Who remembers the Matrix? I recall gasps in the theatre as the camera rotated around trinity in midair. That shit was tight. What about Avatar? Tons of people were impressed with the world of pandora and the 3D effects. Special effects can definitely impress, but only if you keep them moving forward!
That's not true. Wikileaks released papers in 2007 exposing corruption in the Kenyan Government, and there have been thousands of deaths of activists who used this information to protest the government.
As a union film editor currently working in Hollywood on independent features, I would like to weigh in on this issue.
There is no single answer to any of this. Computer generated effects are not bad. Quick cuts are not bad. Long takes are not bad. Handheld is not bad. None of these techniques are bad in and of themselves. They become bad when they are used inappropriately.
When cutting a scene I ask myself what is trying to be conveyed in that scene. Let's say the character is sad, and we want the audience to know that. My job then becomes finding the best way to show that. It could mean using a close up to show them crying. It could mean using a locked off wide shot to show them surrounded by a lonely environment. There's never a single best answer, and that's in part why I enjoy my job so much.
Likewise when it comes to long takes and special effects, both have their place but both are misused. Again, ask yourself what it is you are trying to convey. If your character is in a fast paced fight in a warehouse, with bad guys all around from above and below coming at him from many directions, it's quite possible that quick cuts can give you a better sense of danger, as well as actually show the action better. One of the drawbacks to long takes tends to be that you are limited in what you can show. If a bad guy drops in through the glass on the other side of the warehouse, in a long take you'd have to pan the camera, and see that action small in the frame. With a cut, you can easily bring the audience across the warehouse to show this action in a medium shot, then instantly bring them back to the hero's reaction.
Another issue with long takes is that they tend to follow the actors and show their backs. You're in a hard spot on this, because we're most interested in where the actor is going, not where they've been, but at the same time seeing someone's back is not very intimate and is a bit disconnecting. This is why long takes work best when nobody is really going anywhere, or when the environment itself is the most important thing to show.
Long takes can be beneficial for action in small spaces, such as a Kung Fu fight or a dance routine. These elements are about physicality and continuity of motion, and being in a small space a long take can easily capture the entirety of that. I love seeing fights with a smoothly flowing camera that preserves the action, just like I love seeing wide shots of musical numbers where there is dancing. All too often, quick cuts are used in these situations to hide things, like the fact that the actor can;t fight or a bad piece of choreography. I think in general any time you use an edit to HIDE something rather than SHOW something, then the quality of your film goes down.
I see a lot of long takes in some films, which appear to have no motivation other than to be long takes, and that hurts the film just as much as if someone threw in a fury of cuts just to make it exciting. Like all techniques, you've got to be really conscious of the implications of using a long take, and what effect it will have. The worst reason to do it is to do it because it's the new cool.
Rope is a good film, but you're essentially watching a stage play on film. If you're going to make a film, you should take advantage of what the medium has to offer, namely the ability to edit and use closeups. In that respect, Rope is sort of a wasted effort. Quick cuts aren't inherently bad, just like long takes aren't inherently good. It's situational, and both can be used to enhance the emotion of a film when done properly.
You know what. I personally think it does say a lot by our society that it's acceptable to slaughter adolescent animals simply because we think they taste well, but if you let one of them lick your naked body it's somehow animal abuse even if the creature in question suffers no ill effects.
Damn will my karma burn for saying this, but while people like to pretend zoophilia is bad because it hurts animals, the real reason it's considered unacceptable is because we have freaking problem with sex.
I can't believe you can't see the difference here. It is pretty much agreed upon that sex is only acceptable when both parties consent, and that both parties are capable of giving said consent, that is, able to understand their actions and are not coerced. I think it goes without saying that an animal is unable to give consent, therefore any sex with animals is going to be unethical.
Killing for food is quite different, as that is required by both us, and many other species in order to survive.
I voted for Nader in 2000, and people blame me all the time!
