What are we doing? A semantic dilemma

Z

zaarc

Well-known member
It always annoyed me when people talked about 'filming' something when they were clearly using video. In my own vernacular I always made sure I distinguished between tape and film. But now we are not even using tape! So what do we call it when we are shooting onto SD cards. It seems kinda awkward to say we are digitizing an event, though that is probably the most accurate. I recently had a phone convo with my producer, and he suddenly became paranoid about using phrases like, "so, we will go over to the convention center and shoot some people there, and …." He was all like. 'what if the NSA is listening in on us?' so I said well what DO we call it then…if it isnt film and it isnt tape? He said….i dunno..capturing, maybe. But if we are worried about the NSA we don't want to be talking about CAPTURING PEOPLE either.

I know this is ridiculous, but…any thoughts? is there a verb form for 'film-like'?
 
You could just say "We will go over to the convention center and video some people" or "get video of some people," but...

Record
Tape
Film
Video
Shoot

They are all interchangeable nowadays. I delineate between film and video by saying "They shot that on film" or "They will shoot film" against "We will video" or "We will shoot on video."
 
theyve become arbitrary generic terms nowadays. i too dont like to say that i 'film' such and such, but when i refer to a job as 'shooting' clients think stills/photography, and 'video' as 'some guy with a cheap old handycam', so i say i 'film'.
 
Yea. As an addendum: I say I make 'films.' That typically clues the bystander into thinking of narratives, which is what I do and what I want them to think.

"Film" is probably the only word out of my short list above that invokes professionalism; the rest, like Zissou said, imply consumer quality.
 
zaarc said:
So what do we call it when we are shooting onto SD cards.
Click to expand...
I call it, shooting on SD cards. When the shoot is finished I'll have a bunch of footage on the SD card. If I dump the footage into a NLE and string out a bunch of the shots for delivery to the media I'll put a slate at the top that says B-Roll.
Regarding your producer friend it sounds like he needs to cut down on the cocaine and spy movies.
 
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