Hey it's Michael and Dustin! Have you ever wondered how the rhythm of videography work shifts with the seasons, or what really goes on behind the scenes of your favorite indie films? Well then get ready to be rocked to your very core as we peel back the curtain on the industry.
As we gaze (no homo) toward the horizon of the film industry's future, we don't shy away from the harsher truths. This candid conversation takes you from the bustling indie scene in Atlanta (that's a joke) to the global production stage, tackling the unsettling job market and the reality of working on passion projects versus big studio gigs (there are none). Discover how we're embracing adaptability and resilience, the secret ingredients for surviving and thriving in creative careers (drug use).
Rounding out this insightful talk (yeah right), we dive into the nitty-gritty of videography tech, from the dream features of the ideal camera to the practicality of matching camera setups. It's the kind of chat that could save you time and money on your next shoot, and maybe even inspire your career's next move (like doing anything other than becoming a videographer). We wrap things up with some personal reflections on the uncertainties facing our industry, the balance of life's commitments, and a light-hearted sign-off that'll leave you wanting more—just like a good film should.
Hey it's Michael and Dustin! Have you ever wondered how the rhythm of videography work shifts with the seasons, or what really goes on behind the scenes of your favorite indie films? Well then get ready to be rocked to your very core as we peel back the curtain on the industry.
As we gaze (no homo) toward the horizon of the film industry's future, we don't shy away from the harsher truths. This candid conversation takes you from the bustling indie scene in Atlanta (that's a joke) to the global production stage, tackling the unsettling job market and the reality of working on passion projects versus big studio gigs (there are none). Discover how we're embracing adaptability and resilience, the secret ingredients for surviving and thriving in creative careers (drug use).
Rounding out this insightful talk (yeah right), we dive into the nitty-gritty of videography tech, from the dream features of the ideal camera to the practicality of matching camera setups. It's the kind of chat that could save you time and money on your next shoot, and maybe even inspire your career's next move (like doing anything other than becoming a videographer). We wrap things up with some personal reflections on the uncertainties facing our industry, the balance of life's commitments, and a light-hearted sign-off that'll leave you wanting more—just like a good film should.
BOO-DEE, boo-dee. Hey everybody, it's the Video Bros podcast. Welcome back.
Speaker 2:It sure is the Video Bros podcast. What are we talking about today? On the show Video.
Speaker 1:Video. Yeah, what about it have?
Speaker 2:you made any recently. Aren't you basically unemployed for, like the entire kind of November to March every single year?
Speaker 1:I still have about another month's work.
Speaker 2:I mean you're editing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm not unemployed.
Speaker 2:Right right, right, right right, but you're definitely not shooting anything.
Speaker 1:Finishing my editing obligations, not really shooting anything right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's nice not to.
Speaker 1:It's nice to take a little break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did have three days of shooting last week. One of them got canceled. I was the last to know, which is good, because it was shooting on my front porch. Nobody thought I needed to know that it was canceled. Yeah, unpaid Shooting on my front porch, at my house, and I guess everybody else on the crew all got the same like virus or something. One dude had to go to the hospital. They were all vomiting and shitting uncontrollably. So, yeah, they were like, hey, let's push this back. But nobody bothered telling me, so I spent a bunch of time getting ready for it.
Speaker 2:Oh, and then also, so there's this thing, you know these dolly tripods, or sorry, these dolly I guess it's a tripod dolly Like, where you put your tripod on top of this thing that's got three wheels and the idea is that then you can push it around on the floor to get like dolly shots. But they don't work. They've never worked. There isn't a floor in the world that's smooth enough for it Like to be able to get a good dolly shot without any sort of a track. It's just not possible. And I think that this is an item that only exists because, like, people that are in their first or second year of videography, want to try it. They see it and they're like, oh, this is a solution. And then they buy it. And then they look at their footage and it's so shaky and so unusable that they can't get rid of it. And then they move on with their life and then another beginner buys the same product and they keep making these things. That don't fucking work.
Speaker 2:But I have run into twice this year where I get to a job and some director is telling me to hey, look what I brought you. Please get some dolly shots with this. And I try that. It's not going to work. It's going to be really shaky. You're better off with me just hand holding and walking. I mean I've got a gimbal I can put on a tilt to float and it could be a whole lot better. But you didn't really pay me to bring all that up and you don't really have time for me to set all that. But you know I could hand hold it better than this fucking dolly is going to. And they were like, let's just try it. Let's just try it. I mean, just try it. And I'm like, dude, I don't have to fucking try it. I've known for 15 years these things don't work. So, anyways, I try it. And then they're like, yeah, that footage is just not usable at all. And again, that's what I told you before we started. So I got into one of those twice this year and one of them is a job that I do recurring, like about once a month I have this gig and so I told them you know, I told them it wasn't going to work. We tried it anyway, the one show. And then they were like, yeah, this is a, yeah, we're never using this again. And I was like, okay.
Speaker 2:So then on the next episode is like a live, is like a live show that's done in a black box theater. I was like, well, I have a motorized slider. It's, you know, it's only four feet, but if you just have something in the foreground or whatever, it's all the movement you really need and we can set it and forget it. It doesn't really have to be manned Like we can just turn it on and just let it run and as long as you just edit around when the camera gets to the end and starts going the other way, you know it's not an entirely useless shot. It's not my favorite thing to do because, like I've seen it in a lot of shows and it's, you know it's unmotivated movement. That's just like oh, they had a motorized slider and they let it run back and forth, and a lot of times they've. You know it's like a three camera shoot and the wide shot is the slider and the other two are static shots and so then they kind of don't cut well together with the. You know it's just like well, why is this camera moving? The other ones aren't? You know there's no blocking.
