Media Industries Final

My role in MI1
Within my research group, Digifilm 2020, it is difficult to talk about specific “roles” or functions unique to individual group members. With seven members, collaborating as a collective team was certainly a challenge, and our solution to this problem could be described as democratic and egalitarian. We agreed upon our core research question, and then each of us were free to explore areas of this problem that were relevant to us. I feel that this was a good way to approach the group project, as it ensured that everyone was working on something that they found useful or at least interesting. With this in mind, my individual role in MI1 involved in-depth research on my chosen sub-question, on digital capture technology and its effect on film production. I immersed myself as deeply as possibly in the realms of digital cinematography, trawling cinematography forums, researching new camera technologies, reading books on the economic impacts of digital capture and subscribing to RSS feeds to keep up to date on the latest technological developments. Some may argue that I did not work as part of a group during the course of this assignment, but I think that given our democratic, individualistic group structure, I was as involved in my group as is possible. Through sitting in isolation and delving into technical research on cameras, I ensured that my part of the group project would stand up to scrutiny, and that I would not let the team down. I also made sure to upload my work onto the collective tumblr site, so that other group members could access this information or at least track my progress and gain a better sense of where everyone’s research connects and fits in.

My progress
Throughout this semester I have gained an increasingly strong sense of what I wanted out of Media Industries. At the beginning, I vaguely knew that I wanted to look at the future of film production, as this would be relevant to the work that I hope to be doing later in life. However, it took me weeks to break this general “sense” down into concrete questions to answer, and even longer to synthesise all the information I was processing into definite answers to these problems. In some ways, I set myself questions that were impossible to conclude in any definite sense. The war between film and digital capture has been waging on for years without any definite conclusion, and it was probably naive of me to attempt at an answer. But despite the difficulty in reaching conclusions, I think that these sorts of “difficult” questions are usually the most valuable ones to explore. In terms of my own strengths and weaknesses, I think that it was often easy for me to lose myself in generally “exploring” digital capture technology, while neglecting the question of how my research was relevant to the bigger picture, the group project question. It was only in the last few weeks of semester that I started to realise that my contributions to the group lacked sufficient perspective in relation to the conclusions of other group members. I noticed Cris and others coming to the conclusion that digital technology would put the means of media production into the hands of so many people across the world. And after struggling to find ways of connecting my research to this greater conclusion, I stumbled across an answer. I found that regardless of whether digital capture leads to objectively “better quality” compared to film, digital technology is subject to Moore’s Law, and constantly changes in an exponential fashion, whereas film is a fixed medium. Its quality and price is relatively locked, and it is not “scalable” to meet the size of your production. Thus ultimately, I found a relevant answer to my question that I never previously considered, through gaining a better sense of what other group members were finding in their own research and applying this knowledge to my own work.

My strategies
I can’t say that I went into MI1 with an overt “strategy” or “method” to inform my work. At the time, my research felt quite organic. I’d always been interested in cinematography, and quite familiar with capturing images digitally. So it seemed like a logical progression to explore the technology on a deeper level during this course. I thought of all the different film production resources that I could start gathering in relation to my research question. I knew that established cinematographers often discussed their experiences on online forums such as cinematography.com, and that I could gain inside-knowledge from professional filmmakers through these sorts of channels. I don’t think that there was anything was fundamentally wrong with this approach, although it may have been augmented through physically making contact with filmmakers and discussing digital capture technologies with them as well. My approach my have been too passive and literary — although in my defence, I have previously worked on VCA productions and an ABC Comedy shooting on RED, and have talked with cinematographers about their personal views on digital technology. I’ve experienced the stark variations in attitude towards digital capture first-hand, and I think I really needed to approach this MI1 assignment more objectively, in order to formulate my own ideas and arguments. Hence I don’t think it was a bad thing that I tried to understand underlying technologies and how they actually work, rather than focusing on subjective opinions about these technologies. Prior to this course, everyone I talked to already had an opinion — except me — and that’s what I wanted to change.

Problems
One of the largest problems I encountered while undertaking this assignment was realising that the sorts of discussions I wanted to have about digital capture already assumed that the reader had prior knowledge of how the technologies worked. As soon as I began writing, I discovered that I couldn’t simply dive into the project, I needed to talk about digital video from the ground up, and this was a real challenge. It involved attempting to explain and articulate things that I already knew, but did not know how to convey. As such, I ended up reading many basic introductions to digital video myself, as well as more advanced texts, so that I had a sense of how to go about explaining the basics of digital technology, in terms of resolution, bit-depth, analogue voltage vs discrete digital values, etc. In terms of the end result, I managed to integrate this “introduction to digital capture” into a page talking about the problems that digital video has had to overcome — this allowed me to explain the basics of the technology within a framework that was highly relevant to the rest of my argument. After this page was established, it was then a logical continuation to talk about the latest video cameras and their overcoming of the previous fundamental problems, and then to discuss economic implications of the technology and conclude. So in dealing with this initially unexpected problem, I ended up finding a way of logically organising my research findings in the best way possible.

Connections, Intersections
Through completing my research in Media Industries 1, I have gained a better sense of my own direction in an otherwise generic realm of “media” that we’re all floating around in. I know that I’m deeply interested in cinematography as both a science and an art, and that despite writing over 5000 words on the topic, I’m now continuing to research on a daily basis. In this way, I also have a greater sense of the importance of self-driven, self-oriented learning as a core industry skill. “Research” is no longer about passing coursework, through completing this assignment it has dawned on me that this research I’ve been doing will be essential for me to continue with in the future if I pursue a career in cinematography. I see that regardless of my university course or the content of my subjects, there’s nothing stopping me from hunting down the information I need and becoming an “expert” within any chosen field. With enough initiative, drive and curiosity, that knowledge is within reach. Hence where I previously may have complained about RMIT’s lack of practical training when it comes to making films, I’m now coming to appreciate the aim of this degree, and especially the aim of Media Industries, which I think is metalearning. While my research was certainly valuable, I think that the greater meaning behind this task was to exercise our minds as to how to go about researching media trends and technologies, so that we may continue to do so in the future. And if nothing else, this may be the edge that RMIT has over other film/media courses.. If I’m to go anywhere at all, it’s all in my hands and it’s all my responsibility. Nowhere is this more obvious to me than in MI1, and while it’s a harsh lesson, it’s immeasurably valuable.

In terms of marking myself, I’m giving myself an 86/100, as I think I’ve engaged with the course on a deep level, I’ve committed a great deal of time in my research exploration, reaching conclusions that I never would have considered at the beginning of this semester. In short, I’ve made an effort to shape this course and understand it in ways that are most relevant to me, in an attempt to maximise the benefit I can gain from this subject — and I’m happy with what I’ve gotten out of it.

Digital Capture research plan

Media Industries Group Assignment

Sub-Question: Will digital capture technologies significantly change the nature of film production?

How many tumblr pages will I need to sufficiently answer these questions? Let’s find out.

Does the quality of digital compare to 35mm film? Will it?

— The Age Old Problems
Outline the previous limitations of film v digital (not enough resolution, not enough dynamic range, sensors too small, either too much compression or too much digital storage space)

— The Digital Arms Race
New technologies (RED ONE, obviously. Then HDSLRs. Scarlet. Prosumer cameras with 35mm sensors (Sony). Arri Alexa. Panavision’s Dynamax sensor.)

— Quality comparison: a summary

Is it actually cheaper than film capture?

— Film vs tapes and flash cards. Cheap, reusable recording media.

— But there’s a catch — post-production costs. (shooting digital encourages us to record more raw material than we would on film. Compressed HD files are difficult to edit/de-bayer, etc.)

— And you may need to pay for a data wrangler or DIT (outline reasons for needing a DIT, and what a DIT is typically paid)

— Case study and conclusion on costs

Overall Conclusion on quality and cost

Total: 3 pages, 8 subpages.

Sounds alright. Now it’s just a question of writing them all…

Progress Report

So far, this semester of Media Industries has been.. amorphous. The tasks ahead are starting to take shape in my mind, and I think my group has a reasonably clear idea of how we’re going to approach the project. What scares me is just how long it took to sort out our area of research, and to sort out who was in our group, and how to word our large umbrella question… if these things have taken so many weeks, producing detailed analyses of the film industry should take several months at this rate. But this probably isn’t a fair comparison. We’ve got our plan locked in now, and despite the vastness of our research plan, it’s straightforward in that we all know exactly what we’re doing. Having such a large group (7 people I think) is both difficult and beneficial. We can collectively cover some extremely large questions, which is great, but decision-making is difficult with so many members.. it’s like trying to steer an ocean liner.

Anyway, I’ll run through the current state of our project, both in terms of the collective group and in terms of my individual role within it.
Our core, umbrella research question is “How can digital technology change the film industry?” — obviously it’s a massive, massive question. But I like this because there’s great scope, and despite being cliche, I think this is *the* question everyone needs to know at the moment (in film at least). It’s necessarily speculative, but there’s plenty of work to draw on — the film industry is currently obsessed with digital technology and whether or not it’s a bad thing, whether or not it will replace celluloid, whether it can all coexist, etc. There’s a lot of material “out there” to work with.
In terms of my individual research area, I’m looking at digital capture, and whether shooting films digitally significantly changes the nature of production. Only in the last few years has digital capture become a reasonable competitor to 35mm film, and the technology is still in its infant stages. I personally think that this is the perfect time to undertake this project because RED Digital Cinema, ARRI, Panavision, Sony and Panasonic are all embarking on desperate quests to create relatively low-cost, HD (or super HD) cameras with large sensors and high dynamic ranges. There’s so much happening, so much to talk about.
But of course, that’s only one aspect of my research topic. I’ll definitely cover these new camera technologies, and to what extent they’re comparable to shooting on 35mm film… but I also need to cover more difficult questions over the potential cost savings of shooting digitally, and whether these savings will encourage new growth in the filmmaking industry. The problem with this sort of research is that I needed to gain a rough idea of what *every* aspect of production costs. Let’s say I discover that by shooting digitally can save you up to $80,000 for a small feature film. This figure means nothing unless I know what that extra money can be used for. Is it enough for significantly better post-production services? Or a bigger emphasis on marketing to get the film seen? I need to gain a holistic sense of film production in economic terms in order to gauge the impact of shooting digital.. this is probably going to be the most difficult part of the project for me.

So what have I done so far?
I’ve been gathering research materials and trying to figure out how to break my question up into stages… like an essay. I’ve got around 4 editions of Inside Film, an Australian magazine that has some great articles by film producers on the state of the film industry (needless to say, it’s often quite a grim read..). I’ve got 5 editions of American Cinematographer, which is great for looking at new camera technologies and the way in which digital workflows have changed the way giant American feature films are made.. quite a few case studies there. Then I’ve got a couple of relevant books that I’ve been reading religiously: “High Definition Cinematograhy” by Paul Wheeler, and “RED” by Noah Kadner, which provides a guide to film production using the RED ONE camera. Paul Wheeler’s book is especially useful, with several detailed examples of cost savings when shooting digital, as well as a chapter on how well digital images hold up when projected in cinemas, and finally a great description of how various digital technologies actually work, including their shortcomings. In terms of research online, I’ve subscribed to multiple production blogs and cinematograpy forums, so now I get updates via RSS… and I find that this is a great way of finding out about the most recent technological developments, and to hear professional cinematographers discuss their experiences with said technologies.
In short, I feel fairly good about my research strategy.. there’s a lot out there on a variety of different platforms. I’ll gather some journal articles from RMIT’s online archive to add an academic edge to what I’m saying.. but otherwise I think I need to start synthesising this information and breaking it down into discrete areas that I’ll cover on the tumblr website. As soon as our tumblr site is created (hopefully early in week 7), I want to start setting up my section on digital capture technology by constructing a hierarchy of subpages. I can have one page on whether digital capture is comparable to the quality of 35mm film, and another page where I look at the cost benefits, etc etc. It should be good.

