When voting on a film...

I usually vote on the story/acting/crew's skills.....But mostly, the "look" the film comes out as (filmic, 24p, etc...)

Might be a bit bad...Haha. This fest I'll try to be more professional.

Robbie
 
If I know the film was shot with a RED camera I take off points!!

I'm just kidding,,,,,,,maybe
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
All things being equal, I'd love to see Zak walk away with this one with the D90. Just to show it can be done. Because it can.
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I do not expect my entry to place this year :) and that's fine. It's an honor just to lose to Matt Garrett.

but I do have a goal in mind and that is for all the Red One users to complain in subsequent fests that the D90 users have an unfair advantage.
 
Trust me, as I'm still shooting on a dvx-100a (although my friend just invested in a RED One, so I might get to play with that), I have the fear that my work will be looked at with lower regard than all of the more crisp HD renders that will be uploaded.

The bottom line: this is a load of crap. If dvxuser were a place in which people would judge my work because I'm still back in the SD world, I would be out of here in a heartbeat. Nobody needs that kind of belittlement and ridicule. If the story, acting, editing, and blocking are good, then the quality of the film will always be less important. JUST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD SOUND! Sound is SO important.
 
Zim said:
If I know the film was shot with a RED camera I take off points!!

I'm just kidding,,,,,,,maybe
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Honestly, I'm right there with you in a way. A lot of films I've seen that were shot on the RED One have ranged from mediocre to fair. The Twilight Fest winner was pretty solid, but, honestly, was a bit of a cop out in the end. Stunning amount of production value, GREAT lead actor, and a good brand of beer, but it felt just a little pastiche and unresolving.

I'm glad it placed since it covered the theme of the fest and all other aspects of filmmaking very well. But I can't help feel that there is a certain stigma attached to those who are still faithful to the dvx while those who shoot on the D90 or the RED will get unparalleled attention. It's kind of scary sometimes. :(

But, I'm just looking forward to seeing a good festival. Bring on the films!
 
puckthemad said:
Some of the results definitely skew towards the big cameras, but coincidentally, the same guys who entered using the RED were also excellent storytellers, good directors, DP.. whatever... or they simply had higher production values. One of the things I've noticed is that the ones with higher production values have better thought out stories, longer development processes AND they have longer shooting times. So some serious effort is going into some of these projects, as well as cash to pay for cast, crew and locations, but moreover, for production design.

Until some of us can afford to use the RED, the best we can do is ramp up our production quality by following some of the same development (story and otherwise), production timelines, and post-production processes, that some of the other productions are. It really does help to get a much better film in the end, one that people will forget for a time that wasn;t shot on RED.
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Precisely. Those who have, in a way, a fixed crew and high production value will more often than not fare better at these festivals because of the time, energy, and cash they can dedicate to the project. This has always intimidated me a bit, which may be why this is only my second attempt at a dvxuser fest. I'm confident in my film this time around, but there will always be a tinge of apprehension for me coming into something like this, and it's primarily because of the normative values and beliefs that float around here occasionally. Some of those values praise precision HD video, 35mm adapters, and kino flos. I have NONE of those! But I have been playing with the dvx for years and have recently been getting exquisite stuff from it for what it is. If you don't believe me, check out the edits for my "Reggio/Glass project" on vimeo (shameless plug: http://vimeo.com/user511902/videos).

You know, this almost makes me wish there were just a couple more categories/brackets that films could fit into; something to establish the type of productions, levels of professionalism involved, etc. Because there are always more amateurish films (don't worry, I don't mean that to be denigration, amateur means to do something for the love of it!) and those of higher production value, it seems silly to place them in the same running. It's a double standard, sort of like what women experience in patriarchy in which they must be supremely talented AND beautiful as a sex object to climb to the top of the status mountain.

And Freud would say this all stems from my unconscious desires to make good films and my unconscious fears of being given poor ratings for my work. But what did he know, anyway? :beer:
 
To me there are just too many factors that place one film above another. I Thought RPDM was a better movie than O2. But the technical aspects of 02 were astonishing. when I first saw Broadcast I said "this is gonna win" and I thought it should have won. Was it because of the RED? I don't think so. It was just a good movie. If that was not in the mix Antidepressence was king and teachers pet was prince IMO. I think Anti that was DVX100A if I remember right.

When I first joined I thought it was a popularity contest. then after my first fest I quickly learned the most notable filmmakers on this site can lose to anyone. The voting system can work for you or against you depending on how many people know you.

I think there are just wat too many factors to determine how films place, But at the end of the day I'm happy we have this arena to do battle in.
 
filthrich said:
To me there are just too many factors that place one film above another. I Thought RPDM was a better movie than O2. But the technical aspects of 02 were astonishing. when I first saw Broadcast I said "this is gonna win" and I thought it should have won. Was it because of the RED? I don't think so. It was just a good movie. If that was not in the mix Antidepressence was king and teachers pet was prince IMO. I think Anti that was DVX100A if I remember right.

When I first joined I thought it was a popularity contest. then after my first fest I quickly learned the most notable filmmakers on this site can lose to anyone. The voting system can work for you or against you depending on how many people know you.

I think there are just wat too many factors to determine how films place, But at the end of the day I'm happy we have this arena to do battle in.
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All valid points. I do, on the other hand, think that there are a certain amount of specific factors that tie into a film's placing in these contests outside of their storytelling and technical merits. It's not that I'm saying it's a popularity contest. Because as you already said, underdogs with less attention can take top spots. I guess I just wish that all who vote pay extra attention to be as objective as possible and try to forget how many times they gushed over someone's film in their individual film promotion thread and decide: did this film engage me? Was it exciting to watch? Were the actors good? Did they use music, and if so, was it effective? Are the sound and picture tight? If we could do that, we would most certainly eliminate some bias from the ratings.

But hey, bias will be involved in almost anything unless you have complete strangers pick the winners. And even then, something in their own life will make them bias toward one film or the other. Thus, being objective is really subjectivity, and I just neutralized my whole argument, haha.
 
One thing that I also take into account when voting.... have I seen this film before? There are a few films in every Fest that are just remakes of films we have all seen before. Some almost direct copies. I tend to rate those lower.

Originality counts in my book. :thumbup:

Others may and do disagree. :D
 
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Michael Anthony Horrigan said:
One thing that I also take into account when voting.... have I seen this film before? There are a few films in every Fest that are just remakes of films we have all seen before. Some almost direct copies. I tend to rate those lower.

Originality counts in my book. :thumbup:

Others may and do disagree. :D
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I completely agree. But then we also have to make sure that we recognize that the film, if borrowing a thematic element or stylistic element from another film, still probably deserves credit somewhere.

This is a problem I had with Broadcast. It was a tremendous piece of work, but it just felt so influenced by 28 Days Later specifically, and a few other post-apocalypse films indirectly. But, that's all part of the genre.

It happens in the professional world as well. Lots of highly-regarded works that I can think of off of the top of my head borrow a lot from other films. So it's more or less about finding the balance between a trite, pastiche rip-off, and something that pays homage to a great film and changes the elements to make it something different.
 
filthrich said:
To me there are just too many factors that place one film above another. I Thought RPDM was a better movie than O2. But the technical aspects of 02 were astonishing. when I first saw Broadcast I said "this is gonna win" and I thought it should have won. Was it because of the RED? I don't think so. It was just a good movie. If that was not in the mix Antidepressence was king and teachers pet was prince IMO. I think Anti that was DVX100A if I remember right.
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Thanks for your kind words.
Anti De Presence was shot on the dvx100b (with adapter), and combined with my lack of CC skills, the choice of red/orange colors and other things, I wasn't very pleased with the final image quality, and the movie is definitely lacking in that department.

This Technical-Art that we pound our heads around trying to perfect is one of the most challenging there is. I think we should take into account all of the aspects of the movie when voting, but I'll still take a flick with a great story over one that looks good any day.

Good luck everyone! (Maybe all the entries shot on RED should get a 1 star deduction....:Drogar-Evil(DBG):)
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
but shooting on Red could just be one thing in a long laundry list of things that the teams using it weren't willing to compromise on, or set the bar extremely high for...
Now temper that with the fact that Jason won 2nd in Love Fest (after a piece shot on Red) with basically one camera set up and an HVX...
All things being equal, I'd love to see Zak walk away with this one with the D90. Just to show it can be done. Because it can....
If we can find the clip of Mark Johnson and I on the set of the spaceship from Dustin's time fest entry you can compare HVX and Red...
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Notice something here? This thread developed into, "Well maybe the HVX can hold up to the Red" sorta thing. That's not my point. All of these things are out of my financial league. You mention the HVX and the D90, others the HV20, all of which shoot HD.

You're busy comparing HD to the Red, which is not my point at all.
 
my line of thought has always been production value: what you put in front of the camera is going to pay for itself. If you have great set design, good actors, good script, everything coming together to make a good film (as well as great cinematography), then the camera doesn't matter at all. You could shoot on Hi-8 and it would still be effective.
 
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