2010 and its been 15 years since I had my first professional work in "the arts" (for want of a better descriptor) For reasons unknown this inauspicious milestone has prompted me to reflect upon my own work history, the things I have done and, more importantly, the nature of what the 'working professional' is in the 2nd decade of the 21st century?
This navel-gazing exercise finds its fundamental in the definition of 'professional'. It's a powerful word, a word with weight and status and implications. And whilst few would argue this, the definition of exactly what 'professional' means remains contentious and inconsistent.
The most base of definition would simply be Professional as a descriptor of someone who gets Paid to work in a particular field. A person paid to make art is a professional artist; a person paid to make clothes is a professional tailor. And so on...
The issue this base definition raises however is that it encompasses everyone with a paying-job. Subsequently the distinction of being a 'professional' or indeed the use of the word at all becomes redundant, 'professional' fails to mark a distinction or status that common usage of the word would imply. Professional dog walker...? Professional checkout operator...?
So, to take a step more refined we could define a professional as a person paid to perform a task that requires specialist knowledge, certification and/or specific education or training. This definition with greater specificity would fit the traditional idea of the 'Professions' - law, medicine, accountancy - jobs that are encompassed or overseen by a Professional Body. You might make the argument that those working in filmmaking for example, are encompassed by the various guilds and associations. But this is a big stretch to suggest that such organisations have the same authority as the Medical Board or Bar Association; organisations from which someone may be disbarred and so unable to continue to practice their profession. Union agreements aside, you don't have to be a member of the Writers Guild to write a screenplay or a novel and be paid to do so. So whilst Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants might argue that no one else can truly be called a professional, such stubbornness wont sway the word out of common usage for other perceived professions.
If we then move specifically to the arts industries (broadly encompassing theatre, tv, film, music, art, and a myriad of hybrids) the idea of 'Professional' takes on another connotation; context. As the arts and arts-based industries are generally and traditionally considered to be difficult to break into and make a living from, the idea of being a Professional marks a distinction of Success.
This idea seems to be derived broadly from the idea that everyone starts in the arts woking for nothing, doing it for the love and a desire to create. Then, much like separations between amateur and professional in sport, when a person is good enough they move up to being paid to do what they previously did for nothing and make a living from it.
So it may be said that the term Professional has greater specificity, is more meaningful and is more applicable when used in reference to the arts industries (and sport) than anywhere else. It denotes an accomplishment and a progression from the mass to the elite; from part-time amateur to full-time professional.
This distinction may be even more apparent and applicable in the digital age of consumer co-creation, the Prod-User and User Generated Content. Fuelled by the pressure cooker of powerful and accessible tools of creation (software) and an unlimited and openly accessible broadcast system (the internet) we are palpably in the age that declares proudly that "anyone can be an arts-worker". This massive spike in the number of people engaging with creative arts industries practice as Amateurs gives extra impetus to entrenching a dividing line - a moniker to stamp a person as having risen above the mass of unpaid creators becoming successful enough to make a living from that creation as a Professional. The term becomes a medal of achievement.
Now, this is not necessarily to suggest a hierarchy of importance or worthiness. Great artistic civilisations have only risen when art and culture are embedded in this populous not confined to the elite. If every kid was making music imagine how many Mozart's, Tom Yorke's, YoYo Marrs we'd discover? The digital age has this potential to unlock and provide opportunity for what might otherwise be lost or undiscovered.
Yet, somewhat ironically, through widespread engagement with Folk Art - in its literal sense of Folk being 'of the people' - we make the need, the desire, for a moniker of status, success, achievement, all the more entrenched. If everyone is making videos then what does it take to call yourself a 'professional filmmaker'? Is it just being paid? Or is it something else..?
This leads us to yet another incarnation of 'Professional', one that has broad appeal and popular usage. Many might argue that above ideas of 'specialist knowledge' and 'being paid', Professional is a state of mind. It is an attitude and a way of conducting ones self in regard to their creative practice. A mindset that is irrespective of whether one is being paid and making a living for their efforts - a state of 'Professionalism' rather than just the pragmatic moniker of being a 'Professional'.
Certainly I, as most, have worked on 'amateur', un-paid films that were highly 'professional' in the way they were conducted. And similarly have worked on professionally paid projects that were far from professional in conduct. At an individual level, paid arts workers can often demonstrate a distinct lack of professionalism whilst amateurs exhibit all the traits u would hope to find in the pros. The point is that budget (or lack thereof) is not a garantee of Professionalism.
The downside of this reading of Professional is that it leaves aside Professional experience and knowledge - something that no attitude of good intent can make up for.
If I was more cynical I might suggest that those who argue professional has nothing to do with being paid but is wholly a way of conducting yourself do so as little more than means for amateurs to adopt the term Professional without having to earn it, a kind of self delusion to raise their status above their amateur colleagues and exert a notion of experience they do no actually possess.
But I don't think Im that cynical... And something about a quote from James Cameron rings true "Pick up a camera. Shoot something... you are a director. Everything after that youre just negotiating your budget"
So to come to back where we began - after 15 years can I call myself a professional...? I find myself making a list of all the Professional (ie Paid) roles I have performed in those years on projects large and (mostly) small... Actor, sound designer, lighting designer, sound mixer, technical director, video camera operator, production assistant, live staging technician, voice-over artist, video editor, motion graphics artist, magazine editor, journalist, book author, website content editor, director, producer, script editor, screenwriter, radio host, photographer, sound mixer and sound recordist. And those roles may be in turn viewed in a more succinct list of arts industry spheres I have worked in: theatre, film, tv, advertising, radio, publishing, museums, music and online.
Am I a professional? Certainly this is how I have made a living. I've never worked a job outside of these related 'arts and media' industries, never needed a 'day job' to support my creative work, never worked in a bar or cafe between gigs.
And yet for the most part (or at least for arguments sake) I have not been any one of these roles consistently enough to make living unto itself. It's taken an engagement with all of these and my own flexibility and adaptability to make a good living collectively by performing them all at various and overlapping times.
If 'Professional' means being paid for what so many do as un-paid amateurs then I assume i get a tick. But despite my 15 years experience and having undergraduate and masters degrees - along with a soon to be completed PhD - it might still be hard to justify 'specialist expertise' when I'm such a jack of all trades. And certainly there is no Professional Body governing my work. I may dare to hope that I have always conducted myself professionally. I am quite certain that a great majority of the work I've had was simply because I was a touch anally retentive about showing up on time. I often tell my students that producers will take reliability over talent any day of the week.
So, having formulated this summary of my career to date I conclude that I'm probably not alone or unique in my checkered professional history and my confused state about what Professional really means. 'Professional' is a many varied badge and we all wear it in different ways - as a mark of success, a signifier of status, a certification of experience or a descriptor of attitude and conduct.
What is consistent as I reflect back is that I am, above all else, an Educator. Of all the roles I have played it is teaching that has been the hub and, moreover, the most engaging, involving and satisfying field of endeavour. It's taken 15 years and a sojourn through a myriad of roles and fields to arrive at that conclusion and the following position - whilst I will continue to write, edit, shoot, produce, script, composit, review and record - and will likely always make part of my living from these endeavours - I am above all else a Professional Educator. And the mark of status as a professional educator I carry is that I would trade all my other pursuits for teaching on any given day of the week.
This may appear a touch self-indulgent for my blog-post - I fear it will prove to be one of my least popular scribblings - but it all seems rather fitting since this week I start a new job as lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film, TV and Radio school (AFTRS). A new Year, a new job and the start of a whole host of new Professional challenges for the next 15 years.
District 9 by Neill Blomkamp is arguably one of the most exciting
new films to come along in some time. A film that feels fresh, original
and unique - traits that are all too often lacking in mainstream
cinema. The Los Angeles Times described it as a "thoughtful sci-fi standout in a season characterized by big, dumb studio tent-pole movies"
Now certainly with a budget of $30 million District 9 can hardly
be called 'low-budget' but in comparison to Hollywood standards for
what they problematically term a 'High Concept' sci-fi special-fx
film, its extraordinarily efficient.
What is most significant
is that whilst the film cost $30m to make, it has thus far made back
$163m - more than 5 times it's budget (and thats before it hit's DVD
where it's reasonable to assume it's going to do very well). 5x return
on investment is good by any standards and it's this 'return' that is
the only thing major Hollywood studios are really concerned with.
So
let us then compare that to the hideous abomination that Michael bay
inflicted on the world with Transformers 2: Revenge of the fallen. Cost
$200m to make and has thus far taken in about $800m. Sounds impressive
- but thats only 4x it's investment in return. The key factor is not
that Transformers 2 made more money but that the proportional 'return'
is comparable. Importantly however the Risk is not. Massive budget
Hollywood monstrosities demand monstrous risk of failure. A $30m film
demands not nearly as much risk.
Now, one might argue that an
un-tested director making a 'low' budget alien film, in South Africa,
with a cast of unknowns was a risk and that Transformers 2 was no risk
at all because it was a known commodity franchise, regardless of budget.
Yet
that doesnt really hold up. take for example Speed Racer; it cost $120m
to make and made back just $44m. huge flop, lost heaps of money and yet
investors could have been forgiven for thinking Speed Racer was
risk-free. Speed Racer is a hugely popular brand, with the right
demographic, had comic-book hipness and was being made by the Matrix
guys...!
