Major Site Changes Coming

[CharlesPapert]

The conversation of balancing the technical vs the artistic, from the sales pitch/interview for the job through the job itself is actually a topic I'd love to see explored more. Someone want to start it in a new thread?

 

[David Jimerson]

The conversation of balancing the technical vs the artistic, from the sales pitch/interview for the job through the job itself is actually a topic I'd love to see explored more. Someone want to start it in a new thread?

That's the point of the revamping, so we hope it will drive many conversations.

There's going to be a dedicated section, called the Business Office, which covers things like pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing, and so forth.

(And I don't know how many times we have to say it, there will still be technical and gear sections.)

 

[Doug Jensen]

(And I don't know how many times we have to say it, there will still be technical and gear sections.)

Yeah, but the problem is that you also said this . . . "We will be ending individual camera forums".

I think that is a source of a lot of questions and push back by the members. How the hell can you have a good forum if all camera-specific questions are crammed into one thread or category? The answer, is you can't. If I have questions about the Venice 2, I don't want to have to sift through a bunch of other posts about GoPros or some other camera that has nothing in common with it.

 

[Doug Jensen]

There's going to be a dedicated section, called the Business Office, which covers things like pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing, and so forth.

Well, I have owned production companies for more than 40 years and I can tell you that "pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing" have no relevance in my world of corporate video, TV sports, network news, reality shows, documentary, stock footage, etc. And I have zero interest in those topics. I can't speak for others, but I'll wager Run&Gun and a few other might say the same thing. I think we are more intersted in attracting, servicing, and retaining paying clients who will provide regular work for years and years. Totally different than "pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing"

I think you might be overestimating how many of the active members are trying to pull together some kind of indy film or pet project for festivals or something. That isn't our world. Some active members, yes, but I don't think most of us. So, the question is, are you going to be able to attract new members who care about pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing" to replace those of us who have no interest in the new topics and the elimination of the threads we did participate in? Be careful about throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Here's an idea. The American Film Market convention is happding the first week of November in Vegas. https://americanfilmmarket.com/
Let's take a poll and see how many, if any, DVXuser active members will be attending? I think that should tell you something about our areas of interest.
Who's going? Speak up.

 

[JAMedia]

I think that is a source of a lot of questions and push back by the members. How the hell can you have a good forum if all camera-specific questions are crammed into one thread or category? The answer, is you can't. If I have questions about the Venice 2, I don't want to have to sift through a bunch of other posts about GoPros or some other camera that has nothing in common with it.

agree. I don't want to wade through lots of posts to find info on a specific make/model of camera.
This forum has been a great resource of good technical advice. Mainly professional advice.

Most making videos are doing it for clients who judge the work. You would not be posting it openly before client approval. IE when it is finished,
The same with "Hollywood" films or documentaries. For Journalism and News .... It will go live long before you have time to post here.

So that leaves the amateur or low/no budget stuff. If there is a big influx of that it is likley the Professionals will go elsewhere.

However, given the apparent severe decline in activity on the forum it looks like it is dying so any thing you want to try you may as well do.
Kill or cure? (you will get blamed either way )

 

[JAMedia]

I think you might be overestimating how many of the active members are trying to pull together some kind of indy film or pet project for festivals or something. That isn't our world. Some active members, yes, but I don't think most of us.

I agree with you.

That said I am looking for funding for some projects but.... They don't fall into the "indy film or pet project for festivals" these are for a Heritage charity and the funding and pitching is for specific grants and the like. Which is covered in places like https://heritagetrustnetwork.org.uk/ not DVX.

It think if DVX takes the route suggested the current active members will disappear. It remains to be seen if DVX can attract enough new members to grow. So this might be kill or cure. As the site is slowing to a stop anyway there isn't much to loose.

 

[rob norton]

On the home page, 5 out of 12 sections are camera related (panasonic/HDLSR/sony/canon/other). They might just be planning on cleaning it up, where everything stays the same, but not on the home page, accessed via a catch-all "cameras" etc?

I find I exclusively use "New Posts", or google dvxuser + thread to find older threads, not much sifting.

There's going to be a dedicated section, called the Business Office, which covers things like pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing, and so forth.

In the spirit of the move you're going for (staying current, appealing to newcomers), is there room to tweak the title?

Business Office almost sounds like a joke. It goes without saying you conduct "business" in an office.

Is there something wrong with Pre Production, even if elements on either side of Production get their own sections e.g. pre production marketing, post production marketing (continuing the campaign)?

If you're going for a physical space vibe for an online platform (I'm a fan of the "cafe", but it's undeniably very "Cable Guy" (feels like it's from the 90s).

What about "office"? If comfortable giving up the physical aspect then "Business" works too.

 

[JAMedia]

It goes without saying you conduct "business" in an office.

Really? Maybe 20 years ago. The internet, cell phones, cheap powerful laptops, coffee shops with WiFi etc have changed all that. COVID gave it a push but many in this industry /these industries(?) rarely see the inside of an office. Much less work in one.

(I should probably have not had the last two drinks and gone to bed already)

 

[rob norton]

Really? Maybe 20 years ago. The internet, cell phones, cheap powerful laptops, coffee shops with WiFi etc have changed all that. COVID gave it a push but many in this industry /these industries(?) rarely see the inside of an office. Much less work in one.

(I should probably have not had the last two drinks and gone to bed already)

I didn't realise the statement was ambiguous til now! Work can happen in a variety of locations, and a space can only be an office if it gets worked in, which is why business office is redundant. It's like eating restaurant or exercise gym.

 

[David Jimerson]

On the home page, 5 out of 12 sections are camera related (panasonic/HDLSR/sony/canon/other). They might just be planning on cleaning it up, where everything stays the same, but not on the home page, accessed via a catch-all "cameras" etc?

I find I exclusively use "New Posts", or google dvxuser + thread to find older threads, not much sifting.


In the spirit of the move you're going for (staying current, appealing to newcomers), is there room to tweak the title?

Business Office almost sounds like a joke. It goes without saying you conduct "business" in an office.

Is there something wrong with Pre Production, even if elements on either side of Production get their own sections e.g. pre production marketing, post production marketing (continuing the campaign)?

If you're going for a physical space vibe for an online platform (I'm a fan of the "cafe", but it's undeniably very "Cable Guy" (feels like it's from the 90s).

What about "office"? If comfortable giving up the physical aspect then "Business" works too.

"Fix It In Pre" will be the title of the entire section. Business Office will be a subsection.

Other sections will be Writers Room, covering script writing, script breakdowns, screenwriting software, etc., and Previz Lab, covering storyboarding, shot design, production design, and related software.

 

[David Jimerson]

Well, I have owned production companies for more than 40 years and I can tell you that "pitching, budgeting, fundraising, distribution, marketing" have no relevance in my world of corporate video, TV sports, network news, reality shows, documentary, stock footage, etc. And I have zero interest in those topics.

Then don't read them.

 

[Doug Jensen]

Well, you might consider keeping the various camera forums and say the same thing to those who don't care about mastering their gear. Why remove sections? It makes no sense. Adding new things, sure, why not? But why get rid of stuff? As you rightly say, people can just choose not to read threads that don't interest them.

Mr. Nesmith, I have a feeling my presence here is coming to an end.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

Well, you might consider keeping the various camera forums and say the same thing to those who don't care about mastering their gear. Why remove sections? It makes no sense. Adding new things, sure, why not? But why get rid of stuff? As you rightly say, people can just choose not to read threads that don't interest them.

This. That's transitionary instead of exclusory. And then after testing the new forums if the new forums that are added blow up and DVXuser becomes a paradise of activity while the individual camera forums are a dead zone, at that point, consider consolidating the camera forums.

But to delete or consolidate the most popular forums now in hopes that these artsy filmmaker forums blow up in popularity is short sighted and disrespectful towards your contemporaries who are vastly voicing their opinions against it.

I've also always been of the opinion that it's better for a forum to slowly die than to change what it is in order to survive. Sure, DVXuser may get more members and activity if you changed it to TikTokDiscussions.com or JustinBeiberFans.com but at that point you'd really just be better off starting a whole new website. If your current core base is primarily interested in technical discussion and you personally want to run a website dedicated to filmmaking discussion, you could consider just starting a new website rather than alienating an entire community that has been around for years.


Didn't Jarred Land of Red own DVXuser? Nikon bought Red. So, Nikon owns DVXuser and this is all a ploy to sell more Nikon cameras?

 

[Zachadoodle]

I'm more of a Kinefinity guy than a RED guy actually.