Speaker 2:The example that I think of a lot is they used it in some of the early seasons of maybe all the way to the end on Letterkinny, which is one of my favorite shows. But it's just like, you know, they're all just sitting still by the fruit stand or whatever the vegetable stand where they sell their produce, and you know it's like a classic setup in that show that they use on every episode. But like this just makes no sense for that one camera to be moving. And then sometimes in the edit they show the part where the camera gets to the end and bounces and then comes back. It's like you can't show that, I think, but anyway. So I told them we could do that and they were like, oh, that sounds great.
Speaker 2:And then I spent a bunch of time. I got a couple new accessories for it because I haven't had it that long, and I got some accessories for it and then I tested it. I spent a couple hours like setting it up because I'd never set it up on a tripod properly. I'd just been like I've only had it for a couple of weeks, couple of months, and I've been getting away with just like putting it on the floor, putting it on a table, finding some furniture to put it on, and I was like I really need to be able to put it on a tripod. So I needed to get a quick release plate to put on the bottom. And then I bought these two like arms that screw into the side of it and then they have a clamp that you can clamp it onto the side of the tripod so that when the camera slides it doesn't tip over to one on the heavy side and then come back and tip over the other way. And then I realized I needed a sandbag or the whole thing was going to fall over. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I spent a bunch of time practicing with this thing and bought some new accessories for it and like kind of did some test shooting and then showed up at the gig and they're like oh yeah, we decided we don't want to use it. We just think that, since it only goes four feet as far back away as this thing is, you wouldn't even be able to tell the cameras moving. And I'm like wrong again. Like wrong again. Like it's all about having something in the foreground. And as long as you have something in the foreground which we're putting it behind the audience, so you're going to have all the heads of all the people sitting in there. You're going to see plenty of movement.
Speaker 2:And it's just like you didn't listen to me when I told you that we couldn't push this fucking tripod dolly around on carpet and that that wasn't going to work. And now you're not listening to me when I tell you that this thing is going to work. And, worst of all, like you know, when I texted you and told you I was bringing this, like two weeks ago, you were all excited. And then at no point in the in the last two weeks did you think to text me and be like, hey, don't bother spending two hours practicing with that in your garage because we're not going to use it. I was just like annoyed that I packed it up and was all ready to go. And then they're like yeah, don't bother. Why don't you fucking tell me that before I left my house?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people know ahead of time that they're not going to do that. You probably, they probably knew they weren't going to do it when you were telling them about it.
Speaker 2:Well, well, no, what it was is like the person that I told I was going to bring it was the producer, and then it was when the producer talked to the person that's sort of the technical director, I guess. I guess she's the director, I don't know. She's sort of sort of a technical director. I guess I think she was the one that said, like no, we don't want to use it. So it was like the person that I talked to was up for it, and then when they talked to somebody else, that was when it was no, but they didn't relay that back to me.
Speaker 2:But I don't know, man, people like people just fucking don't seem to respect each other's. It's almost like you have to charge people a lot of money in order or they don't respect your time. Like I feel like if you're going to waste my time, then pay for it, but don't ask for my time for free and then fucking waste it. Like there's other people where it's like hey, I thought we were shooting something on my front porch so I turned down some other stuff not work stuff, but you know, personal things Like my wife wanted me to go somewhere with her and I was like I can't, I got that shoot, and you know, and then like, all right, like here's, here's, here's where it inconvenience me. I had all of my equipment in my car and normally I would have taken it down to my lower basement where I can drive in my car and unload my equipment. But because I knew I was going to have that shoot the next day by my front porch, instead I unloaded everything and just had it all sitting in my living room for two or three days and you know, from the last shoot to that shoot, and then to find out it's canceled, it's like wow, I just I made my living room like a little bit less comfortable the last two nights because I was being lazy, but I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't fucking, if you would have just told me this fucking thing was canceled.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm talking way too much. My point is people are fucking rude. The other thing that sucks when you do indie, like indie short films out here in Atlanta or whatever, is like they'll give you a call time at 10 o'clock and then I'll get there at 9.30 and no one else will show up till 11, including the director, and the producer that you know asks you to come, please help. And it's like, bro, if you're going to fucking ask me to come out for free and work on your passion project, the least you could do is fucking show up at the call time. You like don't tell me call time is at 10. If you're not even planning on fucking getting there till 11, fuck you. If I'm working for free, get me in and out as efficiently as you possibly fucking can, because you're not paying me to sit around. If you want me to sit around, then fucking you know full rate your thoughts.
Speaker 1:I well, I agree, it sounds like Atlanta's booming.
Speaker 2:Oh no, probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made my whole life coming out here and I have to live with it. This one's going to hurt for a long time. I don't know, there's a lot of it's. The thing is it's not just Atlanta. Like I'm in a lot of Facebook groups where the people you know it's a national or even international page and so like there's there's people in LA, there's people in New York, there's people in New Orleans, there's people in in Canada and the UK, and like it seems that the entire industry is in collapse. So it's not just Atlanta.
Speaker 2:But I do think that it's possible that Atlanta has more fake it till you make it than anywhere else and that causes it to be really difficult to I don't know. Almost I don't want to say I was being boozled into coming out here, but I mean literally people were like dude, they're practically giving out jobs at the airport in Atlanta. Like that's the kind of shit I was hearing before I moved here and then I got here and it's like I've been to the airport a bunch of times still not really getting a lot of paid work here. Things are. This is not a good time to be trying to work in the film industry for anybody.
Speaker 1:Some people are back to work.
Speaker 2:The people that are back to work act like everything is, it's like it's. People are so into like, whatever their personal experiences right now, they're like that's how the business is. Like, if they're working right now, they're like everything's fine and it's like no. But like um, like uh, 80% of us are not working. Everything's not fine, no, but I am. My show came back. I'm on season seven right now. It's like all right, cool bro, but everyone else is uh, losing their house out here.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that is? Why do you think the uh industries like seems to be?
Speaker 2:Well I mean not really, I don't know, I'll tell you what I think not whatever you thought it was. I'll tell you what I think um. But I'm kind of just regurgitating articles I've read and stuff I've heard other people say. So it's like how do I really know?
