Ode to the noob

O

Ode

Member
Let's dispense with the obligatory self-effacing comments: hi. I'm Chris. I am a noob.

They say admitting it's the first step. Whew. I feel ten pounds lighter.

Ok, I've got an idea, a few bucks, some might say a wee bit of talent (others would disagree, so, take that with a lil' salt), and motivation. Gumption, baby. Gumption.

Sucker n' a dream. That's me. So, reality check aside, I'd like to start shooting for the stars (figuratively and literally I suppose) and I need you guys to give a fella a little bit of a hand. I have questions... and questions about what questions I should have... I'm sure you know the drill.

So let's get to know each other a little bit first, before we talk business. I gotta buy you a drink before we negotiate a price, if you know what I mean.

And if you do know what I mean, you naaaaaasty!

Anywho, say hello. And if you do, realize that you are also saying "Hi, I will absolutely spend large quantities of time answering any and all questions you have, as well as fielding inappropriately timed jokes and horrible puns."
 
You have to ask questions to receive answers.
But I guess.. it'd be obvious to ask you. Do you have a DVX?
 
Matt, you are wrong, he is using the wrong compression on output. Welcome Ode! Hey at least he didn't ask how to get rich now that he has a camera.

You sound like you understand more than many new members here. LOL, keep that sense of humor. You will need it. Things can get rough here.

As the self-appointed DVXUser ambassador to the new members (just now, appointed myself to this high paying job), always think before you post or respond to someone. Most people here will answer your questions honestly, give you good feedback, and try to generally help you out. But understand, many of the users here are pros, so always keep that in mind. They will give you advice in a nutshell, and to the uninitiated, it may seem harsh. But look past the language and see the intent.

Again, welcome, Ode.

Oh and one more thing. Watch the typos and syntax. (Gotta start them when they are young)
 
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Ode said:
Ok, I've got an idea, a few bucks, some might say a wee bit of talent.......
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So, you're new huh ???

And you got some cash too ????

Well what is it you need ???

I am sure I have at least a couple of those, whatever they are, that were only used by a little old lady to shoot Sunday services.

Just send all your cash with your list and watch your mailbox because I'll ship it out Special D !!!!!!
 
A: Nothing's broke, it's the optical stabilizer.
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LOL. Just spit my beverage all over the keyboard.

And welcome Ode.

Hudson's right on.

Every DVX new member should know.

1.) The clicking is normal
2.) And Barry summed all the rest of the info up in a great post - Quoted

Since some of our new members (and our existing members) may not be aware of the forum guidelines and the general policies that govern DVXUser.com,
this post is meant to point out the official guidelines, as well as the more informal "Eight P's".

For the official guidelines, please see the forum announcement at:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/announcement.php?f=81

For a very brief (and more tongue-in-cheek) summary, we also have a list of guidelines of, well, basically stuff that we don't put up with :)
Most users are quite familiar with these, but some may not be. These are pretty much the unwritten rules. Er, well, not anymore... :)

We've occasionally made informal references to the various "P"s, but it hasn't been officially codified, and it's about time it was. So, without further adieu, here are the Eight P's:

1. No Politics
We've tried it and it doesn't work. There are many other sites where you can discuss politics, just not this one.

2. No Pornography
Please don’t post any images or links to images with explicit sexual content -- Nudity in still images is not acceptable. Links to films that contain nudity are acceptable as long as the post is appropriately labeled for content. Links to any pornographic content are unacceptable. In addition, discussion of pornographic films, websites, the business of producing it, the morals of it, etc are not welcome here.

3. No Personal Attacks
Personal insults of any sort are not tolerated. If you feel another user’s post is inappropriate, please report the post or contact a moderator. Participating in a flame war is uncool even if someone else started it—and just like mom and dad, we’ll give you both timeouts.

4. No Prosletyzing
Just like politics - we've tried it and it doesn't work. There are many other sites where you can discuss religion, just not this one.

5. No Piracy
We’re a community of content creators, so don't post about how to rip off other content creators or endorsing it or posting bittorrent links. No cracks, hacks, warez, any of that. It's illegal, it's immoral, and it's not welcome here.

6. No Profiteering
Please don’t try selling your products here unless you're an official site sponsor. It costs a lot of money to administer this site, those costs are defrayed by our sponsors, and it's not fair to paying sponsors to have people using the site they pay for used to promote other products. This means no commercial signatures and no advertising, unless you're an official DVXUser site sponsor. Uncleared advertisement signatures and posts will be removed. Those wanting to become site sponsors should contact Jason Ramsey at advertising@dvxuser.com

7. No Poaching
If you have something to contribute to the community, please contribute it here, don't just say "hey everyone, look what's going on over on my own site." That's just a lame way of trying to build your own site up by poaching our members, and it's just not cool. Don't be a "taker", be a contributor.