Re:Too bad they can't put some effort towards test
on
Review: Halo: Reach
·
· Score: 1
Too add to this, many of the titles and HUD elements are outside the action safe regions. I could not read the chapter titles in the cinematics for example - they were half off the screen. Putting text inside the viewable area is pretty basic stuff Bungie... not everybody plays your game on an HDTV.
You still need to pay people, and rent equipment. Making a professionally done film requires both proper gear, and crew, both of which you have to pay for!
You need to pay for:
The camera package.
Lighting package.
Grip package.
Costumes and makeup.
Props.
Crew which consists of grips, gaffers, the DP, an AD, and the director at LEAST. Often times you need hair and makeup, as well as stunt and visual effect co-ordinators.
You need to pay the producers, the editor and assistant editor, the sound editor, as well as whoever writes the score.
Filming permits and possibly travel arrangements for your crew.
Making a professional looking film is just not cheap to do. While it's possible to make a good film with just your DV camcorder and your spare time, if you want it to look good you have to spend some money. As for your point on props and costumes, you still have to buy and fit these costumes to your actors!
The idea that you can't fire a bad teachers or administrators due to the unions is patently false, at least in Michigan. Teachers and administrators are frequently evaluated, and those that do not perform can certainly be fired. The bad ones that stay usually have ins with the higher ups - which is no different than in any other industry.
Okay, I'll give you an example of something killed by piracy. I worked on an independent film with a budget of about 150 grand. We were nearly finished and from what we'd shown there was a lot of buzz and there were a lot of distributors literally coming to our doors to make deals with us. The film was leaked onto the internet, and after that nobody wanted to make a deal with us anymore. We went from tons of interest in theatrical release, to none in the course of a day. Basically, nobody will buy our film now so we are out of luck.
Contrary to what you think, it's difficult if not impossible to even just get DVD distribution on your own. It's not as easy as you'd like to make it out to be, and I suspect you know very little about the movie business.
Piracy hurts movies. A low budget film I worked on was leaked to the internet while we were looking for a distributor. Because of that, no distributor wanted to touch it, and it never got sold.
It all depends on why you go to college. I got a BFA in film, but I did very little film studies. It was all practical work. By the time I finished I had a large body of work to show based on what I actually did and learned hands on, not what I just read about. It very much felt like a trade school, even though I took other courses like history.
Given that typically most of a game's sales happen early in its life, any DRM that keeps the game from being pirated for a while has done its job. Let's say it takes 6 months to crack your DRM. It's already paid for itself. Depending on the game, you could even crack it in 2 months and have it be a net gain.
If you pay for everything with cash, you're actually losing money. Many credit card companies offer things like cash back on purchases, or flier miles, or discounts on cars or whatever. If you are responsible and pay off your bill every month, you're foolish not to use your credit card to take advantage of these things.
In the piece, Ebert wonders why video game designers seem so bent on proving that what they make is art. I quite frankly wonder why too.
The question is a useless distraction anyway: nobody can even define art, so there's no way to prove games are art. They may be, they may not be, but the question is fundamentally unanswerable since we can't even pin down what art is.
Instead of obsessing over whether games are art, game developers should simply be making the best games they can. Likewise players should be buying and playing the best games. There is no need to validate our hobby to anybody people; video games are fun, challenging, and many are engaging intellectual pursuits.
Well, it might be doom for the entirety of the arts if the 'iGeneration" as you deem them, doesn't stop treating art as disposable. It's not so much the 13 year old's insatiable desire to get the Jonas Brothers CD any way she can, it's the fact that music itself is becoming less and less important, so less value is placed on it. Music is now something you listen to while studying, something you put on in the car or at a party, not something to be enjoyed for its own sake. The advent of portable music devices insure that it's everywhere all the time, utterly trivial to get, and not something you'd feel attachment to. We value what we have to work to get, and getting music nowadays is not work at all.
