The hard part of filmaking is boring (+new HD Video)

I have been making little films for almost a year now and I have come to the conclusion that  the parts that take a lot of time are excruciatingly boring and stupid.

I want the content to play at a really high quality using a freely available open source standard codec  but so far nothing really seems to work.   So i guess that just means each iteration of a film is essentially a new print as the codec used to compress the file can have a huge impact on the final product(There isn’t much talk about lossless video) and the available codec make HUGE files.

Actually I hear there are actually people out there that use pirated versions of popular media manipulation software which are easily attained THey essentially function as a further avenue of marketing , a way to get a large enough user base so your software can actually become a vital part of a working environment. An environment will include many companies that do buy the software.  But seriously Sony Vegas has a really nice multiple format drag and drop video audio mixing interface that is really easy.

I made two films which include some crudely rendered canon 7d footage the last one was 1.1 gigs yet it failed to upload to You Tube(2 gig,ten minute limit) I’ve tried 4 times so far..oh well.

In conclusion here is the first of aforementioned film followed by some notes

You may wonder how this related to the material but given the constraints of time I have decided to construct a longer more ruminated on piece of “film” and therefore certain aspects may only become concrete after a few episodes.
You may also question the style of the video and my only comment there is that time is what is needed.  Time and huge embracing screens or isolation tanks filled with salt and wired for video.

Words

“Some have asked if I did not feel lonesome”
“If there were anyone else”

Henry David Thoreau Walden
From the Librivox recording

“Leading A modest life in an Idyllic fake… ….staged to keep him satisfied.”

Text by As read by a computer(apparently).
It refers to the Phillip K. Dick Novel “Time Out Of Joint”
Which was a really neat book about this dude who does crosswords or some other mindless thing unawares that he is also somehow determining the launching trajectory of these missiles that are being fired at the moon.

“Classically in philosophy there was a distinction drawn between
Being with a capital B,
Which a philosophical way of writing the word God or Fundamental Entity
Being Big B.
and
being/entity
one among which is dasein
Heidegger, However,and I don’t want to mislead you because many readers have been mislead
Heidegger
is no humanist.”

Rick Roderick From his lecture series Titled””Self under Siege” lecture series”(I’ll note where it is next time i hear it)

Man-”It’s beautiful here
I can see the whole valley”

Woman-”yes and there’s our cottage down there
it’s time to go back isn’t it

Man-”Yes.

“but we’re not going to”   ” there is nothing there for us”.
“ah the town’s empty no ones going back”
“there’s no reason to…none at all…?

“Such odd
such ridiculous houses”

Woman- “such ugly people I’m glad their gone”

Man- “Gone?

Where did they go?”

Woman-”I don’t know?

Man-”We’ll go back to town maybe next year,
or the year after that”

Woman-
Or, maybe the year after that

Man- Maybe?

c’mon

let’s take a swim”

Ray Bradbury

From a later 20th century Production

of one of his short stories

that was on NPR(Yuck)

Canon 7D Output Extremely Soft and Desaturated

Now that I got a canon 7d  I can begin too realize just how much the camera adds to the photograph.  It certainly doesn’t feel like fidelity yet i’m not really sure.

Obdurate Milking Spectrolysis

Goodbye Four Thirds, 4/3rd’s er whatever: Hello Canon EOS 7D.

I’ve been using a 4/3rd’s olympus E-410 for a few years now and it worked pretty good.  It took better photo’s than my canon point and shoot . At Least when the tripod mount was still intact  There were a few glaring problems however. It really only works when i used it manually.  The AF never worked well or quickly and the auto exposure was completely useless.    So to take any kind of photo I had to set the aperture and the shutter speed and even though this was fairly easy the camera took a while to get ready for use.  Since I really only took photo’s for artistic reasons I limited my use mainly to tripod mounted HDR  landscapes and some macro shooting.

Well i happy to say I’ve  finally gotten a fully functional camera.  The Canon EOS 7D starts up in .4 seconds and it’s auto focus works well.  I still plan on mainly using it manually most of the time

Oh and the ISO low light stuff is like miraculous.
I ordered an ef-s lens with an 18mm wide angle and some exstention rings so soon I’ll be able to see just how good this camera is.

