Technology and story-telling

[Ameer Azari]

What right do any of you have to tell people where they can spend their disposable income? If I buy a Scarlet, I'm not going to be making a living with it (I have several degrees in engineering and physics to do that), and the only person I'm going to have to justify the purchase to is my wife.

Since we met making films for the shear enjoyment of the hobby, somehow, I don't think she'll mind too much.

I totally agree

 

[John Caballero]

Well said Spiff.

 

[Isaac Brody]

A (overly) Simple formula for distribution.

Good Script + Name Talent = Distribution.

Scarlet is great for closing the technology gap, but unless you can draw name talent it's a huge uphill battle for distribution. How to draw name talent and investors? By creating short films that play well and win awards in festivals and then having a polished feature or two to help pitch yourself for funding.

 

[Jared Caldwell]

Look, its simple.

What do you need to make a good film?

Everything.

You need all of the tools at your disposal. You need all of the resources. You need some part of you to add to your craft.

After knowing that, how to accomplish the technical aspects of filmmaking all relies on your problem solving skills.

Can you make a good movie with low or meager resources?

Sure.

It all relies on your problem solving skills.

To use an analogy:

If making a film required you to use a paint program, would you use MS Paint or Photoshop?

You can make amazing things with MS Paint as long as your problem solving skills are great (as proven here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2sPl_Z7ZU

But I bet if you had the choice, any of us would choose Photoshop any day of the week.

With equipment from companies like Red, more people are provided with more tools. Does having these tools automatically give you a great movie?

No. But most great films do have these high quality tools.

 

[Bing Bailey]

This argument gets made over and over again. You have to wonder if people making it actually bother to look independent film in the U.S. before letting loose with it. Production budget is indeed much less a factor in the prospect of indie feature distribution than most people think, but for reasons having nothing to do with production value.

Before the so-called DV revolution in the late 90s, virtually all indie films where shot on 16mm or 35mm. As late as 1998, at a well-known international shorts festival in this country, not one of the films, including the low-budget American stuff, originated on video. And yet during the prior 10 year period, from the boom which started in the late 80s with sex, lies and videotape, thousands of features shot on film never got distribution. Most were not even seen widely at festivals.

Or look at the big indie sleeper hit of 2007 ("Once"). Was it shot on 35mm? S16mm? Genesis? HDCAM? Varicam? SDX900? HVX200? HV20? Hundreds of indie films were shot on all of those formats in the preceding year or two. But no, the one and only indie "hit" of 2007 was shot on DV, with minimal production resources. Don't even think they were up to a DVX100.

What does that tell you?

whether an indie film will get distribution , be sold , be good or crap is a completely different arguement to whether you can pull off a highly visual quality film in the first place. if your story is bad all the great tools in the world won't fix it. that happens with studio films and with art films. their is a tendency in studio flicks to have little to no real story and in euro art flicks to not have much of a story either they try and cruise by on how beautiful they look. its the same disease as using effects to distract from the lack of dept but again thats a seperate debate

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

But he also owns a part of Truly Indie Films, which may be worth pursuing for some RED users. They set up a distribution deal for your film if they find it has merit. They have a website at www.trulyindie.com.

how does this really work?
are you paying them to distribute?

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I'm a little bit concerned because it seems there are a lot people on this forum who do not make a living from film/tv production and yet are willing to spend thousands of hard-earned dollars on technology they think will make them into great filmmakers....

I don't make a living on my movies yet, but I got that talent shit and people who are starting to see that. To be able to produce something with greater quality then my current DVX100 is for me a way to skip the timeconsuming steps of getting money to rent big ass cameras.

I'm a visual director that rely on having tools that are capable of producing the images I want and I'm at the moment pushing my DVX100e to it's limit together with a brevis35. What does making money on my movies have to do with me being an artist trying to get the best tools for creating my artwork?

I oppose anyone who talks about filmmaking as a pure producing/consuming media.

Filmmaking is an artform when you want it to be an artform. You can make it into something that's only about money and you might earn alot on it, but for those like me, who are interested in telling an audience something important about our world, about human lives or deeper subjects, we don't give a rats ass about money. We need to make a living of course, but I don't want to buy Scarlet for the purpose of getting a larger house and a newer car, I want it because it's a tool that gives me the ability to create the images I want, to create the emotions and messages I want.

There are limits to DV and as said, I'm a visual director and I need a better tool then DV. It's not that I lack the ability to direct actors just because I'm visually driven, I'm just looking for a better brush that gives the painting it's needed quality for telling what I want.

Yes you can do great movies with DV, I don't understand why anybody would oppose that. But for those who need the powerful visual tool that Scarlet is, what does that have to do with earning money? What exactly are you concerned of? That we who don't make money of it create something better then you do? What?

Last project I did was praised for it's cinematography and it was made with my DVX100 and brevis35 (Canon 17-35mm 4L lens). It's the best I can do with it and I'm not really happy with things like the latitude, resolution, colorbalance, lack of colorgrading options and artefacts.

DivShare File - Coffee_Break_HD_480p.wmv

I'm willing to pay money for Scarlet so that I can advance my filmmaking. I want to be able to shoot something in the same way as I do when I'm working with still photograhy.