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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Group huddle (personal advice)

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Holosynthetic

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As a person with a passion for film, acting, and story telling; I feel as if everyone here really understands my pain and suffering when it comes to buying equipment. I'm in a situation where I'm lucky enough to have the ability to purchase the things I want instead of only the necessities. I guess what I am really trying to get out is whether or not the rest of you would spend every last penny you had on the things that you believe in most, in this particular case, film. I hear about directors selling their houses in order to gather the funds to produce a picture show, a commitment not many people I know would share.

how far would you go to pursue your dreams in film? what would you sacrifice?

Those of you following the thread about the Elite s35 lenses will know what I go on about. Something to do with spending ~$40k or upwards of $100k for cine lenses
 
Wow, this is the kind of thing I've wanted to open a dialogue about, but have been to fearful of what people might actually say. I can imagine that there are a lot of different thoughts on this simply based on everybody's individual life experience.

I for one am one of those directors that put everything on the line to make my first feature. I didn't have a house, but I spent downpayment money on my movie, so I guess I gave up my house. :)

It took me many years to recover, so in real-world experience I wouldn't do it again...at least not the exact same way.

Passion is what passion is. If you're truly passionate about something then you can't run from it.

I'm not even concerned with whether or not I will ever achieve my highest, creative dream, but I have to keep trying. Actually, I make some shitty things from time to time, but passion won't let me sleep unless I keep trying. Every time I'm on a shot I end up wanting to kill somebody or myself and I swear I'll never do it again, but passion won't let me stop.

So, I am willing to keep putting a lot out there to keep feeding the passion. My wife and I live pretty comfortably, but if it weren't for my film dreams, we could live even better, but I wouldn't have it any other way. My wife would (we're still arguing about RED), but I wouldn't.

We're actually just getting ready to downsize our lives considerably to allow more money for college funds and filmmaking, so I'm the wrong person to ask it you're trying to have some sense knocked into you. If you're looking for validation for chasing dreams that reasonable people should know not to chase, then I'm your man. :)

People are always on my case, because I want this camera and say that a director has no reason to spend $40k+ to have a camera that I only hope to learn to use. They're absolutely right...and I don't care. I could be driving a Porsche instead and rent my cameras and gear when i need it, but I have control issues. :) I also want to be reminded of my passion every time I get in my non-Porsche car and drive off to work on a project. We are all motivated in different way.

As for the lens issue, i feel that there are plenty of good options out there for imaging that would please 95% of people watching your end product. So, get some nice lenses and shoot away, but when needed go and rent the really high-end kit.

That said, if you're anything like me you'll not pay a bit of attention to my opinion. :)

Jason
 
Believing is good.
If you really believe you will do everything else you have to.
Knowledge, experience......
After believing you will need the will power. Don't think it will be easy. It won't. Nothing really good comes easy.
If it did you wouldn't value it so much. food for thoughts

Many people discard their dreams because that's the easier way.
Dreams don't come cheap.

What others would sacrifice has nothing to do with you.
Their priorities aren't the same as yours. You have to set your own plans, goals and boundaries.

The more objective you are in doing that, the higher chances are you will succeed.
 
I'm 27 years old and I've never owned a car. I used to have an awesome surround sound speaker system (B&W Nautilus 802's, 805's, and HTM2), a 50" HDTV, and a premium digital cable service. Now I watch the absolute cheapest basic cable TV, on a 10 year old CRT computer monitor with headphones for speakers. Pretty substantial sacrifice when you consider my friends are getting new HDTV's, HD Satellite service with all the premium channels, and then sitting around playing Playstation 3 all day.

I decided to save all my money and buy all the equipment necessary to start my own production company. I plan on purchasing all the equipment upfront by myself. Only the best quality equipment, and only the necessities. If the business fails, I can do whatever I want with the equipment. Clients will pay to have their projects produced by my production company, and that money will pay my employees weekly wages. When not working on projects for clients, my employees will be working on my own movie. Investors will pay for actors, props, location shoots, promotion, etc., for my own movie. I have my own other source of income from the freelance typesetting work I do currently to pay for everything else (rent, bills, insurance, craft services, etc.).

Looking to specialize in vfx greenscreen shoots and post-production. I am also looking to purchase a motion control rig like the Mark Roberts UltiHead http://www.mrmoco.com/index2.htm with track, lift, roll, remote head with follow focus. But I'm hoping Curt will come up with something as good for a much cheaper price. I will probably spend over 100k on gear, and another 50k+ when something like the 25kW SES Dish Stirling system http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ is available to small businesses.