No budget Filmaking:Part Two-Opening your Eyes

Nope i certainly don’t know what I’m doing.  I tried out the “Non-linear” video editor Edius 5 and found that just like the Pinnacle Studio 14 Hd it proved to be much to frustrating and cryptic to deal with.   Perhaps Sony Vegas has spoiled it for me but that program seems so intuitive.  It’s just so easy to drag and drop music and sound, still and motion pictures all in a a program that doesn’t tax my system.  Perhaps this is why most films really suck.  It’s just to technical.  I can’t imagine Proust or Kafka wasting their time setting type or making paper.  I guess I have a theory about art that doesn’t stress technique.  I mean it’s all technique in a way but the striving for technical polish destroys the creation.  A good example is rock music. Technically great musicians don’t make compelling music they make impressive music.  A Micheal Bay or a Tony Scott film may look nice but since the creator’s purpose is to impress it ends up just being a pointless exercise.  Of course I’ve certainly seen the other side of it where some high concept “arteest” who has nothing to say just jumbles some crap together and gets a patron.  I wonder how deep these artists actually are?  How can people without any curiosity, raised on mass media actually say anything worth hearing.  But that’s probably too harsh I mean I love a cartoon like the Family Guy because it seems honest somehow.  In the end it’s vapid and pointless but at the same time it brings all the other mass media schtick into perspective.  That’s why it’s so great but at the same time it is just pointing out how little compelling “entertainment” there is available.

One more thing…We live In New Times… I can freely listen to all this highbrow stuff without succumbing to any rote paths.  I can combine anything I want, I have  all the capabilities at my fingertips to create a new cinema with the  depth of great literature.  This is the kind of thing that will never be done by large groups of people with “careers” in art.  It will only come from those who somehow comfortably exist outside of these straitjackets.  If your the kind of person who thinks that NPR or PBS is in anyway intelligent or interesting you just are not there yet.  At some point I thought that too but it was a mistake and if you don’t get out soon you will find your self dying in a tiny little world which you could have transcended if only you had the courage , anger or depression to see what you were actually involved in.

It’s all too much to talk about.  I can feel this line of thought begin to fray.  I’ve spent the last few years not looking at TV except for the Cartoons and since what’s on TV is their major subject I am beginning to lose the references.  Personally I like to surround myself with philosophy lectures and audiobooks.  Since these things can be obtained for free I just play them in the back round all day long.  Hubert Dreyfus, Rick Roderick, Robert Solomon and Slavoj Žižek have hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio and video available that actually takes your head out of your ass.  This kind of serious thought is much more fun to engage and there is absolutely none of it on the mass media.  It’s strange just how many hours of crap is produced every year and there is not one show or documentary or drama with anything even approaching the kinds of viewpoints and Ideas that are talked about in all of these guys lectures.  Of course listening to it is not something anyone who has a vested interest in the current culture could do without destroying their opinion of the life they have led, especially if they have a good job or some religious prejudice. However the vastness of the space opened up by them makes the current tiny little worlds most people live in seem like  a complete waste.

One quick example would be a person who has spent their life espousing fiscal responsibility and good honest hard work.  The don’t make waves and they are really dedicated to their work.  What happens to a person like that? Well in today’s culture they end up alone in a nursing home wondering what exactly it is they accomplished.  Perhaps they were a banker who finally realizes that all the money they manipulated suddenly dissappeared before their eyes or maybe they are a minister who despite their best efforts was only able to pretend to believed in God all the while actually living in fear.

Someone who spends their life working retail or food service  don’t actually accomplish as much in their whole lives as a construction worker, nurses aid or garbage man does everyday. These phantom worlds are the province of the vast majority of people.  Philosophy and actual art challenges a person to drop out of this society because it does not go anywhere and it never will.  The mass Media is a huge consensual penal colony.

Ok now I forgot what I was talking about.  Oh yeah.  I want to use Sony Vegas but I screwed up the installation and I need to reinstall my operating system before I can use it.  I also need to figure out how to use the Quick-time .mov format in it since that’s what the canon 7d put’s out.  I wait to get this tripod it’s made of aluminum and can hold 11 pounds!! I also have a flash coming and a 16 gig flash card but the most important thing is a wide angle lens which is really hard to come by with the APS-C sensored camera’s( i had to get a Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens) unless your willing to spend quite a bit of money.

Here is the last Film Short I made (before I got the 7D)

This First No Budget Film: Day One

So like I already made some shorts mainly using high resolution still photographs and I bought myself A canon 7d so I could get some quality HD footage.  I have been using sony Vegas pro 9 64-bit but yesterday I found I couldn’t import 7d’s .mov files so I got pinnacle studio 14 ultimate and tried to use that.

Once I loaded the whole program I realized that it is not going to work at all.  It really really sucks.  The problem with stupid consumer level  crap-ware like pinnacle studio is that I could spend weeks just learning it’s particular way of “making it easy for you”.  Screw that I’m going back the sony vegas.

One would think that since the DSLR video “revolution” has sold so many cameras there would at least be one open source option for manipulating the “footage” perhaps I will need to look into it further.

One of the main reasons the canon 7d and 5dmk2 are so popular is that everyone likes the way the information is encoded but if one ends up with a proprietary file format like a .mov quicktime piece of crap it makes you wonder how much of an advantage it really is especially if the “footage”  ends up degraded due to file conversion.  Hopefully I’m just underinformed on the subject.

I should also start this thing out by stating I am doing this hoping to  to create something that will be completely mind blowing and artistically transcendent.  This is not something I’m doing  just to pass the time this will be something I do to change the world.  I’ve already seen every film that needs to be seen I’ve already read all I need to read about the activity that went into making all the junk they throw up on the screen these days.  All a book or a school or a teacher can tell you is how to do something that has already been done.  Fuck all that. Fuck the film schools fuck hollywood fuck Dogme 95 and fuck you.  I’m not going to waste my time entertaining that kind of crap anymore.

The only role model I can think of is Werner Herzog.  That guy is actually doing something creative and in the moment.  That guy abhors storyboards. His creative process takes place right out there among all the cameras and actor and sets.

Anyway I just wanted to make a small statement of intent to give myself a little kick in the ass.

I have the camera now, I can make the sound this is all there is sound and image over time.

Sound and Image Over Time

Varieties Of The HDR Experience

Middle Tennessee

Middle Tennessee

Middle Tennessee

Middle Tennessee

New Hassleblad Adds Fourth Dimension

Unfortunately I am not qualified to explain the Hassleblad’s new camera.

“Interested in the Hasselblad H4D and what it can do for your photography? As always, your best contacts are Calumet’s Advanced Product Sales specialists. Their expertise can guide you through the entire process of selecting and purchasing commercial equipment.“

Unfortunately I really don’t have the money to be able to afford this NEW technology let alone understand it.  I barely made it through Organic Chemistry in college and I always hated the calculus.  I did take physics though that was so long ago i can’t remember exactly what the fourth dimension is.  Isn’t it commonly thought to be Time?  I really have no Idea perhaps it’s one of those curled up dimensions that is mentioned in those confusing explanations of string theory.  Aside from lacking the financial and cognitive assets to judge the import of this new breakthrough i wonder if I’ll be able to perceive the promised extra dimension.  I guess I’ll just have to wait until DXO comes out with their sensor evaluation.

The Canon EOS 7D doesn’t make films..

What the hell is everyone thinking?   Are people really going to make films with there DSLR.  Given the amount of virtual ink that’s been dedicated to promoting that idea one would think there is going to be a new Renaissance for film.  Finally a person can make an actual film for nothing so now there is no excuse.  Of course everyone also has access to a pen and paper and the writing of a book is just a matter of  spending the time doing it.  But are people actually going to do it?

Oh yes some people will do not doubt it.  But you are not going to.  You see your only  reading an article about a piece of hardware that could facilitate the making of a film for nothing but you won’t find any inspiration in an article on hardware.  Can you imagine what George  Romero could have done with this technology or how about Robert Rodrigez or Sam Raimi.  There initial films were dirt cheap yet they all still cost ALOT of money.  Can you even imagine asking a person for ten thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollar so you can make your first film?  And how are you going to find a cast?  Aren’t most people who really busy doing other things?  How are they going to feel when they see themselves staring back at them on a monitor?

Why do people actually take photo’s anyway ?  Are you the type of person who enjoys looking at photo’s.  What the hell?  Have you looked a flikr?  There are millions of photos out there already.  Why retake someone else’s photo?  Why take any photographs unless you have A brand new 25,000 camera.  Aren’t you going to have to just retake the photograph again when the technology get’s better?  Is photography even an art?  Who looks at it? how many photographs do you see in museums.  What about the new stuff were do you find that?

But wait a second film is actually a viable popular art the people actually participate in.  But it requires a community of people to make one.   How many friends to you have?  Maybe your just going to film those important moments like a birth or marriage.  Then you can file it away in some dusty hard drive or force people to watch it.  Remember community Cable access channels?