8. No Pi$$ing In The Pool
Trolling, Baiting, Complaining and beating dead horses is like urinating in the pool -- it may make you feel good, but it kind of ruins it for everyone else.​
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Please read the 8P's three times to get the desired 24P. It will ultimately help your video look more like film.
 
Thank you one and all for the wit and conviviality. I'll go on record now (and probably much to my future dismay) as saying that I've quite a few years under my belt in discussion board moderation and conversation, so if I violate any basic rules of etiquette please, feel free to slander me accordingly.

Before I go any further, let me check that optical thinga-majig...
hrm. Wasn't that. Heh.

Ok! Allow me to explain...

...no, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry Humperdink in little less than half an hour, ...

eesh. Two points for anyone who puts up with that quote.


So as I was saying, let's outline the premise.

Got a few bucks. Let's roughly say.. between $6,000 USD and $10,000 USD.
I have access to a word processor and an idea, so a script will be forthcoming.
I believe that the endgame for this will be a mini-series of small, up-to-half-hour shows for a premise that I personally believe has long-term (possibly commercial) potential.
I have access to a handful of talented actors and actresses, as I reside near a school with an acceptable acting program.


Nooooow, to answer someone's question... no. I do not currently own a dvx. I've been doing about a month's worth of research, so I know just enough to know that there is a voluminous amount of data I need to be able to synthesize. I am not asking all the good folk here to do it for me, but to possibly offer any off-the-cuff advice and directions to the nearest best resources. I've ordered a few books I've seen some folks recommend here, and I've ordered a few that I saw when looking around. I've been reading up on e-village how-to videos and doing as much personal research as I can.

I'm not looking to do this fast and easy. No loosey-goosey, I.

I'm considering the possibility of transitioning from a lurcrative computer science field/career into art because I am truly passionate about it, and yadda yadda yadda (don't want to get too heavy here, let's keep it light).

But yeah, I'm serious about it.

I'd like to first start looking into the equipment I might need/want to purchase. I am assuming that I might want a different "starter kit" to film, say, an independent film versus a "starter kit" that would work for a serial, episodic type deal.

My initial thoughts were for purchase of a Panasonic AG-HMC 40 HD camera, and then build the kit from there.


I would have posted this in the appropriate topics, but to be honest I'm trying to cheat a little and keep all quesitons associated with what is admittedly an entirely personal project in the same space. Rather than have to go to a half-dozen boards and repeat the intro of "Hey, starting a kit based on such-and-such a camera, what audio/lighting/etc do I need?"

Admittedly I would have posted it in a blog of some sort, but I for the life of me could not figure out how to post to it.
 
I'm going to give you some of my "brutal honesty"... which isn't brutal, but the world as I see it... i.e. my potentially valuable, possibly worthless opinion.

Do NOT put that money into anything more then the cheapest equipment that will capture image and reasonable sound (yet)... Get to working on that script and great idea... and consider using some of that cash for 1 or 2 Sennheiser G3 wireless sets w/ Sanken cos11 lavs (from Guy at DVestore) for audio. Why? Because you can feed audio into even the cheapest camera with this, and audio is the ONLY thing in your kit that won't go obsolete overnight... forget booming, or on-cam mic, etc. because you don't need a cam which can support anything beyond mic level audio recorded at a safe level and divided into 2 channels (via a 2x 1/8 mono F to 1x 1/8 stereo M adapter cable from radio shack). I suggest you bite the bullet on a mid-grade wireless right off because it will maintain it's value for probably 5 - 10 years... and bite the bullet on the lavs because they sound better then anything else and the sankens are about the only lavs out there that an amateur can somewhat predictably hide under clothing and not ruin the audio. (otherwise start off with the included lav mics and build your skill in rigging as quick as you can).

Frankly... even THIS step is optional, but the reason I push it isn't just because I'm a soundguy, but because sound is the one thing that kills almost all attempts at anything even remotely serious. If you forego sound quality you can still make it, but your idea will have to be SO clever as to transcend minimum production expectations... and go viral on youtube anyway. Watch some youtube for a while and you'll see a glut of built-in cam mic videos which could never deliver any drama or complex dialog which is the basis of delivering a story of drama, etc. (The way around this is to write narratives and record the audio into the cam separately later, by holding the cam a few inches from your mouth as if it were a microphone only... then taking that audio and laying it on the visuals.)

