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twistedmentat posted:I just watched Dark City with the Ebert Commentary. I know he did commentary for his movie Beneth The Valley of the Dolls, but are there any other movies he's done commentary for? ratethatcommentary.com lets you search by name, credit (cinematographer, editor, etc.) and is loving great. Without it, I never would have discovered all of Steven Soderberg's guest commentaries: http://ratethatcommentary.com/search.php?search=soderbergh&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
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Jun 27, 2008 16:20
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Ape Agitator posted:
Aliens wasn't shot on Super 35. Back in 1986, you would only use Super 35 if you wanted an aspect ratio of ~2.39.1~ and didn't want to shoot anamorphically. Super 35 requires some modification to the camera in order to center the lens over the negative, it requires custom ground glass, and it wasn't very common in 1986. These days, some shows are shot for 1.85:1 or 1.78:1 (vs. 2.39:1) on 3-perf Super 35- the last "film" job I had did this and it is becoming very common - but back then it wouldn't have been done. And actually had he shot Aliens with a Super 35 camera it would show less grain than it does since the 1.85 extraction area from Super 35 is a bigger area than 1.85 matted Academy. In other words, bigger negative = less grain. Of course, I have no connection to the film, but this stuff is my bread and butter so my guess is somewhat educated. Now, if you want to talk about why Terminator 2 is grainy? The answer is Super 35 in that case.
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Mar 16, 2010 03:41
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poonchasta posted:This probably sounds like a request that Google could fill, but I wanted someone's personal recommendation. Does anyone know of a good website that talks about common techniques in film making and special effects? I want to get a basic understanding of things like steadicams, tracking shots, rotoscoping, compositing, and other related techniques. I'm not trying to be a film maker, I just want to be a better film watcher when it comes to the technical side of things. Wikipedia is actually pretty good for a lot of stuff. There are also some great, beginner friendly books that I know of (that are fairly cheap, too.) I meant to post links to them when someone earlier in the thread was asking what you are asking but specified books. Finally, there are a few people here who work in the industry who, judging by my own observation (and speaking for myself, of course) are more than happy to share their knowledge. I know that coming up with your own questions and then waiting for a response isn't as engaging as following a bunch of hyperlinks wherever they take you... but it never hurts to ask and they conversation might turn to things you didn't even know enough to ask about. Anyway, for reference, I work as an Assistant Editor/VFX Editor. I'm trying to finish out the longest, biggest job of my career, a 3-D movie slated for release in late summer. Anyway, working in the picture editing department means that ultimately I have to know a lot about about cinematography, visual effects, and sound work in addition to understanding editing technique. I am pretty busy with work so I don't have a ton of time to answer questions, but I dunno, maybe the rest of the Something Awful industry pros could all pitch in and we could do an Ask/Tell thread... Meanwhile, I'll try to dig up some links. EDITED: I changed "photography" to "cinematography" because while I do have a deeper than average understanding of photographic technique and lighting... I am the wrong person to explain things like T-stops or whatever. I know enough about general photography to have a deep understanding of what cinematography is, though. Hope that distinction is clear. Anyway, I guess the broader point is that 98% of what I do as an Assistant Editor doesn't demand that I understand VFX, sound, or cinematography... and a lot of people in my position don't bother learning about that stuff, but I am constantly trying to expand my knowledge for the same reasons you are- to be a better film watcher. In my situation I hope that it does help me advance my career- and I was educating myself long before I entered the profession (never went to film school.) Part of why I am eager to offer help to you is that I admire your inclination to "watch movies better" just for the sake of your own enjoyment. We work insanely hard, even on shitbag movies, but most of what we do is supposed to be invisible, so it's always nice to know that there are some folks out there who will appreciate the work. 2ND EDIT: Out of curiosity I went to check out what Wikipedia has to say about roto and composite work, and I really can't stress enough that it has become a really great place to learn about stuff like that. I mean, on Sunday I was working until midnight rotoscoping and keying a computer monitor effect... but it would take me forever to describe everything I was doing on this specific shot. For an overview, Wikipedia really is pretty great. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Mar 31, 2010 |
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Mar 31, 2010 19:12
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Co-sine posted:I couldn't find a specific thread for identifying films and I didn't think it was worth making a whole new thread about it. Sounds like The Running Man. Also it sounds like you were really loving drunk- maybe having a great loving time, too. 