I do have a little experience with greenscreen studio shoots, motion tracking data in Maya, 3D backgrounds, rotoscoping, supercloning, and compositing, etc. I used to work on post-production for a TV show ("The Book of Pooh") on the Playhouse Disney channel. I've done a few freelance post-production jobs from home since then, including the Fisher Price Little People series that comes with the toys.
 
I have been doing this for 27 years, so many of you were babies when I started....I have many friends who wanted to be the next Spielberg and spent every dime they had on their film. Most never recovered from that experience and many left the business altogether. I do remember one guy from the early 90's who did it one step at a time. He is the guy who created Jimmy Neutron and just directed Ant Bully for Tom Hanks. He used to do some low-budget animation's for us. I am still looking around for the cell artwork they did of a BlockBuster internal video we produced. The gear will only get you so far. Once you buy the gear it is only worth what you can produce with it. In 3 years that shiny new RED will be a paperweight. At least I hope it can be upgraded as opposed to sell it for $1500 and get the RED2. My first BetaCam cost $35,000 in 1985. Then in 1990 it was another $75,000 for an edit bay. And every year a new guy comes into the business with better toys. It never stops. So now all the HDCAM shooters and 35MM DP's are groaning about the RED. Some want to embrace this whole idea while others are pooping on the premise. Either way, I have my reservation in - but "the gear will only get you so far."
 
You don't have to eat kraft dinner for every meal to make it. Take one step at a time and do your best while taking those steps. Employers look for someone with a well balanced life for a reason, they make it.

Enjoy life don't put everything you have into your bussiness just get balanced and do your best. It takes a while but people make it.
 
Also, to be politely honest there is sharing. Maybe we don't need an uber-individualist community. Does everyone need to have their own RED and SuperComputers and Studio Monitors and etc. in an Indy community? (sure it's easier, but need?)


If you have a good indy community around there should be no reason why people couldn't help each other out; be it through the connections and resources of REDuser, DVXuser, or your neighborhood film students and producers. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. And if there's not a good indy community around you, no reason you couldn't help create one RIGHT NOW.

Or maybe that's just my misguided Midwestern sensibilities, or maybe I'm just a dirty Communist. Who knows.
 
xin said:
Also, to be politely honest there is sharing. Maybe we don't need an uber-individualist community. Does everyone need to have their own RED and SuperComputers and Studio Monitors and etc. in an Indy community? (sure it's easier, but need?)


If you have a good indy community around there should be no reason why people couldn't help each other out; be it through the connections and resources of REDuser, DVXuser, or your neighborhood film students and producers. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. And if there's not a good indy community around you, no reason you couldn't help create one RIGHT NOW.

Or maybe that's just my misguided Midwestern sensibilities, or maybe I'm just a dirty Communist. Who knows.
Click to expand...

It sounds really good in theory and it is a very valid idea. It's what I hope to do with my gear if I follow through on all this.

The problem with communism is that it doesn't take long for people to start getting greedy again and irrational in their entitlement, so then it ruins it for everybody.

We have a touch and go kind of indie community here in Phx, but I'm trying as hard as a can to put my energy in places that will make a difference and help those that are growing the community.

We'll see how it turns out.
 
i have a friend that has been homeless for 3 years .. lives out of his car ... any extra $$ he gets he spends it on a film doc project he's been working on the past 15 years ... he just got $10K from a estate ... he is using it to telecine 10,000ft of 16mm to tape, buy a laptop to edit ...he plans to stay living out of his car ...
at 56yrs my brian just can't imagine putting everything on the line ..
my current limit is around 60k .. ( think when i reserved at NAB i was thinkin around 40k) .... i have no plans to rent RED 103 so my brain just can't take the thought of 100k sitting in the closet !!!
 
xin said:
Also, to be politely honest there is sharing. Maybe we don't need an uber-individualist community. Does everyone need to have their own RED and SuperComputers and Studio Monitors and etc. in an Indy community? (sure it's easier, but need?)


If you have a good indy community around there should be no reason why people couldn't help each other out; be it through the connections and resources of REDuser, DVXuser, or your neighborhood film students and producers. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. And if there's not a good indy community around you, no reason you couldn't help create one RIGHT NOW.