Likewise Speed2, big budget sequel to hugely popular
film with same star lead as original - Cost $110m and returned just
$150m. Didnt loose money but $110m is a lot to risk up front to make
less than 50% return.
Batman and Robin should have been a
slam-dunk with that cast and the uber Batman Brand but it cost $125m
and made back just $140m.
Meet Joe Black had 2 huge stars
in Pitt and Hopkins, should have been a safe bet but it cost $90m and
made back just $180m. Doubled its money but not even close to the
percentage return of District 9.
What does this tell us?
Well perhaps a few things....
First
is that first-rate visual effects and 'high-concept' filmmaking is not
the sole domain of huge-budget filmmaking. You simply dont need
mega-bucks to do mega effects. The $30m District 9 is one example, the
inspiring Moon by Duncan Jones - made for just $5m and before
its even gone into main release and DVD its made back more than $7m
is another.
The
second is that low to mid-range budget films can and SHOULD be arguing
their value NOT only on artistic integrity but on pure economics. It
strikes me that for too long indie filmmakers have defined their value
purely in self-indulgent artistic parameters instead of exerting their
viability as products of strong economic credentials.
Low-budget
filmmakers should Not be knocking on investors doors with pleas for
artistic patronage and good-will but rather banging down their doors
with a powerful argument for moderate risk, high return investment.
Blockbuster Hollywood studio films are simply not good investment
massive outlay with massive risk. Mid and low budget films are a much
better investment. They can take advantage of multi-platform delivery
and should be able to compete head on financially on a
dollar-for-dollar basis.
What Directors have to do to prove this
and make it a reality is get Pragmatically Smart. Not self indulgent
with artistic whimsy but proactively savvy in making films that are
dynamic, viable, adventurous but also with a strong eye for the
audience and being, heaven forbid, popular.
If theres one
director who intrinsically understands this its Peter Jackson. Lord Of
The Rings may have been mega budget cinema (though it was
proportionally far less than it would have cost had it been made in the
US by and American) but all the films Jackson had made to that point
where low-budget but profitable and viable films that always gave good
return to investors. In this regard I was quite taken with Peter
Jacksons funny but astute comments to Niell Blomkamp in regard to
District 9:
I told him that was what he could do that
Transformers and GI Joe couldnt. We could be grungy and dirty and rude
and violent. Thats how he could compete with movies like that. Once
you have 100 million dollars, you naturally get more conservative and
you think about the demographic and such. We were able to have total
freedom.
---
Below is the original short film that was the basis for District 9
Stereo3D - creative boon or desperate financial ploy?
Can/Will Stereoscopic 3D reinvigorate interest in deep-focus staging and a greater utilization of the spatiality of cinema? And Is Stereoscopic 3D 'all that and a bag of chips?' Or is it doomed to die?
These were the questions recently posed on my blog by a reader posed in response to a lengthy discussion on deep-focus vs rack-focus cinema techniques and my perspective of the later being vastly over-used. The reader, Dani, speculated that Stereo3D may prompt a revisiting of less common deep-focus techniques.
My response to that first question would be a fairly resounding yes. I think the very nature of Stereoscopic 3D forces directors and DoP's to think immediately of Staging and Spatial arrangement first and foremost rather than Framing. The nature of what Stereo3D can do puts onus on arrangement in Space rather than arrangement in Frame. Stereo3D innately demands deep-focus as going ultra shallow with blur is effectively composing in 2-dimensional planes rather than deep spaces. So a DoP shooting Stereo3D with ultrafast primes with wide open apertures is totally defeating the purpose of having Stereo3D in the first place.
Now, as for the second question. It would be too easy for me to say that i generally think Stereo3D is a crock of shit that no one is really interested in and which the mass general public is, at best, ambivalent about. But I'll avoid such provocation and instead entertain a perspective on WHY parts of the film industry are so gung-ho on 3D....?
Lets face it, Hollywood studios are Terrified.
Movie theatre ticket sales are slumping. It's getting harder for the studios to convince people to leave their homes to go to the movies. The reason..? Well aside from cultural phenomenon factors I think there two more tangible elements. Home theatre systems are getting cheaper and better and so the enticement of the 'big screen' experience is just not as alluring as once was. When our home TV's were small, 4:3 with convex glass and limited colour and resolution, there was a great 'viewing quality' attractor with going to the cinema - an experience you couldnt get at home. But when you've got a 40-50" flat-screen LCD on the wall (let alone a home projector) with a multi channel surround sound system playing from BluRay in HD and a VERY COMFY couch; the movie theatre just doesn't have the pull it once did. Frankly I for one would generally rather watch a movie on my home than the theatre. I can stop whenever i like for a piss-break. I can rewind if I miss a line of dialogue and I can have my friends over and have a better communal experience.
Then we add on top of this the dreaded DownLoad culture...! Shock Horror!
Legalities aside, the much bigger problem for the studios is that they are trying to convince viewers to conform their watching to When and Where the studios say they can in a culture where the viewer otherwise has complete control over how and when they watch just about anything. 4000 years of human history and warfare has told us that people dont like being told what to do and being dictated to.
There was a shift a decade ago when studios started treating Theatrical Releases at the Movie Theatre as simply a 'marketing exercise' to drive DVD sales post theatre run. That trend still stands and indeed some big mainstream films actually draw the money to pay for theatrical release prints directly out of the marketing budget for the film. This alone tells you the brave new world we live in. A world the studios are terrified of...
And this brings us to Stereo3D. Why are the studios pushing Stereo3D so hard? Why are they talking it up? Why are they giving huge financial incentives to hardware and software companies to develop Stereo3d technologies...? Because You HAVE to go to the Movie Theatre to see it. I cant download a Stereo3D version to watch at home. I have to go to the movie theatre and buy a traditional ticket to see Stereo3D.
So the major studios are pushing hard on Stereo3D because it is a way to preserve the traditional hierarchical financial structure of the film industry. In maintains the old-school distribution pyramid that trickles down from Theatrical release, through DVD and onto Broadcast in a strict linear privilege. Rather than change the way they operate they are pushing a technology simply to reinforce the status quo they are most comfortable with.
So... I could argue that Stereo3D is a viewing experience the bulk of the world's movie goers simply dont give a flying rats arse about. Or I could argue that my experience is, as with many others, that Stereo3D is hard to watch, makes my eyes tired and sore and so will be avoided by many on physiological grounds. But, i wont argue either of these because I dont have to.
My predication is not that Stereo3D will disappear (quite the contrary, i think it will persist in various forms for some time to come) but that it will fundamentally FAIL to do what the Hollywood studios desire so desperately for it to achieve - Get people back into the movie theatres en-masse again. It will fail this overt objective through a) audience apathy and b) because it is simply a matter of time before technology advances and I can watch Stereo3D movie in my home theatre from a file I illegally downloaded (not that i would ever do that ;) Even 2 years ago i tested a prototype laptop computer that could make a Stereo3D image WITHOUT glasses; you just had to sit dead-square in front of it. It wont be long before that becomes mainstream (if people want it)
Thus I draw the conclusion that it doesn't matter how good Stereo3D is, or how great it looks, it will Fail to do what the studios desperately want it to do. And when it does, they will give up on it and desperately scurry for soemthign else to plug their sinking boat. And because I think audience desire for Stereo3D will always be fringe and marginal rather than mainstream, development of hardware and software for Stereo3D will subsequently cease or slow once the studios let it go.
As a case in point of the culture of apathy I believe exists around Stereo3D (from those outside of the big studio set at least) I can say that I teach a hundred rabidly enthusiastic, drenched in movies, gung-ho film school brats who eat breath and sleep cinema technology. Are they milling over the internet reading about Avatar and Stereo3D? Are they endlessly talking about Stereo3D between classes? Are they excitedly musing on how they would use Stereo3D when they should be working on their HDV short films? NOPE..! They just dont care.... They really dont. They talk endlessly of video games, 3D animation, CGI, RED camera, 4k, Steadicams but Stereo3D is just NOT on their mind. Some might argue that this will change once they see Avatar.... But im not so sure. This is the next generation of filmmakers, all in their 20's, and right now they just dont care about Stereo3D. And if they dont care do we really think the general public is going to care enough to leave their comfy couches...?
The 'film look' is a Crock, Shallow depth-of-field is Banal and Rack focus is Lazy. Would all you indie filmmakers please Get Over It..!
Allow me to be deliberately provocative...
How a Movie looks is a very important thing. The visual aesthetics of a movie profoundly shape the experience of watching it. Few would argue with this position.
Aesthetics, by definition, is the study of ways of seeing and of perceiving. When we consider the aesthetics of cinema we are considering how a movie looks and is perceived. To the filmmaker - concerned with making, building, constructing a film rather than just experiencing it - aesthetics are tangibly the techniques they employ to depict the world of their cinematic creation.
So far, this is all pretty obvious and straight forward. But something we must consider is this idea of 'Technique' and the choices at the filmmaker's disposal - What are they? How are they used? What do they mean?
Any visual technique used by a filmmaker is simply a tool leveraged for an aesthetic story-telling purpose. Quick-cutting or long-takes, close-ups or wide shots, colour or black and white, dollys or pans, so on and so on... The effectiveness, impact and worth of any given technique a filmmaker employs is derived from its suitability to the context of the film. In simple terms, does the technique match the story?