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Jul 24, 2010 21:57
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Korak posted:Haha I can't believe someone hasn't seen Running Man by now. That is such a hilarious description for it and I kind of feel sorry for Five Cent Deposit for having to spend like 15 minutes typing in variations of "Electric clown film" into google. I didn't spend a second typing anything into google- are you crazy? I answered the guy's question with a guess. Seemed like an obvious and safe bet. Wild T posted:Five Cent Deposit, were you drunk enough that you didn't notice Arnold Swarzenegger was the protagonist? That probably would have helped you find out a lot easier than the electric clown (his name was Dynamo, incidentally, and he's the best overweight opera-singing electricity-themed villain ever). God, I love that movie. You need to improve your reading comprehension, pal. The drunkard was Co-sine, not me. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 26, 2010 |
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Jul 26, 2010 18:08
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volumecontrol posted:Do movie studios which are part of media conglomerates have to pay for the advertising on their own networks? When Rise of the Planet of the Apes was being promoted the last few weeks, they had ads all over FOX, FX, FOX News, etc. Does 20th Century Fox pay these stations ad revenue, or what? Same goes for Viacom when promoting films on their own channels, MTV, CBS, etc. When I'm working in a cutting room on a studio lot, my production is paying rent for that room to the "facilities" division of the same company (Paramount, e.g.) that I'm working for. My Avid (editing system) might also be rented from another division of the same corporation. It's all part of the very elaborate "Hollywood accounting" system of moving money around and hiding true income and profits.
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Aug 15, 2011 20:18
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Voodoofly posted:Not to defend accounting in Hollywood, but this isn't true. Every corporation does this, and every industry has a few (or more than a few) people guilty to some extent of using this system to shift profits for legitimate and illegitimate reasons. What's not true? You've contradicted yourself pretty nicely with your first and second sentences. I can assure you that Hollywood accounting is real - everyone who works in the business would back me up on this - and your own assertion is that "every corporation" and "every industry" has people "guilty" of shifting profits around. So what are you disagreeing with?
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Aug 16, 2011 06:11
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I know it isn't unique to the movie studios - never claimed it was. That's why I take issue with his first statement that "it isn't true." Maybe I was just feeling pissy?! Felt like he was opening his post by trying to contradict me. Whatever, I can be cantankerous about semantics.
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Aug 16, 2011 17:21
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huh posted:I'm trying to google something but don't know the name for it. I don't want to come off as a douche, but I've worked in cutting rooms since 2004 and the only term I've ever heard used in the business is prelapping. I dunno about the other answers you've gotten so far.
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Nov 17, 2011 04:42
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TonTon posted:Well poo poo, I guess I am. I knew the term, but thought it meant something else completely. Thank you so much! Little piece of editorial trickery for you- we often use invisible jump cuts during a take to speed up the performance, e.g. the actor is sitting fairly still and pauses a long time between words or lines, we lift out the pause. This only works when there isn't any other action in the scene (e.g. extras crossing in the BG) and traditionally would be made invisible by adding a 2 or 4 frame dissolve across the cut. These days though, it can be hidden even better with VFX. You see this done a LOT in talking head documentary footage - but usually less effort is made to hide the cut. If it's especially ugly you cut away to your stock footage or beauty shots/b-roll. Of course, in a narrative feature we cut away all the time to cover dialog edits - usually to the other people in the scene - but the invisible jump cut is essential for when, artistically, we want to stay on the speaking character.
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Nov 18, 2011 02:29
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Hibernator posted:On the anthology set? Each one has a separate documentary. They're called: There's also "The Alien Legacy" which was a 5th disc that you had to mail in the UPC from the Legacy DVD boxed set to get. Only available for a limited time, too. It wasn't in the Alien Quadrilogy boxed set, but I believe it resurfaced in the Blu-Ray boxed set. Edit: You're probably thinking of "The Alien Saga" which was a cable documentary that ran 108 minutes, had a separate DVD release http://www.digitalbits.com/reviews3/aliensaga.html , but is also available in the Blu Anthology box. Google also found this: http://www.shadowlocked.com/20101026845/news/watch-some-mind-blowing-alien-extras-not-on-the-blu-ray-anthology.html Go nuts. Additional edit with an additional link: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewshd/bdreviews102210.html - great rundown of all the special features. Here's an excerpt: "You'll also be happy to learn that yes, Sharpline Arts' excellent Alien Legacy documentary is finally included here, as is the 2001 Alien Saga documentary. And all of the older laserdisc archive material is here too. One additional note, however: If you have Image Entertainment's original Alien Saga DVD, you may wish to keep it. It includes a couple things not available on the Anthology or anywhere else, including 4 short Aliens production featurettes (Grunts in Space, Behind the Scenes and profile pieces on James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver) as well as a bit of uncut Sigourney Weaver screen test footage. Most of the same screen test footage is here on the Anthology, but it's been censored." Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Dec 16, 2011 |
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Dec 15, 2011 23:26
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twistedmentat posted:No, this one was about 2 hours long, it was all a solid feature. They would talk to people involved with the movies and behind them they'd often have old timy green computer graphics of facehuggers and stuff. If, like me, you have the Blu Anthology then you're in luck, it's in the Archives section. But if not, or if you're a crazy completionist, Amazon has the standalone DVD (with extra stuff) for only 9 bucks. Hell, check netflix too. I'm also definitely planning to try to download those other free docs I linked to.
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Dec 16, 2011 18:41
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Magic Hate Ball posted:That's why Ang Lee was so reluctant to make The Life Of Pi, because it combined the three most difficult, time-consuming things to shoot: water, children, and animals. I'm really good friends with the 1st Assistant Editor on Life of Pi, and I turned down a spot on his crew (twice, in fact) because the timing wasn't right for me (a long story.) I was waiting for that phone call for years, actually, and was always under the impression that the Ang was really gung-ho about the project. The story I kept getting was that Fox didn't want to spend the kind of money Ang thought it needed (among other hold ups) but if you've read otherwise I'd love to see the quote. Your assertion certainly makes sense on the face of things!
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Oct 3, 2012 05:09
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^^ Absolutely! I'm just looking for a quote or an interview or something. Basically I was following the project casually for awhile because my wife and I loved the book, but the reporting was always vague. When I became friends with the 1st and asked him about it (and expressed interest in working on it) back in '08 or '09 he told me it had been dead in the water (har har) but might someday still happen. From that point onward I stopped reading about it and just got occasional updates from him until late Dec '10 when he called me and said "it's finally happening, can you be ready in two weeks to go to Taiwan and India for 5 months?" And for better or worse, I said no. He called again in May of '11 with another offer but again it didn't work out. Since then we've gotten together or talked a few times but we've never talked about the reasons it took so long to get going - mostly we've compared notes on workflow issues and other boring poo poo like that.
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Oct 3, 2012 20:39
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Maxwell Lord posted:It depends. There's a way to shoot a 35mm movie "hard matted" so that the framing is always right, but it costs a little more. Where did you get the idea that it costs more? Very few pictures are shot with a hard matte, but not for any cost reason. Even films with hard mattes on the negative aren't usually matted to the final projected aspect ratio. For example, I've seen the 4K scans of Terminator and while almost every shot is matted, it isn't matted to the 1.85:1 ratio. There's more on all sides. If you see booms in the theater, it is the projectionist's fault, plain and simple.
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Oct 25, 2012 17:02
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Maxwell Lord posted:Wanted to double check this, but it's in Paul Sylbert's "Final Cut" (the one about the making of The Steagle, not Heaven's Gate)- he wanted to shoot it hard matte, the studio refused, and he says it was for cost reasons. Then again, this was 1970, and he could have been wrong anyway, but it was one request he ended up not getting. If you can dig up a quote, I'd love to read it. I'm not being argumentative - I'm genuinely curious as to what his explanation is.
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Nov 1, 2012 19:28
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Ninja Gamer posted:What's the difference between a Director of Photography and a Cinematographer? No difference.
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Nov 20, 2012 03:53
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Maxwell Lord posted:Maybe at the time the hard-matte referred to an actual bit of hardware you'd put in front of a lens to actually cut off those parts of the frame. Hard matte means the same now as it always has - it doesn't go in front of the lens but it does go in the camera gate in front of the negative. It is very uncommon and always has been. My best guess is that in this case the studio wanted to force him to protect for 1.66:1 knowing that projectionists in Europe typically used 1.66:1 aperture plates on all flat films. In other words, it *was* common for studios to have mandates that their films be presentable in multiple aspect ratios.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:45
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DNS posted:My understanding has always been that 35mm, when projected in the best conditions, has better picture quality than a 4k DCP. The advantage of digital projection is that there's less variation in the quality of the experience, ie. you're less at the mercy of the abilities of the teenage projectionists at the multiplex. This is incorrect. While it is possible to get great 4K scans out of great 35mm negative, theatrical projection doesn't even come close. 4K projection blows 35mm projection out of the water. Everyone who has ever seen 4K projection of restored classics has walked away saying they've never seen [insert favorite movie here] look as good. The directors will say the same thing. Extensive testing with resolution charts has shown that in the real world 35mm gives you around 800 "lines" (so, more in the ballpark of 720p, nevermind 1080p or even 2K.) Here's another bit of inside dope: TONS of 4K remasters and restorations have been created by scanning at 4K, downrezzing to 2K, cleaning up, then uprezzing back to 4K. So the 4K digital master is an uprez, and the new 35mm archival film neg master is lasered out from that.
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Jun 23, 2013 08:44
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Mescal posted:Why does projecting a movie reduce its quality so much? The biggest loss comes from traditional chemical & optical developing and printing. Web you strike a print off the neg, you lose a generation of quality, like photocopying. And in many cases, theatrical prints were made not directly from the OCN (original camera negative) but from an internegative, itself a copy of a print which was copied from the negative. When you've only got one original original negative as the archival master of a film, you're not going to risk damaging it by printing 3000 theatrical copies off of it. The digital intermediate, a relatively recent innovation, allows you to scan the neg once and use a laser printer to run off your prints from the 2K scans. This is much better than the optical duplication used for most of cinema history. Prints made this way in the last few years often look better than older optically duplicated prints. Bloody Hedgehog posted:Why do they bother downrezzing to work on it, and then uprezzing back to 4k? Is 4K too unwieldy to work with? Yes, of course, it is much easier to work in 2K than in 4K. Also remember that a 2K downrez from 4K will be better than a 2K native scan. Try it if you don't believe me - take a crisp new dollar bill and scan it at 150dpi, then scan it again at 300dpi and downrez that to 150dpi. Now you've got two "identical" 150dpi scans but you'll see that the one that started out at 300dpi is better. And with sufficiently good upscaling hardware/software, you can blow that one back up to 300dpi and it will look better than it does at 150dpi (though of course not as good as the original 300dpi, but that doesn't matter because you'll never be looking at it close enough to tell.) Speaking of which, 4K is certainly more than adequate for any reasonable theatrical configuration you can conceive of except IMAX, and in most seats in the house your average eyes won't see a difference between 2K and 4K. VFX shots for IMAX portions of movies like The Dark Knight and MI4 are typically scanned at 6K, for what that's worth. I can't speak to what happens when the effects vendors get their hands on those scans - for all I know, they downrez them, create the shot, and then filmout from a lower rez render. I know the right people to ask, but just haven't gotten around to chatting them up. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jun 23, 2013 |
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Jun 23, 2013 17:25
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DNS posted:I believe you, but then why does a blu-ray projected in a theater look worse than a great quality 35mm print on the same screen? I've never see a Blu-Ray projected in a theater. My guess is that if you have seen one that way, the setup and conditions weren't optimal. That said, Blu-Rays are compressed far more than theatrical DCPs, which at 2K (only about 6% more lines than 1080p) can run in the hundreds of GB vs a typical 30GB disc. But even theatrical DCPs do look subjectively "worse" than 35mm to some eyes. This is more a limitation, again, of hardware and calibration. I've read terrible things, for example, about how Sony's 4K projectors handle black and white DCPs. Someone else has already touched upon the apparent harshness of digital pixels vs. film grain. There's also the way light interacts with emulsion grains on celluloid. There were a lot of people who preferred the analog lines and color of laserdiscs to the "superior" (numerically) pixels and digital compression of DVDs.
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Jun 23, 2013 22:04
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csidle posted:How the hell does that work? I assume uprezzing refers to resizing the image. Shouldn't that logically reduce the quality of the image? [CSI]Can you zoom in and enhance that reflection?[/CSI] Uprezzing is in fact a real thing, but of course it's not magic wizard poo poo like it's portrayed to be. Just as there are "lossless" data compression-decompression algorithms (codecs) the vendors who do 4K -> 2K -> 4K workflows have their patented secret sauce that gives great results. For as well as image enhancing tech works at creating detail where none was immediately apparent, it works even better when it is essentially putting back what it took out. The recipe for taking it out and putting it back in is the same every time, so the results don't vary much. It's just a really complicated recipe. It ain't the "unsharp mask" photoshop filter.
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Jun 23, 2013 22:42
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Trump posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-UOqYbOrQA Just chiming in to say that I do a lot of stabilizing and VFX and what you're seeing there isn't necessarily a byproduct of a rolling shutter. It happens with any cheap/quick single pass 2D stabilization on very shaky or complex movement.
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Aug 21, 2013 22:43
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Snak posted:Doesn't Spike Lee actually put the actor on a dolly so that they aren't even walking? This has long been one of his visual trademarks. I hate the effect and can't think of any other director who does it this way off the top of my head. Completely different look from what you get mounting the camera to the actor.
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Aug 21, 2013 22:45
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effectual posted:I'd love to see an example. Also, did people manually do this way back when? Or just not bother? Before computers did it you had to get it in camera. It's why the operators are some of the highest paid guys on a crew. Dolly grips and crane/jib guys also make a lot. Smooth camera moves have always been tough. The Steadicam was a HUGE, revolutionary innovation. So was "moco" (preprogrammed motion controlled by electronics).
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Aug 21, 2013 22:52
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Most feature editors I know - and maybe even moreso their assistants, myself included - hate dissolves because they are often used as a last resort, when the editor can't decide what frame to cut on, or can't figure out another way to grease the cut (music or a sound cue). Cuts are seen as precise, decisive and strong. Dissolves are for editors who can't cut, or for very specific mood evoking time transitions. Even the classical use of a dissolve to get out of one location and into another (e.g. dissolving from a lingering shot of the hero contemplating his future in a saloon, to a wide establishing shot of him riding on the prairie some days later) aren't used much because modern visual and sound techniques will grease that cut pretty well and today's audiences don't need a wipe or dissolve to understand that time has passed. Prelapping and panning a sound cue is the easiest way to help the audience anticipate a cut from on location/time to another so that the visual discontinuity of the cut isn't too jarring. Also FYI nobody says "smash cut". It's just "cut". Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 21:35
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:"Smash cut" pops up in screenplays all the time. It is considered bad form by everyone else on the crew when screenwriters do this. I'm gonna elaborate now that I have more than a minute - shooting scripts almost never have camera or cutting notes like that. If they do, they just look silly. Some scripts have poo poo like that in them before they get turned into a shooting script, I'd guess in order to help convey the ideas that the screenwriter has, and to make them read a certain way. Finally, I just wanted to make a clear distinction that the alternative to a dissolve or wipe transition is NOT called a smash cut. It's just a CUT. Someone might have something specific in mind when they write SMASH CUT but since there is no universally accepted definition of the term, it's a lousy way to try to communicate that notion to an editor who has his hands on the footage months later. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Oct 30, 2013 |
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Oct 30, 2013 03:29
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Trump posted:If the downmixing is done straight up, with no weird processing like virtual surround or presets like the "movie" or "music" option some TVs have, you won't be able to tell the difference. Downmixing doesn't remove channels, but simply throws the available sound out 2 speakers. The center channel will come out of both speakers. The downmixing that cable boxes, blu-ray players, and TVs do is almost always dreadful and absolutely buries the dialog, making it really hard for a lot of people to hear. You've never noticed this?
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Jan 9, 2014 04:19
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Seems like it's not meant to be taken literally to me. Also, "unsourced DVD liner notes" aren't really great sources. I'm just saying I hope your article's thesis doesn't rest too heavily on this. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 22:10
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BisonDollah posted:I was reading in the blu-ray thread the X-Files series may be converted and all the old effects could be improved if they still had an original source - I wonder how hard it would be to fix the dog Alien, if the original stuff was still lying around, obviously. I would bet money that Fox has the OCN for the VFX elements packed up in a vault. Even if they weren't in great shape they could be scanned and recomposited digitally. The results would be greatly improved over the original opticals. Even without going back to the OCN though, they could scan the final composited shots and clean them up quite a bit.
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Jan 30, 2014 22:18
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david_a posted:If they didn't do it for the 'Director's Cut' they never will. They even added a CGI bambi-burster; I would think if it was Oh, I don't think it will happen. I also didn't say it would be cheap or easy. But it could certainly be done. FWIW, the green you see on the Alien in that screenshot up there is called "spill".
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Jan 31, 2014 04:05
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Two Worlds posted:The green tint on the alien is not spill from a green screen. The puppet was shot against a blue screen. I think Bugblatter went into detail about exactly what was going on with those shots. Likely something inherent in the optical compositing method they used. D'oh! Of course you're right. We didn't use green back then, something I forget from time to time. These days green is so prevalent that it often gets used in setups where blue would be better. :-/ Anyway, I still think the it's spill (and there's no ignoring the chunky matte edge, or halo, jn that screen grab. Could be that the color timing has pushed it over to green? I dunno. Maybe I'm crazy. It's definitely lovely optical compositing, but also the elements aren't matched all that well to each other in terms of lighting. Edit: I should clarify that when I said "we didn't use green back then" I don't mean myself. I didn't start working in this industry until the mid 00's. By that time though, green was already starting to be used everywhere, even when blue was more appropriate. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 16:11
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CzarChasm posted:Why the switch from Blue to Green? My best guess is that a green reflection, or the green outline/halo is easier to hide/touch up/avoid than blue. Very simplified answer: Digital cameras pick up green a lot better. Film picks up blue better. Very simplified answer pt. 2: Even before digital acquisition was commonplace, digital compositing had been standard for years, i.e. shoot on film but scan VFX elements digitally for compositing in computer software. The scanners, and the compositing tools, also like green better than they like blue. What this means is that there was a period where you'd be compromising no matter what. You'd want to hang blue because your film neg would be cleaner and easier to key but you'd want to hang green because your compositors would have an easier time of it. During this period a lot of stuff was shot with green instead of blue simply because green is "easier" to light - you need less light hitting the screen to pull a clean key, and it's easier to make the light uniform. The problem with that is the green is so reflective that it tends to spill everywhere, and to my eye the spill is uglier and more obvious. Blue is still the color of choice in a lot of applications, especially shooting human beings, regardless of acquisition (film or video). But I'm honestly trying to think of a single blue screen element I've ever seen on all the features I've worked on though, and I can't think of any. I'm sure there have been a handful, but it's not many. And that's out of thousands of elements. These days where most VFX heavy shows are shot digitally, or at the very least the VFX elements are shot digitally, green rules the day.