Perhaps the greatest problem I’ve encountered so far in this project is communication within such a large group. This may sound like an incredibly unoriginal problem to talk about, but my Media Industries group is quite different to any other group I’m used to working with. I work in groups to make films, and everyone has a different role, and everyone executes a set of events planned out in the script. But in MI1, our group is comprised of people with effectively the same role — we’re all researchers and we’re all writers. We’re collectively writing an online hyper-essay on digital technology and the film industry, which is difficult because essays are usually written by one person. When you’re writing an essay on your own, you can make sure the points flow logically, that the writing style is cohesive, and that each section of your essay works towards the same conclusion. But our hyper-essay is radically different. It’s non-linear, fragmented and compartmentalised.. which is great, but we run the risk of creating something that fails to be cohesive. If we’re all aware of this, I think we can come up with a solution. We need to meet on a more regular basis and collaboratively develop our website. Then I’d suggest we work on our separate areas of research before coming together to develop a conclusory statement that takes in all of our myriad findings. This emphasis on developing a conclusion will also help us when we’re giving our 15 minute presentation to everyone, ensuring that all of us have a common direction in the way we organise our information.

Finally, I think that our project connects with a vast array of other research projects, it’s incredibly broad but at the same time, extremely relevant. Our findings would relate to projects on Indie film production, where the costs of shooting and distributing film in a conventional way are prohibitive. Our research could shed light on the state of the Australian film industry, and the way in which it could sustain itself in the future. It could also intersect with discussions of film piracy, the distribution of films online, 3D technology and many other avenues of research that involve film production and digital technologies.

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1297 words

Traps

In the beginning, as you start out on your quest to become some kind of filmmaker, you take up every opportunity that comes along. It’s great at first, you can learn a lot. But over the last few months, I’ve found that there comes a point where enough is enough, and you’ve got to make tactical decisions about when to say no. It’s difficult to gauge sometimes.. you can’t predict what’s going to happen in a shoot, or who you’ll end up meeting. But there are a number of definite pitfalls that I’ve become aware of. And being aware of them helps me to decide what I should do, and what I should turn down…

Audio
I’ve found that working as a sound person is a great way to get onto shoots.. lots of shoots. I’ve worked on films that shot on RED and 35mm because I opted to work in the sound department.. so yes, I’d recommend learning audio and running with it for a while. But the risk here is that you get typecast. There aren’t many sound people out there, and once you’re branded as a half-decent sound recordist, new opportunities tend to spring up, again and again, provided that you do sound. If that’s your thing, great, but otherwise, you’ve got to make your move and get out of sound while you still can. Direct your own films, shoot your own films, read millions of books.. just do something to slowly develop a non-sound related skill and then make the switch.. market yourself as something else.

Television
Yes, I said it. Working in television sounds great at first, but if you want to work on films, television is often frustratingly different.. geared towards mass production of content rather than creativity. And television projects cling to you like parasites.. one day you’re helping out on a TV pilot, and 4 months later you’re still doing small crap jobs for a small, crap TV series.. because a TV series is such a freaking huge thing to create. Especially on small-scale, C31 projects, people often don’t understand just how massive it is to make 12 episodes.. so it drags on and on.. weeks and weeks of messing around to make an ultimately bland product. I guess I should clarify this statement slightly — location TV production can be alright, if the production is organised enough. You sign up for a few of weeks of solid shooting and then it’s over (if it’s not organised, it’ll take many months and generally suffocate you..) But studio shoots are worse because they tend to be so sterile, at least, from a cinematography perspective. You’re working in a contrived environment, you throw together a few props, chuck on 500 diffused lights, hook up the lapel mics and hit record. Framing isn’t as considered because you’re working with 4 cameras, and the aim is to blast through as much screen time as possible, as you’ve only got the studio booked for so many hours. So yes, I think that television is a cleverly disguised trap. It’s beneficial to understand how it works, it’s beneficial to meet people, but you could do better.