Or maybe that's just my misguided Midwestern sensibilities, or maybe I'm just a dirty Communist. Who knows.
Click to expand...

I think many people share the similar idea,

but it takes only a few suckers to start missusing this community
and lazyness and greed kick in, which start the chain reaction
....and it all falls apart
 
donatello said:
i have a friend that has been homeless for 3 years .. lives out of his car ... any extra $$ he gets he spends it on a film doc project he's been working on the past 15 years ... he just got $10K from a estate ... he is using it to telecine 10,000ft of 16mm to tape, buy a laptop to edit ...he plans to stay living out of his car ...
at 56yrs my brian just can't imagine putting everything on the line ..
my current limit is around 60k .. ( think when i reserved at NAB i was thinkin around 40k) .... i have no plans to rent RED 103 so my brain just can't take the thought of 100k sitting in the closet !!!
Click to expand...

This guy must be hard core or be touched. Does he understand that when he is done with the film he will just get screwed over by the distributors....
He needs an independent rep who can sell the film so he can get a decent place to live.
 
I really appreciate everyone telling stories and being honest, thats what I wanted most out of this thread. Some of these stories really hit home with me, coming up later this year I will be selling some property on the east coast (I live on the west coast so its a hassle), and with that money all I can think about is buying the equipment I need so I don't have to sacrifice my vision.

I really like the idea of sharing, while it can be tricky I would love to see how it works out.

Eventually when I get a set of Zeiss Master Primes, I'll let someone borrow them with my supervision if they would do me the favor of helping me set up lighting and green screens for my short film...
 
T'is coincidental you bring this up now. On some other forums i've been seeing these very cynical and condescending posts about RED reservationists. I've wanted to respond there, but your post struck me as really honest, and hence a more apppropriate place.

Oft times, I feel out of the loop a bit too. It's hard to quantify a passion or put labels or qualifications on it, for me. Maybe it's something like Van Gogh spending hours in the fields waiting for the perfect light to touch his ideal, or Modigliani doing the same curve of a womans hip over and over until he's felt it captures the beauty of her expression. Perhaps, it's Mozart living without heat and spending what little meager earnings he had on pen and paper (he died in a paupers grave). By NO means would i compare my abilities with them, but there is a kinship to the desire to communicate, to elevate, and most of all to express our own understanding of the panoply of humanity.

Maybe it's because I started later in media - film making (hopefully), but once I knew that this passion i've had since i first felt another person/film maker "got" what my experience was like in life, was the only endeavour i wanted to pursue - there was no turning back, no detours or exceptions. For me, the sacrifice is not a pragmatic one, or even societally sanctioned (my family is full of dreamers and inventors). Like a drug addict i need to feed my habit.

Whereas others may tell you to start small and make baby steps to your goal, I am a firm believer that no one can tell you the path to take, for if it is a passion that can't be rationalized or objectively quantified, then the individual will always follow it, regardless. Take into account the absolute minimum to achieve your artistic goals (renting in some cases is better), spend your funds wisely, and enjoy the craft of creation. If it isn't that Van Gogh type passion, then there are myriad ways to achive your objectives as a working professional in the industry, for fortitude and perseverance are more important than anything else (this ain't rocket science its film making).

I can't tell you what type of gear to buy (although I think you may get the same results with a Russian lense kit at a tenth the price) but as someone who's moving into a smaller office, spending their savings, forgoing a fancy wedding, and a plethora of other sacrifices; I can dig where you're at. For me, if i can reach that one person who sees my film and says "yeah, that guy really gets what i've been through" or " there's poetry there to love", then the sacrifices would be worth it ...

Please forgive the long post, but some of these pros condesencion of others has bothered me for awhile. Especially when they assign psychological parameters to reservationists as if they could know what drives a person.

There's a couple quotes that sum up, the aforementioned, better than I could.



"I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
- Orson Welles

"It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer."
Berkeley, CA, 1911
-Teddy Roosevelt






:beer:
 
My sister wanted a laptop. As a the geek in the family, she turned to me for advice. I said, "Go to the Dell website, pick the absolutely cheapest laptop you can find, and do not, I repeat DO NOT, add on anything other than what is offered in the base price. All those extras are a devious trap." I told her she could meet her needs for $600. So what does she do? She buys this widescreen, dual-layer DVD burning, graphics processing powerhouse, and it cost her triple what I suggested. She doesn't use a tenth of what the computer can offer, and for that matter she doesn't even even have the need or know-how. She surfs the net and plays MP3's.