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Jan 31, 2014 19:24
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Egbert Souse posted:Green reacts less with flesh tones and seems to work better with digital processes. I think it depends on what the lighting requires and the action. Some of the effects in Independence Day were shot with red screens. The old sodium vapor process used on Mary Poppins and The Birds, which utilized yellow screens and in-camera mattes (bipack film). The use of blue actually originated from compatibility with 3-strip Technicolor. It was easier to use one color channel that way since Tech negatives were filtered to yellow, cyan, and magenta. By using blue screens, the matte would be produced from the yellow strip of film. This is a pretty interesting post but I take issue with your very first sentence. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "Green reacts less with flesh tones" but I can't think of a single interpretation which would put you in the right. The fact is, when you shoot a human in front of green screen and you later key out the green, you can end up with pretty nasty side effects. Blue give you much, much better results in terms of preserving their skin and hair colors and it's much easier to do (the effect requires less tweaking).
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Jan 31, 2014 19:29
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xcore posted:Do people that have all the little lovely jobs on movies in the credits make a living from what they do? People like the guys the hold a boom mic, drive actors to and from a set or clap the clapper between scenes. I work in post, but have worked in production and on set. So while I'm not 100% certain of this, I can say with a lot of confidence that boom ops on features are making an absolute MINIMUM of $2000/wk. In other words, the "scale" for their position on a union show is probably in the ballpark of $2000 for 50 worked hours. When we make our deals, we agree on a weekly guarantee that works thusly: I go in and say "give me 3300 for 50" and that means I want my wage to be $60/hr and I want to be paid for a 10 hour day every day (8 hours at $60 and 2 hours at $90 - time and a half). I'm asking them to guarantee that I will be paid a minimum of $3300/wk and in return I will guarantee them that I am willing and able to commit to a ten hour day. If its a slow day, I can leave early but still be paid for the 10 hours. BUT I'd better not make plans, generally, to be free before those 10 hours are up - since they're paying me for them, they can ask me to stay and I can't really say no. I don't incur additional overtime until I go beyond ten hours. The producer might counter with something like "I only budgeted for $2750/wk... Let me do the math... That would be $50/hr if we did a 50 hour guarantee." If I sense that they absolutely will not go over $50/hr and I need or want the job, I'd try to get more hours in the guarantee. "Give me that rate but do a 55 so I get $3125/wk" And so on. Now this is a decent rate for a below the line crew member. But what really ends up happening is you start putting in 70, 80, or even more hours per week and it really goes through the roof. Meal penalties for missed meals. "Turnaround" (if I am making double time when I leave at night and I show up to work less than 10 hours later, I start my new day in double time). Night premiums (all hours after 8 PM are +10%). Box rentals (I rent my equipment to the production so they don't have to provide it for me - I charge less than an outside vendor since I have no overhead on the stuff and it probably paid for itself years ago). Location bonuses - a housing allowance, car rental allowance, and per diem when on location, as well as additional "holding fees" for keeping me on location on Saturdays and Sundays (this is typically 8x our hourly rate, and gets added to your paycheck even when you don't work the weekend, so you don't try to leave town and go back home on the weekends.) There was a job I did a few years ago where my base rate (my guarantee) was $2250/wk but most weeks I made a minimum of 4 grand. That year I made $250,000. The best I've ever done was a consecutive 4 week run of 8k, 9k, 10k, and 10k - so 37k in a month, as an assistant editor on a $3000/wk deal. In total I made about $100k in 16 weeks on that one. Had another good one a year or so ago where I made a deal based on a $3000/wk and made 9k in 9 days - the length of the job. That one was a super time crunch - a short film for the DNC, directed by an academy award winning documentary filmmaker. A boom op who makes a deal for 2000 a week could easily average twice that through the length of a shoot. If they do three, three month gigs in a year, that's $150,000 a year. And that's making "minimum wage" for the position.
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Feb 18, 2014 06:59
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The point is this: I think most of the unions have a scale (minimum wage) of around $35/hr for the lowest position in the department. Most people would do the math on that and think $35 x 40 = $1,400/wk and they'd come away thinking movie industry professionals make a decent living, but nothing too crazy. And you know what? Some people working on union shows really do make about that much. But the reality is that you can make north of $200,000 in a good year with pay stubs that show you earning less than $40/hr. Just as actors ultimately make a good bit more than the amount they are guaranteed, the laborers usually do too. I don't even have a college degree.