Filmmaking is above all else a process of problem solving and the techniques employed are simply the solution to those problems - be they narrative, emotive, technical or creative. For example; PROBLEM - The audience need to feel a part of the action, that they share the danger the characters face. SOLUTION - Shoot hand-held and shaky, ducking and weaving the camera with the action
All this seems well and good and leaves open infinite possibilities for creative aesthetic solutions. Great films are made when directors find innovative, fresh and exciting aesthetics to solve creative problems.
But if we except this premise then we must face up to a distinct problem. If a single aesthetic choice becomes so dominant and common and ubiquitous across all genre's of filmmaking, regardless of the creative problems posed by individual films, then it ceases to be grounded technique - it becomes stale, meaningless, banal, a default position rather than a creative choice.
In the 21st century I would attest that Shallow Focus and Rack Focus aesthetics have lost all meaning as useful creative problem solving techniques and instead have become banal, unimaginative staples of cinema. And it prompts us to ask loudly.... "What the hell happened to Deep Focus?"
Let me step back a bit from this verbose statement and provide some clarity on the trajectory that leads me to this point. In the early days of cinema film stocks were slow and so apertures had to be wide open in the hope of obtaining decent exposure. With wide open apertures you get very shallow depth of field - a short stretch of space where the subject is in focus that renders anything in the fore or back ground blurred.
In the 40's companies such as Kodak and Agfa developed better chemical processes and faster film stocks. With faster film stocks apertures dont need to open so wide for exposure and thus depth of field can be extended. Deep-Focus cinema was born; an image aesthetic where subjects at varying focal-lengths from the camera can be equally sharp; both foreground and background in focus. Cinema changed dramatically as a new set of problem solving aesthetic techniques were opened up for filmmakers; new opportunities and possibilities for how a film could look. Shallow Focus and its offspring Rack Focus (where the lens is manipulated in-shot to shift focus from one subject to another) became not the staple of how films looked and worked visually but rather options of choice that a filmmaker may chose to use, or not use, depending on the needs and context of the film.
Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, and the superb camera work of Gregg Toland, stands as a penultimate example of the power of deep-focus and spawned the host of new thinking about cinema aesthetics that was embodied by the French New Wave and scholarly journals such as Cahiers du Cinema.
But the cinematic party of aesthetic choice, possibility and variety seemed to be cut short as deep-focus became the victim of the Video and Digital Revolutions.
Let me explain...
Video technology - the ability to capture a moving image electronically rather than chemically - came along in the 70's and 80's. For the most part such technology was seen as having a great many benefits but one of them was Not visual fidelity. The technology still had many years to go (and an evolution from analogue to digital) before it may be considered visually equal. The simplistic result of this was that Video Cameras at this time were made, in large part, not to directly compete with film cameras for conservatively traditional cinema roles but to serve different purposes. As such they were largely small cameras with small sensors. There is of course a direct mathematical correlation between the size of the sensor (the imaging plane) and the depth of field rendered. Small sensor = deep depth of field. Large sensor = shallow depth of field. Video technology, by nature of both its technological limitations and cultural position within media industry contexts, was innately deep-focus.
What must remembered about cinema aesthetics is that they are deeply connected to cultural responses. Take for example the modern age of mobile phones and mass popular YouTube uploading. We have become so used to seeing nightly TV news filled with amateur footage that is shaky, pixelated and out of focus depicting immediate and current events in a veritae style that there is a prevailing cultural construct that directly associates such Shaky / Out of focus / Pixelated images with 'Truth' and 'Actuality'. It's for this reason that modern TV news proactively requests amateur footage from its viewers despite it being only a few years ago that airing such footage would have been considered beneath 'Broadcast Quality Standards'. Similarly TV networks the world over have been known to compress and deliberately degrade images of natural disasters and war zones in order to make it seem more 'authentic'.
This same cultural construct response was forced upon deep focus by the video revolution of the 70's and 80's. What was ingrained into the popular visual language was that 'deep focus' equated to video and so, in the minds of viewers, primarily to documentary, news reporting, amateur footage, cheap production and pornography. Conversely that 'shallow focus' equated to 'film' and high budget, narrative cinema, high-art.
This shift in the popular cultural 'reading' of moving image aesthetics and the separation of High and Low cinematic art on the basis of Deep or Shallow focus has been a blight and a curse on filmmaking ever since.
In the digital age, amid the famed 'digital revolution', we at last moved towards a parity of visual fidelity between celluloid and digital but have been simultaneously afflicted with a prevailing bogus desire to constrict the aesthetics of digital to the legacy hang-ups of film.
Sadly the prime concern of digital indie filmmakers over the past decade has not been the new aesthetic possibilities afforded them by digital technologies but rather an almost singular focus on the cost saving and pragmatic elements of digital. As such, the much lauded desire of digital filmmaking has been to, on one hand, shoot cheap but, on the other, have it look like 'Film'.
Now, despite the thousands of website articles, posts, forum treatises and essays dedicated to the mission of how to get the 'Film Look' it is arguable that a useful definition with any clarity on exactly what constitutes the 'Film look' is near impossible to come by. Frame Rate, Progressive scan, Grain, Flicker, Weave, Dynamic Range, Gamma curve - these are all the traits often cited as the 'film look' but together they constitute such a broad palette of hazy and in-tangible possibilities that distilling them into a particular set of aesthetic traits is a highly ephemeral process.
May I suggest this.... The ?film look? is bullshit; a product of marketing representation and the digestible distillation of an association with a particular mode of viewing. The 'film look' is a cultural rather than aesthetic understanding; one drawn from our legacy of personal cinematic experiences in the movie theatre watching a projected image - Nostalgia not Aesthetics.. Thus, when it comes to making 'films' in the digital age for ourselves our base instincts are to want our films to evoke those same nostalgic memory associations we have with celluloid. This we translate as the aesthetic of film, the 'film look', but in truth it's much more about cultural and personal association.
Through all this, the ramifications of this for digital indie filmmakers have been profound. In working with Digital Video but desiring a 'film look' - that is near impossible to quantify - their efforts were skewed and corrupted. For so many digital indie filmmakers over the past 15 years their functional definition of the 'film look' was primarily whatever aesthetic characteristics were the opposite of what was innate to small-format video. Most specifically Shallow Focus.
Because deep-focus is the default position of many small format digital cameras, owing largely to small sensors as imaging planes, the prevailing aesthetic desire of indie filmmakers was to invest their films with the opposite - to enforce shallow-focus as a way of connecting with a popular culture mindset that connects Shallow Focus with 'high-budget cinema' and Deep Focus with 'low-budget' video.
As a result we have a whole generation of filmmakers who measure their aesthetic mark by how shallow their focus can be and how often they can Rack-Focus their shots. They are a generation who have been obsessed with rack-focusing rather than staging to move the viewer around the cinematic space; using the camera lens to depict space in flat 2D planes rather than a 3-diemnsion staging of space itself.
We've spent so much of the digital revolution fussing over how to make digital look like film that we've neglected the subtle art of arranging space itself, forgotten how to focus the eye Spatially rather than the far more clumsy and overt mechanics of doing it Optically. Most importantly we've forgotten that the viewer is a sentient and intelligent being, more than capable of deciphering, analyzing, speculating on and articulating the visual information they take in.
Let me offer a verbose rebuke of Shallow Focus and Rack-Focus by way of being provocative.
Shallow focus and Rack-Focus is lazy. A ham-fisted and overtly slothful technique with little impetus other than to lead your viewer around by the nose, to force them to look exactly where you want them to look, when you want them to look there. As a tool, like all other cinematic tools at the filmmakers disposal, it can and may be very useful. But as a staple and default way to depict moving images it is as articulate as a house brick.
Shallow focus and Rack Focus is the cinema equivalent of spoon-feeding the audience one small digestible and banal visual morsel at a time. Handing to them a deliberately unsophisticated and unchallenging image platter. It is the camera equivalent of writing only in capital letters and short sentences for fear your reader/viewer may not understand precisely and exactly what you want them to understand. "Look here", "see this", "turn now" - no distractions, no surprises, no accidentals, no confusion, no uncertainty, just the domineering dictation of a moving-image experience on pre-determined flat 2-dimensional planes. This is the essential internal logic of Shallow-Focus/Rack-Focus cinematography which, by nature of it's elimination through blur of any distractions outside of a singular focus, is an acutely dictatorial aesthetic. An aesthetic that leaves nothing to the viewers analytical mind and doesn't engage the viewer in a more complex visual contract. Rack-Focus refuses to allow the viewer to decipher and assemble meanings for themselves and is a condescending and patronizing way present a cinematic image.
That said, the problem is not Shallow and Rack Focus unto themselves as techniques but rather that they are not seen and used as deft Tools and problem solving Options. Rather they act as blithe and banal default methods fueled by a misguided desire for an association with nostalgic 'high-art'.
Utilizing deeper focus allows for a complex play of light, space, distance, obstacles and subjects. The arrangement of the framed contents becomes paramount, the subjects proportions and relationships to each other the prime creative device. The construction of a cinematic space that is detailed and nuanced becomes the main canvas of the filmmaker. Shallow focus eliminates and takes these options away, it dissolves a great deal of the problem-solving and decision making process that is the art of the Director. In shallow focus the Director is not demanded to solve problems of space, is not compelled to ask questions of arrangement and position, is relieved of the requirement to convey proximity and relationships.
A post such as this may be very confronting for some indie filmmakers who have dedicated so much of their time to extolling the virtues of shallow depth-of-field and to toiling in their colour-grading system to mimic film-stock emulsion and gamma curves. But for those more enlightened readers who feel compelled to think outside of banal convention and consider how else things might be done, I encourage you to read David Bordwells superb book 'Figures Traced Light' which explores in exquisite detail the lost art of Cinematic Staging and Deep-Focus.
Likewise the two links below present some interesting reading in regard to the contentious history of deep-focus and its connection to movements such as the New Wave and the idea of 'reality'.
Using a Movie camera for Stills is more significant than using a Still camera for Movies
Why Capture the moment when you can Select it..?
This seems to be the question some high-profile still photographers are asking themselves. Why work with a camera whose mechanics are based around the idea of 'capturing' a moment plucked from the air - a snapshot - when you can simply hit REC on a video camera, capture 24+ photos every second and then, at will, select and choose any of the captured moments you wish? Up until this point, the factor preventing this mindset was Resolution - the fact that still image resolutions are very high and moving image resolutions are very low. But the times they have a changed....
Reports from a recent Vanity Fair shoot is that famed Photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a session with Tina Fey not on the usual assortment of Canon and Nikon digital SLR's but rather with a RED ONE. The process..? 1) Press REC. 2) direct the subject in real-time to pose. 3) Press Stop. 4) Import the footage and from the 4k rushes pluck out the 'moments' you want from the 24+/sec you have availible.
And photogrpahy will never be the same....
Whilst an argument that the resolution of of RED at 4k is still not anywhere near the native resolution of high-end DSLR's (let alone Digital mid-Format) there are two things that must be remembered - 1) that with a 35k RED sensor on the way this argument has a short shelf-life. And 2) How much reoslution do you REALLY need for a magazine shoot and for website publishing. 4K from a RAW image might struggle if you need to blow up to a large framed print or billboard but it is certainly plenty for just about any print-publishing purpose.
Photography in this way becomes not a process of timing, reflex and moment-capturing but rather a distinctly different mechanic more akin to selection and image isolation.
Whilst much of the discussion about the convergence of Still and Motion image acquistion has focused on Still cameras shooting Moving images; I'm inclined to suggest that moves - such as those by Canon with their 7D HD DSLR - to use a still camera to shoot movies are not anywhere near so significant as using a Movie camera to shoot Stills. The former simply changes the tool to do the same job whereas the later changes the entire cretaive process and premise of Photogrpahy itself.
A fascinating set of statistics has emerged from a poll conducted in on US household viewing habits. These stats should sound as profound note of perspective to filmmakers and, in particular, student filmmakers in the 21st century.
The report shows the growth and change in the amount of time spent watching TV and Internet video in the year from the start of 2008 to start of 2009. Rather unsurprising was that TV viewing dominated in total hours per week but the much more telling aspect was in growth. People are watching more TV in 2009 than 2008 by about 2%. But the growth in the amount of Streaming/Internet Video being watched grew by a massive 53% and the number of people who regularly watch internet video went up by 13%.
For a very long time the term 'Film and TV' has been a conjoined twin; the most common thing for a filmmaker, actor, director, editor, or producer to say was "I work in film and TV". Remarkably few would, or do, state they work in "Film, TV and Internet video". And yet look at the stats. Look where the trend is going. Look where the bulk of the work will be in a but a few years time.
A colleague of mine is the online content manager for a major network of radio stations which includes development and delivery of a significant amount of video content. A recent production of video content series for the network, destined for internet only release, had a production budget of more than 5 million dollars. Thats more than enough to make a very substantial indie feature. And this was for web video..!!!
Every filmmaker or film student right now who isnt looking at the above stats and seeing in clearly spelt out detail of where the future foundations of the career work is, is simply not seeing the forest for the trees.
Loving digital for its beauty not just its practicality
For too long the distinct Colour, Grain, Artifacts, Judder and
Flicker of celluloid film had been praised and celebrated as somehow
the epitome of 'cinema'. That these defects in the celluloid image were
somehow what made cinema organic, special, magical....
As digital arrived and grew, it's potency was celebrated in terms of
Cost, Efficiency, Flexibility. For sometime now movies have been shot
digital because of practical and logistical concerns but rarely for
aesthetic ones. Subsequently the much voiced pursuit of digital camera
hardware was to achieve "the look of film, with the flexibility of
digital"...
This is a profoundly short-sighted view. Those who see Digital only
as a logistic advancement rather than an aesthetic one are failing to
see the future beyond their nose, failing to possess any vision for
what could be?
Take a long hard look at this footage from the BBC.
This incredible image sequence, that seems to present a reality more
Real than Real, a hyper-reality that is beyond what the human eye is capable of but which is
embedded with Veritae actuality, an image that is impossible in any
format but digital, was shot with a Typhoon HD4 camera in an underwater
housing.
The specs of the HD4 are remarkably humble, Not 4k, not 2k, not
even 1080 but 720p on a single CMOS sensor. However that sensor has an
astounding light sensitivity of 1000ASA and can shoot up to 1000 frames
per second.
Is there anyone who doubts that it's just a matter of a time (short
time at that) before we have such a camera capable of 2000fps at 4k??
Sometime ago I wrote a decidedly provocative piece entitled "I Love the look of Video" and in that article i observed that:
"I see chemical image of film and it just seems soft and dull and
lifeless to me. I see the razor sharpness and the infinite flexibility
of video, its density and dynamism and vibrancy and I think nothing but
'film is dead'.... I can't wait for the day we all 'get over it' and stop seeking to limit
and curtail the evolution of the moving image and focus on exploiting
its new properties."
In the above image we see yet another of those evolutionary steps. Once upon a time digital was a great leap forward in filmmaking
logistics. But, at long last it seems we may have come to the true calling of
digital as a great leap forward in aesthetics.
It's very easy to fall into thinking that the cinema industries are
pushed along by a hunger for the power and flexibility of new
technology and technical innovation. From where we sit in a binary pool
of software and digital hardware and RED ONE cameras and solid-state
recording and so on, you could be forgiven for thinking that the film
industry is the foremost embracer of new technology.
The truth however is that the film industry has most often been
painfully slow to accept new technology, extremely slow to change or
adapt or engage with new opportunities and oftentimes deliberately
resistant to evolution and 'better' ways of working. Indeed it might be
said that it has an overt preference for the status quo.
This interesting interview below explores this conundrum whereby, on
one hand, 'cinema-is-technology' and does not exist without technology
and yet on the other, the industry has consistently rejected, avoided
and rallied against technological change.
This idea was floated in a recent Studio Daily conversation which discussed the current state and future directions of Apple, Avid and Adobe. The perspective that Apple is a public company focused on maximum profits for shareholders means that sooner or later some bean-counter at Apple will take a look at the company accounts and realise that the ProApps division takes a lot of resources but represents a tiny slither of the company revenue. When compared to iPhones, iPods, iMacs and iTunes, the turnover connected to ProApps like FCP is absurdly small.... hence the old joke that Final Cut Studio needs a giant dongle in the form of a Mac to run.
At the same time as this video appeared a blog post by Scott Simmons explored Apple's approach to suppourting non-Quicktime formats. These two together prompted me to reflect upon an article i had written in the past entitled "Final Cut 6. Where did all the Newness go?"
To my mind Apple, sadly, have a BIG PROBLEM... And its a problem they have had before and not seemed to learned the lesson.
When FCP6 was released (in the guise of FCS2) It contained NOT A SINGLE 'NEW' THING. Not one. Everything in FCP6, that was an improvement from FCP5, was simply a catch-up to what every other NLE had had months or even years before.
ProRes was a copy of DNxHD and Cineform. Multi-format timeline was something everyone else had been enjoying for a very long time. 24bit 96k audio was standard everywhere but FCP. Multi-cam was nothing new, the list goes on. There was no innovation or market leadership in FCP6 as there had been in previous versions - namely 2 and 3. FCP6 was merely playing catchup to the 8-ball.
I said then that Apple needed to desperately get in front of the ball and release an FCP7 very quickly... They failed. FCP7 is far far too long coming. By the time it does get here I'll be not at all surprised if it delivers nothing but catchup again. In fact i fail to see how unless Apple truly come out with a from-scractch re-write of FCP into something mind-blowing, that FCP7 can be anything but a disappointment.
What do we hope for in FCP7/FCS3...? - A real-time engine that can actually scale decoding resolution. - Actual 4k 4096px support - Project files able to be fully exchanged with Motion/Colour/DVDSP - GPU acceleration (used for much more than page-twirl transitions) - Surround sound audio - Greatly improved audio tools in general (this is a VERY long list that starts with the ability to playback a bloody MP3 files without RENDERING!!!!) - Metadata management - And of course 'real' native format suppourt rather than compulsory re-wrapping to MOV.
And yet even though all these in FCP7 would be a lovely improvement over FCP6, every one of these is Already available in FCP's competitors - namely Premiere, Vegas and Avid. And moreover, have been for a LONG time.
There's only so long Apple can continue to bring very late delivery of NLE features that its competitors take for granted before it starts losing market share and industry respect. Unless Apple pull some of the guys off the damned iPhone and start putting some real resources into ProApps development then they'll be perpetually behind the market. Each new version of FCP only able to deliver what everyone else already has. I find myself asking where did Apple the innovator went?
I hope that im wrong. i hope that FCP7 doesnt just catchup but goes way past where the others are at with FCS3. I hope they deliver integration Better than Adobe's. I hope they deliver audio tools better than those in Vegas. I hope they deliver project management better than Avid. But the shift from where FCP is right now to this fantasy is so Huge that i just dont think it's possible. And that's a real shame.