Naive productions
When you’re working for free and finding work on the internet, you come across a lot of people with big, fanciful ideas and no idea of how difficult they will be to actually create. Often, these big-ideas people are fairly thankless and expect that you’re dying to work for them because their idea is so fantastic. They don’t understand logistics, or time constraints, or recording formats.. and worst of all, they are often unable to make compromises which are absolutely necessary given how stupidly ambitious their productions are. All I can say is, get the hell out while you still can. They’ll leech your time, leech your equipment and leech your mental health, all to make something abysmal and most likely uncuttable.

Corporate videos
I’m in two minds about corporate videos. On one hand, you’ll usually get paid for doing them, and the people making them usually know what they’re doing. But the people involved in corporate videos often seem to lack higher aspirations.. they’re happy to make money out of ads and wedding videos for the rest of their lives, shooting on Z1s and similar 1/3″ cameras.. it’s all a bit depressing. Doing them on the side is fine.. I haven’t had much experience with shooting that sort of material. But I feel like it’s a vacuum — corporate videomakers will happily suck you into their small depressing lives forever. Say goodbye to shallow depth of field, say goodbye to shooting on film.. you make corporate video now :)
and yea. that scares me quite a lot.

I may sound picky. I may sound like I’m getting cocky and deciding that I’m “too good” to work on all sorts of different productions. But it’s not really about that. It’s about deciding where you want to get in this industry, and making sure that you get there. All of these opportunities, in audio, or corporate video, etc, are useful in their own way. But I do think you need to be careful.. or you lose sight of what you really want to do.

Digital Capture

Digital technology and film production. That’s our essentially our MI1 topic. It’s massive. 28,000 words on 7 different topics within this monster umbrella topic.
Our project may not be cohesive enough. We may end up with a complete mess. But it does mean that there’s a lot of freedom in terms of individual topics. Typically, I’ll be looking at digital film production and digital distribution workflows.. I’m happy with that. The fundamental question is whether said technologies will significantly affect the film industry. Will the reduced costs allow for film to become more profitable? Or allow for a larger number of films to be created, as indie productions become more affordable and hence common? Or.. is the difference so negligible that digital technologies will hardly change anything?
The problem with most of these questions is that they require cost comparisons between film and digital workflows.. and also that I know the cost of marketing, post-production, cinema distribution, dvd distribution, etc. Even when the cost difference between shooting film and digital is “figured out”, this specific sum of money means nothing unless we understand it in a relative sense.

Whatever. At least I have a direction now. There’s lots of ground to cover, and I’ll need many sources. Inside Film articles should be good, plus Paul Wheeler’s book on HD Cinematography (with a case study on the cost savings of shooting digital), plus quotes from post-houses, plus cinematography.com… should be good.

Discontent

There’s something wrong with this semester. We’re 4 weeks in. And it feels like all we’ve done is lie around in deck chairs on the beach while casually talking about the imminent nuclear war ahead. We’re about to get blitzkrieged by a vast array of assessment tasks, yet we’ve been ‘chillin’ and talkin’ Jenkins, etc. What have I learned in this semester? I’ve learned about what we’re meant to be doing in PP1, and how PP1 is marked. I’ve learned about what we’re meant to be doing in screen production, and how screen production is marked. I’ve learned about what we’re meant to be doing in Media Industries, and again, how we’re marked. Also we’ve come up with groups for PP1 and MI1. Groups in SPP are yet to be finalised and we’re still waiting on a mysterious set of scripts that will allow us to start planning/casting actors/finding locations. Why is this all so slow?