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Feb 18, 2014 08:28
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xcore posted:clap the clapper This is usually done by the "2nd AC" and you can definitely apply the numbers I quoted. They're all terrible at their job, too. "1st AC" aka focus puller might make 50% more. Camera Operator makes even more. DP on a decent sized feature will make a minimum of 8k/wk, more like 12-15. Long tenured DPs with excellent records will hit 20+ and I think the top guys get ballpark 30k/wk.
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Feb 18, 2014 08:34
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therattle posted:The UK is less unionised. An HOD like DP or production designer might get £1,000/w on a v low budget film, up to around £2.5-3k/w on mid-budget (£4-8m) and more on bigger/studio films. I've worked on some things with crew members in other countries and it is appalling to me how much less they get paid - on the other hand though, some of them have been real grade-A gently caress ups. I've had some really fun times fixing mistakes made by "Assistant Editors" who were being paid $800 (equivalent) or less in another country. A couple of training videos on how to drive an Avid doesn't make you an Assistant Editor. Years of apprenticeship, working under skilled people and learning from them, actually do help. I'm glad my union exists and screens out the goofballs who have no business coming near a cutting room. Anyway, you do find super low budget (non-union) shows here that pay Editors, DPs, and other heads of department as little as $100/day. But generally speaking, the people who work on those will never come near a "real" show (something that an audience will see) -OR- they are splitting time between jobs like that, which they take to try to build some steam, and union jobs where they make more money doing what they're already known for and good at, e.g. someone who normally makes $3,000/wk as an Assistant Whatever on Spiderman and Sandra Bullock movies will take $1,000/wk to play a bigger role on a smaller show for a short time in between the union gigs. I have found that those smaller gigs rarely end up helping the career though. therattle posted:The differential between them and other crew is lower especially in low-budget films. Hey man, this is 'Murca, where the boss deserves to make AT LEAST 10x what anybody else makes... just because of reasons, Goddamnit! What are you, some kind of loving COMMIE? I actually know of a very famous (as much as any film editor can be) Academy Award winning editor who makes less than his top assistants. I'd guess it's therefore possible that outliers like that exist in all departments. And on smaller shows where editors are making scale or have a low rate, it's easy for their assistants to make more than them since the assistants rake in tons of OT and editors almost never do - I mean I did a small job where my rate was around $1,800/wk for 50 hours, and the editor was getting $3,000. They producers tried to limit my OT but there was at least one week where I put in enough extra hours that I went over $3k. therattle posted:Also, "lovely jobs" is really patronising. Those people get films made. I'm glad you said that - though I'm not sure I agree that it was a patronizing comment. It speaks more to ignorance of the industry, and that's not so terrible is it? I mean I guess it's not very nice to assume that the hundreds or even thousands of people working on a film have "lovely" jobs. But the question, the simple curiosity about it, shows that they want to know if those *are* lovely jobs or good ones. However - if you take even a moment to think about it, OF COURSE the wages are decent. Where, in the entire USA, is "Carpenter" (for example) not a decent job? Wouldn't it stand to reason that a Carpenter who is tasked with building sets on fancy movies, and who has to pay a mortgage or rent in an expensive city, is going to make a good living? Same goes for the truck drivers. The painters. The make-up artists and hairdressers. The caterers. How much did you spend on catering for your wedding? Now imagine catering for an even bigger group (many of whom are high strung, millionaire, nutcases with special snowflake needs) every single day for 3 months. Of course caterers on movie sets make a good living. Most everyone who works on a movie set, or even in post, is doing a variation on a "good" job that can and is done elsewhere. None of the jobs are lovely, really - not even the PA (entry level, non-union) gigs. Nobody who thinks their job is lovely is going to last in this industry.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:31
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Eh. Thought better of it. Maybe I'll revisit.
Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 09:00
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 22:55 |
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echoplex posted:(kill all VFX supes) Yeah. What the gently caress is it with these guys and why are they all so loving bad at their jobs?
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Feb 26, 2014 16:58
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