http://www.richardmassey.tv/2009/the-big-red-one/

I’m surprised that I have to clarify this most important fact: I do know the difference between an HD camera you can get at Walmart and the HD ENG models we use.

My point is that once such a new technology begins to trickle down to the first generation of users, the use of such new toys is conservative, to say the least. Therefore, observing how they’re used, judging the initial products produced with these cameras, you would not be able to tell the difference which camera was employed (the pro or the consumer.) That disappoints me (which is not the intent of the camera’s manufacturers.) It happened ten years ago with HD, it’s happening today with RED.

I have several colleagues who’ve used it. They’ve proudly posted their photos. Yet, every production still I’ve seen shows it deployed on a tripod, 36′ – 48″ off the ground. Occasionally a high-hat, sometimes handheld, a steadycam once. But, no foot chases or car rigs, no jibs or dolly. They deploy the matt box, monitor, drives, focus assist… an entire spaghetti tangle of crap, every single accessory drips of it in order to attempt to make it look menacing.

I haven’t seen it with macro, diopter, anything greater than a 100mm lens, or less than 25mm. Have I seen it with any primes at all?

Everyone uses that matte box, though.  But, what filter are you using in that box? (You do know that it is painfully obvious when you attempt a gradated ND or color effect in post, instead of in-camera?)

Furthermore, looking at the set, there’s still the standard flat lighting, same shitty office location, same crappy indie effort.

My point is clear: where’s the spectacle? Where’s the stunt? Why go to such an expense to have the same mundane task? (Now in even higher definition!)

If you’re going to dump a wad of cash for a special element to add to a project, wouldn’t it be better spent on some talent, location, costumes, pyro, fx, stunts, crashes, extras, CGI, etc.

The RED: If you have one, I’ll be impressed when I see it strapped to a motorcycle or Cesna. I’ll be envious when I see it with a probe lens, a Revolution lens, or a bellows tilt-shift kit.

BackPage trailer from Hugh Massey on Vimeo.

If you haven’t seen our website yet, take a gander:

http://www.backpagemovie.com/

Anyway, as you know we’ve submitted ourselves to a dozen or so festivals. On a dare, I sent in a submission to the Cannes film festival (the one in France.)

The other day, I was excited to recieve this:

Hugh MASSEY III

IMPYRRHICISTIC FILMS

ETATS-UNIS

 Paris, 30/03/2009

We’re constructing a site dedicated to promoting it. Mosy on over to:

www.backpagemovie.com

for most of this content repeated.

I used to second, pull, and load for an AC who claimed to have had extensive DP experience in HD. This was back in 2000, so we all knew he was full of shit. No one in our market had made the transition yet. The stupidest thing he ever said was when he claimed that he was going to an HD workshop the following week. When we pressed him for details, he refused to give up a name or location. “You wouldn’t know her. She lives up in Canada.”

So, a few years later, I got to spend a couple of days with the metachlorian camera. In the end, it wasn’t anything special. This was after waiting four agonizing years to get our hands on an HD camera. The most unbearable insult was having to endure the hype of it being used in a scene from The Phantom Menace. I was so disappointed to find out that it was just a regular ENG camera. Not much significant difference from the ten year old Beta SP Ikegami I had used the day before.

Four months later, I worked with the Panasonic equivalent. I don’t recall the model, but I remember the difference: frame rates from 6 to 120 and advanced image engineering control. One was for news, the other for art. Guess which.

The irony is that it was another four years until the software and processor speeds were universally ubiquitous enough to confidently edit HD.

Nowadays you can get an HD camera for a little over $100 at Walmart. Nothing special until the next big revolution.

That brings us to the Big Red One. There’s a lot of buzz. I started hearing it two years ago. And now that it’s here, all of it’s earned. It works. It’s affordable. It’s small. It’s almost film. Close enough, maybe (I haven’t heard much detailed discussion about latitude in post, but, I guess that would require enormous redundant hidden data.) I have colleagues who’ve invested in it. I’ve been impressed with the articles I’ve read. (As for the price, you can get it, plus lens kit, batts, storage, and lens support kit for what just the body of an HD “cine” camera costs.) 

And they tell me that the data rate is no problem for today’s computers (even with the layers, transitions, effects, and corrections.) So, the industry has the fever again. You’re the cool guy if you’ve been near one (and that red t-shirt!)

But… and I’m surprised it took me over ten years to realize this: the gear doesn’t make the film.

The French had HD back in the late 40’s, Japan had a working HD standard in the late 70’s.  Ten years later, Japan’s HD projects and potential started invading the national consciousness. Ten years after that, American broadcasters began incorporating it into their infrastructures and the FCC set a deadline for complete standard conversion.

But for the next ten years, the future of media was found in low definition. Blair Witch was shot on hi8 and 16mm, 28 Days Later was shot on PAL DV. But, your post and distribution considerations must be considered. Youtube, porn, comedy central, funny or die, college humor, ifilm, vimeo… The majority of web content is still acquired on standard definition cameras and distributed at even less quality resolution. For a popup or banner video, it can be argued that it still doesn’t serve much point to be shooting in a resolution higher than 240×360. Why burden the budget of your project with HD when your distribution will be DVD? Even if you could output to Blu-ray, most of the monitors sold are less than 47″. Your consumer audience won’t be able to tell the difference. You’ll get engineers in fist fights taking the Pepsi challenge (no pause, no slo-mo allowed.) Well lit, well exposed, well composed; you won’t be able to tell the difference between VHS, 35mm, HD, or RED (granted, it’s limited to just a talking head interview with a diffusion element and pro-mist.)

Thus, the two issues that dominate market logistics that exceed image quality: content, and on-demand. The immediate, non-linear service, the questions answered now, the punchline delivered immediately. Is it funny, dramatic, informative, compelling? No? Then you can’t get me to watch it, no matter how many pixels you stab me in the eye with. Do I have to wait for it?  Then screw you, my DVR’s full and waiting for me. (Since you still have to trade off the option of immediacy for image quality if you’re wanting extended content, that brings me to the most interesting point: the two minute barrier. Audiences sitting at a desk will not pay attention to you for more than two minutes. If you’re a movie trailer starring Tom Cruise or Megan Fox, sure. If you’re a Christmas greeting from a grandchild, sure, grandma will endure for several more minutes.  Efficiency of time is of utmost importance in your program. Get to the point. Start busting heads. Move that thing, Honey. You want me to call, don’t you?) Sure, vimeo, netflix, and apple are breaking the bandwidth/quality ratio barrier. But, you still have to wait for it, especially long format. It looks good, comparably, but, I can still see them cheating in the compression: motion stutters and blurs, mosquitoes, pixelation, low bit depth contrast ratio. Once we get fibre optic saturation of the market (the capacity rests at over 100 gB ps, but averages 10 to 40), or the new RF frequencies redistributed, then a good looking home theatre environment won’t be seamless. Thus, extended definition, it’s only truly applicable to your production if you have theatrical distribution. Ha!

Thirteen years ago I wasted the monetary equivalent of a fully loaded economy car on a Hi8 A-B roll editing system (with two 3-chip cameras.) That was the year that DV was released. I learned my lesson. Sure, just like HD, a format similar to the RED will be everywhere within two years. The old adage will have been proven again: talent over technology. Its not the batter, its the baker.

The last Executive Producer I worked for took me to lunch one day. As we walked back to the studio he told me in the most earnest way that one should never bring a pornographic film to the station or studio for which one works. Even if its locked in a safe in your car out in the parking lot, even if its in a format your company doesn’t even support, it will find its way onto the air and into your duplications. After these many years, I know for a fact that the most strongly learned lessons are those we glean from disastrous mistakes. Mistakes, Billy Joel said that they’re the only thing that you can truly call your own. People don’t change because they’ve seen the light, they learn because they feel the heat. I saw that on a t-shirt once. My old boss, he neglected to tell me how he had learned that particular lesson. The one about the porno.

What have I learned? That is, what mistakes have I made?

Never take your phone off vibrate. Don’t wear a watch that makes any noise at all. My first day on the job, the DP’s phone rang, interrupting the president’s speech we were taping. Twenty minutes later, my watched beeped the hour. Ten years later, I haven’t worn a watch since.

When I would grip, the old-timers would bitch about actors and management. They claimed that you should never assume that they thought of you as equal. Never assume you’re one of the gang with the talent or creative or the money they would say. No matter how much advice they ask of you, no matter how much they flirt with you. “They see you as a carny with teeth!” Is what he exactly said. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s stuck in my memory.

I’ve had some spectacular disasters that were entirely my fault. When I was an AC, I exposed the feed-side of a 16mm magazine, twice on two separate shoots separated by six months. Sure, one of the magazines had a busted latch, and the other had been out of my control during transport from location to location. But that doesn’t excuse me. There were several best practices, industry standards, I hadn’t employed that would have prevented those errors. That’s where I learned to tape the hell out of the magazine.

My first time as DP for a film shoot, I shot a sequence two stops under-exposed. I didn’t watch my forearm against the exposure ring. I was steadying the camera with my right hand. As I reached across the lens to trigger the camera with my left hand, I just rolled it against the iris ring. That’s where I learned to tape down the ring after metering and setting F-stop. 

My first time working in Hollywood, I was AC, audio, video DP, grip, loader, and Associate Producer/Director, and PA for a project (actually, we were there to shoot several projects simulteneuosly for numerous clients.) There was a very long list of things that went wrong. (The story of how I nearly got fired because I pissed of the talent, three famous personalities, I’ll save for another post.) My two favorite things that went wrong involve audio. I was riding the mobile DAT and shotgun boom as the producer shot 16mm. It was a perfect Universal City day, but I was terrified of wind noise polluting my recording. So, I put the neoprene foam windscreen on the shotgun mic. Then I put it in a blimp. Then I put the cat on the blimp.  Thus, the last two inches of the neoprene foam windscreen was compressed between the end of the shotgun mic and the inside of the blimp. It might as well have been a concrete wall, it was so dense. I don’t know how our post audio guy back home pulled it out of that swamp.

When it was time to interview the big star, there was no handler, MUA, costumer, or anyone to negotiate placing a microphone on him. There was no way I was going to ask his permission to cop a feel as I threaded a lavaliere wire up anddown his shirt. I also knew full well the possible political ramifications of even having the appearance of messing up his costume before his next take (as we only has him for five minutes before his next setup was ready.) So, I draped the mic from behind him, over his shoulder and clipped it to his collarless shirt. It looked terrible, thins wrinkled wire snaking across his neck and shoulder. I at least tried to put it on the upstage shoulder to minimize the impact.

It gets worse. Sure, I had erected the previously mentioned muffled shotgun/boom armed over at him on a c-stand as a secondary audio source. The deal was, I was shooting as well on that project. We had rented a very sweet Sony ENG Beta camera (Model 40, or something.) The engineering menu allowed for me to paint the image such that it seriously rivaled the 16mm footage. So, I was shooting with the Beta camera as a backup/camera B. I knew that the other projects I was shooting for would kill me if I returned with this important interview and it had weak audio (and they had to go crawling to the other producer for his material.) Thus, I wanted good audio for my camera. So, I sent the signal from the DAT outputs into my Beta camera inputs. You may be asking, what the other guy, the producer, was doing while I was grip, gaffer *, audio, 1st/2nd ac, loader, slate, PA**, and DP? He was schmoozing with the talent. So, what got overlooked this time? When the interview was over, I looked down at the DAT. It wasn’t rolling. I hadn’t pushed the record button. I grayed out a bit. Lost the feeling in my hands. I absolutely did not tell him. It was a few minutes before I realized that, fortunately, I had the audio I had rolled on from the beta camera that was usable. (Now I’ve got the audio engineers who may read this ready to kill me over the the difference between 48kHz and 96kHz sampling rates between the two formats.) That’s where I learned that free run time code should only be used in very specific applications. Like when you need to sync to the event’s time of day, etc. I know it’s another piece of equipment to keep up with and feed batteries to, but the timecode transceiver kit to slave the slate is worth the rental price: rolling numbers=rolling decks.

*I had setup this ridiculous 20X silk overhead for him to sit under in order to soften the backlight from the sun. When that was too flat, I setup 4x reflectors to bounce in sunlight for a backlight. So, I was constantly running over to the reflectors to chase the sun back on him to create and effect that looked exactly like he was sitting in the sunlight.

**That was the shoot I spent all day (on the Producer’s orders) getting our graphics guys back home to stop what they were doing in order to make mic flag logos. We never used handheld mics on that shoot.

Three years ago, when I first began my transition into HD, my favorite style was to soften the image slightly in order to reduce the crisp digital quality that some saw as jarring. I accidentally left this feature on one time as a shot a green screen interview. Thankfully, the editor had some great software andwas somehow able to get the shot to key, even with such soft edges. But, my mistake was nothing compared to the other camera operator on that shoot. She kept performing pans, tilts, zooms, all sorts of aggressive artistic movement that was useless against a static 2d non-virtual background. This was after she had beat me down before the shoot (arguing with me about aesthetic choices, technical standards, even a big pissing contest over our careers.) I felt no small amount of schadenfreude watching her shoot herself.

What else? My first two documentaries I shot in grad school had no B-roll. I was so tense over the drama and action, I shot in an incredibly conservative style. I did not want to interfere for fear of them stopping their performances. There were also minimal amounts of reverse shots, close ups, and establishing wide shots.

I shot a concert last summer. Considering my work in theatre, music videos, etc., I felt pretty confident about my ability. Christ, what a disaster! I had very little choreography that corresponded to the music. It was almost as conservative as my grad-school docs from eleven years earlier. I had previously reequested the song list ahead of time so that I could learn the songs and be able to move to the music. The producer let this slip his mind, but that didn’t excuse my rigid performance. My mistake was that I was shooting for the edit (in a journalism style), not the event which called for the cameras to act as dance partner to the musicians. What’s worse is that I had done the exact same thing two years earlier shooting a documentary for the music department at the university I was working at. It seemed to make sense, after a decade of shooting anthropologically, to record the entire event, I had finally learned to shoot for the edit. I had anticipated only using the video with an audio bed from the interview of the performer, not realizing the value of the audio from the concert performance in editing transitions, segues, introductions, and conclusions. Shooting for the edit is  necessity, but with music, it’s different. You have to move to the beat. The editing will require you to get at least an entire chorus or lyric in the take.

I once drove to Austin for a film shoot. We had all intended on using my jib and dolly. I forgot jib’s yolk at at home.

I once blocked cameras into spaghetti during live broadcast. We had over a dozen setups in the large studio. As floor manager, my job was to choreograph the cameras positions to the order of the corespondents. About three quarters of the way through, the cameras had crossed so many times that their triax cables were twisted and knotted so bad that the next camera up didn’t have enough hose to reach the next performer. Sure, we zoomed in and got the shot. But, that did nothing to solve the speaker’s problem: the teleprompter on the camera was now too far away to read. Fortunately, I thought fast: unplug the program monitor in the studio (it was on a cart with plenty of BNC RJ6 composite cable and power extension cord length) and use the teleprompter monitor’s BNC output jack to feed it content. We rolled that monitor close enough to him to read just out of frame for him, using it as a line-of-sight prompter.

I was shooting in a forest once in Texas (overcast winter in a river valley) where there was, of course, only one color in the scene: grey. I didn’t want to chase color balance all day as the sun shot different color temperatures at us each hour. So, I used the camera’s engineering menu to boost the red channel up about five percent. It didn’t give me everything I wanted to warm up the scene. But, it did add a bit to the mid-tones and flesh. I had had plenty of previous experience working with color processes in production and post. Between gaffing choices, choosing unique color balances and camera settings, and finally correcting certain channels in post I had created some very artistic pallets. That was my intention here. But, even though I had explained it to them numerous times, management freaked about it when they saw it in post. They absolutelydid not understand the process. Furthermore, they could not believe that  it was the easiest fix to normalize. That was why I chose it: if they didn’t want a second or third process to finish the look (even though it would have turned out great), it was easily dumped and corrected (I’d done it lots of times.) That was one of  the most important lessons I had on the importance of client education.

I’ve worked with several squirrely consumer grade cameras. I won’t mention the brand that’s been my constant nemesis for 13 years. But, if you know me, you know who they are. My attempts to paint the image with these cameras meets with inconsistent results as the ergonomic design of the cameras fails to meet professional demands. If it’s not the onscreen interface not giving conclusive data about the programming I’m attempting to run, its a lack of features needed to technically or artistically operate the camera. Then, they place the most important button for the look you’ve designed right under the main handle so that when you pick up the camera, your fingers brush this button. Thus, every time you go near that part of the camera, you’re unconsciously and unintentionally either turning on or off these engineering paint presents. I’ve learned the hard way which brands to trust.

Back at that river valley in Texas winter, I had about ten minutes one morning to shoot all the B-roll of the location (for intra-scene seque montages) before the cast and crew invaded it. The increasing light from rising sun was warm (being a cool color temperature), but the dawn lingering  in the valley was cool (because of the hot color temperature frequencies from the sky.) I panicked from the time constraint. I didn’t know what to choose, so I tried to straddle the color balance choices. The result was that the highlights looked yellow, the mid-tones looked purple. I though it was an interesting look. It was out of limits of any software to correct and match with other footage. I knew this andwas hoping they would bring all footage to some middle ground (giving all of those scenes more artistic looks) but management was too conservative for such a risky artistic choice. Sure, I learned not alow myself to be rushed. More importantly, I learned not to be skeptical of  management’s ability to understand the spectrum of artistic possibilities.

Yeah, even after all these years, I’ve accidentally left the auto-focus on, auto iris on, crossed the line of action, didn’t assert myself when a problem arose, etc.

But, my favorite recent mistake is within post. I have a tendency to become impatient with best practices of post production work-flow. My most frequent recent error habit is when I begin to add effects (special, correction, movement, audio, layers, transitions, etc.) and other sweetening processes before my cut is complete. Then when I have to go back in order to make changes, my work-flow is slowed because my project is dragging the computer procceses down because I’ve crammed the prject full of effects and transitions to early. It’s the worst when I do this on individual clips instead of an adjustment layer. Then when a change is required, I have to open up every damn clip for these minor tweaks instead of only just one. 

Every day is another lesson.

Pay attention.

That night in the coliseum I overheard mutiny on the microphones. That time I was paying attention. I had wired the three executives for sound and while they were awaiting completion of a setup, they remarked about the time it was taking to make progress in the shoot. The second responded with a derogatory remark about our studio’s professionalism (compared with what they were used to working with back in Hollywood.) The third executive mm-hmmed in agreement. I couldn’t let this insult to our character go unanswered, so I told the producer what I had heard. I told him not to give any indication what his source was. Just inform them about what time investment a proper shooting schedule will logistically require, and how efficient we were running. Because, we were. We were getting a lot accomplished very quickly. So he marches right over to them and states how the audio guy overheard them trash-talking us. I literally ducked under my audio cart as they looked around for me. He threw me under the bus. The producer assumed that, since the four of them were on the other side of the coliseum, I wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation. He forgot that those three were wearing wireless lavalieres. That’s how I heard them in the first place. And then his explanation about our shooting progress was worthless.

I should have paid more attention to whom I could trust.

When I would work crew for that producer and he would direct, he had this odd practice of not paying attention to the performances. He would allow take after take to commence with huge flaws unseen in the shot.

I had to pay attention for him, but didn’t have the authority to fix such problems.

Some personnel from another department came to use our equipment. They were right to complain about how old it was. Considering that the entire industry was in this new digital format we didn’t have, why didn’t we have any of that new equipment, especially since it was so inexpensive. (Specifically, they wanted to shoot on cards, not tape.) I said, yes, I had planned to replace it, but I’ve lost my budget for the year, it wasn’t approved. Therefore, I can solve your problem if you help solve mine: go to management and, as clients, demand this service which will be logically funded through my budget. So, they went to management and bitched about cards and tape. Said I had sent them up there. 

I had not payed attention. If I had, I would have realized they were idiots who knew nothing of politics and lobbying.

Gossip and political espionage. If you’re going to play. You have to pay attention to what you say and whom you say it to. It reminds me of what Sydney Greenstreet said in The Maltese Falcon, “Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. I distrust a closed-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice. I’m a man who likes talking to a man who like to talk.”

I first began to become irritated when he would ask me technical questions about the equipment. Really? Come on, he had been working with that ARRI camera for over 20 yrs. He kept asking me the same questions about it.

Furthermore, he was growing myopic in his middle age. He had the worst habit of trying to set focus for the shot, even though it was my job, as AC, to measure it off. He wouldn’t tell me that he was doing this. Since he couldn’t see well enough to judge focus at the shot’s current exposure, he kept breaking the gaff tape seal I had placed on the exposure ring. Then he would open up the iris all the way to let in enough light for him to judge focus. Of course, he wouldn’t reset the iris ring back to the f-stop we were shooting at (yet he would close the light valve on the eyepiece?) I didn’t notice it for a while because hewould do this intermittently. I would eventually notice it when I slated the scene and quietly reset it, hoping no one saw me near the lens. (I didn’t report it to the AD or Script because we had several more takes left in the setup, the over-exposed takes weren’t going to be used anyway. For some reason we were rolling on action that hadn’t been fully rehearsed. So, all of the final, good takes were properly exposed.) But, when I would see the gaff tape dangling off the lens I would mentally panic and berate myself for not keeping the camera under my control. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that it couldn’t have happened by accident. I was just so busy. But, this practice eventually resulted in an entire sequence, an entire setup was two stops over exposed. Sure, we were working with Kodaks’s new 400 speed stock with denser grain, but we hadn’t tested it for those circumstances. Everyone had had previous experience with overexposed fast stock, so we weren’t going to trust it. We had to re-shoot that scene the next day.

One day we were on the other side of the state on a music video shoot. This was a job which was a favor for the director, I was working for half pay, so that time this DP was getting 20 times what  was (and I was both 1st, 2nd, slate, focus-puller, video assist, and loader… for two cameras… 35mm! those 400′ rolls at 48fps ran out every two minutes!)  So, he asks me for the 85, I brought him a yellow filter, he bit my head off. Literally yelled at me in front of the crew, “No! The 85mm lens!”

That day they all sat around smoking a box of cigars someone had brought. The biggest insult came when I went to get a new battery for the steady cam op. A lit cigar stub had been left behind the charger, right where I placed my hand to support my weight as I leaned down to harvest the battery. My entire weight, plus tool belt (since I allways operated as swing between electric, grip, and camera department, my belt had three times as much gear as other crew memebrs), plus magazine, and slate. I couldn’t get off the cigar quickly. The blister an was immediately the size if a dime. An hour later, it was as big as a silver dollar. I had to pop it then and cut it off in order to keep working.

While I was doctoring myself, they were all yelling for me (aloud and over the walkies) to get back.

Being from a theatre and photography background, I appreciate a good composition. I really do.

A static frame can add to heightened dramatic tension (In the Company of Men), or comic absurdity (Napoleon Dynamite.)

Those who argue for a camera with cement shoes often point to classic films as evidence of aesthetic authority. But, what they don’t realize is that they have ignored a technological historical obvious fact: there’s a reason those old films didn’t move much, those cameras were tanks. They could’ve if it was possible. And when they could, they milked every moment out of it (Ben Hur, Singin’ In the Rain, Touch of Evil, Lawrence of Arabia.)

Oh, but they claim that they’re not complaining about jib, helicopter, dolly, boat, elevator, crane, cable, plane, dumb waiter, or truck shot.  (They don’t want it to seem that they don’t understand three dimensional space.  Even through that’s exactly what they’ve proved with such an inflexible opinion.) No, they hate the ‘Shaky-cam” as they call it. It makes them motion sick, they can’t follow the story. Those with a bit of learnin’ will go further to bemoan the schools of Dogma 95 and Cinema Verite.

Sure, the extreme use from filmmakers has resulted in extreme reactions from audiences and critics. There is a shaky-cam syndrome. The Blair Witch Project, NYPD Blue, Battlestar Galactica, The Kingdom, Paul Greengrass, all prove that it’s possible to use a single spice in the soup until nothing else can be tasted. But, the syndrome is merely a chronic nuisance, not an epidemic.

I was working on a feature five years ago. I had been lobbying for a dolly for months. All of a sudden, on the last night of shooting, it showed up. All of my blocking plans didn’t include it, but I’d try to fit it in. I hoped the schedule could conform to this new demand. What floored me was the moment I realized that the director had no idea how to use it. I knew we had no time to be finding and experimenting in an attempt to move at all times (Michael Bay.) That would have destroyed my back with all those setups (what with only a three man crew for all camera, light, sound, and light setups.) I did my best Poo, “Think, Think, Think, Think,….” I got it: move on important moments, beginnings, ends, climaxes, punchlines, only move on the aganorisis, the perepeteia, and the aristeia. (On a side note, when the DP has to decide all the actor blocking and camera choreography, is he essentially the director now?) So, in order to keep to schedule and still introduce a bit of movement artistry, each scene was limited to only three moving shots (in, out, punchline.) But, when it came to the climactic fight scene, it was time to change things up a bit. I insisted on going handheld. I quickly learned the fight choreography and became a third member of the scene. It was brilliant. Run up, duck a punch, run away, crouch, soar… the camera was unleashed. How did I know that changing the camera blocking approach would work? I saw the exact same thing done for the climax in Drop Dead Gorgeous and Napoleon Dynamite.

Back to the syndrome, the catalyst for shaky-cam grousing seems to be editing. “Quick-cut editing” is the term that puts the sour lemon expression on these critics faces. It’s true to an extent. Cuaron’s handheld work in Children of men was lauded because it was all done it one take one shot. Berg and Greengrass are criticized because their editing style is just as frenetic as their handheld camera movement. But I understand the intent of such style and am a fan and practitioner, when appropriate.

That’s because this philosophy views the audience as more participant than spectator. The filmmaker respects the audience enough to know they can handle a ride rough enough to equal what the characters on screen are experiencing. That’s the point, to enhance the viewing experience to a perspective that rivals the characters’. Bring the audience closer to the action. It’s a ride, not a show. We can’t move the seats or the theatre (it’s not an amusement park), so we move the camera.

My favorite philosophy regards the camera as dance partner. The master of this device was Stanley Donen (Its Always Fair Weather: suck on it, Tony Hawk!) The audience, with camera as proxy, is literally dancing with Gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Howard Keel, and Cyd Charrise. Its the exploitation of the medium. Its not theatre anymore, break the fourth wall. imagine what he could accomplish with todays’ technology.

Conversely, I’m critical of those that have used movement to excess. Kenneth Branagh loves his steadicam. Being a master blocker as a theatre director, I guess he thought it would translate onto the screen. There are scenes in Hamlet and Frankenstein where the steady cam operator is blocked like in a hoe-down during Cotton-eyed Joe. All the while actors and are flying in from the wings and background only to immediately exit. It feels like being the sole remaining member of your team in a dodge-ball match. It seems to last an eternity.  Sure, it was only used during important, climactic moments, and was an example of his mastery of the medium both technical and artistic. But, I thought it gilded the lily. Branagh and Carter were dramatic enough by them selves. (For Love’s Labours Lost, i noticed that he calmed down and took a few notes from Donen.) Ah, Who else? Of course, Michael Bay. Did the camera ever stop moving in Armageddon? Consider that none of these shot sequences I’ve just exampled conform to the definition of  ‘Shaky-cam” or ‘Quick-cut.” So, even well structured movement can wear out its welcome.

One of the hack directors I used to work with would never allow a zoom. He’d read in a how-to book that Hollywood movies don’t use zooms inside a shot, so he never would. I didn’t fight it. I just wanted the day to end. So, I never brought up Robert Altman. I’m jealous that he perfected the zoom and only he can ever use it. Now that he’s dead, we’ll never see it again.

The director I admire most once told me: “If your subject is still, move the camera. If your subject is in motion, keep the camera still.”

Back in the fall of ‘96, I noticed that the content of a report I did in my Theatre History class could be applied to the demands of other projects from other courses. Humanities, history, writing, economics, science, logic, they all benefited from that one research report. With a little massaging, the message was made to fit the needs of every other medium. In fact, what I had realized was that each course was not asking me to deliver content, but exhibit mastery of a process: research, analysis, comprehension, and communication. This medium of process was the message, not the content, not the facts.