The Canon EOS 7D

I ordered the Canon 7D about a week ago from amazon.  I haven’t gotten it yet but I’m hoping it’ll be here next week.  I started this blog about a year ago when I was on a lot of pain medication because of a severe toothache.  I had been planning to get a Canon 5D Mark II then start the process of making films but i lost my income momentarily and i had to make do with my 3 year old Olympus 410.  The E-410 is not a bad camera but it doesn’t take video, it doesn’t auto focus very well especially since I broke it, The mirror Is locked up so you can’t see through the view finder, the lens is scratched, the deal you screw the tripod into was ripped out and it’s pretty dusty on the inside. (Not only that but the built in flash doesn’t work any more and the one i got to mount on it lasted about a week). Oh well i got about 100,000 photo’s out of it. so it certainly paid for itself. I can’t wait to see if my computer can handle processing the large files for the 7D

Don’t waste your time buying!

Well I wrote all these here articles in some revery of equipment lust that kinda makes me cringe.  Not that the technology isn’t very important but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  When was the last time you printed out a nice full quality print?  Maybe this is just poverty talking but I just don’t see too many really hi-res prints.  And with all this talk about making films with dslr’s  it kinda funny that there really aren’t screens of high enough resolution to play any of the upper end Red stuff.  I’m sure this will change but in the mean time I’ve been using my time learning how to make films.  I figured I cuold just start editing stuff together and see what happens.  I experimented with overlaying video and still and using various effects but then I realized that film editing esn’t anything at all photoediting.  FIlm editing is exactly like music making using a computer.

Music and film(or moving images)communicate much of their content in rythmic and reapeating structures.  At any given point in the film the frame you derives almost all of it’s meaning and resonance  from the frames that come before or after it.  This is true on a microscopic level  in that it gives one the illusion of another temporality mirroring our own but also themes and colors over longer period of time.  Western music has rythym and time signatures it inherited from the past and there  are limitations on what sound creation can be coordinated if one plays live.

Luckily film developed recently so the editing of it was not as constrained by tradition.  In fact since the editing of it was really hard until very recently there really haven’t been many creative man hours being put into it.  Maybe the editing situation is too abstract.  If one could start to really coordinate the manipulation of high resolution images by transposing the musical editing skill to video editing then one could begin to take film back to it’s more experimental roots.  Even now if you look at a film like <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziga_Vertov” target=”_blank”>Dziga Vertov’s</a> <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera”>Man with a movie Camera</a> you can see for yourself how more there is to do in the film editing.  That film really moves.

Well I wrote all these here articles in some revery of equipment lust that kinda makes me cringe.  Not that the technology isn’t very important but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  When was the last time you printed out a nice full quality print?  Maybe this is just poverty talking but I just don’t see too many really hi-res prints.  And with all this talk about making films with dslr’s  it kinda funny that there really aren’t screens of high enough resolution to play any of the upper end Red stuff.  I’m sure this will change but in the mean time I’ve been using my time learning how to make films.  I figured I cuold just start editing stuff together and see what happens.  I experimented with overlaying video and still and using various effects but then I realized that film editing esn’t anything at all photoediting.  FIlm editing is exactly like music making using a computer.

Music and film(or moving images)communicate much of their content in rythmic and reapeating structures.  At any given point in the film the frame you derives almost all of it’s meaning and resonance  from the frames that come before or after it.  This is true on a microscopic level  in that it gives one the illusion of another temporality mirroring our own but also themes and colors over longer period of time.  Western music has rythym and time signatures it inherited from the past and there  are limitations on what sound creation can be coordinated if one plays live.

Luckily film developed recently so the editing of it was not as constrained by tradition.  In fact since the editing of it was really hard until very recently there really haven’t been many creative man hours being put into it.  Maybe the editing situation is too abstract.  If one could start to really coordinate the manipulation of high resolution images by transposing the musical editing skill to video editing then one could begin to take film back to it’s more experimental roots.  Even now if you look at a film like <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziga_Vertov” target=”_blank”>Dziga Vertov’s</a> <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera”>Man with a movie Camera</a> you can see for yourself how more there is to do in the film editing.  That film really moves.

So the point is I taught myself how to make music and edit films at the same time all while listening to a lot philosophical lectures.

This is the result
HD version recommended

.