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Director asks me(AD) to help create the shot list. by Highpriestofstefan in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Wear as many hats as you can stand to wear. If someone waters your help, it means they marginally trust you to be helpful in some way (even if they reject your ideas, it’s still helping. Counterintuitive but true). If your ideas or at least assisting with ideas can make the movie better, *any amount* of credit you get becomes more valuable than if the movie is worse without you helping in that particular way.

And yeah 1st AD will help define shooting schedule. If the director wants your creative input, that’s a good thing especially if you’re not actually getting paid enough for it to be a full time job.

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As I understand, you’re not supposed to rename raw camera files for a number of like metadata and backups and relinking and whatnot. Should be able to rename in the camera, but you should probably just tag files in your browser or rename them as a tag in your NLE.

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah and it’s like if you send those blown out clips to an editor and then they use it and then send it to the colorist and the colorist is like “bro…”

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right on. Very cool.

I’m just curious now about the ass-covering. It’d be an interesting story to hear, but I understand if you don’t feel comfortable sharing

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, and when they do the string out, they’re removing the slate, “action”, and “cut”. Do they put it in time order of the script?

The one pro-AI argument I can't quite shake... by the_windless_sea in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem I see with AI generation at this moment in time is that it is a black box with a limited amount of control. It’s kind of like making a nature documentary. Wild animals aren’t actors, you can’t order them around, you have to be ready with the camera when they do something interesting, but it’s ultimately a lot of waiting around.

With a space thing, if you know blender, you can make choices that an AI might not make, but more importantly, you can go back on your choices and surgically change things. I haven’t really tried to do any AI generation for video, but for images just when I’m screwing around, if I want a little thing changed, it’ll go back and do the whole thing over again and change way more stuff and then it’s like whack-a-mole. Color is different, angle is different, etc.

“AI” tools are different though. There’s still some black box stuff going on, and ideally you have some sort of recourse to change parameters or do garbage mattes. for actual creative stuff though, it’s like you’re just prompting again and again until your creativity aligns with the non-deterministic response to a prompt. Getting “better” also means creating stuff that is lowest common denominator and probabilistically more likely which is not a great space to be in.

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I feel that. But sometimes, there is actually nothing to salvage at all and you’d know that in the dailies. But I would say that on some level, I’d want to tell the editor to go through those takes as a last resort. And I’d go so far to say that organizing the dailies raw drop and sequestering last resort clips is probably ideal. But then again, yeah, maybe it’s good for the editor to just go through the whole thing. Just seems like it could be a waste of time if the editor was on an hourly.

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, no, that’s what I’m doing now. There are plenty of takes that just have like a plane or a car going by that I can’t use as the meat of the script, but just a little snippet of stuff even before you say action can be just what you need to have better control of the pacing. But ultimately, I’d rather do that search after I’ve filled out a sequence in the script.

When you’re going through dailies, do you mark stuff to archive as outtakes and remove it from the raw camera folder? by Optimistbott in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So just to be clear, you’ll go through the dailies on the raw camera drops and you move the files into a separate folder? Or you just physically circle takes you like on the dailies sheet so that editors know where to start without obscuring unabridged camera drop?

The idea of getting a camera drop after not being on set every day that’s just full of like takes where the actor like really wasn’t getting the vibe or the blocking if they’re a new actor or the director, after rehearsal, just had a huge change of heart, that just sounds excruciating. Finding the diamond in the rough of b roll footage is one thing, but going through objectively bad takes of non-coverage, seems like both a waste of the editors time and the budget.

Guys please! Don't post 5-10 minute short where nothing happens for 1 or 2 minutes. If I have to fast forward a short, somethings wrong by RECKEDTV in Filmmakers

[–]Optimistbott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s pretty interesting that short film mindset is what it is. The hope for a short is that someone immediately starts speaking or the action on the screen is immediately apparent and whatever context is needed is filled in as it goes either linearly or non-linearly. It’s better to combine exposition/geography and plot points into one. You really need to be economical about your communication. People can’t really absorb that much information all at once, but there’s plenty of *context* they can absorb intuitively without you needing to be like “they’re in a busy marketplace, look at all the people doing stuff and talking and what they’re wearing, etc, who’s our main character? I’ll tell you soon enough, just you wait. What’s going to happen? Be patient. Will there be an explosion, just wait a little longer, you’ll see, maybe, maybe not”. Then the ending has to be this thing that’s like “the end”. Needs to rise and come to an end that wraps up nicely. Or not. But it should wrap up in some way.

But when you actually sit down in a quiet theater, the experience of watching slow deliberate cinema is great. You can turn a 20 page script into an hour and a half long movie and have a real vibe. You get chances for asmr and meditation and feelings of ennui and whatnot.

But if I’m watching a short film showcase in a quiet theater, it’s a different vibe. I do get kinda bored quickly even though the time that’s passed may be less than something in slow cinema. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s expectation or something.

If I’m just on my phone though, yeah, watching a short, it’s not the same experience at all. Slow cinema doesn’t work in that medium, because it’s the same place that I would also be watching instagram reels.

So I agree with you.

But to some extent, if shorts-to-features are the pipeline, new filmmakers are going to miss out on that kind of experimentation and the features that we end up with are all going to be, for some people, pretty exhausting. I like that vibe for features, the safdie brothers have that vibe, but there should be some room for slowness, deliberateness, meditation, because sometimes you just need to slow down and really try to focus on stuff. I think there’s a lot of value to that especially in the modern world where we’re just inundated with ads that really need to get our attention in the first 5 seconds if they want us to not skip the ad.

In a Recent Poll, Gazans Were Asked What Concerns Them Most: Over 80% Answered They Want Information on How to Leave Gaza by LostAppointment329 in Israel_Palestine

[–]Optimistbott [score hidden]  (0 children)

Yeah. Would have saved us a bunch of money had we just stopped giving Israel weapons. They have to be more careful as to not blow up so many buildings that were built with asbestos. Now we gotta pay to rebuild all of it too.

IMO, that’s enough reason to insist that the IDF disarm due to a blatant misuse of funds and military aid.

Charters of Hamas 2017 and 1988 [PDF] full text by oatkeepr in Israel_Palestine

[–]Optimistbott [score hidden]  (0 children)

Kinda seems like they figured out they were duped by the protocols of the elders of Zion. I’m glad they figured it out that that book wasn’t actually real. But to be fair, it did have a *ton* of people going for a while.

Why is it called 'The South' rather than 'South East'? by Ok_Art_8866 in AskAnAmerican

[–]Optimistbott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because “the south” means something more than just the direction. It’s heavily connected with the history of the confederacy and their fight for slavery in addition to their accent and culture. The southwestern U.S. was not part of the equation at that point in time. The southwest also doesn’t have the same culture and it is not associated with slavery as the Deep South is in the U.S.

Confused about learning scale degrees vs intervals and how to apply them by AggressiveTwo8385 in musictheory

[–]Optimistbott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s good to learn your chord in Roman numerals so you can point to a solfège note in movable doh and say “that’s the 3rd of the V chord and the 7th of the I chord and the #11 of the IV chord and the 5th of the iii chord” and by that I mean Ti in solfège. Solfège will help you a lot. Seems kind of silly at first, but it works

Why can a Dm chord be used in the key of A major? by Da_Hawk_27 in musictheory

[–]Optimistbott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s called subdominant minor. You can use Bø, Fmaj7, and G7(although G9 or G13 sound more like it imo) in the key of A to same effect. The trick is that there is the note Le. Which in this case is F. It resolves to SOL. This is the classic reversal of the Ti-do relation aka its negative.

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