At the film school where I teach students learn FCS first and the Adobe CS and are then free to choose whatever apps and workflow suits them and their projects... Needless to say, FCS isnt popular in the latter part of the course....
Asking REAL questions - the company line and journalist sycophancy
As with most of the creative technology addicts in the world, I have spent the past week pouring over the daily news and announcements from NAB.
As always it's a mixed bag - the exciting mingled with the banal, the profound intermingled with the paltry. But one announcement in particular caught my eye and caused me to ponder whether developers work in a veil of ignorance, oblivious to what other developers are doing? Or whether they feel compelled to hawk their wares in a way that is intended to hoodwink potential customers into thinking their product is totally unique. It seems the overt intent in recent years is not just to convince users that their product is 'better' but that it is in fact Unique and 'World First' and the 'only one of its kind'.
There was the infamous interview Charlie White conducted with head honchos from Apple back when the G5 was first released. In that interview the Apple folks spruked the G5 to Charlie and DMN readers as "the worlds first 64bit desktop". Charlie, well informed journalist that he is, pointed out to the Apple guys that Boxx Technologies had been shipping an AMD64 cpu system for several months prior to the G5s release. The response from the Apple guys was a stammer and stutter. If I may be indulged to quote from the interview article. ___
Rubinstein: (Jon Rubinstein - Senior Vice President of Apple Hardware Engineering) On the hardware side of things, our introduction of
the world's fastest personal computer -- the first 64-bit desktop
machine -- it's just an amazing machine, jointly developed between IBM
and Apple, using IBM's latest technologies, and using all the
engineering prowess from both companies to make this thing happen.
Charlie White:
Now, you're saying it's the first 64-bit desktop machine. But isn't
there an Opteron dual-processor machine? It shipped on June 4th. BOXX
Technologies shipped it. It has an Opteron 244 in it.
Rubinstein:Uh...
Akrout: (Chekib Akrout - Microelectronics Division)It's not a desktop.
Charlie White: That's a desktop unit.
Akrout:It depends on what you call a desktop, now. These... From a full desktop per se, this is the first one. I don't know how you really distinguish the other one as a desktop.
Charlie White: Well, it's a dual processor desktop machine, just like that one.
Akrout:It's not 64, then.
Charlie White: Yes, it's a 64-bit machine with two Opteron chips in it. It started shipping June 4th.
Akrout:That we'll double check, but in my mind, it wasn't.
Now this prompts the question; were Apple totally ignorant of the fact that AMD had not only been developing a 64bit cpu system but that they had been first in the market with it? Or was the imperative from Apple to declare the G5 a 'world first' at all costs, even when it was a lie and fallacy?
As Homer would say "a little from column A and a little from column B"
It was in this vein, though not quite as arrogantly ignorant, that I watched Adobe demonstrate their new software tool 'Story' at NAB.
The suitably verbose video presentation showed off a online enabled software tool for writing, annotating breaking down screenplays and for embedding the script itself as the hub of a pre and post workflow process. The way Adobe spoke about the product you'd think it was an earth-shattering announcement of un-precedented and never before seen 'newness'. And yet there is truly nothing really new about Adobe Story and in what we've seen so far it delivers virtually nothing that isn't already extant in the market in some way.
The key strengths of Story are touted as its online collaboration and its ability to embed and annotate a script with metadata, images, videos and sounds. Need I mention CELTX...? A tool which arguably has the most comprehensive online script and production collaboration tools on the market and supports all kinds of tagging, markup, rich media and report breakdowns? (not to mention being open source, cross platform and the base application is free)
Now its not that I'm not pleased that Adobe is continuing to take an holistic approach to media production - that's good for everyone. Indeed the opportunities Adobe is in a position to exploit through integration with their other post-production tools have enormous potential. But please don't try and sell me crap wrapped in pretty bow and attempt to convince me its brand new, never before seen, crap.
But, that said, I reserve my true ire for the Journalists who cover such releases. Rather than coming to such an interview or press release with a broad knowledge of the industry and a critical investigative demeanor, far too many such Journalists present little more than blithe sycophancy. Displaying starry eyed ignorance of wonder more fitted to a kid in a toy shop; oohing and aahhing over every tidbit as if it were the best thing since sliced bread.
I really shouldn't be surprised when the corporations and developers continue to piss on our legs and tell us its raining because they are simply responding to the vacuous uncritical state of most tech jorunalism reporting their products.
When the Adobe representative started rabbiting on about 'online script collaboration' and 'rich media' the very first questions should have been "so how does Story differ from Celtx?", "how does Story's rich media markup compare with Final Draft?" "How does Story's script editing offer in comparison to Movie Magic?" What workflow management does Story offer over Gridiron Flow?". Certainly there would be answers, possibly good and compelling answers, to these questions. But where such critical and probing questions asked...?
No...
It seems we may pose to the journalists the same question I earlier posed to the developers - are they blindly ignorant of the current market products? Or are they simply sticking to the company line of "declare newness at all times"...?
What I desperately want to see is more Charlie White's - more journos asking real questions.....
Over the past 4 years my viewing habits of moving-image media have changed profoundly. A whole host of factors, both external as well as internal to the types of films themselves, have reshaped not just what I watch but perhaps more importantly the satisfaction and fulfillment obtained from the watching.
Whilst neither scientific nor grounded in a broad survey, the identification of the changes in my own viewing habits may none the less serve as a microcosm of changes on a broader audience level both technologically and culturally. Others may not have changed their viewing habits for the same reasons as I but I suspect the results have a fair degree of consistency across demographics.
Whilst not the exact source of change there is a specific point in time where I can identify a major shift in my viewing habits brought about by a specific catalyst - my wife's pregnancy. During this period of incubating an alien body inside the host of my partner she experienced, as all hosts do, a persistent narcolepsy and general exhaustion owing the alien sucking all the nutrients out of her body for its own development.
As a result our usual nighttime habit of watching a movie became a unviable proposition as a two hour feature was just too long a commitment to stay awake for an alien host body.
So we needed to change our primary entertainment viewing media and thus we shifted focus to shorter forms, namely TV drama in either the 47min commercial network form or the slightly longer 57min format for cable and non-commercial broadcasters. Where 2hours was too much for a pregnant body, 47-57mins was quite doable. Of course we had always watched TV of various flavors but it had long been mostly secondary to feature movies in our cinematic drama diet - entree rather than main course if you will.
The happy coincidence with this change in viewing habits, brought about by the catalyst of pregnancy, was that it coincided with what is arguably the height of the golden age of TV drama both out of the US and UK (and with notable efforts from Australia and other parts of Europe).
Need I count the ways.... - West Wing - Deadwood - Sopranos - Six feet under - Spooks -Dexter - The State Within - Wire in the blood - Rome - The Wire - Madmen - Angels in America - Carnivale - The Tudors - The new Dr Who - East west 101 - Underbelly - Entourage - Joe from Cincinnati - Queer as Folk - Californication - Fingersmith
And this is just what I would consider the top-shelf list, there are obviously many more that whilst not achieving the sublime status of Deadwood, the finesse of West Wing, the sophistication of The Wire or the exquisite beauty of Angles in America, are none the less very capable dramas.
It's a mighty impressive set by anyones reckoning and with each of these high quality shows delivering between 8 and 150 hours of screen time there's a lot of watching to be done from a deep supply.
But this happy collision of a desirable screen duration with a broad palette of offerings created another change driving a further dilemma. Once we established a contented and comfortable habit of watching a hour of TV drama before pregnant exhaustion set in we came to a desired expectation for there to be a show on Every night for us to watch.
The tragic truth of course is that broadcaster programming is incapable of living up to this expectation. Let alone that waiting a week between episodes and suffering commercials was both a waste of time and a seriously undesirable interruption of dramatic flow.
So a traditional viewing of a TV drama based on watching when the broadcasters said we could was simply not satisfactory or desirable. And Frankly you just havent watched West Wing until you've watched 2 episodes a night every night of the week right through all 7 seasons back to back (this we have done 3 times now and doubt not at all that we will do so again in the not too distant future)
So to circumvent the dramatic dislocation exerted by the structure of commercial broadcasting we took to simply buying the DVD box sets allowing us to watch what we wanted, when we wanted, commercial interruption free. (I could have of course gone online and downloaded the episodes from various nefarious sites but I chose to buy the DVDs not out of 'legal morality' but simply because I'm a collector and like to own the 'box'. )
The truth is that whilst the shows listed above are enormously popular among my circle of friends and colleagues - the topic of ongoing discussion over meals and beers - I actually don't know a single person who has watched these shows as broadcast. Everyone I know, without exception, has watched these shows either on bought/borrowed DVD or from 'illegal' downloads.
The other factor in this mix is that a great many of the shows listed above have either not aired at all here in Australia or, in the case of those such as Rome, aired 2 episodes late at night and were then canned for not rating high enough.
All these factors prompt a mode of viewership of TV drama that steers decidedly away from the intended weekly serial broadcast and into a manner much more akin to the reading a novel (an idea touched on in this Sydney Morning Herald article). For in not watching the shows as broadcast we invariably, as viewers, don't wait a week between episodes. We watch as many chapters as we like, when we want, much like picking up and putting down a novel.
At the other end of the spectrum there is another flotilla of moving image media that takes up a considerable amount of my viewing time. I have come to love the density of online video. Short films, trailers, animations, motion graphics, the 30sec spot, the youtube video, the moving image joke, the viral video, the clever advertisement, the spoof and satire piece.
Whilst too often dismissed as disposable fluff it is actually this vast body of produced media, accessible online anytime, that I very often find the most inspiring on a daily basis. It's in this body of work that you will find the most creatively challenging, technically adventurous and socially brazen. This mass of media, virally exchanged and embedded across the expanse of the internet, is the test bed for the cinematic language of tomorrow (take a visit to Motionographer to get a taste of just how bold cinematic language can be)
Whilst enormously divergent in variety and context what all this online media share is a density; a concerted meta-principle of maximum meaning in minimum duration. Consuming a daily diet of this stuff breeds a cinematic eye trained for efficiency and accustomed to density, nuance and complexity in brevity.
Then of course there is the third dish on my cinematic diet that profoundly influences the experience of all others - narrative based computer gaming.
Still a young and largely immature cinematic form, gaming has none the less delivered to me some of the most compelling and engaging cinematic experiences of the past 5 years. Half Life 2, Oblivion, Bioshock, Rome Total War, Stalker, Company of Heroes and the sublime Portal make up just a handful of titles that have shown how truly engaging and 'cinematic' gaming can be and herald a bright future of narrative and dramatic complexity.
However much like the experience of TV drama detailed above, my consumption of a game is an a-la-carte affair. With anywhere from 40 to 150+ hours of game/screen time the experience is taken in self determined chapters and sessions.
When you've taken the Bioshock journey through the city of Rapture for 40 odd hours your expected timescale for a good drama to play out is inevitably realigned.
There is also a technology derived experiential element to viewing itself that for me has robbed features of their lure.. Arguably the long standing appeal of the feature film (outside and irrespective of its duration and content) was its traditional delivery environment - the cinema theatre. The idea being that whilst other forms might be good - even comparable - they were not going to be delivered in the 'prime' environs of the dark auditorium on the big screen.
But there is a lot of legacy tradition in the perspective that big screen theatre is best and it's a perspective I find I now reject. A 40in lcd screen in a living room with surround sound and a very comfy couch I would argue is a quality of viewing every bit comparable to the cinema theatre. The standard of home entertainment has been elevated so high in the past five years that I simply don't feel the appeal of the cinema theatre anymore. My living room is more comfy, I can pause the movie for a piss break anytime I want, I can have a communal viewing experience with friends if i want and I don't have to conform to the programming of anyone but me. My home theatre feels sharper and more synamic by intimacy than the theatre, the viewing experience wholly more pleasurable (this may also account for the increased number of IMAX films I have seen over the past few years - if I'm going to leave my home theatre then I may as well leave it for something that is offers More)
So, beset by the epic duration of the multi series TV drama and narrative-based computer gaming on one side and the ultra short dynamism of viral online video on the other, and with its primacy of viewing experience seriously undermined by the sheer quality of the home theatre, where does this leave the feature film?
Decidedly unsatisfying....
Permit me to tell it like it is, I am so bored with feature film. Upon reaching this conclusion I was at first surprised but the surprise was short lived when taken in the context of the evidence.
How can a feature hope to craft the kind of character depth and sophistication in just 2hours that a show like Sopranos did for Tony over 6 seasons? How can 2hours of screen time delve anywhere near the plot depths that The Wire achieves over more than 60 episodes? How can a 2hour action feature contain the scale of adventure contained in the 40+ hours of a game such as Bioshock?
Is it it any wonder I am bored and unsatisfied with feature films? By comparission to these other forms in my daily diet of cinematic form the feature film just seems shallow, simplistic, limp, an undernourished step-child of cinematic media.
And yet even when we compare it to the other end of the spectrum, to short works of brevity and efficiency, the feature film just seems wasteful, superfluous, inefficient and bloated. In possession of neither comparable depth on one side nor complex density of form on the other, I can't help but see feature films lately as bland, middle-of-the-road, lowest common denominator cinema for those short of attention span or seeking not be challenged.
Will my love for feature film return? Gaming will undoubtedly only become more mature and sophisticated, we hope TV drama won't go backwards in its persistent quality and its unlikely the viral dynamic short online isnt going anywhere anytime soon. In this light my cinematic desires for narrative, character, complexity, dynamism, new worlds and compelling visual and visceral engagement are more than likely to be satisfied largely without feature film. And I don't think ill miss it...
Sometime ago as part of research I was doing into trends in cinema production I was directed to a website called http://cinemetrics.lv/ which sort to collate raw data about the average length of shots through the history of cinema. Using a custom tool it allowed for a mathematical dataset to be compiled of how many cuts and how long those cuts were during the course of a feature film. What results is a very interesting set of graphs dealing with editing trends over the past century.
Before one even looks at the graphs it be expected that most would speculate that the hollywood/mtv editing aesthetic of ever shorter shots mashed together is the dominant discourse trend; the reliance on pure montage over spatial staging. And such speculation would be correct.
Of particular note is the divergence in the 60s and 70s between US and European films where continental filmmakers embraced the long take. This coincides with the impact of the French New Wave and the Cahiers critics who championed Auteur cinema and the 'reality' of spatial cinematic staging in long-take over overt montage of short takes. As we wind into the 80s and 90s we see the influence of Hollywood dominate and the graph lines for European and US cinema draw not only closer together but to decidedly shorter shot lengths.
So what if the future? Will shot lengths continue to be crunched into faster and faster cutting and in a chicken and egg scenario drive and be driven by viewer expectations of visual language? Or will the graph change again and steer back to longer takes and deeper staging?
Cinema is a techno cultural art and as such the art is inextricably tied to the technology; an advance in image acquisition changes the art and method of the acquiring.
I see two technology based connections here - one that may indicate the trend towards faster cutting from the 90s to now and the other sign posting a possible future change of direction back toward long take.
To see what technology may have contributed to a culture of shorter takes and emphasis on montage we have to look at what new filmmaking technologies arose during that period. Similarly to see where trends arise its prudent to look not at what established filmmakers were doing but rather at what young independent aspiring filmmakers were doing; its these who will shape future trends by the processes they engage in their infancy.
The obvious technology of the mid to late 90s that had profound impact on the thinking of filmmakers is of course DV. Low cost cameras shooting to cheap digital tape and able to be edited on a laptop. DV didn't invent the indie filmmaker - 8 and 16mm had long since established the viability of non-studio filmmaking - but it did pry its doors open to the masses.
But like any format DV had a particular look and feel - the first was an overly smooth motion derived from interlaced sensors at 50i or 60i in opposition to the progressive image of film at 24. The second was that due to very small sensor sizes and low cost optics DV cameras invariably had very deep depth of field.
Despite the bang-for-buck quality of DV both these factors gave DV an aesthetic connection in look and feel to TV news and documentary rather than the narrative filmmaking aesthetic of film audiences had long been schooled in.
There is no doubt that DV was (and is) embraced, even the traditionally conservative broadcast sector utilized DV as a viable acquisition format. But the inherently deep depth of field of DV directly prompted the pursuit of what became known as the 'film look'. The single most asked question by every DV filmmaker was (and is) how to achieve the 'film look' and the most obvious and specific means of doing this was (and is) to emulate shallow depth of field (by way of lens adapters, shallow staging, close-ups and various techniques mechanical or otherwise.
This overt emphasis on shallow focus had an instant association with the long established language of feature film. Because traditionally only expensive cameras shooting with large receptors (ie 35mm film cells) could produce shallow focus there was a perceived direct connection between production values and shallow depth of field. By proxy shallow DOF equals hi quality, deep DOF equals lo quality.
I see this blinkered perspective with my students, they are terrified of the video-look. Of course they can rarely actually quantify what the 'video look' is outside of the singularity of avoiding 'deep focus' t all costs. A decade and a half of DV has bread a conundrum - on one hand they are whole heartedly digital natives and by and large don't really understand the impetus to use an archaic process of shooting on celluloid. However by the same token they are of course aspiring professional filmmakers and so seek proactively to have their work seen in that light. As such shallow focus, rack focusing, blurred backgrounds are the sure-fire ticket to that acceptance.
(This is of course in defiance of the glories of deep focus cinema of the 40s and 50s most notably Citizen Kane)
Of course student filmmakers from the outset of the DV era grow up to be the next generation of professional filmmakers. As such they carry with them the aesthetic impetus of their formative years. The technical mechanics of shallow focus images bias a particular cinema aesthetic and visual language. Greatly restricted and narrow bands of focus force the filmmaker to compose in layers rather than depth and such 'washing line' composition interspersed with occasional rack focus makes for a rather 2dimensional compositional form; a for that must then rely on cutting and montage to construct spatial relationships rather than deep focus staging.
The tenuous, though still rather compelling, argument I would subsequently wish to paint is that a generation of filmmakers rising out of the populous DV era have concertedly pushed (or been pushed) to favour montage by way of avoiding an aesthetic connection to the great mass of deep focus amateur DV content.
Of course this blaming of DV (or more particularly the desire to avoid visual aesthetics of DV) for the editing culture of the short take is not definitive. It exists as one contributing factor amid a host of elements. But it is one worth consideration of its unexpected and unintended impact on cinema composition and editing aesthetics.
So as to the future; will the trend plotted on the graph continue or is there a technological development that may push the pendulum back and have us see long-take staging return to the dominant cinema discourse?
I'd venture that one particular technology and cinematic construct may push cinema back toward long take; the virtual camera.
A construct of 3D environments, CGI and compositing the virtual camera is a metaphysical point in space that serves as the viewer perspective point over a computer genrated scene. Whilst obviously at home in animation the virtual camera is a regular construct in live action. Witness David Fincher's Fight Club with single shots that traverse the city, Panic Room with cameras that move through walls and voyeuristically explore the house, Lord of the Rings which very often flies the viewer in single takes across vast distances and TV title sequences such as that from Carnivale that involve a single 'shot' moving in and out of tarot card images and Angles in America where a single shot traverses North America from San Francisco to New York.
By virtue of its non-physicality the virtual camera can function in filming a scene with infinite movement - through walls, into impossible spaces, over vast distances. The very nature of the virtual camera is to sustain the continuity of the image. Without a physical need to 'cut' to depict an event on the other side of a wall, for example, the virtual camera can simply 'fly' there.
I'd venture its possible that, as the virtual camera becomes a more common place mechanism in filmmaking we will see it employed more and more regularly as a standard shooting technique rather than a special effect.
There are firm precedents for this notion of specific technological advances delivering profound shifts in cinema aesthetics. In the 1940's Kodak developed faster film stocks, this allowed cinematographers to shoot with a closed down aperture and subsequently with a deep depth of field. The deep focus, long-take cinema so expertly utilized in Citizen Kane is a direct result of this technical advance. We may speculate that the virtual camera may deliver a similar shift in staging techniques and a move away from quick cutting to longer takes.
We may also hope in a non technical mode that filmmakers simply get over their hang ups about the digital film look and embrace a greater diversity of compositional techniques that have been neglected, because cinema is going to get mighty dull if we stay the course with shallow DOF, short take, quick cut, master/shot/reverse montage coverage.
Once again back to an old chestnut I have been known to gnaw on.... How Apple went from playing the 'innovation game' to the 'catch-up game'. Or in other words.... Why the hell is it taking so long to get Final Cut Studio 3 in the field and why is FCS2 so far behind everyone else?
Those who read DigitalBasin regularly will have encountered my concerns as a long-time FCP user before. The last two versions of FC Studio and FCP in particular have been nothing more the catch up. No innovation, nothing really new, nothing implemented that wasnt already extant in competing NLE's.
ProRes? Nothing new there for anyone who can spell DNxHD and Cineform from which ProRes is arguably a less flexible immitation.
Open Timeline? Premiere Pro, Avid and Vegas had been format, codec and resolution independent for at least 3 years or more before Apple caught up.
Apple Color? Powerful app certainly, perhaps the best software colour grading system around, but largely it just made up for a complete lack of good colour grading tools elsewhere in the FCStudio suite. Of itself it's nothing new, just Apple keeping up with Synthetic Aperture out of the Adobe suite or 3rd party tools like Magic Bullet Looks.
I could go on but we all know the drill. Every FC user knows where the warts are. The real question is why we put up with them? I've said it before and Ill say it again; the worst thing about FCStudio is its users. In large part they blithely accept what Apple offer even when the offering is substandard and not keeping pace with the competition. There's an arrogance about FCStudio users, an arrogance that prevents them from complaining, stifles their desire to demand More and Better from Apple. FCStudio users are far too often apathetic users and apathy on the part of users results in complacency on the part of developers.
So it was that i was pleased to see Colin McFadden of Discreet Cosine has compiled a set FCStudio 3 wish list items. It's a good list pointing both to the areas where FC has been woefully neglected and also to the parallel spheres where it has been left behind by competing apps innovating more proactively - namely of late the resurgent forward thinking of Premiere Pro CS4.
The lists goes like this....
GPU Acceleration in Final Cut Motion already makes heavy use of the GPU for effects, and Final Cut Pro already has the capability for GPU accelerated effects as part of its FXPlug architecture. However, the bulk of the filters in Final Cut are currently running on the CPU, and the realtime effects architecture is achieved based on CPU speed alone.
Unified Solid State Camera Support Importing video into Final Cut has gotten to be a bit of a mess these days - you've got "log and capture" for tape, "log and transfer" for P2 and AVCHD, plus XDCam and DR60 importers from Sony, plus standalone apps for RED, and a handful of others. It'd be nice to see an importer plugin architecture that allows different importers to plug in to the "log and transfer" framework, so that we could have a unified interface and workflow.
Native AVCHD Premiere Pro CS4 does it, so Final Cut should too. I know it's not a "pro" format, but that doesn't mean people won't be creating compelling content with it. Transcoding to AIC really hobbles the support.
Kill LiveType Please? It's already Schiavo'd, just end it.
BluRay in DVDStudio Pro This one I'm a bit less certain of - Steve called BluRay a "bag of hurt" at a recent event, but Encore is doing it. If DVDSP isn't going to get BluRay support, it might be time to officially start phasing it out.
Better Roundtrip Support Roundtripping is one of those ideas that works great in demos, but never seems to quite live up to expectations in real life. Final Cut -> Motion -> Final Cut tends to work ok, but FCP->Soundtrack->FCP is like russian roulette. Every now and again it'll work OK, but usually it just blows up in your face. It's not sexy or fun, but it sure would be nice if it worked.
Make Color Pretty Nobody expected FinalTouch to get beautiful in one version, but for Color 2, it's time to get an Apple interface and a refined workflow. Better Quicktime integration would be nice, and again, improved roundtripping.
OpenCL Accelerated Codecs This one is a bit more "out there," and the WWDC NDA prohibits me from talking about some of it, but OpenCL would provide some great opportunities for hardware accelerated video codecs. Not just for encoding, but also decoding of formats like HDV and AVCHD. Now, whether this will happen is a bit more uncertain - it'd be a pretty sharp departure from Final Cut's reliance on Quicktime. It'd also likely be Snow Leopard only, though perhaps OpenCL can be integrated into an app, the way Core Animation showed up in Motion before appearing as an OS component.
Script Sync Avid and Adobe are doing it now, so it only seems logical that Apple will add some sort of script-sync feature. Is this something people use in real life, or is it just nice for demos? I'm not sure.
Real Final Cut Server Integration It'd only be logical to start building in Final Cut Server integration, to really start putting a bit more pressure on Avid in that space.
Other Crazy Stuff If they were going to make it Snow Leopard only, there's lots of other interesting stuff that could be done - grand central scheduling, proper soup-to-nuts 64bit, etc. Maybe for Final Cut Studio 4.
Motion Pro Hey, whatever happened to the Shake replacement?
I absolutely concur with all of that and to it I would like to add a few wishes of my own.
4k - Whilst perhaps not many are working in 4k the fact that Final Cut Pro is actually incapable of displaying spatial resolutions more than 4000 pixels wide when 4k digital cinema (such as that from RED) is 4096 pixels across points to the QuickTime engine base of Final Cut Pro being fundamentally flawed. Apple needs to stop putting Band-Aids on QT, re-code it to be future focused and ahead of the curve instead of behind it and perpetually catching up.
Metadata - Adobe has shown the way and Apple needs to seriously catchup. Metadata is arguably the single most important factor in the future of digital workflows. Keywords, tags, flags, descriptors, custom searches, database retrieval, media management - these are things the future of production will rely on daily. At the moment any vague semblance of real metadata management in FCStudio is virtually nonexistent. Apple needs to go down this path to get themselves back in the game.
Inter-Application exchange - If youre going to stop selling individual apps and make us buy the whole suite of software then you damn well better make it worthwhile by making all those apps play nice. At the moment the exchange of projects between FC apps is paltry at best. There is enormous promise and XML is the ticket but right now with FCS2 the dream is very far from realized and the heights of integration Adobe have unleashed with CS4 make FCS2 look positively lame.
And last but not least, and certainly my favorite bone to pick...
Audio tools - Apple needs to recognize with FCS3 that the old industry structures and demarcations have drastically changed and job role expectations are not what they used to be. At the moment FCP takes a very traditional line - Editors don't do audio they give it to someone else or at the very least they do it in another application (namely Soundtrack pro) Whilst this separation of processes will always have a place (and indeed have some advantages) Apple need to recognize that a new generation of media makers Think Different (tragically ironic that Apple has failed to live up to their own slogan with FCS) The first thing my students at the International Film School ask when learning FCP is why they cant edit their sound designs on the same timeline as the edit? Why they cant design the sound first to inform the edit? Why they cant cut image and sound at the same time in the same system as a sheer creative choice? They simply don't understand the division of labour and feel hamstrung and curtailed by FCPs process dictation. Here again Apples competitors have shown the way - Sonys Vegas is a complete and total Pro-Tools comparable DAW in its own right right along side a very powerful NLE - the first NLE to also have surround sound mixing. Likewise Premiere Pro has a very capable audio engine, sophisticated mixer and well rounded audio editing tool set. FCP by comparison is an audio production wasteland with tragically woeful audio tools. So youre forced over to Soundtrack Pro which is the Great DAW that isnt. STP is halfway there, some great features mixed with some god-awful clumsiness, inaccuracy and inefficiency.
FCS3 needs to deal with both these issues - bring good audio editing and multi-tracking to FCP itself and ALSO make STP the DAW it has always promised it could be but has thus far not lived up to.