Speaker 2:Like I'm not a fucking, you know, insider powerhouse. I'm not running a fucking major studio or whatever, but my understanding is that, um, every, every platform, from movie studios to TV, um, studios, like all the big boys, were uh convinced that, when they saw what Netflix was doing, that that was the future and that everybody had to just become Netflix. And so they came out with Paramount plus and they came out with the Disney plus and they came out with, you know, amazon, prime and you, you name it. Like, how many of these fucking things are there now? There's like 50 different things to subscribe to. And they all kind of like, right off the bat, weren't making any money. We're actually making a profit. But they all just kind of thought, like it's okay, this is the future, like we're just investing, we'll get the subscriptions up which got to keep making good shows, and eventually we'll blah, blah, blah. And now it's like five or 10 years later and Netflix is the only one that's actually profitable on every year. Like, fucking, Disney plus is losing their ass every year, every month, they're fucking losing it. They're not recouping any of the money that they're investing in all these shows.
Speaker 2:And I think that, like in the last year, especially after the strikes. Um, I think they're. They're basically like I think Bob Higer was basically like yeah, we're going to be slowing down production until we can figure out how to make make this stuff profitable. And I think, basically, just like, all these studios are just like, uh, we don't know what we're doing, so everything, everything is just kind of fucking on hold until we figure it out, you know. And then, like the folks over at that run all the DC stuff. They're just like, yeah, all these movies we shot, we're just going to can them cause they're not good and we're just going to cancel everything that we spent a hundred million dollars making and I don't know, like, all of the shows now, uh, these I don't know if you've noticed from watching television, but everything used to be 22 episodes and somehow then it became 13 episodes and then it became 10 episodes and now they're putting out shows that are eight episodes.
Speaker 2:So even when there is work, there's not that much of it, you know. And these these fucking eight episode shows are killing everything, cause it's a trickle down effect where when everybody's working that much less than when there is a job there's that many more people trying to get the job. So it's like work is scarce. None of the. It seems like everybody's losing on every front, like the, the fucking crew. People are losing their ass and having to do other jobs they don't want to do. The studios were losing millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars every single month, year after year after year. Everything's fucking fucked. Everything is fucking fucked. And and I don't know if you've seen the newest stuff from AI, but it's over, man, there's just no, there's just no reason for human beings to exist anymore.
Speaker 1:The best stuff I've seen from AI on the video front doesn't last very long. It's like it can generate like four seconds of video. I know but like it's not even really doing the thing that you want it to do.
Speaker 2:I know, but I don't see how it.
Speaker 1:I don't see how it replaces like comedy movies or dramas or anything. I see how maybe it replaces like some sci-fi stuff.
Speaker 2:But let's say, let's say it replaces 50% of the workforce. That means it's now twice as hard to get a job and film, yeah. But I don't even think that. I don't even know how it would replace 50% of the workforce.
Speaker 1:I mean, unless you're saying like 50% of it is writers, it's going to replace basically every single person that works in VFX.
Speaker 2:Every VFX person is going to, is going to have to be an AI worker now, and probably it's going to get to a point where one person can do as much as what used to take a hundred people to do, yeah. So, yeah, it's going to replace writers, it's going to replace VFX, and then it's going to start replacing. You know. It's going to start replacing some of the work that is being done in camera is not going to be done in camera anymore, it's just going to be AI. And then, lastly, it'll start replacing actor. It'll definitely be replacing background actors. They're going to fucking get rid of background actors, for sure. It's just, it's just a lot of jobs gone, and so when you're a guy who's not going to be able to do anything, you're a guy who is like, yeah, he's wanting to make movies.
Speaker 2:So I got into VFX. I did that for 15 years, and then they kind of, with AI, that doesn't really exist anymore. So now I want to be a director of photography, or now I want to work in camera department, and so it's it's like fuck. It's like you know all of the people, all of the people that were COVID compliance officers, they now have, you know, a year or two of experience on set and they're now trying to move into camera department, into grip and electric, into art department. You know, they're like, hey man, I was in the industry for two years, I'll you know, and that job no longer exists, as it shouldn't, and so it's just that many more people that are taking work from new PAs that are whatever, like there's just only so many jobs, like it's.
Speaker 2:It has been nice that there's been like 30 or 50 jobs on a film set that I never wanted to do Cause it's, you know, it kind of like oh, thank God, you guys can all work in our department, so everybody is not fighting to be a DP. When you get to a point where, like, well, there's really only two jobs left, those people that were movie enthusiasts are not going to find that VFX thing. They'll go like I got to work in whatever I'm trying to do. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy.
Speaker 1:I think the AI stuff has a lot of promise but I think it's going to be a little bit harder to implement than people realize.
Speaker 2:But it could also get it could also, you know, I maybe over the next decade it's just going to drastically improve to the point where it's not hard to implement anymore.
Speaker 1:But the stuff I'm seeing right now I'm like, eh, it's not really going to replace anything right now, but I could. I mean, I'm I think it probably would replace a lot of stuff down the road, but it's still not quite where it would need to be to really replace. I mean, you're not going to watch, you're not going to see. There's not going to be an Adam Sandler movie that's made from AI. There's not going to be. There might be. There's not going to be a Judd Apatow movie that's made from AI. You know what I mean? There might be. I don't think so.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look realistic enough, unless you're kind of going for this. Hey, it's an. You walk in knowing it's an AI movie and the characters aren't going to quite look totally convincing.
Speaker 2:But, dude, just think about like we're from, we were, we're old enough to remember when there was no internet. Think about how far that's come and that hasn't been that long that's. That's been like two, maybe not quite three, decades, like remember the first time you saw porn on the internet.
