Obsession with "The Industry"...

Ted Spencer said:
In all cases at all times professional production is about "what's the best way to get the best result considering all factors". So Nolan flipped a real truck but Cameron didn't breed actual 7' blue mutants. Quality of result vs hour/dollar consumed is the metric. The smart filmmaker uses whatever best solves that equation regardless of whether it's cutting edge or blunt instrument.
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Absolutely. And there will be times when "lighting in post" will even be a useful tool.

But you don't dismiss the orchestra just because you have a really bitchin' Casio keyboard.
 
Gary Huff said:
I don't know about that...those Casios are really sumthin'. :cheesy:
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There are subtle effects that an orchestra achieves that have not be encoded into synth or sampled sounds.

Oddly, while playing an instrument is based on 'accurate' timing... humans have slight variations, whereas the electronic version has none... unless some dithering is added to note parameters.

These are usually summed up in muscianspeak... although P. D. Q. Bach's great-great-great-great-great-great...great grand daughter has made some contributions to this... I think she was 8 or 9 and
using an Apple ][...
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
GH2user, did you even conciser that maybe those "quack" directors were telling you that they want it more cinematic or professional because they didn't have the heart to tell you that your work sucks? What if what was going through their head was: man, those shots look like s**t, they are flatly lit with crappy composition and nonexistent camera dynamism, man what a bummer that we hired this guy, next time i really have to insist on proper budget for the DP because i'm fed up with this crappy lever of non-professional DSLR shooter work, good thing this is a short non-budgeter that no one will see... so let me be nice to this guy and say something that maybe, and just maybe will spark his creative juices... "Hey, can we make those shots more professional and cinematic?"
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Kholi said:
Likely the case.

There are tons of people who can't look at their work and see that it doesn't look anything like a major motion picture, or real commercial, so on and so forth. Not sure HOW that's possible, but it is...
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Gary Huff said:
I think Kholi's interpretation was spot on.
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Nope it was wrong. I said the direction DURING the initial meeting was that he wanted it "cinematic". He and the producer loved the images during shooting, but he pretended like the his "direction" of "I want it really cinematic" was the catalyst. Of course, when it was screened and people said "wow" you really have an eye for visuals, he took all the credit... when in reality, he didn't line up one shot. No one said the "direction" was good... just that it looked professional visually.

Then like I said earlier in the thread, some Disney affiliated producer just ok'ed my work for his friends Cannes bound short based on "work" they had seen. Not just a "hook-up" job. So I'm not just spewing non-sense. Im getting jobs because they like the work BEFOREHAND. How else do people get work? Oh yea, this is hollywood... so their dad's friend or an uncle gets them an AC job right out of college or something.

I really just think that digital cinematography can be learned quickly these days, especially by even a moderately technical inclined director. I understand WHY a DP was needed in the past... they needed some on set who has had experience with the film stocks, lights, and has a feel for exposure. Because you couldn't see how it going to turn out until it was developed. This makes sense. But it's just so much easier now... exposure is real time. There's tech like RAW... where exposure and color are just meta-data, and are extremely flexible. So now when director claims "to have vision", I don't see the problem with handing them a camera and saying "prove it". Film is just such a visual art-form, where "how" something is shown is easily equal to the story and performances, that I feel modern directors (if they really have a vision) can save allot of time, and take their work to a higher level by being their own DP's... since it's much easier with modern digital cameras now.

Film's another story though. Should you have a DP with film? Absolutely, no arguments there. But that's film. Digital changes the game since you can see everything real-time. Which just shows that saying "that's how they've always done it" isn't vilid proof for an argument about how someone SHOULD make films in the future. It only valid for discussion about HOW do people make films currently.

I have a friend who did a bunch of PA work for RSA and he said the quickest and easiest shoot he was on was a car commercial where some german director insisted on being his own DP. He would set up the camera and then BAM, on to the next shot... because he KNEW what he wanted before hand, there was no waiting for a DP to set up a shot that the director liked. He saw what he wanted, and shot it. The shoot ended up taking half the time and came in under budget, when the producers apparently fought the idea of him being his own DP in the first place. It just makes sense the more jobs you can consolidate, the less "clustered" a shoot becomes and you can do more for less. I think it's the future.
 
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GH2user said:
Which just shows that saying "that's how they've always done it" isn't vilid proof for an argument about how someone SHOULD make films in the future.
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If you think that's what people are saying, then you're not reading very carefully, which may possibly be willful.
 
GH2user said:

Film is just such a visual art-form, where "how" something is shown is easily equal to the story and performances, that I feel modern directors (if they really have a vision) can save allot of time, and take their work to a higher level by being their own DP's...
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Right and wrong at the same time: If we talk about feature length movies, then film basically first and foremost is a dramatic art form with a strong visual aspect. In it's base - and that is why it works if it works - a movie needs a consecutive, attractive, interesting story which is performed by actors in a believable way which, altogether, is the first and most important role of a director to get these extremely moveable, volatile, changing elements into an order and rhythm.

