what happens when a scene is shot sequentially based on a shot-list. Many people work like this (I guess because it's easier to visualize one shot at a time rather than 10 shots at a time), but I would submit that it hurts more than it helps. Sequential blocking is especially hard on actors, who never get up to speed -- it's very hard to act in 5 second spurts.

To use HCW, I would say that you have to at some point have a dolly. However, the first two DVDs are all static blocking, which is the foundation of all blocking, and you can do that with a tripod. Actually, you can learn a lot of line-management techniques with just static pictures from a digital camera.

If you make yourself skilled in static blocking, I think you'll find that a lot of dolly blocking techniques are a simple outgrowth of that. In fact, I think that too many people jump ahead to working with a dolly, but without the static blocking foundation underneath, they end up doing the same 2 or 3 techniques over and over. If you really make yourself good at static blocking, your dolly blocking will become much more sophisticated.

I hope this answers your questions!

Per
 
Bullocks! OK, this will be a very short rewrite:

The course is all about single-camera blocking -- the reason multiple cameras are shown at the same time is that it's better to think of the blocking *as if* you're doing multiple cameras at the same time.

Best,

Per
 
Hi again Kyle,

By the way, don't rush into buying anything. The DVXUSER Hollywood Camera Work discount will be around for a while. But especially, don't buy a DOF adapter without doing careful research, including finding out exactly which lenses fit, and what other equipment you need in order to use the adapter (it might be a lot).

Best,

Per
 
the letus is able to be attached without rails, and the biggest thing that confuses me is finding the right lens... i wish someone could pm me more specific answers (as i am lens-illiterate) -- i dont understand some of it.

this probably isn't the right thread for it, but... i've got the funds to start investing in the adapter and im sure i could get that hollywood dvd set for christmas. now i just need someone to tell me whether the basic letus35a is worth it - ive already got the upside-down image solved, just need to find a lens and the proper mountings... anyone?? i'd be greatly appreciative!
-kyle
 
Yes, for the DOF adapters, you can't just use any lens -- it has to be a lens that gives you access to especially the aperture from the outside, and many SLR lenses control the aperture electronically. There's probably plenty of discussion in other forum categories, and probably the manufacturer can make recommendations. We probably shouldn't discuss it in this thread, as it could get lengthy, and there are also people in this forum who could much more be considered experts.

Best,

Per
 
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