learning

[Tom Lowe]

The other night I was talking to a documentary director when the subject of cameras came up. I was rambling on and on about image quality, IMAX, 65mm, Vista Vision, RAW, Phantom, and so on.

The director was like, "How do you know all this stuff, Tom??"

I scratched my head and was like, "Uh... the internet?"

I got to thinking about it later, and I can probably say that at least half of that stuff I learned just from David Mullen's posts! If you'd have asked me about those topics 3 years ago, I would have been clueless. Forums like these are god-sends for those of us who never went to film school. So thanks, guys!

:cheers2:

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I agree.

I learned a lot from every other forum. SonyHDVInfo, DVInfo.net and finally RED User and Scarlet User.

It's an awesome way to discuss and I see that lots of people just don't do this and have very little information about current tech, not to say RED.

 

[David Wilson]

Tom,

"...god-sends for those of us who never went to film school."

god-sends for some of us who went to film school as well.

David

 

[Martin Weiss]

From a practical point of view, I learned more here than in film school.

And don't get me started on the bang-for-the-buck

 

[Andy Jarosz]

I'd say it's about half and half for me as well. It's interesting being able to hold your own in conversations based on things you taught yourself online. You start to get familiar with things you've never even touched. It's very weird.

 

[Vico Martin]

more than 15 years filming and learning... but this last years in DVXuser, CreativeCow, REDuser. Lot of people can´t belive how huge the net is.... ;-)

 

[Vince Doran]

A bit off topic here:
I agree about getting educated from the internet, I am a recreational fisherman and hate the fact that our fish stocks are being depleted at an alarming rate with people giving GPS co-ords and advice about how to and when on the net. I believe the internet is playing a major roll in destroying our seafood stocks.

 

[Peter McCully]

At the risk of sounding like the old geezer I am, my font of learning for many years before the internet was American Cinematographer - and what books were around.

 

[Ace]

It's interesting being able to hold your own in conversations based on things you taught yourself online. You start to get familiar with things you've never even touched. It's very weird.

Yeah it is quite wierd how one finds oneself discussing incredibly intricate details of things you havent done or touched. Its like how when Geena Davis started assembling an assault rifle in Long Kiss Goodnight without ever having known of touching one!

And every anecdote talked about starts with "This guy I know on reduser did this.." lol.

Just imagine if you were privvy to thousands of conversations in thousands of rooms by thousands of expert minds. Now imagine those conversations were not ephemeral, but in written format and those same thousands of people were listening to those thousands of conversations. Its an incredible thing. A collective consciousness functioning in true form.

 

[Andrew Walker]

I've learned so much from first starting out on DVXuser and then coming over here to REDuser when it started. Its amazing what you can learn when there are so many creative minds in one place...on the internet. Forums like this and working at the studios have been my film school.

 

[Adrian Correia]

The internet is wonderful for learning....although I am reading Conrad Hall's article on "The Day of the Locusts" in an old American Cinematographer right now!

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

These boards are great. I have learned so much here and not just about filmmaking.

 

[Milan Nikolic]

Yes! This is very good learning place.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The internet is wonderful for learning....although I am reading Conrad Hall's article on "The Day of the Locusts" in an old American Cinematographer right now!

Great article -- you'll learn how Hall did the firelight scene, by projecting light through the smoke and flames of a real fire. And blackened the ceiling of the soundstage... Looked great though.

 

[Andrew clemson]

Forums like these are god-sends for those of us who never went to film school.

and those of us who did. Its a cliche, but Ive learnt a million times more through working and talking with established professionals than I ever did at Uni.

This forum has helped me no end.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I've been learning via the internet ever since I first got dial up and it's taught me more about every subject that's interested me than highschool or college.

That being said college is much faster if you have the right teacher. I had a small handful of teachers who were extremely knowledgeable and helpful. When you can just sit for 90 minutes asking whatever question pops into your head and be able to get an instantaneous answer that's a really powerful thing.

So while the internet $ for $ might be the cheapest education money can buy, minute for minute it doesn't compare real school is much faster.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

College is a resource just as the internet is -- some people can take better advantage of that resource than others. But the burden is still on the individual to make the effort to learn.

I'm more or less self-taught, an autodidact. I tried to transfer into the film program at UCLA as an undergraduate, but my grades from being a pre-med student weren't good enough to get into the competitive film department.

So I ended up studying English Lit and creative writing at UCLA. In the meantime, I spent hours and hours at the Theater Arts Library studying filmmaking on my own, while shooting my own Super-8 projects. I also helped friends that were in the USC film program, though I was envious that they were actual film students.

I then spent almost four more years after graduation studying film on my own, and still hanging out at the UCLA libraries. I read every issue of American Cinematographer going back to the mid 1920's, and I re-read every issue starting in 1970 several times over (this was in the early 1980's so I'm only talking about a decade's worth of issues that I re-read). I read every issue of International Photographer (now ICG Magazine) going back to the 1950's. Same goes for the SMPTE Journal (though much of that was over my head). Not to mention all the books....

During this time, I made lot of short films in Super-8. By the time I went to film school as an MFA student when I was 26, I had been learning filmmaking on my own for a decade. When I took my basic cinematography class under professor Kris Malkiewicz, I told him I read his two books several times over already, and after getting 100% on all his tests, he made me his TA for the years I was there. I also later got to work on the 3rd Edition of his textbook years later.

My point is that whether or not you go to school, you are responsible for teaching yourself because it's a lifetime process, it doesn't end with graduation. Now with digital taking off, I've probably had to do more personal research in the past ten years than I did in the ten years before that. It never ends.

And I learn just as much from everyone here at RedUser as anyone has learned from me, so thank you all.

 

[Petr Dvorak]

... If you'd have asked me about those topics 3 years ago, I would have been clueless. Forums like these are god-sends for those of us who never went to film school. So thanks, guys!

:cheers2:

DITTO exactly :yesnod:
DVXuser was great start.
All theory is from net but I need way more real experience.

Big thanks from me too! :thumbsup:

 

[mikeburton]

It's important to be as proactive as possible to further your knowledge and carreer. As much as I learned about the Phantom from research on the web it was vital to make a concious effort to bug my local rental house over the course of a few months to get hands on time with the gear. Reading and doing are two different things although both valuable nothing can give you the experience like working with the gear in a production environment or at least a live test. The nice thing about what we do is that are business gear is fun to work with so spending free time learning it is usually fun. That's why I'm in the business. The day it's not fun or challenging I'll find something else to fill my recreational time until I feel confident enough to pursue it as a carreer path. But yes, thank you to all the wise individuals who frequent this and many other sites/blogs.

 

[Zac C]

You're right, I've saved over 100k in college fee's, and learned everything online, thanks to you guys....


Now how do I go about splitting the checks? :biggrin: