A Warning And A Bit Of A Ramble
Aug. 13th, 2008 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fangrrl_squees..and I mean this in all kindness:
The very next person I see watching a film who says "I wonder if [thing which just occurred in said film] was deliberate?" I'm going to club to death with my old clipboard.
Would you say "Gee, I wonder if that was deliberate?" when you read a book, or look at a painting? Of course not.
Big ol' Hollywood films cost, on average, a million dollars per minute of finished celluloid. You bet your ass everything is deliberate. It's not like some 1950s musical out there "Hey! Let's put on a show! We can use Old Jones' barn and I'll be the director!". Although I will admit that there were some moments like that in film school - but only when we were shooting video. Ain't nothing like the costs of even Super 81 to make a student thing "Huh... I guess I should have done a storyboard, after all."
I hate storyboarding. Even my stick figures are inadequate. And I'm not a cinematographer, by any means. Exactly how I made it through film school is a bit of a puzzlement. I think it was the scripts and the fact that I apparently had half the faculty terrified of me, for some reason. Maybe it was the accent...
(this incipient rant was mercifully cut short by a lunch date. Count your lucky stars. And I know it isn't fannish, per se, but I talk more about media on this journal than the other one...)
1 - do they even make Super 8 film any more? I have a beautiful, almost unused Super 8 camera in my den. It was one of my thrift-store finds. I just haven't come up with a (silent) script I want to shoot that badly, given the cost. Ironically, it's sitting next to my equally dusty DV camcorder.
The very next person I see watching a film who says "I wonder if [thing which just occurred in said film] was deliberate?" I'm going to club to death with my old clipboard.
Would you say "Gee, I wonder if that was deliberate?" when you read a book, or look at a painting? Of course not.
Big ol' Hollywood films cost, on average, a million dollars per minute of finished celluloid. You bet your ass everything is deliberate. It's not like some 1950s musical out there "Hey! Let's put on a show! We can use Old Jones' barn and I'll be the director!". Although I will admit that there were some moments like that in film school - but only when we were shooting video. Ain't nothing like the costs of even Super 81 to make a student thing "Huh... I guess I should have done a storyboard, after all."
I hate storyboarding. Even my stick figures are inadequate. And I'm not a cinematographer, by any means. Exactly how I made it through film school is a bit of a puzzlement. I think it was the scripts and the fact that I apparently had half the faculty terrified of me, for some reason. Maybe it was the accent...
(this incipient rant was mercifully cut short by a lunch date. Count your lucky stars. And I know it isn't fannish, per se, but I talk more about media on this journal than the other one...)
1 - do they even make Super 8 film any more? I have a beautiful, almost unused Super 8 camera in my den. It was one of my thrift-store finds. I just haven't come up with a (silent) script I want to shoot that badly, given the cost. Ironically, it's sitting next to my equally dusty DV camcorder.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 06:57 pm (UTC)Nope. Not rant-baiting. Not me...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 07:02 pm (UTC)I'm thinking more of the time I think it was, hrm, T2 was on telly and some fairly significant thing happened, prompting the remark from my pal. *headdesk*
You're lucky, my lunch date just arrived. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 07:19 pm (UTC)I have no idea if they make it, but they sure as heck don't teach us how to cut the damn stuff anymore. Its pretty much only the art schools over here that still teach film students to edit actual film, the rest of us tend to hold those lucky individuals in considerable awe.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 08:30 pm (UTC)Editing super 8 you can practically do with scissors and scotch tape, as long as you have a steady head. I've no idea where my dear, dear splicer has gone, alas...
16mm was a bit trickier, but also less fiddly.
Mind you, I'm not talking about anything with a soundtrack, oh no. That was grad-level stuff at my school - before THEY went digital, too. (boy, was I resentful to learn that the semester after I graduated, they school rolled out a whole *shitload* of digital editing equipment for the undergrads... grr...)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 10:51 pm (UTC)Hee, I dunno bout anyone else but speaking as someone whose entire filmic education was digital, the mere sight of a splicer fills me with awe and fear. I have when the need arose spliced audio tape but much as I curse minidiscs and memory cards, I'm eternally grateful that I'll never need to faff around with various kinds of tape in a professional environment, oh perished audio tape how little do I miss thee.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 11:03 pm (UTC)Probably as little as I miss perished video tape! *shudder*
Some folks ask me why I wanted (and still do, in a way) to be a film editor. I tell them it's because one of the happiest moments of my life was when I was on the twentieth hour of a 24-hour booking on the flatbed, cutting my senior thesis film. I was going mad with fatigue (I think I'd been up for about 36 hours by then), I hadn't eaten nearly enough, I'm pretty certain I didn't smell too good and I was looking for FOUR FREAKIN' FRAMES that I had a sinking feeling had fallen down the back of the immovable flatbed a few hours ago. But despite all that, my internal voice was flat on its back, kicking its little legs in the air and saying "This is GREAT! I wish we NEVER had to sleep!"
Ah, well. Probably for the best that it didn't go anywhere after that. The hours are lousy and the divorce rate amongst editors is shocking. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 08:41 pm (UTC)