This is why the film industry is still doing well: people don't yet treat the experience of watching a film as disposable. Some do, happily watching one on their PSPs, but most people recognize the value of going out to a theatre, which extends beyond that of just watching the film. The act of going out, the communal aspect of the cinema, these are things that people still value, and as luck would have it they cannot be replicated by piracy.
It's only going to get harder, since when more and more content can come right to you, the less and less people are going to go out of their way to get the stuff that can't. I'm sure many young people nowadays don't even know the value of seeing a live stage show or play. I mean, why do that when I can watch it on my iPhone?
Here's the list of the players. The source is fomos.
Myung Soo (Yarnc), Chan Soo (Luxury), Sang Ho (SangHo), Jung Woo (EffOrt), Yong Hwa (Movie), Jae Yoon (sAviOr), Taek Yong (Bisu), Byong Goo (Stork), Jae Wook (BeSt), il Jang (hero), Myung Hoon (fantasy), Heui Seung (UpMaGiC), Jae Dong (Jaedong), Sang Moon (Leta), Jong Seo (Justin), Chang Hee (go.go)
Having fixed focal lengths is not bad! Prime lenses always give a quality advantage over zoom lenses, which is why in film production, prime lenses are used almost exclusively when image quality matters. Zoom lenses are only used on budget productions, or when there's actually a zoom in the take.
"You just can't present more information to the audience than you started with. You just can't present more information to the audience than you started with. Avatar was filmed with multiple cameras and therefore had the information needed to present a real 3D stereoscopic image. The Wizard of Oz wasn't."
Actually Wizard of Oz was: the 3 color technicolor process required 3 strips of film for each primary color and 3 lenses. Granted the lenses were close together, but they are slightly different perspective. Enough to make true 3D?
Slashdot Mirror
Who remembers the Matrix? I recall gasps in the theatre as the camera rotated around trinity in midair. That shit was tight. What about Avatar? Tons of people were impressed with the world of pandora and the 3D effects. Special effects can definitely impress, but only if you keep them moving forward!
That's not true. Wikileaks released papers in 2007 exposing corruption in the Kenyan Government, and there have been thousands of deaths of activists who used this information to protest the government.
...of the emergency broadcast system.
As a union film editor currently working in Hollywood on independent features, I would like to weigh in on this issue.
There is no single answer to any of this. Computer generated effects are not bad. Quick cuts are not bad. Long takes are not bad. Handheld is not bad. None of these techniques are bad in and of themselves. They become bad when they are used inappropriately.
When cutting a scene I ask myself what is trying to be conveyed in that scene. Let's say the character is sad, and we want the audience to know that. My job then becomes finding the best way to show that. It could mean using a close up to show them crying. It could mean using a locked off wide shot to show them surrounded by a lonely environment. There's never a single best answer, and that's in part why I enjoy my job so much.
Likewise when it comes to long takes and special effects, both have their place but both are misused. Again, ask yourself what it is you are trying to convey. If your character is in a fast paced fight in a warehouse, with bad guys all around from above and below coming at him from many directions, it's quite possible that quick cuts can give you a better sense of danger, as well as actually show the action better. One of the drawbacks to long takes tends to be that you are limited in what you can show. If a bad guy drops in through the glass on the other side of the warehouse, in a long take you'd have to pan the camera, and see that action small in the frame. With a cut, you can easily bring the audience across the warehouse to show this action in a medium shot, then instantly bring them back to the hero's reaction.
Another issue with long takes is that they tend to follow the actors and show their backs. You're in a hard spot on this, because we're most interested in where the actor is going, not where they've been, but at the same time seeing someone's back is not very intimate and is a bit disconnecting. This is why long takes work best when nobody is really going anywhere, or when the environment itself is the most important thing to show.
