Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] “You can’t avoid all chemicals and pollutants – that’s a given – but when society has developed reasonable alternatives and simply CHOOSE to continue to generate toxic sludge, I’d like a better reason than “But it makes me feel so retro-wonderful!””
Honest question, does anyone know how ‘clean’ the mining of raw materials, manufacturing and disposal of electronic equipment used in modern cameras is compared to film? I know countries have tried to go green and ban/limit the use of things like lead in manufacturing, but I don’t know how extensive those measures are. As a primer this is a recycling web site’s list of hazardous materials that are commonly used in electronic devices.
https://ewasteguide.info/hazardous-substances
-Andrew
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I thought the conversation was more industry-centric so my response was in kind. After you said,
[Tony West] “We started using it a different way in our biz after digital card recording.”
I assumed “we” meant people in the industry which is why I mentioned FCP Legend and MC. “We”, or at least parts of “we”, were using the word media to refer to media assets (as opposed to the press) long before recording to solid state cards became a thing.
[Tony West] ”
Some good points but yes I disagree : ) People who have never heard of the “media composer” or Legend
use the word media as another word for “the press” and they would be right because part of
the dictionary definition is “b plural : members of the mass media”What you describe is there also, but you are outnumbered by folks that use the other definition.”
Might be a regional thing as I grew up making mixed media projects in grade school art classes as well as having access to school A/V media labs (which housed things like video equipment, not the press corps). And, to boot, ‘multimedia’ was a hot buzzword when I was in college.
-Andrew
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[Robin S. Kurz] “Or even a company like Bentley? Even after it was shot on an iPhone and even assembled on an iPad.”
Previously discussed here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/69100#69100
and here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/80950#80950
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Happy Holidays and hope everyone has a great New Year!
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[Tony West] “Some folks might get hung up on your choice also Craig, since the word “media”s definition has to do with mass communication, television, radio and newspapers.
We started using it a different way in our biz after digital card recording.
“I would have to disagree with your disagreement. 😉
Media is the plural of ‘medium’ (such as print, oil painting, photography, radio, TV etc.,) so more than one medium used to communicate to a broad audience (aka ‘the masses’) gets us the phrase ‘mass media communications’.
The term ‘mixed media’ has been around for a long time too and usually refers to using more than one medium in a visual art piece (such as mixing oil painting and photography), but mixing media is very much at the heart of editing. We’ll use some combination of music, video footage, photographs, graphics, etc., in nearly every edited piece. Even a hot-off-the-presses news package will almost always have VO and/or lower thirds to accompany the footage shot in the field.
To this point, FCP Legend’s Media Manager and Avid’s Media Tool both predate our industry going tapeless/card-centric by a number of years. Why Media Manager and Media Tool as opposed to Footage Manager and Footage Tool? Because both of them can track many types of media used (music, graphics, photos, footage etc.,) as opposed to just a single medium (only music, only graphics, only photos, only footage, etc.,).
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[John Rofrano] “Sorry but I have to comment on that one. Mac and PC hardware are definitely NOT the same.”
Same RAM, CPU, GPU, HDD/SSD, underling architecture, etc.,. With regards to motherboards, they come in many shapes and configurations. The biggest thing that sets Apple apart is that Apple doesn’t use standard form factors, such as ATX or BTX, in its desktops. Conversely pretty much all laptops use custom motherboards because laptops come in such a variety of shapes and sizes where as desktop towers still pretty much fall into either ‘full’, ‘mid’ or ‘small’ form factors. Regardless of size and shape, the motherboards (including Apple’s) still have to adhere to the same technical specs so that the all the parts ‘connected’ to the MoBo (from CPU and GPU to external hard drives) work as expected.
One can buy a Dell or an HP and run easily OS X on it w/a readily available hack. RISC vs CISC, x86 vs PPC… that’s all in the past. Aside from maybe paying for a window of exclusivity here and there Apple uses the same chips and specs from Intel that everyone else does.
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[Don Walker] “Time to evaluate what your giving your clients to make sure that a Cowboy Preacher with an iPhone can’t give the same quality of product that your putting out with your Mac Pro and $5000 camera. “
Conversely, a Cowboy Preacher might be be just fine with the results an iPhone can give. Just because you make a better product doesn’t mean the customer necessary wants to pay for a better product. Five star restaurants exist and so does McDonald’s. Speaking of food analogies, people have had the ability to grown and/or prepare their own meals at home for centuries yet there is still a very large demand for prepackaged food, restaurants (of all sizes), frozen dinners, etc.,.
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[Duke Sweden] “I do have one question, though. Aren’t even “shadowy horror movie” scenes brightly lit, and then darkened in post in order to avoid noise? I saw one clip from this color grader’s portfolio where a girl was awakened in the middle of the night, and it was brightly lit, then shadows and color grading added in post.”
Anything that is going to be dark/moody is shot more brightly lit than it appears in the final version but the relative value of the lighting is set in production. For example, if you are shooting a horror movie you don’t want the whole scene to be lit evenly during the shoot because then you won’t have any shadows/darker areas to work with in grading. But, as you said, you don’t want to shoot it too dark because then you’ll have a noisy image. So you have to add enough light to where you want the shadows (to avoid noise) and then add even more light to your talent, for example, so that the relative exposure difference between the shadows and the talent remains constant.
Check out episodes of the X-Files or Supernatural to see examples of giving a dark moody atmosphere w/o everything actually being in the dark.
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Color grading starts in pre-production. You decide on your look (or at least decide on a general, cohesive direction to go in), then pick your set design, costumes, light design, etc., to achieve that look. Color grading is the final step in the process to dial it in and bring uniformity to all the shots.
For example, the orange and teal look is popular in many blockbuster films (flesh tones are pushed to a saturated/orange hue which makes them ‘pop’ against the blue/green look of the rest of the frame. Google ‘orange and teal’ for more info) and if you pause a movie that has this color scheme you’ll notice that almost everyone is wearing a somber shade of blue, gray, white, etc.,. Colors that aren’t close to skin tones and can easily be pushed to teal. If you want the orange/teal look you don’t want to put your characters in a bright red room, for example. Just like if you are shooting a horror movie it’s all about the shadows so you don’t want to flood the set with light like a prime time sitcom.
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Meh.
A dozen other industries have already gone through this and working pros survived.
Sure, if someone sucks and relies on scarcity of gear to make a living they are boned but everyone else still has a fighting chance as long as they continue to pay attention to what’s going on around them. If an 8yr old or a computer program or a hamster on a wheel can put out a product that is comparable to yours, then, yes, it is probably time to do some self evaluation. 😉