I think the "Heinlein Juveniles" are gread reads. In addition to many of them mentioned here, I've always enjoyed Starman Jones and Space Cadet.
The title short story, The Menace from Earth is probably one of my favorite stories in general.
Friday is probably one of my favorite representations of the new archetype that's been growing in our Collective Unconscious in the last seventy or so years: The Sexy Badass Chick.
Actually, 7:1 raw footage to finished product is considered the holy grail for indie/low budget films.
Remember that the raw footage starts at tape roll, slate, waiting for everyone settle (waiting for the car to pass, airplane noise, annoying office worker on the phone, clumsy PA, etc), then "Action" through "Cut" and then a 3 or 5 second count before you stop the camera.
Most bigger budget films are in the 20 or 30:1 range. Action sequences can chew up a lot of film simply because of the number of 1 or 2 second shots used, with all of their above overhead. Also, directors in general are running more camera angles and more takes than they have in the past.
On the two indie shorts projects I've directed, I'm running about 10:1. I also ended up with between 100 and 120 camera setups for a 22 minute film. That's a bit more than most amateurs and a bit less than a lot of pros. I actually called for 182 camera setups on my last project, but had to scale down because we simply didn't have the time to get that many shots. In retrospect, I know I could have used our second camera more effectively to get those additional shots at the expense of more footage. Thank god I'm a digital boy, or this filmmaking stuff would be damn expensive!
Try this experiment one of these days: Pay attention to the commercials you see on TV. Count the number of cuts they make in 30 seconds. The resulting number will suprise you.
Now, Peter Jackson shot over 5 million feet of film for the three movies. That translates to approximately 1200 hours of footage. Or, a bit less than 100:1.
Do I consider that excessive? Well, um... no, not really. Oh, okay it was a bit excessive in some places, like the Arwen/Nazgul horse chase scene, but that was actually one of the second unit directors.
There was supposed to be something epic about the ending.
Define epic.
The architect desired war and the oracle desired peace.
Well, actually, no. The Architect wanted control and the Oracle wanted freedom. And yes, the Oracle really is the mother of the Matrix. Smith is a virus and Persephone (who may or may not be a program) is a lover, not a fighter.;-) She nearly creamed her skirt when she watched Trinity pick love over death, in order to rescue Neo from the train station.
What we wanted was the ending of the movie. We wanted to see them try to restore the rest of humanity to reality.
In a two hour movie? Great! We shut the damn thing off and spend the next few months fishing the bodies out of the sewers (they don't have enough ships to pick every one up before they drown). Those that are saved, well 99% of them didn't want to leave and weren't ready, so most of them will probably commit suicide, try to recreate the matrix, or just become raging, unpleasant assholes. World changing events that don't include rocks the size of Texas, take time.
How different is the world at the end of Revolutions compared with the start of the first one? Not at all different.
How different was Germany two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Not all that different. But what was different was extremely fucking important! Neo ended a conflict that had been going on for hundreds of years. This is not a repeat of the five previous matrices. Neo changed that when he chose to save Trinity instead of picking 6 men and 17 women (the 23 elders of the council) to rebuild Zion. All the previous Neo's made the other choice. They picked their 23 people and then merged with Smith/Anti-Neo, thereby collapsing the anomaly. So, the anomaly is gone, the Matrix vX++.0 installed over Matrix vX.0 and all but 23 people (Neo's choice) are killed in Zion by the Sentinels. No previous Neo had ever gotten past the Architect. Ever.
This time, however, the anomaly grew beyond the control of the Error Handlers the Architect had built into the system. Neo picked love over survival and Smith infected a human.
Oh yeah... It would be Morpheus, not Neo that leads everyone to the Promised Land. Neo's dead. Period.
Moekandu
"You're cuter than I thought. No wonder she likes you."
"Who?"
"Not too bright, though."
The chip will have 64 parallel FPU's. If it can complete one floating point operation per cycle, it will only need to run at about 350 to 400Mhz to reach 25GFLOPS (latency and pipeline issues aside, of course). Even if it requires 2 clock cycles, or the first 32 FPU's feed the second, we're talking about 700 to 800Mhz.
I'm not certain, but I thought I ran across similar number crunching capabilities in Integer OPS. It seems to me to have been in regards to fibre fabric and switching.
They stated that tickets would go on sale online the same time as the box office opened. Never happened. By the time I got to the theater, they were sold out. I suspect that this will be the case for across the U.S.
It's like promoting a major concert, but only selling 200 seats.
Anyway, I'm just waiting for the animated t-shirt. I want to be able to load up everything from animated fractal "tie-dye" patterns, to episodes of Radiskull and Devil Doll, to various 3D animated "Fuck You" sequences.
Imagine walking into a night club and having your outfit connect to the local network and become a part of the light show.
Imagine being able to tell everyone within fifty paces just how you feel, at any given moment.
The reason that Star Trek never had this sort of thing was two-fold. One, they couldn't afford the special effects, and two, the show designed to cater to the mainstream, sci-fi or not.
Prior art? Hell, I've got a science fiction short story (that has since ballooned into a full-length screenplay) that I began writing in 1995 that mentions solar panels installed along the freeway medians that use chlorophyll and copper as the photovoltaic.
Of course I came up with that because it sounded plausible (not that I really know any thing about the subject), and that both copper and chlorophyll reflect green (i.e. the solar panels look cool). Also the story was never published, although I did copyright the script when I submitted it to Project Greenlight.
Actually, I'm just tickled that something that I basically pulled out of my ass, turns out to have some basis in fact.
Besides, you can't copyright ideas. Thank God!
Moekandu
Re:Something I've never understood...
on
RIAA Bits
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· Score: 1
First, writing style? Please. Most people have none; college degrees or not. How many posters here on slashdot actually use the preview for things other than just typos and spelling errors? Not many.
So many people out there don't have clarity of thought, let alone worrying about clarity in writing.
Second, most articles on the subject of "copying" are never clear to distinguish the difference between quoting and properly citing a small snippet of work (regardless of where it came from), from partial plagiarizing, to wholesale plagiarism of an entire work. Why is this?
Because there is a legal gray area in regards to research papers. According to copyright law, even taking a small sample of a work is considered copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not the work is cited properly! Stealing is stealing.
This is, of course, ridiculous. If the law were followed to the letter, education would be nearly impossible. Hence the little education addendum.
What I can't figure out is how the RIAA can claim that copyright law doesn't restrict the flow of ideas. Oh wait! That's right, they don't. They ignore it. And use the law, whether or not it is ethical or reasonable, to bludgeon people with to save their profits.
Sorry, that bit about the quotation marks was some apparently failed humor.
I personally believe that Osama and Saddam cannot be reasoned with, and I supported our military action against them. On the other hand, I also believe that our current administration stepped over a few ethical lines in it's zeal to deal with them, well, mostly Saddam and his non-existent WMD's. Does he still need a bullet in his head? Hell, yes! And so do many others. But I also feel we should be very careful in watching our own leaders for the same signs of fanaticism.
Movies, on average, cost about 100X more than albums to produce. For every album with production costs of 2 million, there's a movie that took 200 million to make. For every indy label record with a 10K budget, there's a movie made for a million.
There's a hell of a lot more money to recoup on a movie than on an album. Once you figure in promotional and marketing costs (normally 2 to 3 times the productions costs), the break even point becomes almost ridiculous. TV commercials for movies are commonplace, right? What about TV commercials for albums? Only if it's released by a music retailer that is bearing the cost of the advertisement. Pepsi was willing to pay for all those obnoxious commercials for the priviledge of taking a ride on Brittney Spears--
Erm. . . Uh, taking a ride on Brittney Spears' popularity. Ahem. . .
The number of units that need to be sold to break even on a movie (be they box office, DVD's, posters, tie-ins, etc.) is almost literally geometrically higher than an album.
And besides, Chicago was nominated for 13 Academy Fucking Awards, so it's hardly fair to use it as an average example, now isn't it? N'Sync's last album broke even on pre-orders. As pop culture phenomena, I'd say the two are pretty well matched. At least half the movies released today don't break even with just box office sales. A single DVD release usually has to recoup significantly more money than a single album, even after box office revenue.
Actually, he was referring to the difference between the Canadian term, peacekeeping, and the American term, "peacekeeping". From what I gathered from his original comment, the word, peacekeeping isn't a euphemism in Canada, but the actual definition of their preferred military strategy. We Americans often misspell our version of the word by leaving off the quotes.
Does that sometime include shooting people in the head? Damn right, skippy. You must always remember, some people simply cannot be reasoned with. Period. When you have someone who is incapable of being reabilitated and dangerous to others, the only way to stop them from harming society is to completely remove them from the equation.
Prison, you say? Consider that most of the drug cartels are being run from the prisons.
But most people can be reabilitated, right? Absolutely! But those that can't will be the death of us all, unless we do something about it.
Peacekeeping as a military strategy is based primarily on attempting to determine whether or not the aggravator can be reasoned with before you pull the trigger.
Actually, I was referring to the characters in X-Force, not the readers. IMHO, I thought that the New Mutants began going downhill after Claremont stopped writing it. The name change to X-Force was just the nail in the coffin.
i'm going to kill one kitten a day and shove it in Stan Lee's mailbox until he brings back the X-Force
I would expect nothing less from a Rob Leifeld fan. All of his books were populated by dickwaving assholes and bitchy, airheaded women. He couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag.
Moekandu
Karma: . ..Well, pretty much gone after this. . .
I'm hearing this constant buzz, "Reason will prevail!"
I have some news for you folks. Not everyone can be reasoned with. Period. They are fanatics, lunatics, and criminals. The last thing on Darl McBride's mind is being reasonable.
So tell me, how do you reason with a person that refuses to listen to logic?
The answer?
You don't. You lock them in prison and throw away the key. Or you put a bullet in their head.
As for Darl McBride, I think prison is enough. As for Bin Laden and Hussein, well, you tell me.
Now. . . Back to the reasoning behind ESR's righteous indignation:
The problem with calm, reasoned rebuttals, is that Joe Sixpack is going to ignore it. It's boring. It's not Monday Night Football.
ESR is rightfully pissed off! And he has quite eloquently displayed that. He is making it absolutely clear how absurd he believes SCO's behavior is. And he's done it in such a way that it won't likely be ignored.
This is a battle over intellectual property and all we have to defend our position is words. So are we gonna drone out the usual, "Reason will prevail!" and hope it all magically comes out okay? Or are we gonna kick some ass?
Moekandu
"The object is not to bring you enemy to his knees, but his senses." - Ghandi
"Sometimes that requires a slap in the face." - Moekandu's Addendum
since the input of energy from the sun remains constant
Actually, that is not true. The sun's energy output is not constant. It fluctuates somewhat regularly and is really the cause of ice ages and other global climate changes.
PhantomHarlock is exactly right in regards to digital film and photography.
Yes, CCD's have their limitations, but they are also at the end of their useful life. Foveon's X3 chip is actually a radically different form of CMOS. It has none of the bandwidth limitations that CCD's do, and also capture red, green and blue on every pixel. There's no moire pattern from interpolation, because there's nothing to interpolate. The technology should easily be able to scale well into the QuadHD 60fps range in the next ten years or so.
You can currently get a system that can capture 640x480 @ 30fps and a firewire output. It's currently meant for product development, but retail NTSC and PAL compatible systems shouldn't be too far behind. I've seen some of the hi-res stills taken with the Sigma SD9, using the X3 chip, and they are astounding. Of course it was obvious that the photographer was a lighting expert. Sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.
The softness in AOC was for two reasons. One, they shot in 1080i (at 24 frames/sec) and then blew up the picture to twice the resolution. They were very happy with the pictures' ability to scale and I'm inclined to agree with them. Second, film itself has a soft quality to it. Digital cameras can give you the sharpest pictures on the face of the earth, but they look like shit.
You don't want sharpness. You want definition and detail. And a lot of that comes from how you light your scene, whether you are using film or digital. One of the limitations with digital cameras is that there is a very fine line between unnatural sharpness and rich detail. The soft look was on purpose.
I saw AOC on the digital screen here in Phoenix. I also saw it on a traditional screen. The difference was like night and day. The digital projection was crisp without being sharp and incredibly rich in color, while the normal projection was dull and muted and it was obvious that they used a relatively cheap stock for the transfer.
Granted you didn't really get those dramatic close-ups where you can see the details of the subject's face, but then Lucas doesn't tend to shoot that way.
Lucas has kept true to his original vision, a space-opera serial. He hasn't changed, you have. That's not necessarily good, as I think that he transcended the adventure serial genre in ways he doesn't quite understand (and it's hurting the story), but that's what he's going for.
As for Roger Ebert. . . No authority? On the digital projection, light sabers glowed with an intesity that I have never seen before in a theater or television. As with all new mediums, the artists need to learn to use the most effective way possible. A digital projectors higher intensity can be used to great effect, if you know how to take advantage of it.
The uncompressed data stream off a Sony Cinealta (HDW-F900) digital HD camera (the same that Lucas used in AOC), is 1.5Gb/sec. I believe it's essentially a Fibre Channel connection. Uncompressed, you can store 3.5 hours of 1080i 24P footage on a 720GB array. You want bigger and faster? Now it really starts getting expensive.
There are some serious technical hurdles with bumping up the frame rate and resolution on a digital camera (can you imagine handling a 12Gb/sec data stream?), but surprisingly, I think we'll start seeing some of those hurdles being overcome in the next couple of years.
Now, when it comes to price. ..
You can rent a Cinealta for about $1500 a day. The price goes down for multi-day shoots. That's 30 minutes of raw 35mm film and that doesn't include processing. If you run 35mm at 48P, then that cost doubles. On average, the filmmaking group I am a member of, tends to record between 1 and 2.5 hours of footage per full day, depending on the number of cameras used, the number of takes, etc. It's a no brainer to jump to HD instead of 35mm.
But the real bottleneck is the projection. Just because you could theoretically record in 35mm 48P, or QuadHD 60P does not mean that you can project it as such. The goal of digital filmmaking isn't merely to increase the quality, but to reduce the costs in every aspect of a production: filming, editing, and distribution.
I would be anxiously awaiting your script, sakusha. Since you are adept at observing the fact that most people are dullards, I would assume that you believe you are not one of them?
Very well then. ..
Let's see you put your money where your mouth is. I'm challenging you to write a "truly creative" screenplay. By "truly creative", please feel free to use you're own definition, as you will need to submit it with your script.
However, while many sequences of sounds or notes humans do not consider music, I would like to see a story, not merely a unique collection of words. I don't care what it's about. Or its genre, or "target audience", or whatever.
I suppose it's up to you as to whether you want to write a "good" and creative script, or merely a creative script. But, please be aware that the judges are likely to mark you down for shameless incomprehensibility. Be creative, not clever.
Please let me know how much time you think you will need.
Moekandu moekandu@cox.net
"The object is not to bring your enemy to his knees, but his senses." - Ghandi
I believe that the Titanic budget was about $190 million. Whereas the total spent on the LOTR trilogy so far, is more than $300 million.
But, you need to consider that LOTR would have never gotten off the ground if Cameron hadn't blown his wad (and everyone else's) and not lose his shirt. Remember, for years, Cameron was credited with three of the Top 5 Most Expensive Movies Made at the time of release: T2, True Lies and Titanic.
Was Cameron a bit excessive? Maybe. But then again, he had to build a whole goddam boat. And he had to build it properly, or it would look like shit. You know, like a Doctor Who set.
Then again, you may not see the layering of fabrics with different textures and patterns in Saruman's robes, but it was obvious he wasn't running around in a bedsheet. Galadriel's robes were simpler and more elegant, but was also obviously not a Martha Stewart K-Mart special.
Cameron made sure that the blue star logo was on the bottom of the plates. Sure, that seems excessive after seeing the movie as it was cut, but at the time the props were being manufactured, they may have planned to get a few shots where the blue star is prominent. Say, after Dickboy knocks the breakfast table onto the floor. A good floor angle long shot of Hot Redhead and Dickboy with the broken and overturned plates in the foreground. There are a few other places where the blue star could have been visible. When half the movie is basically about destroying the set and everything in it, you never know what props will end up upside-down. While historical fans may not be as rabid as Tolkein fans, there are a number of people that would appreciate that sort of attention to detail.
Which do I like more? LOTR, hands down. Does that make Titanic a bad movie? Nope. If you doubt me, ask your girlfriend. Oh! Wait, sorry.
As a writer and a director of independent films, I understand the difficulty in, first, creating a story that can be told within your budget, and second, in finding creative ways to tell the story most effectively. Notice that I didn't say, inexpensive ways. Yes, budget is an issue, but it is not the only issue. Many times, spending just a bit more will greatly increase your production value. Sometimes you just need to drive a real-goddam 18-wheeler off the road and into the canal.
Would I have done things differently than Cameron? You bet! I probably would have tried to avoid building a "whole goddam boat", but that may ultimately have been more headache for "not quite right". Would I have hired the original companies that made stuff for the Titanic for my props? Damn right! It really wouldn't have cost a great deal more and as my boss would say, "They'd be nuts on perfect." Oh yeah, and Snot-nose would not have been in it. Oh, I think Leo's a good actor, I just think that as a human being, he needs to suffer a horrible disfiguring and ultimately fatal accident. Like dating Courtney Love.
Also, I think Clerks was closer to $35K. But, as cool as it was, it looks like it was filmed for $35K.
El Mariachi was filmed for $7000. And he didn't star in it, but he did write and direct it.
Actually, both sides are right. For filmed footage, the director usually watches all or most of it after the day's shooting. This will include the raw blue/green screen and motion control shots. This is to ensure that they can still grab missing shots or retake shots before they strike the set and move on to the next. Setting up a pickup shot a month later is a serious pain in the ass. Trust me.
However, when it comes to F/X shots, there are a number of steps involved and the director has better things to do than hover over competent people doing what they do best. For those, it makes sense to have the director view "dailies" of any given shot in its current stage, once or twice a week: to sign off on maquettes, models, texturing, rough blocking (I forget what it's called), fine motion, lighting, compositing, and etc. And not necessarily in that order. Anyway, it's not likely that there's going to be enough on any given day for the director to see. Someday, I hope to have such problems. Until then I'm sticking with the movie magic I can afford.
Slashdot Mirror
The title short story, The Menace from Earth is probably one of my favorite stories in general.
Friday is probably one of my favorite representations of the new archetype that's been growing in our Collective Unconscious in the last seventy or so years: The Sexy Badass Chick.
Moekandu
"Bring out the gimp."
Actually, 7:1 raw footage to finished product is considered the holy grail for indie/low budget films.
Remember that the raw footage starts at tape roll, slate, waiting for everyone settle (waiting for the car to pass, airplane noise, annoying office worker on the phone, clumsy PA, etc), then "Action" through "Cut" and then a 3 or 5 second count before you stop the camera.
Most bigger budget films are in the 20 or 30:1 range. Action sequences can chew up a lot of film simply because of the number of 1 or 2 second shots used, with all of their above overhead. Also, directors in general are running more camera angles and more takes than they have in the past.
On the two indie shorts projects I've directed, I'm running about 10:1. I also ended up with between 100 and 120 camera setups for a 22 minute film. That's a bit more than most amateurs and a bit less than a lot of pros. I actually called for 182 camera setups on my last project, but had to scale down because we simply didn't have the time to get that many shots. In retrospect, I know I could have used our second camera more effectively to get those additional shots at the expense of more footage. Thank god I'm a digital boy, or this filmmaking stuff would be damn expensive!
Try this experiment one of these days: Pay attention to the commercials you see on TV. Count the number of cuts they make in 30 seconds. The resulting number will suprise you.
Now, Peter Jackson shot over 5 million feet of film for the three movies. That translates to approximately 1200 hours of footage. Or, a bit less than 100:1.
Do I consider that excessive? Well, um... no, not really. Oh, okay it was a bit excessive in some places, like the Arwen/Nazgul horse chase scene, but that was actually one of the second unit directors.
Moekandu
Neo wasn't glowing. The flying barge thingy was.
Define epic.
Well, actually, no. The Architect wanted control and the Oracle wanted freedom. And yes, the Oracle really is the mother of the Matrix. Smith is a virus and Persephone (who may or may not be a program) is a lover, not a fighter. ;-) She nearly creamed her skirt when she watched Trinity pick love over death, in order to rescue Neo from the train station.
In a two hour movie? Great! We shut the damn thing off and spend the next few months fishing the bodies out of the sewers (they don't have enough ships to pick every one up before they drown). Those that are saved, well 99% of them didn't want to leave and weren't ready, so most of them will probably commit suicide, try to recreate the matrix, or just become raging, unpleasant assholes. World changing events that don't include rocks the size of Texas, take time.
How different was Germany two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Not all that different. But what was different was extremely fucking important! Neo ended a conflict that had been going on for hundreds of years. This is not a repeat of the five previous matrices. Neo changed that when he chose to save Trinity instead of picking 6 men and 17 women (the 23 elders of the council) to rebuild Zion. All the previous Neo's made the other choice. They picked their 23 people and then merged with Smith/Anti-Neo, thereby collapsing the anomaly. So, the anomaly is gone, the Matrix vX++.0 installed over Matrix vX.0 and all but 23 people (Neo's choice) are killed in Zion by the Sentinels. No previous Neo had ever gotten past the Architect. Ever.
This time, however, the anomaly grew beyond the control of the Error Handlers the Architect had built into the system. Neo picked love over survival and Smith infected a human.
Oh yeah... It would be Morpheus, not Neo that leads everyone to the Promised Land. Neo's dead. Period.
Moekandu
"You're cuter than I thought. No wonder she likes you."
"Who?"
"Not too bright, though."
Oh boy! I am so glad that SCO just received $50 million in funding!
I figure it should just about cover the damages awarded on the class-action lawsuit filed by the copyright holders.
Moekandu
"It is a sad state of affairs when a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs."
The chip will have 64 parallel FPU's. If it can complete one floating point operation per cycle, it will only need to run at about 350 to 400Mhz to reach 25GFLOPS (latency and pipeline issues aside, of course). Even if it requires 2 clock cycles, or the first 32 FPU's feed the second, we're talking about 700 to 800Mhz.
I'm not certain, but I thought I ran across similar number crunching capabilities in Integer OPS. It seems to me to have been in regards to fibre fabric and switching.
Or I could be on crack.
Hm.
Moekandu
They stated that tickets would go on sale online the same time as the box office opened. Never happened. By the time I got to the theater, they were sold out. I suspect that this will be the case for across the U.S.
It's like promoting a major concert, but only selling 200 seats.
Sounds like the Butlerian Jihad.
