thoughts

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1. Save on food
   Budget properly for catering. The more so if your crew is underpaid. The more so, the longer the shoot is.
   Doesn’t cost much more, but does wonders for crew morale.
2. 16 hour days, 5 days a week
   Just because this film is the No.1 priority for you, doesn’t mean it is for everyone else on set. Not only does the crew have a right to a life as well, and not only do they need to be able to work on their next film, but overworking the crew makes you liable for accidents that may - and eventuall will - happen.
   If all these arguments don’t count: My experience is that 6 days with 16 hours are not more productive than 5 days with 10 hours.
3. Concentrate on the money shots
   While nice for marketing and your show-reel, the audience will only sit through your film if it is good in its entity, not just some scenes.
4. Who needs a DP - I can buy a camera instead?
   An experienced cameraman will free you to concentrate on telling the story by giving your actors good instructions. An experienced cameraman will speed up the production by knowing what to shoot, what will work visually, which lenses to use, which stock to use, and many more things that you have never heard of.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I was listening to tonights fireworks, I thought that for my generation (i.e. born after the 1940s), the sounds of firecrackers have a totally different meaning. For us these sounds are solely connected to joy. To my parent’s generation, they could mean destruction and death.

Wouldn’t it be great if there could come a time where to every single person on earth “war” was only an abstract word?

Thank you, past 

I also had a moment of utter gratefulness to all those generations having lived and strived before me, making it possible for me to live in such good conditions.

Thank you, people of the past.

And a healthy, exciting, creative MMIIX 2008 to all of you.

This weekend I got to see a fun film about the film business, The Last Shot (and don’t let the first 5 minutes of the film misguide you). Joe Devine pretends to be a movie director, and gets Steven Schats to believe that his film will be produced. At one point this dialogue entails between them:

Joe Devine: Have you actually seen a person die, watched them bleed to death, seen them take their last breath? I’ve seen that… many times.
Steven Schats: Why have you seen that?
Joe Devine: I used to produce music videos.

Which is especially funny if you have worked on music videos. Or pop promos as they are often referred to in the industry.

The types on a pop promo set

Pop promos are a totally different type of films from all the others; most notably there often isn’t a story, no one seems to worry about continuity, and generally there are 4 to 6 types of people on set: Read the rest of this entry »

A while ago, I wrote about the Red camera project. Now they have not only released some test films, but also a price list. But first a little note on the test films. Our editing station has two 24-inch monitors. Viewing the 1080p (not i!) resolution film fills out the whole screen. Every single pixel. Plain amazing! (just for comparison, here’s a link to a framegrab from a HDV camcorder) And this camera is capable of up to 2540p - i.e. more than 4 times the resolution of 1080p. (Framegrab, Framegrab 2-you see the structure of the mascara!)

Now I am really looking forward to trying out this baby. Luckily a guy I know has pre-ordered one, so hopefully I’ll be able to do some tests. But I am sure there’ll be lots of buzz around when this camera hits the sets.

¿Quanta costa?

But how much does this miracle of tech-specs cost? Well, let’s have a look at their price list, and put together a nice package to get us up and running: Read the rest of this entry »

— Sometimes we have failed, but at least we have learned from it.

— We haven’t failed, we just haven’t succeeded.

Such went a conversation I had with my wife today. And with this I want to salute all people who stick to their ideals, and don’t get discouraged by life, trouble, problems, clients, money (lack of), paperwork (lack of lack of), tiredness (plenty of). The last days and weeks have been very busy, crazy and exhausting. But we stick to our guns, and I prefer being tired from working long hours for something I belive in, rather than being tired from working 8 hours for something I couldn’t care less about.

Get up, stand up. Don’t give up the fight.

Have a good week.

Since some security guards do not value freedom of speech and love to stop photographers from doing their job, here is a downloadable “Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography” - which fits right into your wallet.

Very handy!

And a nice list on how to be creative:

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten