Sorry for the long post, but I just landed in London and kind of wired up and really should be fine tuning edits rather than writing, but it’s a nice break from unpacking and firing up drives. Anyway, It’s all a matter of perspective.
I’ve heard we’re all doomed before.
When we first set up in LA, it was early evening and I was at the lab waiting for my snips. The guy behind the counter use to be a photographer and since it was just him and me in the room, he started carping on about how the industry has gone to s**t, pays not good just a bunch of negative stuff, mostly about how the good ol’ days were better.
He was a good photographer, but obviously not that good at sales or dealing with people. He was from the school of I’ll wear ragged jeans, smoke a J shoot what I want and make money doing it. It actually worked for him, but then it didn’t, hence he was at the lab.
He said don’t you think clients are _______? I said I guess it depends on the client and he was so down he didn’t realize that I was waiting for 200 something snips from the project we had just shot, so for us things were not bad, in fact they were good.
What most people don’t realize is this is just a business and clients want to be pleased, actually they want more than anticipated.
The thing is when you finally get really busy, your not selling, your working and even if you have the best agent in the world, if you don’t have time to feed them new work, promotions, set up meetings, keep their eye on the ball, you’ll hit a point where it gets slow, so you bust ass do all those things and your busy again.
Like you, I’ve been fortunate, work with my best friend who is my wife, we travel the world together and see things few people get to see, meet people in all stations and situations of life.
Ann can do anything, everything and does. She produces, when the budget is tight does makeup, propping set design and keeps us on schedule, actually ahead of schedule.
Ann says there is still beautiful work being done. Charlise Theron’s ads for Jadore/Dior are beautiful and Ms. Theron is 41 years old. Yes they are a lot of combination images with post production involved and it doesn’t matter how they got there because they’re wonderful.
But back to the topic of reflex cameras. Few people are going to use a mirrorless camera to shoot those Jadore ads today. You need rock solid tethering, processing suites that are fast and bulletproof and a vetted crew that knows the equipment and won’t let you down. If I was shooting those Jadore ads I would probably go medium format just for safety sake due to the post production involved.
Though if the talent was running through the water, and I was shooting motion and stills, I’d probably go with a 35mm dslr, because focus and catching the moment is more important than pure megapixels and if the images were in focus and sharp, 20 megapixels will beat 50 mpx that are soft any day of the week.
What a lot of starting photographers don’t realize is that every day is new and we play different roles. If your shooting retail, even great retail, your usually a xerox machine (does anybody know what xerox is today?). That doesn’t mean you can’t be a damn good xerox machine, but to stick your feet in the sand and say we’ll do it my way won’t get you too far. Other days your the guy/girl that has a lot of control, but with control comes a lot of responsibility and those days aren’t as easy as they look from the outside.
To me the key to this is to have trust in your client’s and they have trust in you. Yes the industry has changed, but not as much as we all like to think. Prices on some projects have gone down and most people blame the internet. I don’t, because I’ve seen this industry change 180 degrees about 4 times and we have to adapt, which is one of the reasons we’ve added motion. I love shooting motion imagery, less in love with the post production it requires and it is a different mind think. The good side is you don’t have to tell the whole story in one frame, the rough part is you can’t just cut out 4 seconds in the middle of a 10 second clip and make it work, so you have to be good from the words action to cut.
Now doing motion and stills is where mirrorless shines and will get better as the tech gets better and after the 1dxII’s brilliant autofocus in motion, is just a glimpse of where cameras can go. The only point I was trying to make on this thread was in digital, nearly all cameras are mirrorless, even if you have a mirror and lock it out and use an evf or the lcd in the back. In reality, my RED’s are mirrorless, Arri’s mirrorless with either an evf or optical viewfinder. Why optical? Because a lot of dp’s and operators are trained in that way and that’s how they see the image.
I don’t know when, but I am positive that there will be a day when autofocus will be offered for high end cinema cameras, along with the ability to shoot stills and motion, apply color luts and codecs to fit the project and yes the cameras will become smaller or more module based. When, I don’t know but I do know that the technology is already there, it’s the adoption rate of the people involved that slows it up, hence that’s why Arri still offers optical viewfinders.
But Rob, you know this, the ups and downs of this business are normal. For the younger people in our crew I always suggest they watch the Hollywood roundtable videos, (even if they just want to be a still photographer). Those videos of dp’s, actors, producers, directors are fascinating and the people that open up with the truth, no matter how famous or successful they are have a common thread of you do what you gotta do, regardless of time, budget, equipment, etc. and everyone has great periods, everyone hits a bump in the road.
One well known producer recalled a story where he shot the b camera, because #1 he knew how, #2 the budget (on a well budgeted film) didn’t allow for another operator. Nobody from the outside would believe that a producer, living the hollywood good life would put 20 lbs on his shoulder and mix it up in the dirt with the crew, but it happens and truth can be stranger than fiction and perception and reality are rarely the same.
So to say you don’t mix well with people I don’t believe. You have to even in stills. You’ve got camera makers, labs, clients and crew. If you don’t deal with them, uplift them to your standards and you to theirs then it’s a recipe for disaster.
Being a professional artist is an elective. Nobody puts a gun to our head and says do this. We chose it and not because it’s easy, it’s damn hard. So rather than say what you won’t do, the best thing is learn and know what you can do.
The phone will not ring, today it will buzz . . . a lot.
IMO
BC
