Tag: rant

Webinars – they could be good/useful

There are an awful lot of webinars out there at the moment because of the Covid-19 lockdowns and people needing something to fill their time.

They vary from those with great content and awful tech standards and presentation to those that are slick as hell, out to grab your money and vacuous and stupid.

It’s unfortunate that some of the worlds best, and most interesting, cinematographers seem to have no idea how to light and film themselves!
Of course their knowledge of sound seems to be less than zero.

Some basics:-

  1. Don’t shoot with your back to a window, auto gain in a webcam will make you a featureless silhouette
  2. If your laptop has the webcam at the bottom of the screen then please put the entire laptop on a box or a pile of books. I really don’t want to look up your nose and be reminded of the dreadful nose hair ads on Facebook.
  3. You may want to think about lighting! it’s what you do for a living and if you can’t light yourself…
  4. Don’t rock back and forth like some kind of deranged chimp, I can’t believe the number of times I’ve seen people do this.
  5. Think about the sound. An echoey Dalek is not the best way to communicate. A clip on neck mic cost about $25 from Amazon, or the Logitech gaming mic is also good. It really helps if people can hear you.
  6. Don’t waffle, get to the point! I’m bored, we are all bored at the moment. We don’t need you adding to the boredom.
  7. Finally, don’t plug your company, just don’t. Some of us have had to sit through your presentations at conferences and have learned to sit at the end 0f the aisle so we can make a rapid exit as soon as you go into corporate drone mode.
    It’s so much easier just to click “leave session” and we do.

This has been a public health warning on behalf of bored camera crews everywhere.

Cameraimage 2019

I’ll start by saying that I love Cameraimage, there’s nothing else like it.
I was nervous about the move to Torun but I needn’t have worried.

There were however some issues with the move and the growth of the event.

First, the projection, both in the main conference centre and at Cinema City.
Cinema City maybe had an excuse because they’re a working multiplex that switches to showing event films for one week of the year.
The main screen, however, should have been immaculate and it wasn’t.

The poor black levels worked fine with a film like The Irishman because it fitted well with the period feel of the film.
Terminator deserved a full Dolby Cinema presentation. After watching the making of session I left rather than watch the film there with its grey blacks I decided to wait until I got home and see it in a real Dolby Cinema which I did on Monday. I’m so glad I waited, it had an impact that would have been totally lost in Torun.
They have to get this sorted for next year, talk to Dolby for God’s sake!

The equipment exhibition area was much better than in the past, apart from the lack of ARRI coffee 🙂

The seminars were generally much better than in the past with manufacturers taking a much more informative and less sales approach than in the past.
They were spoiled by the number of children coming in late and leaving early. I realise I’m being offensive by calling students children but if your behaviour is childish…
I had it hammered home at the start of my career that if you weren’t 15 minutes early you were late. That’s not wandering in during the first 15 minutes of the presentation and after a while realising that it wasn’t a star fucking session just real hard tech info and walking out in groups.
Shocking behaviour and very distracting, this needs to be dealt with in the future.

This behaviour was echoed in the film presentations and also in the booking of seats resulting in people being turned away but not turning up for the booked seats resulting in cinemas “fully booked” but with 30% of the seats empty.

It’s vital that we encourage students to attend events like this but some way has to be found to moderate their behaviour and make them more professional in their approach.

Maybe next year I’ll photograph everyone arriving late and leaving early and publish a wall of shame “never hire these people”.

The dissemination of information about events was bad this year. Lot’s of blocks with no info about times or contents. Events added that weren’t in the App.
There is so much happening there that good information is vital. I missed a number of events I would have been interested in because of this.

Finally, I may be complaining but it’s just because I want to make the best better 🙂