Orson Welles on Shot-Sizes

Orson Welles once said:

"What separates the men from the boys is to be able to play a whole scene in medium-long shot. Any idiot can make a movie with a two-inch lens and a pair of scissors."

-- Some dude (Numberface) in an AICN talkback. Dunno if the quote is true or note (couldn't bring it up in google) but I liked it anyway. A quote doesn't have to be from a famous person to have validity :)

* No CoreImage support in Shake 4 (I was wrong there).
* FCP HD can "send to Shake 4" (I was right there).

Or so the rumours go

Iraqis and conspiracy theories

For years, Iraqis have had to eat and breath conspiracy theories because so often there were conspiracies to contend with. (You think totalitarian states operate with transparency?) And the damage of the United Nations sanctions over 12 years hardened Iraqis' attitudes toward the world, causing them to think, not unreasonably, that the world was out to get them. A people who already suspicious of outsiders because of their Bedouin/tribal heritage came to hate foreigners because the cause of many of their problems were foreigners meddling in Iraq. The list is long: The Americans who betrayed them in 1991, the Security Council that abandoned them in the years that followed, The Americans in 2003 to the present, and now the widespread belief that Syria and Jordan (among the Shi'ites) and Iran (among the Sunnis) are further meddling behind the scenes to destroy Iraq by supporting either “terrorists” or Persian cats paws.

-- Chris Allbritton writing about "The Trouble With Weekends" in Iraq [namely, that the interim government want to move the weekend a day forward, which some young Iraqis are seeing as a zionist conspiracy] over at www.back-to-iraq.com

China's Economic Boom

Typical projections, for example in a recent National Intelligence Estimate issued by the National Intelligence Council, a prestigious group within the U.S. intelligence community, are of the “more of the same” character: China is growing rapidly and can be expected to continue doing so. About all that one can do responsibly is list some of the factors that favor and some that disfavor China’s future growth.

-- Posner on China's rapid economic growth.

Its potential seems to be so limitless, after awakening from a slumber that lasted for centuries, that many are already forecasting that China will replace the United States during the 21st century as the leading economic power. Perhaps these forecasts will be correct-my crystal ball is very cloudy- but some cautionary comments are needed because we have heard that tune before.

-- Becker on China's rapid economic growth

Richard Posner's commentary and the commentary of his fellow blogger, Gary Becker, are lucid, brilliantly written and argued summaries of the current economic boom of China and the implications over the next 50 years. Because they're primarily economists, they focus more on economics rather than geopolitics... Well worth reading! (As is most stuff that Posner and Becker write, but it tends to be rather dry.. this isn't!). The comments at their site are also worth reading for some other intelligent discussions of the issue.

Worth posting in light of the whole "regional power broker" pose by John Winston Howard.

War Stories About The TV Business

War Stories About The TV Business. A write up of the 'Mass Market, Smart Content' panel held in L.A. in March. It features some very interesting quotes from Tim Minear which touch upon Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls and The Inside.

-- via Simon @ Whedonesque

An occupying army, with long supply lines, reliant on heavy firepower, hunkered down in strong points strung out throughout the country, isolated in a population whose sentiment ranges from neutral to hostile... with a puppet government that hasn't done much yet on the ground to improve anybody's life... plus the occupier and the occupied are split by major religious differences...

We've turned Iraq 2005 into Afghanistan 1986.

-- Jason Lefkowitz commenting on John Robb's Weblog regarding the recent attacks on Anu Ghraib

Simulating Moviemaking

I am not 100% sold on what I imagine is going to become a more and more popular technique — the complete digital environment world. People are seeing a real opportunity in movies to create these impossible worlds and maybe control their budgets at the same time. Thinking purely with my visual effects hat on, it’s always better for us when we are doing the invisible work and that means keeping the audience guessing and using different techniques. It’s a big challenge to make the magic, repeating the same trick over and over again and not having the audience gets wise. It’s daunting, but in this case it was unique. We were doing things you couldn’t do another way, but in a gritty, real kind of way. I latched onto that and I didn’t want the stylization to come out of the fact that the world was going to be computer- generated. I wanted the stylization to be photographic and it became the mission statement that got us through the project.

[snip]

"It’s really interesting because in vfx, we have to remember that we aren’t simulating reality, we are simulating moviemaking."

-- Stu Mashchwitz of the Orphanage and ProLost [see link on side] discussing the Orphanage's contribution to Sin City over at VFX World [Rego Required]

Hmm. Note that Stu M doesn't specify exactly why he isn't sold on the technique of 'greenscreen movies', although there is an implicit kind of criticism in his discussion of Sin City.

BSG is HD

“During the miniseries, we established the aesthetic for Battlestar Galactica, and that was done on film,” he says. “We wanted a documentary-style quality and a gritty look in keeping with that. So we were pushing grain and making depth of field as shallow as we could and doing lots of handheld, long-lens work. So, going into the series, from what I knew about HD, which was admittedly limited, I had a concern that it would not be conducive to applying this sort of documentary aesthetic.

- Michael Rymer on shooting Battlestar Galactica on HD in "Breaking the Comfort Zone", an interesting article in Millimeter on both Enterprise and BSG shooting HD.

Wow. I really didn't think that BSG was shot on HD - perhaps the only stuff which really gives it away is all the Caprica exteriors... but its so heavily processed, that I just thought crushed their highlights cause they weren't working with film scans...