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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 :)

Zacuto Great Camera Shootout - and free parking!

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Rob Ruffo said:
...And if you then show them the movie, and the first few minutes look "cheap", you just lost half your sale. I have read articles in many publications that alluded to that research - you will find something if you look hard enough. Studios do market surveys for every film released - the lo-fi stuff always gets lower audience scores. Proof that they know this is that they are willing to spend money on production value. They do not spend money for no reason.
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Those are called test screenings and I've attended many. The questionnaire they hand out at the end is all about story and characters, not how beautiful the movie is or how good the cinematography is.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
A lot of what is on Netflix could best be described as filler, especially now that the studios have renegotiated the price of marquee content. Audiences are not eating it up at all - many of the mumble core-ish films get almost no downloads at all, and there is talk at Netflix of removing a lot of the "chaff" or putting in it's own menu category. I do not like belittling people, but you were belittling my and your own craft, now weren't you. And by the way, just because you have little money doesn't mean your film has to look like crap. You can do a lot with extremely little these days, and many do, so there is no excuse (and no elitism on my part). Being a stoner too lazy to learn how to frame or properly block shots (I've met some mumble core directors, and I just described some of them) is not a valid excuse.
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I wasn't belittling anything. Show me anything in what I said that was belittling anyone or my craft? Saying that story is more important than cinematography isn't belittling anything. I didn't say cinematography doesn't matter. In fact I said it does matter and is important multiple times, just that story is more important and matters more. I didn't say anything should look like crap either. You're misinterpreting what was said and throwing words in my mouth that were never said or implied.
 
Mike Halper said:
Those are called test screenings and I've attended many. The questionnaire they hand out at the end is all about story and characters, not how beautiful the movie is or how good the cinematography is.
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True, and when the pictures look poor people complain about the story... if picture looks good, people tend to like the story better... but of course selling a polished turd is more difficult than a nugget of gold...
 
Any impressions on free parking ?
 
Björn Benckert said:
True, and when the pictures look poor people complain about the story... if picture looks good, people tend to like the story better... but of course selling a polished turd is more difficult than a nugget of gold...
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Really? This film is absolutely stunning, http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/ but nobody went to see it. Guess why...
 
I think trying to reduce what makes a film successful into finite rules diminishes some of the magic of film making.

A great film usually has everything going for it - a wonderful script, cast, director, DP, editor. Everything works in harmony, from the beginning.

Sydney Lumet talks about this in "Making Movies", about how in the first couple of days of watching dailies, he knew if he was making something bad, normal....or...extraordinary.

He knew right away that "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Murder on the Orient Express" were special. He could FEEL it in the rushes.

He also knew that a higher power had taken over, and that all his planning and boarding in advance meant NOTHING. He had to trust his gut, not get in the way of the MAGIC, and trust his CREW.

What was happening had evolved way beyond the bounds of STORY and CAMERA.

After all...filmmaking is one of the greatest GROUP EFFORTS ever. Every great DP and DIRECTOR have an army behind them. People THEY TRUST to create these incredibly complicated tapestries.

I think reducing that process to anything more simple....diminishes the greatest lesson I learned from Mr Lumet...that movies are made by people, and we need to invest in them, and make them together.
 
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Mike Halper said:
I didn't say it isn't important or crucial. I just said the story is more important.
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Mike what I'm saying is that you're seeing a dichotomy where there is really an extremely blurry line. In a movie, cinematography IS part of the story.

To be honest, I really can't think of a movie that has a great story but bad cinematography and is still held in high regard. If you want to give an example of one, I'd be really curious to see it.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
As to this Zacuto shootout... I think all the cameras look like shit. So I don't really care if they look "Similar". Yeah they all look about the same--like a badly shot 90s porno for cinemax. But there are a number of cameras in there that do look shittier.
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Gee....maybe it should have been "THE GREAT SET BUILDING CONTEST !!"
 
Mike Halper said:
Those are called test screenings and I've attended many. The questionnaire they hand out at the end is all about story and characters, not how beautiful the movie is or how good the cinematography is.
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Actually test screenings always have a space for unguided comments. The lo-fi stuff gets comments like "Looked ugly" "depressing looking" "Like a youtube video" "blurry" etc. The only reason the guided questions refer to plot and character is that those can maybe be fixed by a re-edit. The look is mostly baked-in, except for the color grade or maybe some VFX (which would likely be too expensive to re-do) , so why ask about what is too late to fix.

You seem obsessed with devaluing our craft, despite hard evidence to the contrary. What is your problem?

Despite what you say about not belittling cinematography, we were talking about cameras here, and you came along with the tired remark "stop worrying about all that, let's just focus on story" - IT'S AT LEAST HALF OUR JOB to focus on cameras and other technical factors and that is what this forum is about - and this thread was about evaluating the technical merits of a technical camera comparison. If you want to talk about story, maybe this isn't the place. So why make a fatuous remark like that? Do you go to bowling sites and suggest they talk about tennis?

As a warning to you young folks, there is no such thing as a great DP who doesn't also master and have deep knowledge of the tech side. There is no fuzzy-headed hippie way of making a great film. There just isn't. Cinema is a marriage of art, commerce AND technology, even if you are doing a talky romantic comedy - or even if you are making an actual hippie film about tam-tam players.
 