Speaker 1:It took five minutes to see one tit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's like that's going to it did take like half your life to get to that point, yeah Well, so what? So what are you saying? Nothing to worry about until we're what 60 years old? Then when we're 60, then we have to go, fucking go learn how to start a whole new career when nobody like, when really nobody wants to fucking teach us anything new. That's a weird. That's going to be a fucking weird. You know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when we're in our fifties or sixties, that's going to be a fucking, really weird time to try to start selling real estate or whatever fucking bullshit job we're going to do when there's nothing left to, when doing work with the camera is not a job anymore. We'll be living in a camp somewhere.
Speaker 1:You and me being brutalized, living in a camp, being brutalized by whom by the government Brutalizing each other.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm probably not going to live that long, don't you think? Probably heart disease, diabetes in my future? I?
Speaker 1:don't know. I think you got a lot of. You might outlive a lot of people. Some people just live and live and live. You know what they say.
Speaker 2:Don't stop. Only the good, only the good die young, and I'm not so good.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I don't know. I think if you want to make movies, people are just going to have to like go out and do it on their own. I just don't think you're not. You just can't rely I can't even rely on other people to do basic stuff. I can't rely on one other person to do a basic task, let alone rely on a whole studio system to support whatever dreams I have. You know what I mean? It's just like not even. It just doesn't even seem feasible anymore. I feel like I think you're right Like the only people that are making it are kind of at the top and everybody else is just pretending like things are good. When things are good in the moment, you know or they see. Oh, like you said, I'm working right, I have a job right now, so everything's great. They're just so near sighted that they can't see what's right in front of them down the road.
Speaker 1:a little ways which is, you won't have a job because your show will end, and now you'll be living in Atlanta, next door to Dustin, trying to flip a house. I saw somebody begging for a job.
Speaker 2:I saw somebody begging the community please buy this camera for me. I just need to pay my rent this month and I love this camera, but I have to let it go to make my bills right now. And then that same guy I saw a few months later posting this has been the absolute best year of my career because I got to spend so much time with my family. And you're like that kind of fucking positivity can just go ahead and fuck right off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's somebody who wants to impress people. I guess that's that whole social media thing where you just show your life in the most positive terms and you never show anything bad.
Speaker 2:Hey, that guy, kenny, said something that I thought you would think was really interesting. I don't know if I already told you this or not, but he goes you lie about what you can do. And I was like what he goes, everybody else lies about what they can't do. Like they say they can do something but they can't. But you say you can't do something and you can. You have a lot of skills that you pretend you can't do. He's like I've never met anybody that lies about things that they can do and don't want you to know what they're capable of. And I was just like well, you know, you don't really pay for everything I can do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's two things. I think one of it's like Some of it's just I do remember you saying this and I think I said it's like low self-esteem. Yeah, you said it's between high self-esteem and low self-esteem High self-esteem people think they can do everything and low self-esteem people think they can't. But I think it's also that you came from the wedding industry, where you kind of have to do everything, and you have to do everything reasonably well, otherwise, like it's, you know, you don't really advance. It's a couple things.
Speaker 2:One. It's like I've always been a big believer of underpromise, over deliver. If you can under promise and over deliver, people are going to walk away. Being like that guy fucking nailed it because you exceeded their expectations. If you over promise and under deliver, they're going to walk away. Being like this guy fucking doesn't know what he's doing. So there's that, that's one, and then there's two.
Speaker 2:Is like me, you know, sizing up this producer and this project and going like, like, I'm not going to. If you tell me what your budget is and you tell me what your hours are and it's not appropriate like, oh, you should spend fucking a hundred times more than this and you should spend 30 times as long on this. Most people that are that are working regularly, they're established. They're going to tell you that they're going to be like no, you cannot shoot 33 pages a day. No, you cannot shoot this whole fucking movie in six days. No, you know you can't. And then, and I don't do that. What I do is like I go, oh, okay, you want to shoot a movie for $8,000 in six days, okay, and then, and then in my mind I start. I start going well, what does it look like to do that and without without disclosing to the producer. Like I already know, the producer doesn't know how to make a film, so I'm not going to spend a bunch of time trying to educate him on why you shouldn't do that way. I'm just going to go okay, so we're not using a gimbal. That stays at home. I'm not going to tell him that I own a drone that takes too fucking long. I'm not going to use any prime lenses, I'm only going to use zoom lenses. We're only going to light stuff by bouncing one light off the ceiling and we're going to mostly just shoot with available light. We're only going to fucking shoot on sticks. We're like you know, I just start going through the like.
Speaker 2:Here's what it looks like to do that and in order to accomplish making our day like fucking, 90% of my skill set is just not available to you. So I'm not going to tell you that I can fly a Steadycam, because we don't fucking have time for that. I don't have time to. You know, get the Steadycam out of the car and make sure it's calibrated and deal with it If, for some reason, it becomes unbalanced. And I don't have time to do a second take if my gimbal work isn't perfect, like gimbal work.
Speaker 2:You need multiple takes, you need rehearsals and multiple takes and you know, really you need a first AC that's just going to nail it on focus. That's very, very skilled and we didn't have all that. So what we have is like handheld and anyway, yeah. So part of it is just like I didn't lie to you about what I could do. I just didn't tell you I could do that because I don't want you to go hey, can you do that? You know, if you go like hey, can you get a drone, I'm not going to say like, not for the fucking price you paid me. I'm just going to say no, I don't have a drone. When I do have a drone, I'm just not fucking bringing it out for $100 a day when I'm already the entire camera department.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's some others also he probably just also deals with. I mean, if you're in the low budget film world, you're everybody else there is pretending they can do everything. Right, you're, and it's really just dishonesty. You're dealing with a lot of people that are dishonest so they can get a job or whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, dishonest and and some of them, I don't think that they know they're being dishonest. It's one of those things where you know so little you don't even know what you don't know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I see that happen too, when somebody just second shoots a wedding with me and they're like they act all confident, and then you can see the footage and you're like Jesus, like you couldn't even just leave. It's like you couldn't just put this on a tripod and like let it roll, Like I don't understand how this could be so bad.
Speaker 2:Have you had that experience where you walk up behind somebody and you look at their camera and you see the settings and you're immediately like, oh fuck, they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say that kind of happens with like exposure and composition, where you like you're like, oh, you clearly don't realize that this is way overexposed or underexposed, or like it's like this is a shot where it would look good if the subjects were centered, but you for some reason don't understand that, or like they don't, they don't. Yeah, that's a big problem. But I always have wondered if that's an I thing or like is that a teachable skill? Well, the example I'm thinking in is.
Speaker 2:I came up. I hired somebody that was kind of fresh out of school and it's one of those where you find out like the real look. The reason they're real, looks so good is because like there was a professor standing there telling them what to do. Like they, these teachers, make sure when these kids get out of college they have an amazing reel and you don't realize that like the teacher sat there and told them exactly how to expose and what to do and it took 20 people and every person in that class has the same shot and they're real and like they're not really capable of that or whatever.
Speaker 2:But I hired this girl to shoot a wedding with me and her reel looked really good. I talked to her. She seemed like a little green but like she seemed capable and she had she was. It was really bright outside and she had her ISO up to like 8,000 or 12,000 or something and she was like I don't understand why it's so dark. She had her aperture stop down to f22 and it was just like oh, you don't even know the exposure triangle. You're shooting at f22 in shutter speed, I mean sorry on ISO 12,000, you have fucking no idea what you're doing.
Speaker 1:This is a problem.
Speaker 2:What have I done? The thing about reels because she needed to wear glasses, and she was too vain to wear glasses. So then everything was out of focus too, and every time I look at her she's like this it's glinting at the back of the camera and I'm like, oh fuck.
Speaker 1:I've always thought of reels as being very deceptive like even amongst pros, because it's like you're just showing, like a compilation of your best stuff and it's not indicative of what an actual project would end up looking like. You know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel the same way just about wedding highlight reels. Like pretty much anybody can have a really good looking five minute wedding film. But then when you go like well, let me see how you shoot a full ceremony and edit that, you're like, oh. So when you say you've meticulously edited your full ceremony, I noticed that you stayed on the bride camera for 12 minutes in a row and never cut away to the other angles. Or I noticed the audio is dreadful or shake. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's like anybody can sucker you into a nice little montage and get you to make that deposit. I feel like that's the thing. If I ever go back into that business and I'm like having meetings and clients are asking me and clients are asking me you know, like what's it look for? Like I was gonna say like ask somebody to see the long edits of ceremony and toasts and dances and see what that looks like, because I think nobody ever asked for that. Nobody puts that online. You know they only put out those highlight films and like you should, pretty much anybody can make a good highlight film now, because you're just only showing the good stuff and when you see a highlight film you're not noticing that like oh, they fucked up this really important thing because they just didn't put it in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of that's kind of a weird thing, because I do agree with you from like an actual videographer standpoint, but the client really only cares about the highlight film most of the time. So, yeah, I guess I kind of get it like the product is the highlight video. But yeah, I know, yeah, I've definitely seen footage where it's like oh, they just popped, like the raw footage is like a bunch of like here's a camera on a tripod in a corner on a wide shot for 20 minutes at a time.
Speaker 1:You know it's not really like you're not really shooting.
Speaker 2:That's the part that note that clients are not asking to see and they wait till they get it delivered. And you know like when I do that job it looks like a television broadcast.
Speaker 2:You know it's four cameras and one of the cameras I'm moving around constantly. So by the time you see it, it looks like I shot it with seven cameras and I've got four or five different microphones up there and audio recorders and everything and I'm spending a lot of time making that audio sound perfect and natural. You know. And somebody else might just be like, yeah, I got a mic on the groom and mic on the efficient and I just, you know, turn them both up and leave them on the whole time and if the guy is sniffling I don't bother cutting it out. And you know, that's the stuff where, like, people are just not asking to see it and they're not finding out until it's too late. But I guess I'm kind of the sucker for doing all that because it doesn't make good business sense. Definitely more profitable to do bad work, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to a degree. I think it's that 80-20 rule where it's like sometimes you spend a lot of time on the 20% of the job. That is actually kind of a waste, you know. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean yeah, or is that the rule?
Speaker 1:I don't know, is it 80% of what you do makes sense, or 20%?
Speaker 2:Oh, what is the rule? You always say like the 20% is where you lose all your profit, the 20% extra effort. Just do 80% effort or something, Because that's where the profit is.
Speaker 1:I don't think I say that because that's not what I do. I pretty much always put in Well, you're the only person.
Speaker 2:I've heard say this Like 98% effort.
Speaker 1:I think I've dropped down 2% in an effort to like be less effortful.
Speaker 2:You put in at least 50% of the effort that I put in when I was in Texas, like I eventually came down to your level to where now I want to work more the way you work. But when I think about what I was doing in my early days, when I was really successful, I mean, dude, I did so much more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, you brought like that.
Speaker 2:I always showed the crew at three, I would bring a 12-foot jib and set up that crane and break it down three, four different times throughout the day. I ran a gimbal all day long. You don't even use a gimbal I ran around with the slider.
Speaker 2:All day long I ran around with the macro lenses getting, like you know, lighting all these macro fucking ring shots and, like I, you know I fuck. And then I overshot like crazy. You know I had three shooters. I kept them fucking work in the whole day. I was doing 12 hours more often than I was doing eight hours, like dude I was. I was being a real Drake. I mean, I was just fucking overdoing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like the ring shot thing, like that, I remember doing a wedding with you once and you spent like so long doing the ring shots and I was like man, I don't think I would ever put that much energy into like three seconds of a shot, you know.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:But that's why I was like man, well, yeah, but it also seemed like maybe there were things that you would miss because you were doing those, Because you got three shooters and you're doing it, you're doing it at the end of, you're doing it during open dance or whatever, when you've already fucking filmed people on the dance floor for two hours from three cameras.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like I've already I've already got two hours of dance footage from a gimbal, from a handheld camera, from a slider, from a 70 to 200, shooting with the light, shooting into the light, shooting side light. Like I've already got every fucking I'm covered. And then I go like all right now I'm going to spend fucking 30 minutes on a miniature over here with my macro, Well, in slow motion, and we definitely do things differently. I'll give you that. And also, like just from a post perspective, like the amount of time that I put into noise reduction, putting neat video on noisy clips or whatever, to try to get everything as good, and I know like almost everybody be like oh wow, that adds three hours to my render. I'm just not going to do it, I'm just going to send them the footage with a little bit of noise in the reception.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the kind of stuff you could just do right before you go to bed, you know, and let the computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can, but then it crashes and before you know it you've spent two days because your computer is not really powerful enough for it and you're trying to like get it to export without crashing and like, instead of just cutting your losses, you're just like, no, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this clip, I'm going to put the noise reduction, I'm going to export it as a new clip that I'm going to bring that back in and replace it. So now I'm round tripping all these clips because my computer just can't handle exporting with two clips with neat noise reduction on it If there's a crossfade, you know. So now I'm like I'm like I'm putting in extra days of stuff that like fucking nobody cares about. I mean, I don't do this anymore. This is in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah. My my neat video days are over, but I don't feel like my stuff is that noisy typically that I would even need to do anything like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, dude, I shot a wedding second shot for some guy a couple weeks ago and it was on Sony cameras. I still don't like Sony cameras really, but it had autofocus and the autofocus was so good it did kind of did kind of make me think like fuck man, this would be a really nice tool to have. I miss it. Like it would be a really nice tool. This does kind of make the job easier, because I basically haven't had autofocus for like a decade. I got I don't remember I kind of had it on the GH5, but it wasn't very good so I didn't use it. I would always shoot a manual anyway, because it was so bad and the screen was so small that you couldn't tell when you were a bogus or not, unless or so. Then I'm using a seven inch monitor with it and then was just pulling everything manually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Canon 5D4 had like that's when they introduced the AF, like dual pixel, whatever, and it wasn't that great. I mean, it was like it was good if you had like a clear shot of somebody's face, but it was using the image to to figure out what to focus on, unlike like the Ronin 4D which now uses what is it called, when it's like not infrared, something else, I don't know. Whatever that sonar, not sonar, it's something like that. It actually like detects the physical objects in the room or whatever. So, yeah, if you like, on the Canon stuff, like I never really used it. I learned not to use it because if it lot, if somebody turned around and their face disappeared, the camera would go crazy trying to find something else to focus on and then look really shitty. But I don't know. I've seen some cool Sony stuff. I've seen some good video out of Sony, like the FX6 or whatever. It is 6, 3.
Speaker 2:Graham sold all his black magic stuff and he's now shooting on Canon again and he got that C70. Yeah, he's like really happy with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my buddy Adam has it. He oh really yeah he shot, he's gone to that. Yeah, he shot something for me on it and what did you think? It matched up pretty well. With my black magic I was able to match up the clips up pretty well, so it was fine.
Speaker 2:I feel the same way about that camera that I Did it look as good, I think.
Speaker 1:so I mean, I kind of am just a little more partial to it, did have a slightly more video kind of appearance, but not by much really. I feel the same way about the Canon C70. Is, I feel like, about like the FX3 or FX6 or whatever, like they.
Speaker 2:Like it's fine, but it's not quite as cinematic as black magic.
Speaker 1:You can cut them together and they look good. The thing is is I've also had moments with my black magic camera where I'm like, oh, that shot just does not look good, and it's usually because, like I, was in a poor lighting condition or something.
Speaker 2:So oh, and you had the 4Ks also. Right, it was gonna look.
Speaker 1:It was yeah and it was gonna look better.
Speaker 2:I used to have the.
Speaker 1:The 4Ks are not great in low light at all. I used to have the 6K Pro and that was fine. I mean you never used it. I didn't really see that much of a difference between the two. I'm sure there is one but in my particular use I didn't really find there was a lot of noticeable difference.
Speaker 2:My first impressions were they look exactly the same. But after doing like 50 weddings where we would have three 6Ks and one 4K, we would only use the 4K basically for ceremony. The whole rest of the day we would shoot everything on the 6Ks. So I'd use the 4K for the fourth camera because I like to shoot similar to the four cameras. And over the course of that two-year period or whatever, I really started to think like, yeah, the 4K is just not as good and there were times where I found it really difficult to match, to make it look like the 6Ks, just from making the color match and stuff. I mean it should. You know it's the same color science and it's the same color profile and all that stuff from Blackmagic. But sometimes the 6Ks just really seeing and the 4K just was not up to snuff.
Speaker 2:I'm also a big.
Speaker 2:I really think, if at all possible, you should only have one kind of camera, make all your cameras match, because I think, yeah, it's easier in post, but also it's just easier to just reach into your camera bag or grab any tripod or monopod or whatever, and no matter which camera you have everything you can get that muscle memory and just super comfortable with your body and you don't ever have to think you don't want to go to hit the ND button and go like, oh yeah, this camera doesn't have ND.
Speaker 2:So this camera, I have to remember to grab my variable ND filter for the lens. But this one, I have to remember it needs IR cut and this one, I have to remember it's that. And then it's also you go like, oh, I'm going to use the better camera for these kind of shots, like that's what you tell yourself when you're buying it. And then you get on set and for some other reason you do what's easier instead of what's optimal and it's just better to have everything. So the idea of going into the C70 is like can I afford four of those fucking cameras and get all new lenses because they're RF mount? I mean it's like fuck dude, do I really want to spend $25,000, $30,000 on all new cameras and then they're not really the cameras that I would want to use when I'm doing narrative work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find that that makes a big difference when you're shooting multiple cameras on the same scene or same room or whatever. And the same wedding ceremony, or the same or like, well like, for example if I send somebody to shoot something in a different place and they're shooting on a Sony, it doesn't really matter, because you're clearly in a different place and it's going to look different Like there's no real.