I see a lot of posts on DVXUser and RedUser telling people exactly what they "must" have for a workable Red system, with giant computers with raids and megastorage and six lenses and special tripods and matteboxes and lights and how it will all cost you $60,000 or more to even play the game. That is also a trap. I don't believe it for a second. I see these short films made with amazing equipment and top-notch effects and they are, for the most part, vacuous. Pretty but vacuous. And I see little films made with no equipment that blow my mind. I know, there's a balance--good equipment and production values AND a good concept/story/script will give you something that puts you on the map. But if you've never even shot a film, I believe the best thing you do with that cash from your east coast real estate is buy that Red and three Nikon primes and borrow or rent every last other item on an as-you-need-it basis.

Yes, I do say buy the Red. Because you're obviously passionate enough to be spending that new-found money on it over anything else. That's a good sign. And I do think having that expensive camera staring you in the face every morning will probably put a fire under your feet to get out and shoot something. And if it sucks, well, truly, $22,000 for a working camera so that you can explore a passion and a potential career isn't that much (for us spoiled North Americans). And the biggest reason for spending less not more right now: if you're any good as a filmmaker and continue to maintain this passion, you will REALLY want most of that cash to give you the time and resources to write and develop a script and throw a bit of money into the projects themselves. It's harder to do anything when you're working 9-6 to pay the rent; no amount of equipment will help you there. I took six months off to edit my first film that I shot with no dolley, borrowed lights and a DVX100A.

See there's nothing worse than having all these ideas for films and no resources to make them. So I say get the basics (not what some guys will tell you are the basics). I'm talking TRULY the basics. You don't need to master your first film in 4K and so you don't need a huge edit suite capable of 4K either. Not yet. As you grow, your equipment list can grow too.

The Red is most interesting to me because it straddles the DIY indie world and the pro world. Yes, George Lucas might shoot with it. But that doesn't mean you will use it the same way as George Lucas. Buy it with a filmmaking friend and you're suddenly looking at a great camera for around $11,000
 
I have no house

I have a wreck of a Jeep

I have no debt (now thats a bonus)

I have no wife

I have no Kids

I have no Plasma TV

I have no distractions

I have no vices (don't drink, don't smoke)

I am happy because.........

I do have vision

I do have ambition

I do have a (small) reputation

I do have belief

I do have the Ocean

I do have inner peace

My goal to achieve drives me above all other necessities.
 
"Does he understand that when he is done with the film he will just get screwed over by the distributors."

he's not expecting to make any $$ ...and i should say it is "art" to him ... he has his films over at Canyon Cinema Distribution ... he plans to send it to some film festivals ( that he considers ART film festivals - ann arbor film fest type ) ...

http://www.canyoncinema.com/contents.html
 
CamDiver, you're truly the man who has everything. Palau here I come. :-) Now if I only knew where the hell that was.
 
I really don't think this idea of putting everything on the line for your vision applies as much in a digital world. With film, if you really want to make a movie that nobody will fund, you go into debt, sell your stuff, etc. and spend the money on camera rental, film stock, telecine, opticals, whatever... and at the end (assuming your money actually holds out), you have a conformed negative, and basically nothing else. If someone comes along and buys the movie, great. If not, you're basically screwed.

Now, for less than the price of paying for all of the above for a single movie, you can buy a camera package and an editing system outright, and the only completely unavoidable per-feature cost becomes a couple thousand bucks worth of hard drives. If nobody buys your first feature, make another. And another. You own equipment which you can rent out during your downtime, and which can be used for whatever shooting or editing jobs you can find. And if you ever really decide to call it quits, you can probably sell your equipment for a decent fraction of what you paid for it.

While buying a Red package might still impose significant financial hardship on some people, when compared with throwing your entire net worth into making a 35mm film, with Red you're taking less risk and you have a much better chance of getting a return on your investment.
 
I`ve read that everyone in this forum is at different levels of commitment to their craft and or vision. I agree with Finner and also with finding a way to complete your vision without too much harm to yourself and those who care for you. Making the picture will not be easy. Making a great mass appeal film is very difficult they are far and few between the thousands made. Do you your best and get as much help as you can along the way. But remember we want you alive/sane/happy so we can learn and be enlightened by your vision.:)
 
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