Guest lecturers in Media Industries seem to be sourced from the wrong faculties. We had an advertising/design person come in and talk about brainstorming and the creative process. Then we had an abysmal lecture on the ramifications of digital radio — again an extremely niche topic considering the broad spread of skills and aspirations of 3rd year media students. Similar sorts of things are happening in PP1, especially in the latest lecture on Blogging/reflection. I don’t think I learned anything about reflection. I learned that getting a PhD is about relabelling concepts that everyone’s already familiar with and placing them inside a flowchart that you hijacked from some other guy’s PhD. You then proceed to break your already simple concept down into 5 ‘stages’. Then you break each ‘stage’ down into 7 ‘phases’. Break each ‘phase’ down into 3 ‘elements’. Talk about all 105 “elements” (5x7x3= 105) ad nauseam and hopefully, you’ve written an exhaustive thesis on what is effectively one simple concept. Genius.

Whatever. I’ve gotten it out of my system now. All I can say is that I’m really looking forward to next semester.

Welcome to the Industry

I’ve had one Media Industries tute so far this year. I’ve discussed one worksheet in class.. that’s it. And already, I have vague fears about the future of ‘media’ in any sort of professional sense. What a bleak world we live in… Whether it’s feature film, radio, music, print media or television.. there’s always some looming threat. Most likely numerous looming threats.

The world’s gone digital — information is cheap (ie free) and infinitely replicable. The concept of paying for media content is becoming more and more alien. You can torrent films online, stream TV series on YouTube, siphon free music out of Limewire, and find a wealth of free podcasts via the iTunes store. Why the hell is anyone going to pay for anything in this day and age?

In the face of all this rampant piracy and networked chaos, we’re meant to beg at the sacred altar of advertising. Consumers aren’t willing to pay for anything, but advertisers often are. So.. that’s solved? Advertising can solve all of our monetary problems? Well.. not even advertising can save print media. Newspapers are slowly dying all over the place because people are getting their news for free online instead. Hence the readership drops, hence advertisers become less and less interested in paying for advertising in said publications.. And so.. as we watch print media slowly gurgle and die, can we learn something? Advertising is essential, and our media needs to allow for the presence of advertising in some capacity. Commercial television does this quite well. Commercial radio does this quite well. Feature films and music productions generally don’t seem as advertising-friendly. Of course there’s product placement, but nothing as blatant as a dedicated ‘ad break’. And I wonder.. how are feature films and music albums funded, if not through exhaustive advertising? Well, investors are somehow swindled into funding feature films (generally I’d consider this to be economic suicide, given the number of films that fail), and I have no idea how musicians get by.. gigs I guess. In both cases, piracy is rife. CD and DVD sales may once have been substantial, but since bittorrent, I’d imagine sales are dwindling. And why would people pay to see your film in the cinema if it was circulating online months beforehand? (I’d still pay.. I don’t like watching films on my computer.. it’s not nearly as immersive)

As far as feature film is concerned, we’ve come up with something clever: 3D. Now.. 3D films have been around for decades, but in this age, we have a new incentive to make them: you can’t watch a 3D film from home — most people lack the hardware needed to recreate the “3D experience” you’d get when watching a 3D film in the cinema. You can also charge more for tickets to a 3D film, and as most 3D films are distributed and projected digitally, you don’t need to pay for the distribution of physical release prints on 65mm film. Genius. A gimmick, yes, but genius.
Only problem is, it’s only a matter of time before the “3D Home-Entertainment System” becomes a reality, and internet bandwidth increases so much that we can illegally download 3D HD films and burn them to blu-ray… If only hardware remained inaccessible to the masses.. then cinemas would be set. But soon, technophiles and then average Joe Popcorns will be installing 130″ LED 1080p HD 3D Displays in their homes, plus Dolby 9.5 surround sound or whatever. 3D has bought us some time, but I doubt it’s a sustainable attraction.. cinema’s probably still in trouble. (I wouldn’t mind researching this later in the course..)

Anyway. I’ve only had one Media Industries tute. It’s possibly too early to start predicting the apocalypse.
I’ll save that for week 3.