Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Peter Jackson interview...

Status
Not open for further replies.
thanks for posting this.
 
Very nice, Jim. A very inspirational post.
 
Yeah you definitely don't NEED more than one camera to film a movie, but if you were doing action it makes a *lot* of financial sense to have four or even five cameras shooting something at once. Imagine you're like all set to go with your great pyrotechnics sequence and you're spending $1 million on this one shot, you have your one camera setup, there goes the explosion... and someone left the lens cap on. haha, j/k, but the point is you can't very well say, "Yeah that was a good explosion, let's do it again though because we didn't really get it perfect."

With a lot of movies, though, there's no reason you couldn't do it with one camera. It's more a matter of wondering what would happen if you're shooting and everything is going pretty well, then all of the sudden the camera won't work. That'd be a big problem. I have just one RED on order, but my friend David has one also, and I'm intending to make him my producer on my features so we'll have use of two cameras for filming if necessary, and for what I'm doing that will be redundant for sure.
 
Oh my God! Tintin in 3D?!

Now you need 5 REDs per feature (for A and B units plus backup) x 3 simultaneous feature shoots x 2 (for stereo RED Eye - 3D - Ultra Ozzy Vision) = 30 RED Cameras need for a simple boy and his dog story.

Eat your heart out Lassie. Go home!
 
>>>I had 48 hours to write a little script, and we suddenly found ourselves shooting.

So THAT'S what a Peter Jackson entry to the 48 hour film festival would look like.....I always wondered!
 
cool, just cool.
and indeed very independent. Nice report.

And, heard ? The RED jet... wonder if its only red or red-camo...
 
Awesome interview; the meat and potatoes we were all waiting to read. PJ is the man I knew all along would be an early RED adoptor. It's nice to see that he himself was inspired on his own RED shoot; it's all about those creative short-thrown together-low-budget zingers that get anyones creative spirit riled up.

PJ's comment about finishing in 2k with grain and 4k DC for epics really gives us a clue to the real advantage this camera has. We looked at it as a 35mm equivalent, which technically it is in resolution...but the reality is its closer to 65 projection when you have true 4k Digital projection, and the production speed is clearly miles ahead of film. I think we have a winner. So Stevo, ready for digital yet? Maybe there should be a fake film reel attatchment to RED so Spielberg can smell the film as he shoots. :clown2:
 
Spielberg is probably the most old-school famous director there is -- doesn't he still like editing on an old Moviola? LOL, at least Lucas was joking around about that ;)
 
Michael Kahn (Spielberg's editor), last I heard, still does like to edit on a Moviola. Don't think it was a joke.

And quite frankly, there are some artistic advantages to editing on a Moviola. The main one being, since it is not random-access or non-linear, you have to physically go through each frame of film to get to the point that you want. It forces you to pay attention to all of the footage that's been shot, and not summarily dismiss or skip through them with a mouse click. It also forces you to deal with the sequential nature of film. It's an excellent discipline, and more than one editor has made a major artistic breakthrough while editing a film because of this. Sure, it's slower and more cumbersome, but slowing down and making more deliberate edits is in most cases an artistically good thing rather than a bad thing.
 
I would say that in many ways editing on a Moviola is pretty non-linear. In fact the way non-linear editing systems work is based on the film concept of trim bins (which effectively are random access.) And a time-line is kind of like a strip of film. Editing on film is certainly way more non-linear than editing on tape.
 
Nick Shaw said:
I would say that in many ways editing on a Moviola is pretty non-linear. In fact the way non-linear editing systems work is based on the film concept of trim bins (which effectively are random access.) And a time-line is kind of like a strip of film. Editing on film is certainly way more non-linear than editing on tape.
Click to expand...

Well said, Nick Shaw. For those of us editors who were around at the dawn of computer based editing (it wasn't THAT long ago!) that's exactly what got us excited about the technology. It was freedom from the shackles of linear based tape editing (A/B Roll edits) and a return to a more film style approach of trim bins (now clip bins) and being able to easily change sequences. Computer based editing's big advantage (over film cutting) was that it was non-destructive. But, it's interesting to remember that until computer processing power really started taking off, editing on film was still FASTER than editing with a computer. Of course, that's all changed now! And MOST of us editors couldn't be happier.
 
Nick Shaw said:
I would say that in many ways editing on a Moviola is pretty non-linear. In fact the way non-linear editing systems work is based on the film concept of trim bins (which effectively are random access.) And a time-line is kind of like a strip of film. Editing on film is certainly way more non-linear than editing on tape.
Click to expand...

Point well made, Nick. I misspoke by saying non-linear. I meant that film isn't a random-access medium, even with the use of trim bins (even though they do provide for fast access).

And just to clarify, I wasn't trying to make the Luddite argument that editing on film is better, but just that there are some features to working directly with film that, while more cumbersome than editing on a Mac Pro (or a laptop), can end up being artistically advantageous. Of course, the ability to try any number of things out in a non-destructive environment is an unbelievably huge advantage as well (and just for the record, yes, I edit almost everything on my Mac, and prefer it to cutting film for almost every project that I've worked on).
 
Some threads excite me, some depress me, Jonathan posts irritate me....
This forum is my emotional roller coaster.
Anyway, I hope many things.
 
I don't know how many old dogs like me are around this forum, but actually film editing is totally non-linear and random access. It's just a royal pain in the...

When I first moved to Avid from my Steenbeck, the biggest drawback was that I couldn't glance at a clip in the bin and know how long it was by the physical length of the film strip!

I didn't like the feel of running the footage via mouse or keyboard either, so Avid introduced at "Steenbeck" controller to give us the familiar feel. I don't remember now, but I believe it was actually manufactured by Steenbeck!

I don't believe many were sold; we very quickly embraced the new way of doing things and it was pretty wonderful even though, on the first Avids you could barely see the lips move, much less lip sync with it.

Jobs that took days to edit on film can now be accomplished in hours, and, in my opinion, better. We're able to quickly explore more options.

One interesting note, cutting film does force you to do more noodle work and to become more deliberate and thoughtful about telling the story; you develop quite a sense about it. For example, you couldn't preview dissolves, you just marked an "X" the length of the dissolve on the film, but when it ran through the viewer, you could actually "see" the dissolve in your mind.

Things change.

I'm glad!

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Cutting on film, like painting on fresh plaster before it dries, might also inhibit creativity, investigation, and so forth. It's admirable in some ways that Spielberg chooses to continue to edit on film (if this is indeed the case). But there is no reason that non linear digital editing technology should turn a passionate eye into a sloppy or uncaring thing. The care to understand and acknowledge individual frames I think begins before we sit down to edit. And I think, over time, now that we have the tools, filmmakers will be as comfortable in the editing room as any editor has ever been. Many say that the two skills are not necessarily linked, but I think that's a pretty bold statement when one considers it's modeled on past associations between the filmmaker and editor; practical associations born in a period very different from these times. Having been a fine art photographer for twenty five years or so I have known printers who weren't the best photographers, but I've never known a great, or even decent, photographer to be a poor printer. Analogies can be problematic though.
Perhaps tools like moviolas might have more efficiently weeded out the dabblers- it's hard to say since moviolas were part of a more elitist type of technology and denied many an opportunity.

I look forward to hearing new, fresh voices; ones that will add to the dimension of the art of filmmaking. I say add, and not replace or excel, because there is no replacing masterworks. Each to his or her own.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top