Hell in the eyes of a sound mixer

Yesterday, I had the dubious pleasure of working on a test video looking at a few  methods of shooting 3D with a video camera.

Here’s one version of the 3D Red Cam

It was an interesting day, from the standpoint of seeing what has contributed to the ruin of the film business up close and personal, since now that anyone can make a movie, everyone is going to make a movie. Not necessarily a watchable movie, or one that can be sold, but for sure they’re going to make one and get it in all the festivals. Or so they say.

I already know what a hyped up piece of crap the “RED” camera is from working around this “cure for problems that don’t exist” on several projects. This Rube Goldberg device can be best described as a computer with a lens attached on one end of it. Now, they’ve gone and stuck two bodies together in a few different configuration, and we can look forward to a future of working on very sharp Hi-Def crap that no one other than the directors family will ever see.

Another 3D RED Camera configuration, I’m thinking that this one’s going to be called a “Harley V-Twin Model”.

The RED Camera has an audio section that can best be described as a piece of crap (on a good day), so we who work as location sound mixers are required to make a back-up copy of all audio, because the one the camera records is for the most part not useable for real world projects.

So why the big time success of the RED? It’s just a case of follow the money, it’s cheaper to buy than a film camera, no film, no lab, instant results means less interest on loans to make the film (ummm, video), quicker access to computerized special effects, you name it. Oh yeah, any monkey that can get one can get work as a cinemat,   er… Director of Photogr o.k., let’s just say a camera owning person, found by some know-nothing producer who gets it that if he or she was to hire someone who owns one of these, they won’t have to rent it or pay for insurance for it, and probably won’t have to pay a decent wage for the person who will be so happy to at least get a job.

So loads of DP wannabees have begged, borrowed, or stolen the money (about $50,000 USD to buy one all tricked out so they can be the next Haskell Wexler or whomever, not getting the (sorry about the analogy) “big picture” that with this flood of cameras and DP’s, the slice of the financial pie would be sliced quite thin and they would be whoring their cameras and their services out for ever shrinking budgets.

The true humor will take place soon, Sony and a few other makers of “real” cameras are beta testing and soon to be releasing their own 4K imaging cameras that will knock the RED and all its propritary cables and accessories into history, with all of  those owners still stuck making payments on them.

Here’s a low budget 3D camera that is based (somehow) on the Panasonic DVX / HVX line of cameras.

And, if  its image is good enough, it may stick a knife in the side of the 3D RED project.

Hey, here’s a Related post worth reading if you’re a crew person or want to be one

3 walking, 1 in the oven?

I’m making this prediction early on (July 4th, 2009), and it seems that no one else on line or anywhere I’ve searched has taken this line.

Sarah Palin is, umm…. let’s say, aborting her political career at this point, not because as some say she wants to work on a run for the presidency in 2012.

No, not even she is that stupid. Well, o.k., maybe that’s just not correct.

Nor is it because she’s going to reveal soon that she’s under investigation and needs more face time with her legal counsel (Thanks Dennis!).

Nope, none of those.

My guess is that Sarah had to do a “Sophie’s Choice” and make a decision to either have an abortion or have another kid, and she chose the former so she now has to fear that the news about it would leak out at some point.

If this happened because she didn’t want to have yet another child, her “base” who stayed with her even after her daughter gave birth to an illegitimate child and then never got married, well they would likely call it quits.

That “Right To Life” group is a tough audience, it wouldn’t matter to them if the kid was (thanks to an amnio test) found to be deformed or, like the mother, somewhat brain damaged.

Uh-uh, nope, not even if it wasn’t really Todd’s baby.

A new meaning for “Who’s your daddy”?

Well, looking back in time there was that governor’s conference where she may have partied with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford a while back, and you know that guy likes to travel to strange places to find his love, and that’s with or without lipstick involved.

Mark and two pigs new lipstick-less friends at a party?

Snap this financial picture…

Hey, join the march to improve the business world and the government’s financial outlook, and we can do it by reducing the cost of doing business today.

This involves some basic logic, which means that none of this is likely to ever happen, but it would be at least a small step on that slippery route to a cure.

Discontinue all these paid days off on holidays.

Yep, it’s just that simple, here are a few examples:

If the government or business leaders want to take time off, or give their personnel time off, let’s say for president’s day at full pay, well great for them. But if they or their employees can’t prove that they spent at least half of the length of their normal workday in repose on that day off thinking about the creative accomplishments of our various past presidents, there’ll be no pay for that day.

Same for Christmas, you’ll just need to provide receipts for gifts or donations to the needy (as if it would be hard to find such people now), and you would be allowed an hour off with pay for each 1/8th of that donation. Of course, that’s only if your donations or the use of that  time could be proven in an audit.

Don’t forget that receipt book!

Martin Luther King day? Just provide a documented time log that shows how many hours you spend mentoring or teaching in an urban community in need and then you will get paid for those hours at your normal base rate.

Mentoring the locals…

I’m sure with very little effort you could figure ways this process could be applied to any of the gifts of money for nothing that get doled our each year on so many holidays to a nations working people.

Or to most of our fatcat lawyers and politicians.