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Craig W. Bickerstaff said:
Found footage isn't just a tech gimmick it's a style much like the one take or one shot it's a technique used to tell a story it's more then wedging you're story into the tech you have, Cloverfield was shot with more then just the HVX it was also shot with the F23, the story wasn't wedged into the tech the tech was wedged into the story.
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Because it fit that very particular story. You wouldn't have much of a film industry if all you told were stories that worked with a found-footage style. It would get boring (and nauseating, I hate vomit-cam, like most test audiences) in a hurry. Not to mention I know a few marquee talents who would refuse to be filmed that way. Harsh lighting and HVX don't exactly help you look sexy.
 
If only half of the people bickering on tests like these would spend their time on improving their cinematographic skills.... we might actually start seeing improvements in the heaps of crap being shot on Red!
 
Rob Ruffo said:
Actually test screenings always have a space for unguided comments. The lo-fi stuff gets comments like "Looked ugly" "depressing looking" "Like a youtube video" "blurry" etc. The only reason the guided questions refer to plot and character is that those can maybe be fixed by a re-edit. The look is mostly baked-in, except for the color grade or maybe some VFX (which would likely be too expensive to re-do) , so why ask about what is too late to fix.

You seem obsessed with devaluing our craft, despite hard evidence to the contrary. What is your problem?

Despite what you say about not belittling cinematography, we were talking about cameras here, and you came along with the tired remark "stop worrying about all that, let's just focus on story" - IT'S AT LEAST HALF OUR JOB to focus on cameras and other technical factors and that is what this forum is about - and this thread was about evaluating the technical merits of a technical camera comparison. If you want to talk about story, maybe this isn't the place. So why make a fatuous remark like that? Do you go to bowling sites and suggest they talk about tennis?

As a warning to you young folks, there is no such thing as a great DP who doesn't also master and have deep knowledge of the tech side. There is no fuzzy-headed hippie way of making a great film. There just isn't. Cinema is a marriage of art, commerce AND technology, even if you are doing a talky romantic comedy - or even if you are making an actual hippie film about tam-tam players.
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There you go again, Rob, misquoting me, putting words in my mouth, and misinterpreting what I was originally saying and what I've been saying all along. I didn't say "stop worrying about all that, let's just focus on story". Go back and look at what I originally posted (quoted you). You were saying audiences care about things like line skipping, skew, etc. I said they care more about story and acting. Audiences can't tell if a movie was shot with an Epic, Alexa, or F65, Varicam, or film. Sure we as cinematographers and filmmakers can, and it's important to us, and that's great. But the audience just wants to be entertained and affected in some way. And yes, I know that cinematography helps with that. Duh. Put almost any decent camera in the hands of a good DP and you'll get an acceptable image to the audience, who will then focus on and care about the story and the acting.

I NEVER said anything that could be interpreted as saying cinematography doesn't matter at all, but for some reason you really really like to latch onto some false reality that I don't value cinematography or a good DP.

I know our job as cinematographers and filmmakers is to focus on the technical and artistic factors. I never said it wasn't. I also didn't say "let's talk about story instead" as you're essentially suggesting I was doing. Everyone here is arguing about this camera vs that camera, or this test sucked because of this and that, or one person saying it should have been done one way and another person a another way. A lot of energy being spent on arguing about a test, when you know what? It doesn't matter. Everyone is going to choose the camera they prefer or they can get hold of, and they're going to shoot with that and it will look as good as they can make it look. And that's great. But it doesn't change the fact that the audience is going to care more about the story and the characters and the acting. Ask any one of your non-industry friends or ask a complete stranger in the grocery store what their favorite movie is. Then ask them why it's their favorite movie. Will they tell you it's their favorite movie because the cinematography was amazing? Or will they tell you it's there favorite movie because of the story, plot, characters, etc.?

That's not belittling cinematography or cinematographers. It's just the reality. Great cinematography is absolutely important (if it wasn't I wouldn't have bought an Epic), but story, plot, and characters all reign king. Sorry to break the bad news of the harsh reality to you.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
Because it fit that very particular story. You wouldn't have much of a film industry if all you told were stories that worked with a found-footage style. It would get boring (and nauseating, I hate vomit-cam, like most test audiences) in a hurry. Not to mention I know a few marquee talents who would refuse to be filmed that way. Harsh lighting and HVX don't exactly help you look sexy.
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My point isn't that all movies should be shot in the style of a found footage film I'm saying that if you wanted to make a found footage film it doesn't have to be limited a horror film were a big monster destroys a city or some filmmakers are spooked in a tent.
 
Mike Halper said:
There you go again, Rob, misquoting me, putting words in my mouth, and misinterpreting what I was originally saying and what I've been saying all along. I didn't say "stop worrying about all that, let's just focus on story". Go back and look at what I originally posted (quoted you). You were saying audiences care about things like line skipping, skew, etc. I said they care more about story and acting. Audiences can't tell if a movie was shot with an Epic, Alexa, or F65, Varicam, or film. Sure we as cinematographers and filmmakers can, and it's important to us, and that's great. But the audience just wants to be entertained and affected in some way. And yes, I know that cinematography helps with that. Duh. Put almost any decent camera in the hands of a good DP and you'll get an acceptable image to the audience, who will then focus on and care about the story and the acting.