This is clearly influenced strongly by the visual means by which this story is told, your "how". And "the how" will have repercussions, will change, will influence the other elements, yes, but: "A Clockwork Orange" did not work primarily because it was shot, for it's time, so extremely well but for the breathtaking story and the incredible cast and for it's extremely clever story-telling plus the "visuals" that added tremendously to it.

In Vimeo or Youtube on the other hand we stumble over tons of extremely well shot but not that very well written, not very well performed, not very well told videos. And this "kills" a story any time.

If cinematography would be so important to a movie as you make it, I'd think logic would demand that we more often would read that the cinematography did "kill" a film. While I do not read that so often (I doubt that I have read it once in my life) the only explanation for this would be that all the time all cinematographers perform their art perfectly. Which is doubtful at least in my experience.

All of this can be different as soon as we leave feature length and go to short form where good visuals may carry an audience longer.

p.s.: Kudos to you for taking on us "dinosaurs" here....
 
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Good points Tipota.

We are operating on the fallacy (in this argument) that cinematography IS the film (we're on a camera gearhead forum after all). When in reality it may be, in extreme cases 50% of the film, more often it's 15% or 20% of the film (to be generous). It's actually the aspect where you have the most room for error. A well written, well acted film with good audio can look pretty damn crappy and still be a "good" film. The most visually beautiful film ever shot can have bad acting OR a poorly written story OR terrible audio and it's pretty much instant garbage.
 
GH2user said:
Is it all scapegoatism to downplay the fact that maybe 4 people out of every generation are truly good at directing? I don't get it.
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OK, name your Four Directors from the 1980-2000 period, and I'll give you Four others who are twice as good.
 
gonzo_entertainment said:
We are operating on the fallacy (in this argument) that cinematography IS the film (we're on a camera gearhead forum after all).
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In film academy we sometimes would fight over who carried the Arri's because the girls all the time would assume at first glance that the guy with the machine makes the movie.... ;-)

gonzo_entertainment said:
The most visually beautiful film ever shot can have bad acting OR a poorly written story OR terrible audio and it's pretty much instant garbage.
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For me personally this was the case with GATTACA for instance. For what it wanted to be it seemed as if it was almost perfectly shot. But neither the characters nor the story would carry the audiences in Europe along (don't know how it did in the U.S.). I concede that good cinematography will at times hold a movie together that has big but not outright "deadly" faults elsewhere. But I have seen too many well shot films that imploded immediately while others that were shot rather uninspired would work like charm.

I fully expect to get killed for such statements, but as they say: No risk, no fun.... ;-)
 
LMAO, you brought GATTACA into this.

thats one of those movies that i watch every once in awhile, and i have no idea why

now, if you want a real pisser of an ethan hawk movie, have a gander at hamlet(2000)
 
tipota said:
I concede that good cinematography will at times hold a movie together that has big but not outright "deadly" faults elsewhere. But I have seen too many well shot films that imploded immediately while others that were shot rather uninspired would work like charm.

I fully expect to get killed for such statements, but as they say: No risk, no fun.... ;-)
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No, I think for the most part you're preachin' to the choir here, a few gear-oriented types notwithstanding...
 
imdjay said:
thats one of those movies that i watch every once in awhile, and i have no idea why
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I once in a while do watch movies again that really did not work because I honestly believe one can learn a lot from such films. I do not mean by that outright terrible movies. But one of the things we often tend to forget is that none of the participants in a film-gone-wrong awake before or during production in the morning and say: "Hey, let's all make a really bad movie for a change."

Very often highly intelligent, able, creative people will produce a strange, part time derelict of a movie (and I dearly know what I am talking about here..... ;-) ) which just does one thing not it rather should: work. So whenever something like that has happened I love to sift through the wreckage like someone from "CSI Hollywood" ( In my case CSI Berlin/Munich more often) and find out why people failed. To let it, if possible, not happen to me. And, while doing that, at least I for my part find wonderful parts that just did not fit, burned and bruised elements of pristine beauty, complex set ups that somehow exploded because the chemistry was not right or dismantled when being put under too much pressure.

And that leaves my respect for most of the people who worked on such films completely intact. Because in most cases they either had made working films before or would do that afterwards. And: Only people who have never stood themselves on the bridge of a ship in peril have no mercy for other captains or crew in the same position - not knowing will it swim or will it sink. There are real treasures to be found in wrecks. That's why I am a fan of professionally crashed films.
 
^ +1. There's a great deal to be learned from bad films, especially those made by A-List directors (like Spielberg's "Hook"). But lots to learn from lesser dogs as well. Great object lessons in what to be mindful of.

I agree we're pretty much all gonna make stinkers occasionally, but also that whatever we can learn about spotting ourselves doing it before it's too late is gonna be time well spent...
 
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"I once in a while do watch movies again that really did not work because I honestly believe one can learn a lot from such films."

That's how I watch every Lars Von Trier film.
 
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