This lead me to discover what thousands before me had found: that there was a simple method, an obvious aesthetic standard to communications, a universal singular theory, hallowed by usage and consecrated by time.

I noticed that the same rules applied to all of the endeavors of man: interior design, architecture, fashion, painting, sculpture, media, music, religion, government.

Yes, Virginia, form follows function.

Allow me immediately to appear contradict myself:

I once performed a media transfer for a professor. He needed a series of EP cassettes converted to CD. They corresponded to a visual presentation stored on 35mm slides. He had already had the slides scanned and converted to JPEGs. His habit was to present them in a PowerPoint presentation to his class. So, all he wanted was an audio CD from whence to serve from a boom box he would port across campus. I couldn’t persuade him to use the computer’s media player to play the audio. He didn’t want me to cut and synchronize the audio to the appropriate slide in the PPT presentation. He kept and served the PPT presentation from an old CD-ROM. He could not understand my arguments for a USB HDD, or thumb drive, or network storage drives, or thin-client/web/cloud service. Furthermore,  I was unable to convince him to allow me to marry the audio and video into a single media file presentation. I understood all of this, it was a common defeat I would suffer from most members of his generation. But, what shocked me the most was not the medium difficulties, but the message.

He was using instructional media to deliver a lesson on advertising print communication. My problem with the content was it’s narrow concept of how to deliver messages to an audience. The program advocated – no, demanded, one layout and copy aesthetic standard for all messages, all products,  and all audiences. On and on, example after example it criticized photo and copy layout that didn’t contain enough information in an acceptably conservative manner. Surely, you don’t sell hot dogs and lingerie the same way you bark Cadillacs and condoms? Do you speak the same way to the audience that consumes your firearms as you would to the audience that dances in your leotards? Does the audience that needs life insurance even speak the same language as your customers that eat your Pla-doh?

Am I a hypocrite? No. What’s often overlooked is the realization that the message, the audience, the product, the time, the space, the venue, the medium, the politics, religion, history, language… all have aesthetic requirements to be considered when constructing a communication. In fact, these demands are not restrictions, but contribute to the very message itself. The function demands a specific form. Even though they bear many similarities, you don’t build the same kitchen or uniform for a soldier in the army that you would for a soldier in the Salvation Army.

The copy and layout program didn’t cover guerrilla marketing, of course. That concept would have given them apoplectic fits.

I once worked for a director who hated handheld camera work. Against all of the argumentsof his peers and colleagues, he never would admit to having seen it aptly applied. Never could understand its potential contribution.

I’ve known media professionals who could only work in one medium. The TV guy couldn’t do film, the film guy could only do horror, the actor only did plays, the musician couldn’t freestyle jam, the director couldn’t work without a shot list or storyboards, the fight choreographer couldn’t block a dance. Some of these examples constitute a small leap forward or sideways within the same skill set. Others require applying utilities towards mediums they were not originally designed for. But, creativity is finding new applications for old tools. A bucket is a drum once you bang on it, and a canvas is blank until you…

The only concrete rule I have concerns the vulgarities. But, your use of archetypal communication standards can transcend the more common reference devices that will die or be co-opted or suffer etymological complete polar shifts of definition: metaphor, vernacular, idioms, axiom, myths, legends, urban tall tales, analogy of slang. They’re useful, but date the piece. Keep it classy.

I’ve worked in steel, PVC, dirt, tempera, emulsion, pixels, bits, electrons, bass notes, and humors. The mediums differ slightly only by degrees and dimensions but the basic aesthetic tools of communication remain the same: short simple declarative statements, moderate use of metaphors, strong use of  descriptive analogies, three to five point paragraph structure, three to five act story structure, varying use of contrast, polar shifts, hamartia, hubris, perepeteia, aristeia, anagnorisis, can you improve upon the methods that made Shakespeare and Aristophanes famous?

Maybe, that’s what artists strive for in experimentation. But, master the classic forms first, then get creative.

So good to be home. Can’t wait to get back.

I left work, after my first day back, yesterday. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I began to cry. I was so happy when I realized where I was driving: home. When I got there, I experienced my favorite two moments of every day: smelling my wife’s cooking and being stampeded by my three kids.