This ties in to my next bit of advice... youtube. It is fortunate (unfortunate?) that youtube and other internet video sites are a reasonable barometer of your likelihood of commercial success. Sure, your majority audience is probably 12-14 year olds, but there's still no getting big numbers w/o proving the intrinsic cash value in your ideas.

So... produce FOR the internet format, initially. I'm taking a couple steps backward in my view of how to really make it... and following this same advice myself. If you can't compel a large number of people with a 3 minute attention span, how do you expect to get investors or achieve commercial success in even a 22 minute serial format?

Sure, you can imagine yourself "winning the lottery" as it seems almost everybody does (imagines it, doesn't win it) with an instant smash hit success... but if you came here for advice mine is this... produce as much content as you can, for a short-attention span target audience, to be put on the internet... you can break longer stories down into parts, proving your writing skill by making sure that at the end of a 10 minute chunk there's enough intrigue to move the viewer on to part 2, 3, etc.

Doing this requires NOTHING other then the bare minimum of production equipment... i.e. the cheapest camera(s) you can get your hands on... ordinary lights from the hardware store or that are already existent in your house right now... and intelligible audio (which is the toughest challenge for people and why I suggest you consider spending a little on audio FIRST, before you look too hard at a pro-sumer camera option)...

Ultimately... when it comes to quality of the visuals... LIGHT IS EVERYTHING... when it comes to making or breaking the viewer's ability to accept the illusion of production = reality... SOUND is even more important then a well-lit image... and finally... what trumps EVERYTHING else... is CONTENT... which is why people say CONTENT IS KING... with proper content you can overcome ALL the other obstacles... with proper content you can prove yourself a viable candidate for investment by proving your ideas, valuable MIND, and the ability to translate that into tangible TALENT.

People invest in proven talent. It doesn't cost virtually anything to prove ABILITY. Video on the internet is a great equalizer... a democracy to prove the ability to compel or INTRIGUE an audience whereby the proof is in the hits.

I actually have a lot more to say about this... but this is getting pretty damn long.
 
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Thankya kindly, Matt. A few things are good new info, a few things I suspected or knew, and a few things I've got to go do some research on.

The sound thing I had heard (from a lighting professor, no less) before and had every intention of spending a fair amount.
Now, at the risk of seeming completely incompetent or lacking in awareness, I had read a little bit about a good shotgun mic... but your comments on the lavs (and seeing as your other advice seems very cohesive and cogent) make me think.

You really think that some mid-grade lavs are a better choice than getting a guy to do boom work with, say, a 1200 dollar sennheiser mic? (I admit I don't know if a 1200 dollar sennheiser mic is of mid quality or what have you, but the reviews on bhphoto seem fairly positive, and it apparently is used in Warner studios, etc.)

If you don't mind I'd really like to pick your brain on this aspect for a bit, as I realize that sound is probably the biggest technical hurdle as well as requirement for quality product, followed shortly after by lighting (which I'm going to have to learn a helluva lot about as well).
 
Thanks for that link, milk, though that fellow and I are not quite in the same boat, it was definitely some food for thought. Much obliged mate.
S'pose I should clarify... I'm sure as hell not gonna give up my day job until I am reasonably certain I have enough to make a living on in the acting/filmmaking world.
Don't get me wrong: I'm passionate about art.


I am more passionate about eating.
Kind of.

...guess it depends on what's for dinner. What're you serving, Mr. milk?
 
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If I were you I'd parlay your computer science knowledge into working with CGI, and get into filmmaking that way. With the way things are going everything is going to be CG eventually. These guys got a 30 million dollar deal just off this vid mostly because of their CG skills--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk
 
That's a pretty phenomenal video, Batutta... alas, my own skills in programming are application-oriented. I suppose I could learn the CG area, but truly my heart's in acting, directing... that sort of thing. But it's definitely an avenue to consider, thanks.
 
Ode said:
That's a pretty phenomenal video, Batutta... alas, my own skills in programming are application-oriented. I suppose I could learn the CG area, but truly my heart's in acting, directing... that sort of thing. But it's definitely an avenue to consider, thanks.
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If you are able to merge the two that would give you a leg up. Neil Blokamp (the director of District 9), also started in visual fx.
 
Batutta said:
If I were you I'd parlay your computer science knowledge into working with CGI, and get into filmmaking that way. With the way things are going everything is going to be CG eventually.
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No, it will not all be CG eventually. Actual live, human actors will always have a place, and CG will always have its place.
 
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