O and one more thing, one more crucial thing that Apple simply MUST do.... Never, Ever let so much time pass between updates again...! Not only does it make all us users think Apple doesn't love us and is being neglectful, it - more importantly - means that when Apple does finally update the FC Suite its all catch-up with no innovation. This is the pattern for the last two releases - a wait so long that everyone has gone so far passed Apple on a feature for feature basis that the best Apple can hope to do is keep up. Apple the innovator hasn't been seen round these parts in quite some time for just this reason.
Maybe we should just blame the iPhone and iPod sucking all the corporate resources and leaving precious little left for the much neglected pro-apps software development arm.
Apple here our pleas, please..... Give us the FCS3 we deserve and we know you are capable of.
As regular readers of Digital Basin will no doubt be aware, one of the more regular soap boxes hauled out to berate from upon is the old chestnut of 'industry standards'. The absurdity of the idea that there is a standard and accepted means of creative production is not just stupid, it's also an insult to very notion of creativity and creativity explanation.
Yet this time around I feel no need to haul out the old soap box to beat on about software innovation, alternative workflows and forward rather than stagnant software design; instead I have the pleasure of drawing up the parallel commentary from friend, colleague and techno-artist extraordinaire Tom Ellard.
Tom has compiled a simultaneously funny and insightful post on his blog entitled Education: Then and Now. And with hope that Tom wont mind I shall re-print it here. (You can read about the extrodinary cretaive career of Tom here)
---
Then:
* Teacher: Learn these passages from the Bible by heart. * Student: I shall sir, but may I enquire as to the reasoning? * Teacher: This is the way it is done by all, and ye shall not quibble upon it.
Now:
* Teacher: Here is Maya, you?ll be learning that. * Student: OK, but why Maya? * Teacher: It?s the industry standard.
Don?t be hard on poor teacher, it is the industry standard. But in tonight?s programme we?ll be asking just what makes something the industry standard? Sex? Drugs? Enormous space ships piloted by toads? Or something less obvious?
Industry standard applications are at first glance an ill sorted lot. For every prissy convoluted overly complex video editing tool there?s an almost Neanderthal audio suite. But after some reflection and much alcohol we can start to invent a common thread. As with Shakespeare?s villains we have a noble figure of humanity, troubled by a fatal flaw, which eventually leads to their failure.
Maya.
If you make 3D for a cinema there?s a 90% chance you use Maya. (Unless you?re one of those crazy bastards that uses Houdini because you also like riding your sports bike off a cliff onto a moving trampoline.) Recently Maya was bought by Autodesk because they wanted to lose money on two major applications instead of just Max.Yes, the leading 3D animation tools lose money hand over fist - the ones that actually sell are the ones that professionals would not touch with a stick. Here we can post a rule:
Rule 1: if it?s easy to use and very affordable it can?t be the industry standard.
The quality of Maya can be seen time and time again in the results. A nobleman among programs. But look at the interface:Mayahem
Here we have dynamic menus, pop down menus, pop up menus, radial menus, ?shelves?, dialogues, and a really really bad case of iconitus. If this was a teenager it?d be ?edgy? or just ?pimply?. Now I have very little experience with Maya so far and I may be yet to understand but either this interface grew over years of tinkering or the person that invented it has florid hebephrenic schizophrenia. Either way it breaks so many usability and educational concepts it needs a specially minted medal.
Pro Tools LE.
It?s been said before - it needs to be said again. There is a moment when you are teaching Pro Tools when you have to explain that if you have an hour long programme to bounce down and it?s due on air in 45 minutes, it?s Game Over. The student looks at you like you are insane, knowing at least 5 other programs that will export that audio in 5 minutes and asks, what is this?
You?ve got two ways you can run this message. Official: Pro Tools HD is hardware based and LE has to fit in with that and besides running the mix through the hardware insures always that what you hear in the mix down is what you get - no surprises. Alternative: That PT needs to pass that signal through that big fat blue dongle called an M box to make damn sure it?s a legit copy of PT. The student looks at you like you?re a tool either way.
When you get to RTAS, they are questioning you again. Yes that?s right, the effects that you use in Pro Tools only work in Pro Tools. Yes, industry standard means no one else in the industry uses them. No I am not a tool, kindly refrain from looking at me like that.
Rule 2: there has to be some convoluted reason why it won?t work with anyone else?s software.
Fortunately, Apple has come up with Audio Units as part of their ?we are the computing equivalent of North Korea? strategy. They make Digidesign look good. Speaking of Apple:
Final Cut Pro.
Most common question in any FCP class: why do we use this when every single other application we use is by Adobe? I have Premiere, why can?t I use that? Can I do this at home on Premiere instead? I tried barking at them but recently a stony silence showing lots of teeth seems to work best.
No kids, you have to pretend that the Pr isn?t next to Ae and Ps in the dock. Final Cut is the industry standard, and it?s much to do with a fight between Apple and Adobe over Intel versions that by a process of attrition let Henny Penny reach the top of the coop. Besides Final Cut is fun to use - it comes with games! Adventure game: move your mouse slowly over the interface looking for hidden features! Puzzle game: using the resize bar at the bottom of the timeline, puzzle out which way the timeline is going to zoom. Gambling game: which way will the fields in your PAL video export flip this time? Wish it came with a shoot ?em up.
Rule 3: Overcoming arbitrary behaviour of industry standard tools provides teaching businesses with income.
Actually if you just want to edit video efficiently use Vegas.
Photoshop.
Ps is the good guy. The prince charming. If you ever grumble about photoshop then you need to be forced to use an alternative for a few days. That will learn you. If you are very bad we?ll make it The Gimp.
Quark.
Actually this is a cautionary tale. When I was a layout grunt, there was Quark. That was it. When Adobe first brought out Indesign, there was good natured shaking of heads. Everybody used Quark. The printers used Quark. What would you do with Indesign? There would be nowhere to get the damn thing printed! Just as I was ?being made redundant?, a job came in from somewhere in Asia. An Indesign file. My job was to remake the whole thing in Quark, but we had to get Indesign to open it. It was a bit like Illustrator so that was alright, but no one more senior was going to touch the filthy thing.
Rule 4: Industry standards can change mighty fast.
One the most significant shifts brought about by evolutions toward digital cinema is not just sharper, bigger, better pictures, nor is it the flexibility of digital post or lower production costs, rather it comes in the tangible and profound changes in job descriptions and role expectations.
As a technology develops it invariably expands, it takes on new options, incorporates new features. And in so doing it changes the role of the person whose job it is to drive the technology.
We see this no more clearly than in role of the Editor whose job description, once upon a time, extended no further than the sequential and linear assembly of the images. If we wanted a digital software tool to perform that task we had it 20 years ago. But, of course, it wasnt enough and the tools of the editor kept expanding. Now there simply isnt a editing gig in the world where there isnt expectations that the Editor has working knowledge of colour and sound and compositing and....
The Editor may not necessarily be asked to do final work in all these areas but there is a broadly held expectation that they these options largely sit under the broad banner of the Editors role.
It really is absurd and pointless to argue over whether they Editor 'should' perform these tasks the fact is that the Tool the editor sits in front of to perform their work Can do these tasks, and increasingly can do all of them very very very well. So whether the old-school folks like it or not, the job description has been re-written and the job itself evolves right alongside the technology.
There are many who find this idea scary, many who are afraid of a 'watering down' effect or an 'all-things-to-everyone' scenario that seemingly trades off quality. But there are two asusmptions here that bother me...
The first is the assumption that human beings working in cinematic arts have finite creative and technical capacity, a limit to how skilled they can be - "an editor couldn't possibly ALSO be a sound designer or a colourist...!" This is an idea I profoundly reject and indeed would argue human history of art and science and creative endeavor has continually rejected this idea. I see no precedent to put such arbitrary and artificial constrains on what a skilled artisan is capable of.
The second, perhaps less ephemeral, flawed assumption is the notion that skills of 'editing' and that of ancillary fields such as 'colour grading' are some how so distinct and apart - so un-related as to be dysfunctional if unified... What absolute rubbish! The role of the 'editor' is to assemble, reveal, craft and interpret meaning and story. is that not exactly the role of the colour gradist? Are the two roles not singularly focused on producing the same outcome?
This article from San Francisco filmmaker Eric Escobar, entitled WHY EVERY EDITOR IS ALSO A COLORIST, points clearly towards this idea of seeing editing as a broad umbrella of interweaved and inseparable elements. Elements that share a singular aim and in particular why Editor's should perhaps reject the idea that Colour is 'not their job' and embrace colour as a core part of their job description.
As Eric saids...
"That's the point of coloring. Its not just about correction, or balance, or a mechanical smoothing of any production issues that have found their way into post. Its about leading an audience through an emotional experience. Color matters, take some time to learn how to use it to tell your story."
Of course, on top of all that there is also the fact that tools like Magic Bullet Looks are SO good, SO powerful, SO flexible and such a dead set dream to use that its hard to imagine why on earth an editor wouldn't want to dive into colour grading!
Indeed, on a technical level, Magic Bullet's internal structure itself as a plug-in for NLE systems such as Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro that you can run straight of the editign timeline, rather than as a external application separate and apart from the NLE, point's firmly towards the idea of colour being more tightly married to editing itself than as a removed and disparate process.
Magic Bullet Looks may well be a step ahead of the pack in its conceptual approach right of the bat. Certainly it makes for one of the most seemless grading workflows around and one that makes the convoluted trip from FCP to Apple Color seem positively archaic.