Anyway, I'm just waiting for the animated t-shirt. I want to be able to load up everything from animated fractal "tie-dye" patterns, to episodes of Radiskull and Devil Doll, to various 3D animated "Fuck You" sequences.
Imagine walking into a night club and having your outfit connect to the local network and become a part of the light show.
Imagine being able to tell everyone within fifty paces just how you feel, at any given moment.
The reason that Star Trek never had this sort of thing was two-fold. One, they couldn't afford the special effects, and two, the show designed to cater to the mainstream, sci-fi or not.
Moekandu
Prior art? Hell, I've got a science fiction short story (that has since ballooned into a full-length screenplay) that I began writing in 1995 that mentions solar panels installed along the freeway medians that use chlorophyll and copper as the photovoltaic.
Of course I came up with that because it sounded plausible (not that I really know any thing about the subject), and that both copper and chlorophyll reflect green (i.e. the solar panels look cool). Also the story was never published, although I did copyright the script when I submitted it to Project Greenlight.
Actually, I'm just tickled that something that I basically pulled out of my ass, turns out to have some basis in fact.
Besides, you can't copyright ideas. Thank God!
Moekandu
First, writing style? Please. Most people have none; college degrees or not. How many posters here on slashdot actually use the preview for things other than just typos and spelling errors? Not many.
So many people out there don't have clarity of thought, let alone worrying about clarity in writing.
Second, most articles on the subject of "copying" are never clear to distinguish the difference between quoting and properly citing a small snippet of work (regardless of where it came from), from partial plagiarizing, to wholesale plagiarism of an entire work. Why is this?
Because there is a legal gray area in regards to research papers. According to copyright law, even taking a small sample of a work is considered copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not the work is cited properly! Stealing is stealing.
This is, of course, ridiculous. If the law were followed to the letter, education would be nearly impossible. Hence the little education addendum.
What I can't figure out is how the RIAA can claim that copyright law doesn't restrict the flow of ideas. Oh wait! That's right, they don't. They ignore it. And use the law, whether or not it is ethical or reasonable, to bludgeon people with to save their profits.
Moekandu
Sorry, that bit about the quotation marks was some apparently failed humor.
I personally believe that Osama and Saddam cannot be reasoned with, and I supported our military action against them. On the other hand, I also believe that our current administration stepped over a few ethical lines in it's zeal to deal with them, well, mostly Saddam and his non-existent WMD's. Does he still need a bullet in his head? Hell, yes! And so do many others. But I also feel we should be very careful in watching our own leaders for the same signs of fanaticism.
Moekandu
Now think about this:
Movies, on average, cost about 100X more than albums to produce. For every album with production costs of 2 million, there's a movie that took 200 million to make. For every indy label record with a 10K budget, there's a movie made for a million.
There's a hell of a lot more money to recoup on a movie than on an album. Once you figure in promotional and marketing costs (normally 2 to 3 times the productions costs), the break even point becomes almost ridiculous. TV commercials for movies are commonplace, right? What about TV commercials for albums? Only if it's released by a music retailer that is bearing the cost of the advertisement. Pepsi was willing to pay for all those obnoxious commercials for the priviledge of taking a ride on Brittney Spears--
Erm. . . Uh, taking a ride on Brittney Spears' popularity. Ahem. . .
The number of units that need to be sold to break even on a movie (be they box office, DVD's, posters, tie-ins, etc.) is almost literally geometrically higher than an album.
And besides, Chicago was nominated for 13 Academy Fucking Awards , so it's hardly fair to use it as an average example, now isn't it? N'Sync's last album broke even on pre-orders. As pop culture phenomena, I'd say the two are pretty well matched. At least half the movies released today don't break even with just box office sales. A single DVD release usually has to recoup significantly more money than a single album, even after box office revenue.
Moekandu
Actually, he was referring to the difference between the Canadian term, peacekeeping, and the American term, "peacekeeping". From what I gathered from his original comment, the word, peacekeeping isn't a euphemism in Canada, but the actual definition of their preferred military strategy. We Americans often misspell our version of the word by leaving off the quotes.
Does that sometime include shooting people in the head? Damn right, skippy. You must always remember, some people simply cannot be reasoned with. Period. When you have someone who is incapable of being reabilitated and dangerous to others, the only way to stop them from harming society is to completely remove them from the equation.
Prison, you say? Consider that most of the drug cartels are being run from the prisons.
But most people can be reabilitated, right? Absolutely! But those that can't will be the death of us all, unless we do something about it.
Peacekeeping as a military strategy is based primarily on attempting to determine whether or not the aggravator can be reasoned with before you pull the trigger.
Moekandu
Actually, I was referring to the characters in X-Force, not the readers. IMHO, I thought that the New Mutants began going downhill after Claremont stopped writing it. The name change to X-Force was just the nail in the coffin.