Speaker 2:But when you have a wide shot and a tight shot of a first dance and they're not even fucking close as far as how they handle the latitude and the weird lighting and the color. And you know you're like, well, the only way to make these matches to put them in black and white. You know they just better off.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you have some, hopefully you're working with somebody who's good enough to at least, and if I'm not working with somebody who I trust, then I go over and I find the light, balance or whatever and settings I think are going to be the closest, and then from there I can usually match them pretty well. But I mean, yeah, if you're shooting on a. Canon T2i versus a Blackmagic. Anything it's going to Like the T2i is going to suck, you know oh yeah, no, it's like you're not going to really be able to match that very well.
Speaker 1:I also really like the five inch screen. Somebody out there can prove me wrong, but I'm not interested in all that work.
Speaker 2:No, you want the tool that makes it easier. You want the tool that is going to give you success in the most amount of situation. Like it's just going to like, yeah. Like on this camera, like 80% of the time I'm good, but on this camera, 90% of the time I'm good, yeah. So don't tell me what you can do. Like you know there's so many people on the internet they'll have to go oh, it's not the camera, it's the operator. And blah, blah, blah. It's like man, when you get into the real world, everybody is trying to put you in a bad situation, everybody's trying to rush you to go faster. Nobody fucking cares about the lighting. Like people are just always fucking working against you to make your shot worse.
Speaker 2:So having a tool that makes it just a little bit fucking easier to get a good image is, it's invaluable. You know, that's what I feel about B-Raw, that's how I feel about internal NDs and anything that makes it. That's why I goddamn wish I had autofocus sometimes, like I've done film work without it for more than a decade. So what do I have to prove? Like you know what I mean. It's not that I can't do it, but it's just like fuck for an unmanned camera, or how about like for toasts, where the guy's just pacing back and forth? You know you really need to sit there for 30 minutes trying to pull focus manually when the Sony can just track the guy's eyeball and it's fucking flawless. You get to maybe open up a little more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's flawless until the guy turns around and it loses his face and then it freaks the fuck out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a nightmare.
Speaker 1:But I don't know how Sony's doing it. Like if it's the Ronin 4D it's gonna stay in focus, but if it's just solely based on face tracking it's gonna freak out.
Speaker 2:Well they have. I mean, I don't know the camera that well, but like it has like six or eight different autofocus modes.
Speaker 1:One of them is gonna work, and then you always can go back to manual.
Speaker 2:It's like having the option of do you want to use that tool for now or not. You know, if I'm walking around on a monopod getting B-roll, maybe I want to go manual because I know better. But if it's like, hey, we're on sticks and this guy's gonna stand there and give a speech for 30 minutes, to be able to have a reliable autofocus, it means I can crop a little bit tighter, I can open up my aperture a little bit more. You know, and I'm just like a little oh, and the other thing that that camera has is in-body image stabilization, the sensor being stabilized. I just want a camera that has all the things.
Speaker 2:I wanted to have internal ND filters, I wanted to have really, really good autofocus. I wanted to have a really good raw codec, like B-raw or R3D, and I wanted to have image stabilization and like, and I wanted to fucking be really good in low light. And I don't think there's a camera that can do all those things. You have to kind of pick and choose, oh, and have like really nice cinematic color science. What camera has all that stuff? I don't think any of them, except for the Ron and Porter. Oh no, oh, fuck, no, and also I want it to be a real camera.
Speaker 1:I love how you just refuse to even. You've never even held one in your hands and you just refuse. I can't wait until someday.
Speaker 2:I don't want anything to do with it.
Speaker 1:I can't wait until someday. You're like, hey, man, guess what I used today, that's going to be the best day of my life.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's the world's best camera.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that If somebody pays me to do it.
Speaker 2:I'll do it. If you hired me and you were like here's the camera I want you to use, I would do it.
Speaker 1:It's just the camera that I think somebody like money to do it. Somebody like you should be using that camera. If somebody like me, if you're an indie kind of person or a low budget filmmaking kind of person?
Speaker 2:like that camera is just so useful being a low, but I'm not a low budget kind of person. I'm in a low budget kind of situation at the moment. That's what I'm saying At the moment. That's what I'm saying Son of a bitch.
Speaker 1:Hey, I like nice stuff. I like nice cameras. I still want the Ursa 12K. I think it's a cool camera. I would like to see that in a full frame and then the price will probably be too much again and I'll be like yeah, but I like good image. I think the 4D looks overall pretty great. You know what I noticed?
Speaker 2:is, some people are just way better at manipulating images than I am. I'm not very good at manipulating as much as other people. Well, that's because you're fucking color grading a Lumetri.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:I mean, how good can you get with your painting? With a caveman's brush, I guess.
Speaker 1:Well, it's because I do try to get everything as close as I can in camera when I'm shooting it to be where I want it. So I don't really feel like I have to rely that much on Lumetri. But I will say I have started to realize like even just boosting the exposure a little bit in Lumetri does add a lot of noise, like more noise than I would like. It really does kind of soften the image a lot and it just doesn't have that many tools.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have that many options. I don't need that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't even really need that much, but the stuff that I do use it for when it's like, oh, I take the exposure from like zero to point five or whatever it is it's like, oh, that really softened the image. It kind of brought way more noise in than I really feel like it should. So I don't know, but I'm also not shooting at the highest, like, or at the lowest compression either. You know I shoot a lot of 12 to one or eight to one, so I'm probably not ever going to get the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that movie I shot it in Q5 and I kind of wish I'd shot it in Q3. I mean, I've always shot everything in Q5. I think it's pretty solid, for you know the kind of work I was doing or whatever. But now, having now that I'm done and I see how big the overall project is, I'm like, oh, I could have shot in Q3 and the data would not have killed me and I don't know, maybe it would have held up just a slightly, slightly better.