Long takes can be beneficial for action in small spaces, such as a Kung Fu fight or a dance routine. These elements are about physicality and continuity of motion, and being in a small space a long take can easily capture the entirety of that. I love seeing fights with a smoothly flowing camera that preserves the action, just like I love seeing wide shots of musical numbers where there is dancing. All too often, quick cuts are used in these situations to hide things, like the fact that the actor can;t fight or a bad piece of choreography. I think in general any time you use an edit to HIDE something rather than SHOW something, then the quality of your film goes down.
I see a lot of long takes in some films, which appear to have no motivation other than to be long takes, and that hurts the film just as much as if someone threw in a fury of cuts just to make it exciting. Like all techniques, you've got to be really conscious of the implications of using a long take, and what effect it will have. The worst reason to do it is to do it because it's the new cool.
Rope is a good film, but you're essentially watching a stage play on film. If you're going to make a film, you should take advantage of what the medium has to offer, namely the ability to edit and use closeups. In that respect, Rope is sort of a wasted effort. Quick cuts aren't inherently bad, just like long takes aren't inherently good. It's situational, and both can be used to enhance the emotion of a film when done properly.
You know what. I personally think it does say a lot by our society that it's acceptable to slaughter adolescent animals simply because we think they taste well, but if you let one of them lick your naked body it's somehow animal abuse even if the creature in question suffers no ill effects.
Damn will my karma burn for saying this, but while people like to pretend zoophilia is bad because it hurts animals, the real reason it's considered unacceptable is because we have freaking problem with sex.
I can't believe you can't see the difference here. It is pretty much agreed upon that sex is only acceptable when both parties consent, and that both parties are capable of giving said consent, that is, able to understand their actions and are not coerced. I think it goes without saying that an animal is unable to give consent, therefore any sex with animals is going to be unethical. Killing for food is quite different, as that is required by both us, and many other species in order to survive.
Fair use is not a right. It is an exception to copyright clauses.
No difference at 15 feet?! I'm 3 feet away from my computer monitor, and fullscreen the difference between SD and HD is like night and day.
I voted for Nader in 2000, and people blame me all the time!
Too add to this, many of the titles and HUD elements are outside the action safe regions. I could not read the chapter titles in the cinematics for example - they were half off the screen. Putting text inside the viewable area is pretty basic stuff Bungie... not everybody plays your game on an HDTV.
You still need to pay people, and rent equipment. Making a professionally done film requires both proper gear, and crew, both of which you have to pay for!
You need to pay for:
The camera package.
Lighting package.
Grip package.
Costumes and makeup.
Props.
Crew which consists of grips, gaffers, the DP, an AD, and the director at LEAST. Often times you need hair and makeup, as well as stunt and visual effect co-ordinators.
You need to pay the producers, the editor and assistant editor, the sound editor, as well as whoever writes the score.
Filming permits and possibly travel arrangements for your crew.
Making a professional looking film is just not cheap to do. While it's possible to make a good film with just your DV camcorder and your spare time, if you want it to look good you have to spend some money. As for your point on props and costumes, you still have to buy and fit these costumes to your actors!
The idea that you can't fire a bad teachers or administrators due to the unions is patently false, at least in Michigan. Teachers and administrators are frequently evaluated, and those that do not perform can certainly be fired. The bad ones that stay usually have ins with the higher ups - which is no different than in any other industry.
"Anyway just .02 cents."
Do you happen to work for Verizon?
Okay, I'll give you an example of something killed by piracy. I worked on an independent film with a budget of about 150 grand. We were nearly finished and from what we'd shown there was a lot of buzz and there were a lot of distributors literally coming to our doors to make deals with us. The film was leaked onto the internet, and after that nobody wanted to make a deal with us anymore. We went from tons of interest in theatrical release, to none in the course of a day. Basically, nobody will buy our film now so we are out of luck.
Contrary to what you think, it's difficult if not impossible to even just get DVD distribution on your own. It's not as easy as you'd like to make it out to be, and I suspect you know very little about the movie business.