Mine was a joke, too. Well, mostly.
Moekandu
I would expect nothing less from a Rob Leifeld fan. All of his books were populated by dickwaving assholes and bitchy, airheaded women. He couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag.
Moekandu .Well, pretty much gone after this. . .
Karma: . .
I'm hearing this constant buzz, "Reason will prevail!"
I have some news for you folks. Not everyone can be reasoned with. Period. They are fanatics, lunatics, and criminals. The last thing on Darl McBride's mind is being reasonable.
So tell me, how do you reason with a person that refuses to listen to logic?
The answer?
You don't. You lock them in prison and throw away the key. Or you put a bullet in their head.
As for Darl McBride, I think prison is enough. As for Bin Laden and Hussein, well, you tell me.
Now. . . Back to the reasoning behind ESR's righteous indignation:
The problem with calm, reasoned rebuttals, is that Joe Sixpack is going to ignore it. It's boring. It's not Monday Night Football.
ESR is rightfully pissed off! And he has quite eloquently displayed that. He is making it absolutely clear how absurd he believes SCO's behavior is. And he's done it in such a way that it won't likely be ignored.
This is a battle over intellectual property and all we have to defend our position is words. So are we gonna drone out the usual, "Reason will prevail!" and hope it all magically comes out okay? Or are we gonna kick some ass?
Moekandu
"The object is not to bring you enemy to his knees, but his senses." - Ghandi
"Sometimes that requires a slap in the face." - Moekandu's Addendum
Actually, that is not true. The sun's energy output is not constant. It fluctuates somewhat regularly and is really the cause of ice ages and other global climate changes.
PhantomHarlock is exactly right in regards to digital film and photography.
Yes, CCD's have their limitations, but they are also at the end of their useful life. Foveon's X3 chip is actually a radically different form of CMOS. It has none of the bandwidth limitations that CCD's do, and also capture red, green and blue on every pixel. There's no moire pattern from interpolation, because there's nothing to interpolate. The technology should easily be able to scale well into the QuadHD 60fps range in the next ten years or so.
You can currently get a system that can capture 640x480 @ 30fps and a firewire output. It's currently meant for product development, but retail NTSC and PAL compatible systems shouldn't be too far behind. I've seen some of the hi-res stills taken with the Sigma SD9, using the X3 chip, and they are astounding. Of course it was obvious that the photographer was a lighting expert. Sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.
Moekandu
You don't want sharpness. You want definition and detail. And a lot of that comes from how you light your scene, whether you are using film or digital. One of the limitations with digital cameras is that there is a very fine line between unnatural sharpness and rich detail. The soft look was on purpose.
I saw AOC on the digital screen here in Phoenix. I also saw it on a traditional screen. The difference was like night and day. The digital projection was crisp without being sharp and incredibly rich in color, while the normal projection was dull and muted and it was obvious that they used a relatively cheap stock for the transfer.
Granted you didn't really get those dramatic close-ups where you can see the details of the subject's face, but then Lucas doesn't tend to shoot that way.
Lucas has kept true to his original vision, a space-opera serial. He hasn't changed, you have. That's not necessarily good, as I think that he transcended the adventure serial genre in ways he doesn't quite understand (and it's hurting the story), but that's what he's going for.
As for Roger Ebert. . . No authority? On the digital projection, light sabers glowed with an intesity that I have never seen before in a theater or television. As with all new mediums, the artists need to learn to use the most effective way possible. A digital projectors higher intensity can be used to great effect, if you know how to take advantage of it.
Moekandu
The uncompressed data stream off a Sony Cinealta (HDW-F900) digital HD camera (the same that Lucas used in AOC), is 1.5Gb/sec. I believe it's essentially a Fibre Channel connection. Uncompressed, you can store 3.5 hours of 1080i 24P footage on a 720GB array. You want bigger and faster? Now it really starts getting expensive.
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There are some serious technical hurdles with bumping up the frame rate and resolution on a digital camera (can you imagine handling a 12Gb/sec data stream?), but surprisingly, I think we'll start seeing some of those hurdles being overcome in the next couple of years.
Now, when it comes to price. .
You can rent a Cinealta for about $1500 a day. The price goes down for multi-day shoots. That's 30 minutes of raw 35mm film and that doesn't include processing. If you run 35mm at 48P, then that cost doubles. On average, the filmmaking group I am a member of, tends to record between 1 and 2.5 hours of footage per full day, depending on the number of cameras used, the number of takes, etc. It's a no brainer to jump to HD instead of 35mm.
