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Assistantly Camerated
Jun. 13th, 2007 10:45 pmIt is too damn hot. I say this as an expert of too damn hot - as perhaps its prophet. As a Texan, I say to you: it is too damn hot.
You may be in London now, and you may disagree. You may be looking at a weather report and thinking, "looks pleasant." You are not in the editing lab, a small, crowded, unventilated room, up five flights of stairs beneath a thin metal roof. It is sweltering.
Fortunately, I am done with picture editing. I'm pretty happy with my cut, and everybody else seems to like it all right. Now I get to record a bunch of sounds and then tracklay them. I'm meeting with my score composer tomorrow.
Looking at the films I worked on, I think I was probably at my best when directing, which maybe everybody always thinks but which I am not usually someone who thinks. I guess people, especially Ciro and Val, have been telling me this for a while, and I think I'm starting to get it? But maybe it will pass in a month or two. It's silly, but I've always rebelled against defining myself as a director because, well, everybody wants to be that and everybody thinks they're good at it, so if I think I am I must not be? It's dumb. I know that. But I got some nice performances and I covered the action well, with some interesting images and cutting rhythms, which is I guess means I directed decently. It's hard for me to quantify the "good" in directing, whereas I feel fairly confident in my opinions of good and bad camera and lighting.
I had an idea and I tried to express it pictorially? And my team was good at the jobs they were doing, and understood what I was trying to accomplish?
I think I may have to abandon any hopes of being a professional DP; I'm not good enough, and I don't think I'll get good enough. I love light. But I'm better at using it than creating it. Maybe I am being overly hard on myself for mistakes I made on this shoot (which was hardly atrocious, and was occasionally lovely), but it's more that I'm reacting to the work I've seen by people who are very good. (Fortunately, I expect at least one of them to stick around.)
As an operator, I did a damn fine job. Or, well, I did a job that is completely in keeping with the way I usually shoot things, and which the director liked a lot. I'm not for everyone. My framing tends to be distinct and dramatic and low and not always flattering. I could happily operate indefinitely, but I think that's true of most film students; it's the most fun job, and you get to see the movie before anyone else does.
I also have a great love of focus pulling (one rung lower on the camera crew), and pulled a really beautiful one in Pezh's film. There's another I failed at, though, due to bad communication with the operator. Our team didn't really know how to make proper use of focus pullers. It seems to me that this is one of the last things people understand; we're so used to eyes and video that autofocus, and one doesn't have a meter like with lights.
You may be in London now, and you may disagree. You may be looking at a weather report and thinking, "looks pleasant." You are not in the editing lab, a small, crowded, unventilated room, up five flights of stairs beneath a thin metal roof. It is sweltering.
Fortunately, I am done with picture editing. I'm pretty happy with my cut, and everybody else seems to like it all right. Now I get to record a bunch of sounds and then tracklay them. I'm meeting with my score composer tomorrow.
Looking at the films I worked on, I think I was probably at my best when directing, which maybe everybody always thinks but which I am not usually someone who thinks. I guess people, especially Ciro and Val, have been telling me this for a while, and I think I'm starting to get it? But maybe it will pass in a month or two. It's silly, but I've always rebelled against defining myself as a director because, well, everybody wants to be that and everybody thinks they're good at it, so if I think I am I must not be? It's dumb. I know that. But I got some nice performances and I covered the action well, with some interesting images and cutting rhythms, which is I guess means I directed decently. It's hard for me to quantify the "good" in directing, whereas I feel fairly confident in my opinions of good and bad camera and lighting.
I had an idea and I tried to express it pictorially? And my team was good at the jobs they were doing, and understood what I was trying to accomplish?
I think I may have to abandon any hopes of being a professional DP; I'm not good enough, and I don't think I'll get good enough. I love light. But I'm better at using it than creating it. Maybe I am being overly hard on myself for mistakes I made on this shoot (which was hardly atrocious, and was occasionally lovely), but it's more that I'm reacting to the work I've seen by people who are very good. (Fortunately, I expect at least one of them to stick around.)
As an operator, I did a damn fine job. Or, well, I did a job that is completely in keeping with the way I usually shoot things, and which the director liked a lot. I'm not for everyone. My framing tends to be distinct and dramatic and low and not always flattering. I could happily operate indefinitely, but I think that's true of most film students; it's the most fun job, and you get to see the movie before anyone else does.
I also have a great love of focus pulling (one rung lower on the camera crew), and pulled a really beautiful one in Pezh's film. There's another I failed at, though, due to bad communication with the operator. Our team didn't really know how to make proper use of focus pullers. It seems to me that this is one of the last things people understand; we're so used to eyes and video that autofocus, and one doesn't have a meter like with lights.
