Peter Stepnoski
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 7, 2013
- Messages
- 81
- Reaction score
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- Points
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Introductions, my name is Peter Stepnoski, first post amongst the community and proud to become part of it.
It's been a over a year since I've been working with my Scarlet. Still surreal in many regards. Being a long time voyeur of this forum since it's early incarnations, I reveled in the idea that one day I'd have a tool at my disposal that would force me to be better. I was fortunate to cut my teeth in film - 16mm bolex and very limited actual 35mm. Started doing timelapse with a intervolometer motor on the Rex and discovered how thoughtful the process of creating images truly was.
It's the thoughtfulness I love - taking the time to respect your subject and the tools at your disposal.
Over the years, had many camera systems come and go, each one lampooning that the images were to be better, easier to acquire and edit in post. Especially with the boom of DSLR. I will never cut short just how amazing it is that a $3K device can pull off stunning images. I've created successful work from DSLR's. With a caveat that I didn't appreciate until recently. It seemed too easy, almost diluted. Throw a fast piece of glass on and you got extreme DOF and everyone on set thinks you're a master. Granted, it takes skill to make a provocative shot and it takes great post to utilize it correctly, but there was this almost an entitlement associated with just being able to get this cinematic look easily.
Then everything changed for me.
The Scarlet was forcing me to be thoughtful again. Shooting 1080p and knowing you're going to web allows certain liberties in production. Corners can be cut, it happens all the time. Rates go down, crew gets minimized and expectations inflate. With those shooting scenarios, I felt that I had to compromise as well, in the moment it's a non issue. You had x amount of time to fulfill the projects needs. There is not time to sit back and ask yourself, "Is this helping my talents grow?". Shooting in 4K, mistakes become grossly magnified. I quickly learned this, reviewing certain shots and knowing that it could have been better if I respected what was at my disposal. I had to become more thoughtful in the images I wanted to capture. Each card that was being filmed was ticking away like feet from a reel. No longer the days of hitting record and just letting timecode drift by because you had enough card space. Speeding, slating, call action, cut. It was respect to the craft.
Then the day when I finally understood RAW, which took many months and projects to finally appreciate what that meant. It was film again. You had to trust your experience and science that the shot you were composing had far greater ability for malleability in post. The first time a client saw my washed composition, he looked upon the monitor and looked at me as I had spit in his face and completely wasted the morning's setup. Within two minutes, I had a shot previewing in red cine X with a crashed looked placed upon it and he smiled, nodded his head and brought everyone over to look. That's amazing, in every regard of the word. If this was film stock I could have potentially battled the person to convince him to trust me that the shot was okay. Instead, in minutes I sold the guy on RED and he still tries in every effort to shoot on RED. That's an incredible amount of power.
I'm no master, I just love what I do. I have a found a tool that forced me to grow and respect all the amazing technology and experience that has brought us to this point.
Thank you Red, you have certainly made me humbled in how much I have yet to learn and excited to own such an incredible piece of engineering.
It's been a over a year since I've been working with my Scarlet. Still surreal in many regards. Being a long time voyeur of this forum since it's early incarnations, I reveled in the idea that one day I'd have a tool at my disposal that would force me to be better. I was fortunate to cut my teeth in film - 16mm bolex and very limited actual 35mm. Started doing timelapse with a intervolometer motor on the Rex and discovered how thoughtful the process of creating images truly was.
It's the thoughtfulness I love - taking the time to respect your subject and the tools at your disposal.
Over the years, had many camera systems come and go, each one lampooning that the images were to be better, easier to acquire and edit in post. Especially with the boom of DSLR. I will never cut short just how amazing it is that a $3K device can pull off stunning images. I've created successful work from DSLR's. With a caveat that I didn't appreciate until recently. It seemed too easy, almost diluted. Throw a fast piece of glass on and you got extreme DOF and everyone on set thinks you're a master. Granted, it takes skill to make a provocative shot and it takes great post to utilize it correctly, but there was this almost an entitlement associated with just being able to get this cinematic look easily.
Then everything changed for me.
The Scarlet was forcing me to be thoughtful again. Shooting 1080p and knowing you're going to web allows certain liberties in production. Corners can be cut, it happens all the time. Rates go down, crew gets minimized and expectations inflate. With those shooting scenarios, I felt that I had to compromise as well, in the moment it's a non issue. You had x amount of time to fulfill the projects needs. There is not time to sit back and ask yourself, "Is this helping my talents grow?". Shooting in 4K, mistakes become grossly magnified. I quickly learned this, reviewing certain shots and knowing that it could have been better if I respected what was at my disposal. I had to become more thoughtful in the images I wanted to capture. Each card that was being filmed was ticking away like feet from a reel. No longer the days of hitting record and just letting timecode drift by because you had enough card space. Speeding, slating, call action, cut. It was respect to the craft.
Then the day when I finally understood RAW, which took many months and projects to finally appreciate what that meant. It was film again. You had to trust your experience and science that the shot you were composing had far greater ability for malleability in post. The first time a client saw my washed composition, he looked upon the monitor and looked at me as I had spit in his face and completely wasted the morning's setup. Within two minutes, I had a shot previewing in red cine X with a crashed looked placed upon it and he smiled, nodded his head and brought everyone over to look. That's amazing, in every regard of the word. If this was film stock I could have potentially battled the person to convince him to trust me that the shot was okay. Instead, in minutes I sold the guy on RED and he still tries in every effort to shoot on RED. That's an incredible amount of power.
I'm no master, I just love what I do. I have a found a tool that forced me to grow and respect all the amazing technology and experience that has brought us to this point.
Thank you Red, you have certainly made me humbled in how much I have yet to learn and excited to own such an incredible piece of engineering.
