The Last Straw

The Canon 7D is going to be the last straw for all the trades in the movie industry.

Why? The movie industry is going through a similar shift to effective zero cost like the music industry did in the last ten to fifteen years.

As five hundred dollar personal computers became professional level recording studios (with only the analog components such as microphones remaining expensive for true high end quality) the last hold record companies had on controlling the means of production disappeared. Once the means of production was democratized, the means of distribution was next, with the spread of MP3s. The people who are producing music now, I don't think they expect to get rich, but if they do, it is probably because of MP3 spreading their reputations not in spite of it.

Now, with the Canon 7D, super low light, shallow depth of field moviemaking will be available for less than 2000. The 1000 dollar iMac is your editing studio.

Costs are approaching zero, and a lot of people are being hurt. I certainly have felt the backlasj, but it doesn't matter, you can't stop it.

When I advertise on CL for someone to help me make zero-budget movies, and say I can't pay, the posts are immediately flagged and removed by bitter, out-of-work movie people. I have to guess they're out-of-work; because at 7 pm if they're not shooting or relieved they are getting out of work at a reasonable time, they are sitting around being pissed off.

This is understandable, they think I'm someone with money holding out on them, they mention "deserving" money. This just shows a lack of understanding of economics: no one is going to pay you to do something they can easily and and enjoyably do themselves. It's just like working on an assembly line for a car-maker in Detroit-- unions help you get a share of the profits-when there are profits-- I am not against unions at all. But when the company is corrupt--which I have to assume Detroit carmakers were since Toyotas last 3oo,000 miles and American cars were lasting say 80,000-- and I think the American engineers were as smart as the Toyota engineers and some kind of planned-obsolescence thieves must have been at the top in accounting or something, keeping the engineers from doing things right--- when a company is corrupt, there aren't going to be profits to share.

You can see a parallel process today in the lowest-common denominator movies that are made in Hollywood. Everything is about the return on this piece of junk, this time in many movies. Big explosions, dumb crap talking down to the audience. Like a flashy, lousy American car.

The system is corrupt, you can't depend on it to feed you. Time to build your own.


It's not just the camera that gets cheaper-- that already happened with the HDV -- it's the exponential reduction in all the ancillary people needed around the production that used to make everything so expensive.

Let's take a shoot I directed on a commuter ferry a while ago.

There was a lead actress and an actor. We had a medium size 1/3 inch HDV camera, and were shooting on the deck with available light. The crew was a little leery, but no one stopped us. No permits, no sound man, no craft crews for the sound man or lighting people who aren't there, as the crew sizes shrink all the ancillary services shrink.

As the equipment sizes shrink, who's going to know who's filming a movie? Everyone has a freaking camera. They can't make you get permits any more. You just look like a bunch of people walking around with SLRs.

As for lighting, get PAs to wear white jackets and make them into walking reflectors standing near the actors. I can get shots literally right on the steps of City Hall without a permit in the nastiest cities in America.


Now, with the 7D

salmon falls MTB director's ride clip

Salmon Falls is a very enjoyable place to bring inadequate water, ride and get heat exhaustion because you can just jump in the water. Don't ask me how I know.

Casting for Female Bike Racers or serious enthusiasts

We already have some amazingly accomplished racers, but want to try to get as many applicants as we can. If you love bicycling, like maxing out while hammering, and could race if you wanted to that is fine.

Shooting new short in Sacramento

16mm with CP-16r; see below. Great crew and godlike genius DP with decades with a "d" of experience in Hollywood.

Volunteers Wanted- Suicide Mission

I'm trying to talk a friend of mine with photographic knowledge into working on a zero-budget project I've written a script for.

I realized the best thing I can do is try to discourage him, because the honest likelihood is that the project will be too unrewarding for him. Not because he's lazy, but because he expects a reasonable return of enjoyment on his time.

Here's my suicide mission description:

It's FILM. If I buy "short ends" it's about
$35 per minute including film stock, processing, High Definition scanning to a hard drive.

But honestly now, are you really willing to free up whole weekends for something like this?

I'm learning being a director means being really blunt about, ultimately, my mission-over-people focus , because people whose commitment to a zero-budget film is shaky will definitely buckle under pressure, and they will remember they have something else to do like visit their cousins, or celebrate their boyfriend's birthday, and if that person is your cameraman or lead actress, the six or seven other cast/crew have just wasted a weekend of their lives.

So in a military sense a director has a responsibility to the dedicated to warn off the hobbyists, because if he doesn't the people who told everyone "Sorry, I have a shoot that weekend," will have had their time wasted.

Losing enthusiasm already , right?

Film is all about whole days completely devoted to the shoot. No energy or time before or afterwards that day for other stuff. There's too many people to get together, so once you do have them together, you have to go like hell.

I think you'd be a very pleasant person to work with, which is a HUGE thing under production stress, but " I can get there from 4 to 9" just isn't how zero budget, suicide-mission film production culture works. Hope you want to prove me wrong .

I plan on shooting every full moon weekend , starting the weekend before, starting in July.

The good part? All the film lab personnel are rooting for you because you stand between them and a counter job renting out the latest digital wonder that will look "just like film."

CP-16r is all manual and I have no idea how to do exposure. I think shutter speed is
fixed at about 1/48 or so , maybe 1/32 of a second--( cam speed norm is 24 FPS frames per second) -- the shutter opens for about half of the time each frame is in place.

So, taking the sunny 16 maxim, with 50 speed film ( Kodak 50d is a great, low-grain daylight film)
we would expose at f16 in bright daylight with 50 speed film. Overexposing gets higher color saturation, but I think you have to pay the lab more for "pull" processing.

I love learning the hard way, because not only do you figure out how dumb you are, everyone gets to say "I told you!"

No, the hard part is night exteriors. I think there is 500 speed black and white, so you've just got to get the brightest junk lights you can get. " 1,000,000 candlepower flashlights from Kragen auto at $24.95.

Oh, they only last about 15 minutes per charge. I learned the hard way.

It's better because it's MORE expensive, everybody has to focus more.

Rehearse, focus, GET THE TAKE.

WIth video it's , rehearse ( if you want ) try it ( well , you can always try again.)
Not like life at all.

The full moons this summer?

AC

Moon Phases, June 2009
Full Moon - June 7, 18:12
Last Quarter - June 15, 22:15
New Moon - June 22, 19:35
First Quarter - June 29, 11:28

Moon Phases, July 2009
Full Moon - July 7, 09:21
Last Quarter - July 15, 09:53
New Moon - July 22, 02:35
First Quarter - July 28, 22:00

Moon Phases, August 2009
Full Moon - August 6, 00:55
Last Quarter - August 13, 18:55
New Moon - August 20, 10:02
First Quarter - August 27, 11:42

Moon Phases, September 2009
Full Moon - September 4, 16:03
Last Quarter - September 12, 02:16
New Moon - September 18, 18:44
First Quarter - September 26, 04:50

Moon Phases, October 2009
Full Moon - October 4, 06:10
Last Quarter - October 11, 08:56
New Moon - October 18, 05:33
First Quarter - October 26, 00:42

Moon Phases, November 2009
Full Moon - November 2, 19:14
Last Quarter - November 9, 15:56
New Moon - November 16, 19:14
First Quarter - November 24, 21:39

Moon Phases, December 2009
Full Moon - December 2, 07:30
Last Quarter - December 9, 00:13
New Moon - December 16, 12:02
First Quarter - December 24, 17:36
Full Moon - December 31, 19:13 (blue moon)

NewOld Cam - +Thank you Mr. DiGiulio

I sold the Canon XH-A1, although with DP Michael Street we got some great footage for "A Meeting In A Dream", set in San Francisco. Despite his admirable efforts, sometimes it just didn't have the correct 70's magical realism vibe.

The dreams's supposed to be over, but I can't come back.

I'm waiting for [note have gotten! april 14th] delivery of a Cinema Products CP-16R from he early Seventies. ( Sept 22 2009, I've got it it, and the bills for the processing !)

The late Mr. Edmund DiGiulio, a graduate of Columbia University, who died in 2004, designed the camera.

No, film is it for now. I want to have a digicam for utility purposes, very cold weather-- getting the shot is more important than getting perfection everytime. And earthiness is all. And to have a shot is earthier than not to have. But film is touched, physically touched by light-- as are the sensors of a digicam, but the film preserves the light in its substance, it is permanently changed, as we are, by time.

Film is more like your body and my body.

I've know artists of all levels who've gone digital-- including myself.

A friend of mine, an accomplished painter, happily gave up the darkroom she had slaved in for years, Time is expensive, and so is film. $35 to $50 per minute for our 16mm format if you count the full cycle from film stock purchase to scanned material on our hard drive. Similarly, the only current Merkan film genius Davis Lynch, who'd sworn himself against apostasy, went to the Digital Side for "Inland Empire".

In my opinion, both the quality of my relatively unknown friend's, and of Mr Lynch's images declined substantially after deciding to use digital medium.

Are we supposed to extend the excuse? "Well, it was cheaper and more efficient"-- use the argument it would have been even worse if they had done film? Or what about this one which even causes my Barnum Generation Machine engine to quiver with overheating-- " It's worse, but it SHOULD have comc out better, so it's just as good even though it's worse."

Now that, even a gullible sucker like me can't swallow.

LET'S JUST FOR A SECOND LOOK AT WHAT CAME OUT BETTER?!

How can anyone compare the haunting lushness of "Mulholland Drive" with the grainy dithering (both plotwise and visually) of Inland Empire? To his credit, Mr. Lynch describes how video makes it easier to get into lengthier interaction with actors, thus getting better performances. But perhaps performances may suffer from that. What about the benefit of "This is it, right now-- the reel's almost out"-- the pressure that puts on us.

VIDEO ALLOWS US TO REPLACE SUBJECTIVE JUDGMENT WITH INTELLECTUAL, RATIONALISTIC " SHOULD BES".

Here are the should be's:

1) The image is predominantly similar to film, therefore the audience should not care. Probably true. The audience is just the idiot that pays us. Well, I have a another professiona and don't care what the blessed lintel dimwits that jerk off to Angelina jolie "think"-- such as it is. Hey, don't knock it if you haven't whacked it.

2) You have more TIME with digital. Both from the sense that you don't waste time because you can see when you have the shot, so you don't over shoot, and in the sense that you can try more BECAUSE IT'S CHEAP.

Can you IMAGINE MICHAELANGLEO TELLING THE MEDICI'S, " I don't think this paint really works as well, but it's CHEAPER."

DIGITAL IS BETTER BECAUSE IT"S MORE EXPENSIVE MORE UNRELIABLE, MORE ONE-TIME-ONLY , MORE LIKE LIFE.

That is a lot more like life really is. One chance. And the film runs out.

Time is expensive, maybe anything that drives that home for an artist, has potential value.

Here is Mr DiGiulio's obituary in the NY TImes. Thanks a lot for the camera.

Shooting in the Desert and the Search For Chaos

Shooting Location in the Desert

http://www.seeing-stars.com/OC/DesertMotel.shtml
http://www.filmsound.org/articles/designing_for_sound.htm
http://www.syncsoundcinema.com/2007/06/fifteen-drops-tabletten-ten_24.html

Pro Video Store in Los Angeles
samys.comWe might a rent a wide angle lens from them to capture near Joshua Tree National Monument vista.

All of this is changing. Everything is changing. It's the Law.