I NEVER said anything that could be interpreted as saying cinematography doesn't matter at all, but for some reason you really really like to latch onto some false reality that I don't value cinematography or a good DP.

I know our job as cinematographers and filmmakers is to focus on the technical and artistic factors. I never said it wasn't. I also didn't say "let's talk about story instead" as you're essentially suggesting I was doing. Everyone here is arguing about this camera vs that camera, or this test sucked because of this and that, or one person saying it should have been done one way and another person a another way. A lot of energy being spent on arguing about a test, when you know what? It doesn't matter. Everyone is going to choose the camera they prefer or they can get hold of, and they're going to shoot with that and it will look as good as they can make it look. And that's great. But it doesn't change the fact that the audience is going to care more about the story and the characters and the acting. Ask any one of your non-industry friends or ask a complete stranger in the grocery store what their favorite movie is. Then ask them why it's their favorite movie. Will they tell you it's their favorite movie because the cinematography was amazing? Or will they tell you it's there favorite movie because of the story, plot, characters, etc.?

That's not belittling cinematography or cinematographers. It's just the reality. Great cinematography is absolutely important (if it wasn't I wouldn't have bought an Epic), but story, plot, and characters all reign king. Sorry to break the bad news of the harsh reality to you.
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You're a little arrogant. I'm not about to have any realities, harsh or otherwise, revealed to me by you in some wondrous epiphany. Audiences of course don't know which camera was used - that's not their job. I don't know what the chef puts in the sauce at the French cafe downstairs, all I know is, F--- it tastes awesome. Just because they don;t care about technicalities doesn't mean they are blind. They can still see a difference, they just use other words to describe it. Like "clear" "lush" "nice" "sexy" "bright" etc. It also affects how they feel about the story, without them even realizing it - like they might just say a scene looked "cold and scary" rather than that it had strong blue push in the transfer, but they still see and are emotionally affected by the presence of the same color.

Ever seen an English Canadian film? They're mostly pretty awful, with some exceptions. You don't get into the story because the cinematography is so bland the movie doesn't draw you into itself - the camera doesn't move with the plot, the lighting doesn't cue and accent dramatic mood - it all looks like the same 1970s documentary.

To me to say that the cinematography is less important than the story is like saying that the notes are less important than the melody.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
You're a little arrogant. I'm not about to have any realities, harsh or otherwise, revealed to me by you in some wondrous epiphany. Audiences of course don't know which camera was used - that's not their job. I don't know what the chef puts in the sauce at the French cafe downstairs, all I know is, F--- it tastes awesome. Just because they don;t care about technicalities doesn't mean they are blind. They can still see a difference, they just use other words to describe it. Like "clear" "lush" "nice" "sexy" "bright" etc. It also affects how they feel about the story, without them even realizing it - like they might just say a scene looked "cold and scary" rather than that it had strong blue push in the transfer, but they still see and are emotionally affected by the presence of the same color.

Ever seen an English Canadian film? They're mostly pretty awful, with some exceptions. You don't get into the story because the cinematography is so bland the movie doesn't draw you into itself - the camera doesn't move with the plot, the lighting doesn't cue and accent dramatic mood - it all looks like the same 1970s documentary.

To me to say that the cinematography is less important than the story is like saying that the notes are less important than the melody.
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Seriously, you need to learn how to properly interpret and understand what you read. You're getting something completely different than what I actually wrote. I've never ever heard a single person describe a movie they saw as "clear", "lush", "sexy", or "bright", etc. That's a new one. But oh well I'm not going to waste any more time debating with you what you don't understand. Good luck.
 
Mike Halper said:
Seriously, you need to learn how to properly interpret and understand what you read. You're getting something completely different than what I actually wrote. I've never ever heard a single person describe a movie they saw as "clear", "lush", "sexy", or "bright", etc. That's a new one. But oh well I'm not going to waste any more time debating with you what you don't understand. Good luck.
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I think Rob is referring to the answers people jot down on those questionaries after test screenings...

And I've definitely heard people describe a scene or movie as looking "sexy"....I might add "dark", "cool", "big", "intimate", "quiet" as other ways people casually talk about cinematography.
 
Nick Morrison said:
I think Rob is referring to the answers people jot down on those questionaries after test screenings...

And I've definitely heard people describe a scene or movie as looking "sexy"....I might add "dark", "cool", "big", "intimate", "quiet" as other ways people casually talk about cinematography.
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That's exactly what I meant. In paid for session groups, they also sometimes will play a single scene and ask questions to a group paid a few bucks and given lunch - Did they like the characters? Did they like how it was filmed? Etc. In this way they try to learn as much as they can about what audiences like. Keebler tests cookie recipe variations, same with movies. They don't use this to micromanage too much, but they do use it to then go out and find directors and DPs who's reels resemble what they were told would go over well with the general public, or at least the info is used as part of the equation.
 
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