So you're saying you want a product that is superior to physical releases, yet you want them to charge you LESS?
Piracy hurts movies. A low budget film I worked on was leaked to the internet while we were looking for a distributor. Because of that, no distributor wanted to touch it, and it never got sold.
It all depends on why you go to college. I got a BFA in film, but I did very little film studies. It was all practical work. By the time I finished I had a large body of work to show based on what I actually did and learned hands on, not what I just read about. It very much felt like a trade school, even though I took other courses like history.
Given that typically most of a game's sales happen early in its life, any DRM that keeps the game from being pirated for a while has done its job. Let's say it takes 6 months to crack your DRM. It's already paid for itself. Depending on the game, you could even crack it in 2 months and have it be a net gain.
If you pay for everything with cash, you're actually losing money. Many credit card companies offer things like cash back on purchases, or flier miles, or discounts on cars or whatever. If you are responsible and pay off your bill every month, you're foolish not to use your credit card to take advantage of these things.
In the piece, Ebert wonders why video game designers seem so bent on proving that what they make is art. I quite frankly wonder why too.
The question is a useless distraction anyway: nobody can even define art, so there's no way to prove games are art. They may be, they may not be, but the question is fundamentally unanswerable since we can't even pin down what art is.
Instead of obsessing over whether games are art, game developers should simply be making the best games they can. Likewise players should be buying and playing the best games. There is no need to validate our hobby to anybody people; video games are fun, challenging, and many are engaging intellectual pursuits.
Well, it might be doom for the entirety of the arts if the 'iGeneration" as you deem them, doesn't stop treating art as disposable. It's not so much the 13 year old's insatiable desire to get the Jonas Brothers CD any way she can, it's the fact that music itself is becoming less and less important, so less value is placed on it. Music is now something you listen to while studying, something you put on in the car or at a party, not something to be enjoyed for its own sake. The advent of portable music devices insure that it's everywhere all the time, utterly trivial to get, and not something you'd feel attachment to. We value what we have to work to get, and getting music nowadays is not work at all.
This is why the film industry is still doing well: people don't yet treat the experience of watching a film as disposable. Some do, happily watching one on their PSPs, but most people recognize the value of going out to a theatre, which extends beyond that of just watching the film. The act of going out, the communal aspect of the cinema, these are things that people still value, and as luck would have it they cannot be replicated by piracy.
It's only going to get harder, since when more and more content can come right to you, the less and less people are going to go out of their way to get the stuff that can't. I'm sure many young people nowadays don't even know the value of seeing a live stage show or play. I mean, why do that when I can watch it on my iPhone?
Here's the list of the players. The source is fomos. Myung Soo (Yarnc), Chan Soo (Luxury), Sang Ho (SangHo), Jung Woo (EffOrt), Yong Hwa (Movie), Jae Yoon (sAviOr), Taek Yong (Bisu), Byong Goo (Stork), Jae Wook (BeSt), il Jang (hero), Myung Hoon (fantasy), Heui Seung (UpMaGiC), Jae Dong (Jaedong), Sang Moon (Leta), Jong Seo (Justin), Chang Hee (go.go)
Actually yes, in Korea they do have the tabloids cover them. Some even date actresses. Everybody knows of Boxer, Savior and Bisu. Everybody.
Having fixed focal lengths is not bad! Prime lenses always give a quality advantage over zoom lenses, which is why in film production, prime lenses are used almost exclusively when image quality matters. Zoom lenses are only used on budget productions, or when there's actually a zoom in the take.
"You just can't present more information to the audience than you started with. You just can't present more information to the audience than you started with. Avatar was filmed with multiple cameras and therefore had the information needed to present a real 3D stereoscopic image. The Wizard of Oz wasn't." Actually Wizard of Oz was: the 3 color technicolor process required 3 strips of film for each primary color and 3 lenses. Granted the lenses were close together, but they are slightly different perspective. Enough to make true 3D?