 

[Tom Roper]

There have never been ads or sponsors that I am aware of, so the question arises who pays for hosting, domain, bandwidth etc. Jared's name is still listed so I would imagine it is him but he has no recent activity noted. So if it was Jimerson and his desire to have something more resembling of a Q & A blog site, then filtering to reduce bandwidth would be understandable to reduce cost. But if you look at the Articles section there hasn't been a post in 3 years and the last was a comprehensive part one on script writing by Jimerson that mentions a part two that doesn't seem to have happened. Now fast forward to now, and the members have been called out for having knee jerk reactions, which raises the question, what was the purpose for announcing the big change over the coming months if not to gauge reactions?

I have never been a fan of sites with over moderation. Chris Hurd has run a similar site for years, little to no activity probably for that reason. His intention of improving the S/N ratio was met by lowering the noise but so also the signal came down. You can just feel it coming here, Doug's sentiments, the administrator's advice to just not read it if you don't like it, while their right makes it abundantly clear the controlling will. It's not something I want to remain a part of, nor would anyone else care what I think so the advice applies here as well.

I concur with Eric and Doug, but it's not my worry. It's not the topics that brought me here. I enjoy reading member posts, regardless of the opinions expressed, with moderation only for the beligerents.

 

[David Jimerson]

So, Nikon owns DVXuser and this is all a ploy to sell more Nikon cameras?

No.

 

[David Jimerson]

Anyway . . . .

We created this thread with the intent to give everyone a heads up that site changes are coming, because just doing it would be massively disorienting.

We also had the intent of making things clear as we went along and when the specific changes were close to being implemented.

But a weird thing is happening in the thread, in that there a number of people taking things way out of context, or at least way out of proportion, and accusing us of doing a lot of things we have no plans to do, and others are seeing that and assuming these, in some cases fairly wild, characterizations are true.

They just aren't.

We are not eliminating technical talk. If all you want to do is talk about gear, you'll still be able to do it. If you want to mainly talk about cameras, you can do that, too.

In fact, we plan to make the camera chat section indexed and searchable for specific cameras. It's just not going to take up the screen real estate that it currently does, and it's going to be consolidated into something far more wieldy and manageable. Part of that WILL be taking the behemoth of camera sections and moving quite a lot of it to archives so that we can start with a fresher approach. Those threads will all still be accessible, so no information will be lost to any user. But there are a lot of dead branches needing pruning.

Because yes, it IS true that we want to shift the focus of the site away from being 90% gearhead talk and shift it back to what it originally made it a vibrant place, talking about the craft, art, technique, and just plain excitement of filmmaking.

We don't want someone searching for how to make films to be presented with a wall of mostly high-level camera talk when they get here. We want to present a place which is welcoming for users at every level, not just top-level pros.

And what we want, ideally, is to get someone new steeped in the technique of using a camera in general before getting into the technical details of specific cameras. We want them to learn how to shoot. Then they'll be in a better position to talk about the technical differences of equipment and cameras. And we want them to feel comfortable at any point along that journey.

I didn't really want to do this, because details are still being tweaked, but here's our high-level roadmap for site organization. There will be a prominent Gear Room section. There, there will be plenty of room for talk about gear, including cameras.



This being said, if anyone would like to suggest ways for organizing the camera chat section, we'll be happy to hear it.

I hope this helps make everything clearer.

 

[scorsesefan]

Yeah, many (not al) cameras today are good enough, but I think its a mistake to assume the operation, features, functions, etc. of every camera is the same as every other one. That's naive. Just because you can fly a single engine Cessna doesn't mean you understand a 747. And cameras are coming out with new stuff all the time that is important to understand BEFORE you shoot a bunch of crap and ask other people to comment on it. There's a lot of really bad information on social media and DVX is a place where people with a known reputation and experience can come and hammer things out. I predict this will be a misstep for the forum if you implement it and enforce what you have described. My 2 cents.

I agree with Doug. There are too many influencers out there pushing biased gear reviews on YT and the like. Dvxuser is one of the few resources out there for unbiased tech talk…

 

[NorBro]

I think many of us are mostly concerned with change than anything else because we've seen people mess stuff up for 40+ years.

Regarding this, we barely talk old cameras anyway. All of the juicy threads - when existent - are for new ones.

 

[David Jimerson]

I agree with Doug. There are too many influencers out there pushing biased gear reviews on YT and the like. Dvxuser is one of the few resources out there for unbiased tech talk…

And that won't change. But the site as it is isn't very friendly to the type of person watching those YouTube videos, and we want to make it so it is more so.