How would you react to someone who had been shooting professional stills for years on film and didnt know the difference between RAW and JPG - surely you would understand that they had the many of the skills in place to become a good digital photographer ?
But I was specifically talking about someone off the street with a camera, not a pro photographer who used film. So
Besides there are an awful lot of skills in filmmaking that photographers are not experienced in at all. Sound, editing, writing.... Cinematogragraphy is only one small part of filmmaking and comes below the three skills I just mentioned in importance.
Us photographers 'with movie ambitions' are in a wierd place a bit like the film stills photographer looking to translate to digital - knowing nothing about the workflow - but often more about lighting lenses and perspective than established videographers (not cinematographers), even some making a living at the game
No, it is not like those using film wanting to start using digital. That's simply buying different/better kit to do the same job. 'Making movies' is a completely different job with a huge range of skills involved, the main one being the ability to tell stories, not one a stills photography is usually experienced in. Plus editing [in film terms] is a something photographers also have no experience of and it integral to the success of the end product. You are completely ignoring that vital skill, which is also important even if if someone else edits as you have to grok editing to be able to shoot footge that will cut together well. Also why assume those who don't shoot on film don't know about lighting and perspective or lenses? Aren't those assumptions like the patronising attitude you complain about on the DV forums.
of that patronising attitude you will run in to both good and bad on the video forums - I have been both patronised (by guys making crumby indy shorts) and, unbelivably, given simple clear simple advice from a 'camera operator' who has shot some very famous multi million dollar features - He knows even he started somewhere
And why ignore cinematographers? That's the obvious and most direct comparison between photographers and filmaking skills. And they probably know as much, if not more about lighting, than most photographers as they
all have to be experts at lighting wheras many photographers don't even light their subects or if they do, they use a flash perched on camera. Studio or advertising photographers may know lighting well, but many won't. And lighting for moving subjects is also different from stills.
Hey some videographers were buying piles of digital cards for their cameras like tape because they didnt get that you just download the card then erase its content - all digital stills guys know that - what dumbos
Or alternatively they keep the original footage on the cards as they know how unreliable HDs are. There's a discusion here about doing exactly that with one's stills and either Lexar or Sandisk have advertised doing that. So I wouldn't mock. Besides if people judged all photographers by some of the stupid online comments you get even on here, you be laughed at if you admitted to being one in public.
I think the word 'movie' needs to be clarified possibly you are thinking that "movie" = "general release feature"
That's because it does.
I would describe myself as having "movie ambitions" but when I say "movie" I mean "2min corporate web short" like those displayed on other threads on this board
Well say you want to make ads, say so then and it won't be confusing. It's not difficult and there are even less letters to type in 'ad' than 'movie'.
I would imagine the OP means the same thing
Not necessarily, Dustblue made a simailar recent post about his film making ambitions - and he wants to direct features, but I did said in my post above photography is a good background if you want to do advertising.
I'm not saying some photographers won't make great filmmakers, but it is not the simple transformation that some think, there's a lot to learn.
For example you said
In digital moving images there appear to be heaps of output formats and often compressing to those is an 'art' of balancing the amount of compression for file size image quality - no one line answer
So just like stills, CMYK Vs RGB: RAW Vs jpeg, umpteen RAW file formats [or codecs]; ProPhoto Vs Adobe RBG Vs sRGB: imput sharpening, output sharpening, resizing sharpening, these are all things that people get confused by stills with rarely a one line answer either. So in that senses they are both similar in that there's lots of techy nonsense you need to learn and master between the pushing the shutter button and getting to the final output. Plus you also get the same 'nonsense' with sound, which is vitally important to quality filming and something photographers are generally clueless about.
It's patronising to film makers to think if you've shot some stills, you can suddenly make movies, without having to do a heck of a lot of learning of a lot of new skills. I'm sure some photographers will transition well, but they'll probably be the ones who don't think it's a doddle.
If you spent time on film sets, the [ex]photographers tending to be in lighting or camera department, rarely anywhere else. Directors are more often writers than techy people. Many know nothing about technical stuff as that is not what the job is about.