But the real bottleneck is the projection. Just because you could theoretically record in 35mm 48P, or QuadHD 60P does not mean that you can project it as such. The goal of digital filmmaking isn't merely to increase the quality, but to reduce the costs in every aspect of a production: filming, editing, and distribution.
We've got a ways to go, but we will get there.
Moekandu
I would be anxiously awaiting your script, sakusha. Since you are adept at observing the fact that most people are dullards, I would assume that you believe you are not one of them?
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Very well then. .
Let's see you put your money where your mouth is. I'm challenging you to write a "truly creative" screenplay. By "truly creative", please feel free to use you're own definition, as you will need to submit it with your script.
However, while many sequences of sounds or notes humans do not consider music, I would like to see a story, not merely a unique collection of words. I don't care what it's about. Or its genre, or "target audience", or whatever.
I suppose it's up to you as to whether you want to write a "good" and creative script, or merely a creative script. But, please be aware that the judges are likely to mark you down for shameless incomprehensibility. Be creative, not clever.
Please let me know how much time you think you will need.
Moekandu
moekandu@cox.net
"The object is not to bring your enemy to his knees, but his senses." - Ghandi
"We are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx,
Our brave computers fill our hallowed halls."
Rush
I believe that the Titanic budget was about $190 million. Whereas the total spent on the LOTR trilogy so far, is more than $300 million.
But, you need to consider that LOTR would have never gotten off the ground if Cameron hadn't blown his wad (and everyone else's) and not lose his shirt. Remember, for years, Cameron was credited with three of the Top 5 Most Expensive Movies Made at the time of release: T2, True Lies and Titanic.
Was Cameron a bit excessive? Maybe. But then again, he had to build a whole goddam boat. And he had to build it properly, or it would look like shit. You know, like a Doctor Who set.
Then again, you may not see the layering of fabrics with different textures and patterns in Saruman's robes, but it was obvious he wasn't running around in a bedsheet. Galadriel's robes were simpler and more elegant, but was also obviously not a Martha Stewart K-Mart special.
Cameron made sure that the blue star logo was on the bottom of the plates. Sure, that seems excessive after seeing the movie as it was cut, but at the time the props were being manufactured, they may have planned to get a few shots where the blue star is prominent. Say, after Dickboy knocks the breakfast table onto the floor. A good floor angle long shot of Hot Redhead and Dickboy with the broken and overturned plates in the foreground. There are a few other places where the blue star could have been visible. When half the movie is basically about destroying the set and everything in it, you never know what props will end up upside-down. While historical fans may not be as rabid as Tolkein fans, there are a number of people that would appreciate that sort of attention to detail.
Which do I like more? LOTR, hands down. Does that make Titanic a bad movie? Nope. If you doubt me, ask your girlfriend. Oh! Wait, sorry.
As a writer and a director of independent films, I understand the difficulty in, first, creating a story that can be told within your budget, and second, in finding creative ways to tell the story most effectively. Notice that I didn't say, inexpensive ways. Yes, budget is an issue, but it is not the only issue. Many times, spending just a bit more will greatly increase your production value. Sometimes you just need to drive a real-goddam 18-wheeler off the road and into the canal.
Would I have done things differently than Cameron? You bet! I probably would have tried to avoid building a "whole goddam boat", but that may ultimately have been more headache for "not quite right". Would I have hired the original companies that made stuff for the Titanic for my props? Damn right! It really wouldn't have cost a great deal more and as my boss would say, "They'd be nuts on perfect." Oh yeah, and Snot-nose would not have been in it. Oh, I think Leo's a good actor, I just think that as a human being, he needs to suffer a horrible disfiguring and ultimately fatal accident. Like dating Courtney Love.
Also, I think Clerks was closer to $35K. But, as cool as it was, it looks like it was filmed for $35K.
El Mariachi was filmed for $7000. And he didn't star in it, but he did write and direct it.
Moekandu
Actually, both sides are right. For filmed footage, the director usually watches all or most of it after the day's shooting. This will include the raw blue/green screen and motion control shots. This is to ensure that they can still grab missing shots or retake shots before they strike the set and move on to the next. Setting up a pickup shot a month later is a serious pain in the ass. Trust me.
However, when it comes to F/X shots, there are a number of steps involved and the director has better things to do than hover over competent people doing what they do best. For those, it makes sense to have the director view "dailies" of any given shot in its current stage, once or twice a week: to sign off on maquettes, models, texturing, rough blocking (I forget what it's called), fine motion, lighting, compositing, and etc. And not necessarily in that order. Anyway, it's not likely that there's going to be enough on any given day for the director to see. Someday, I hope to have such problems. Until then I'm sticking with the movie magic I can afford.
Moekandu
"Hi there!" - Big Time, Peter Gabriel