Speaker 2:Yeah whatever, yeah, hey, so let's talk in a. B. I'm really thinking I might go and I think you should go with us. I think it'd be a fun time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would be fun, I'm worried that this is going to be a bad year for you. So you're afraid of like wasting money. But first of all, it's really not that. It's not really that expensive at all. Like we're going to, we're going to share hotel rooms. There's going to be four of us. You know you can get a flight pretty cheap. The actual convention itself is free, and my wife said that if I can afford it, you can definitely afford it, and I think she's right, except for the fact that I can't afford it. I'm just going to run up debt and do it anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, maybe I'll look into. Are you on the fence?
Speaker 2:I'll have more time to.
Speaker 1:I can look into it this weekend. I just haven't had time this week to look at it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I'm going to try to decide and potentially book some flights like this weekend.
Speaker 1:So generally, I can find a pretty good. Generally I can find a good deal from, you know, colorado to Las Vegas Like yeah, you ought to fly out there for pretty not a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah so my, my kind of hesitation is that so that'll be April, and in the same month I kind of want to go to Colorado also. So it would be like I would finish that show that I'm working G and E on and then, like literally the day after that show wraps, I would go out to NAB and then I'd be home for a week and then I'd turn around and go right to Colorado.
Speaker 1:What's in Colorado?
Speaker 2:Well, want to go snowboarding. I haven't been in two years. So I go snowboarding, probably one day with my brother. My wife has to go for work. Her company is based in Denver. I mean, she's worked there since we live there and she still works there. But they have like once a year they basically because half their company doesn't live in Colorado Once a year they make everybody come in for a bunch of meetings and whatever events. So my wife is going to be there anyway and you know they're putting her up in a hotel and stuff. So it's like, well, I could go with her, travel with her, we could visit some friends and I'd go snowboarding, I could buy some marijuana.
Speaker 1:They don't have that in Colorado.
Speaker 2:Not legally? Wow, really, yeah, no, we don't know. This is the South dude, the whole fucking dude. Half of the country has barbaric laws still.
Speaker 1:Isn't your government run by Democrats?
Speaker 2:No, why would you think that this is the South? Just because Trump lost here doesn't mean that Georgia's a liberal state. We have a Republican governor.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was a legislator's Republican, like I'm sure, like the mayor of Atlanta had no idea, but that's probably a Democrat right. Like probably inside of Atlanta itself is liberal. But no, this is a very blue state, I mean sorry red state. So yeah, they still think it's appropriate to put an adult human being in a concrete and metal cage for smoking a plant, this place, okay. So anyway, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, see, I feel like it'd be nice to just go, like visit friends, but then, honestly, if we got an NAB, every friend that I would visit would have been there. You know what I mean. Like I would see you, I would see Graham, maybe I'd see Drake. So it's like good, I really need to see all two weeks in a row. But then there's the fact that I haven't been snowboarding in two years and my brother wants to go and I want to go, so I don't know. And then, just, you know, like my wife's going so we can get together, and you know she'll work during the day and you know in the evening we can, and I don't know, I'm homesick, like I, you know, I wish I still lived there.
Speaker 1:I just want to go.
Speaker 2:I just want to go see how it makes me feel to be there.
Speaker 1:You should probably move back before it gets more expensive. Well, because everybody's moving here. It's getting crazy out here.
Speaker 2:I know, I know I'm worried that by the time I'm ready to come back that it's going to be like, yeah, we can't afford a $3 million home. So I guess it's not really an option, but it's not so too soon to leave here. I mean, yeah, I'm pretty doomed and gloom and my sense of hope for this working out is, like pretty much gone. Like I, I'm having to try really hard to resist the urge to just say, yep, this was a bust, this was a total failure. But that is kind of how I'm already feeling. I mean, hasn't quite been two years, but I do feel like this was a huge mistake. Um, but I also just think, logically, given the strikes and the fact that it's always been a business with ups and downs, that it's just like it's way too soon.
Speaker 2:And also, I need to, uh, I need to do more on this house before I sell it so that I can, you know, have done well on my investment here. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm not far enough along in my remodel to put this house back on the market yet. For one thing, you've got to stay here for at least two years or you take a big hit on the taxes. Um, so there's that, but there's just also like I just haven't done enough yet. I did so many of the structural things and the engineering things and the health and safety things and the plumbing things and electrical things that I still haven't really done a lot of the cosmetic things, and that's where you make your money back. So it's like I want to be able to recoup the cost I spent on the basement foundation. Uh, because I haven't done all the drywall and painting, which is like the cheap stuff that makes you a lot of money.
Speaker 1:So I think you need to give. I'm here for another eight years, oh you think. Give it another eight years, Let the industry sort itself out.
Speaker 2:I think I will be giving it a total of four years, eight to 12 years, and at that point, after the fourth year I'll be, I'll be going, uh, one year to one year at a time. I'll be reevaluating every year, but also there's a chance that the next place I live is Texas. Eight to 16 years.
Speaker 1:Just give it eight to 16.
Speaker 2:And that's not really what I want, but I think that's maybe what my wife is going to want.
Speaker 1:Maybe 20.
Speaker 2:God, you don't really think I'll still be alive in 20 years, do you? There's just no fucking way I'm putting up with that much more of this Now, with that attitude. Yeah, all right, dude, I'm starving. I'm going to go make myself lunch. Yeah, I got to get to work. This is enough podcasts already. There's no way anybody would still be listening to this. It's enough. It's enough already.
Speaker 1:It's enough, don't? There's a saying Don't do things too much.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you've heard that one. That's not a saying.
Speaker 1:You don't need a little bit of a long way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, always leave them wanting more, ooh, which is why we quit the podcast three years ago we got to work on that.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck, Give them more than they can handle.
Speaker 2:That's another saying oh that's, I'm going to hit. Stop on three, two Booty Booty.