Aspect Media Factory

Indifference..

Most photos today are edited. Colours are saturated, exposure altered and items erased from a picture completely. And you can turn a boring picture into a great picture with just a few clicks of the button.

I recently started picniking my pics and have seen some great results and big differences between the edited and original. Just by a little bit of cropping and intensifying the colours slightly.

But do you think it’s cheating a little bit? How were brilliant pictures taken before photoshop, picnik and gimp?

Well your first sentence "Most photos today are edited" implies that post processing started with the advent of digital.

As most of the other answers say, that is simply not true. The vast majority (if not all) of the common tweaks in exposure (dodging & burning) and retouching have been done since the advent of photography!

Even HDR type exposure blending was done as early as the 1930’s (although the idea had been mooted in the 1850’s).

You also need to realise that the camera cannot capture what you can see - it just doesn’t have the ability of the combination of human eye & brain. Quite often I hear ’snapshot’ photographers looking at a scene they shot straight out of camera saying that it doesn’t look like they saw it (ie their eye saw it in more detail or with more colour/contrast). Hence then the need to try to get the post processing to better emulate what your eye saw.

Then there’s the artistic,creative side of photography (ie ‘making’ pictures, rather than ‘taking’ pictures) such as adding/removing elements of a scene which enhances the final image. Again if your intent is to create a particular scene or mood, then what of it? Only in ‘record’ photography is it strictly necessary to record, without adjustment, the scene. This again comes back to the purpose and intent of the photographer - to merely ‘capture’ a scene or to create a scene.

As far as glamour/fashion/celebrity photography goes, there has again always been a trend for photo retouching. All that happens now is that it’s done on computer rather than having to huddle in a dark room breathing chemicals. Although I do feel nostalgic when I get a whiff of fixer (!) I much prefer to sit in comfort & edit!

Having said all that though (phew!) Perki88 is spot on - a good photographer gets the basics right in camera - and a poor image will always be a poor image, Photoshop or not.

How long is a piece of string? We need loads more details, where are you? Is it a payment just for extending their photography assistant duties to include some office work too? Post production pays a lot more than a photography assistant or even a competent photographer, a good one is worth their weight in gold as they can dramatically improve your output which raises your companies profile particularly in portraiture, never skimp on PP work.

Chris

I was wondering if it was easy to get a job in America in Film Production.

I’m Studying in Production, Post-Production in Canada at the moment but i would really like to work in America Because everything looks so easy..

Thank You

—> William

It depends. If you live in Los Angeles, and have a six month to a year cushion of savings (even with cost-of-living in LA) to be a PA or runner for a little while until you impress the right person, yeah, you can get it with Lighting or Sound without much difficulty. For post, it’s the same deal, though that’s slightly worse because there are far fewer post jobs.

Honestly, though, why would you want to? Hollywood is a miserable, catty, incestuous business where best friends will stab you in the back. Canada’s film board pays generous subsidies for Hollywood to come up there, and shoot using CA film crews. Get on with a local gaffer or sound guy or DP in Canada (major cities only, especially Vancouver) and just stay where you have free health care, reasonable costs of living, and only slightly-increased chances of being trampled by a moose.

I use to work in a post produciton & would hear people say " I do all your online" or he does all the online. I know it has to do with editorial, but what is it???????

Dont ask I wouldn’t have a clue

Just made a short trailer as part of my media studies higher course now I must write a post-production on it, what should I include?

1) Intended target audience
2) Budget for getting your trailer to them
3) Intended modes of publicity
4) Any hardware/ software you would have liked to use to enhance picture and sound quality
5) Research locally available/ geographically distant but economical company specializing in sub titling work so that the trailer can be viewed by a wider audience. Like you could request a quotation from www.wordsindia.com

Good luck.

I do have a degree in Multi-media and live in porn valley.

Please Do Not do it, Realize That Porn Destroys, See what it has done to the Lives of those who were involved in the industry in this video

Dead Porn Stars Memorial www.shelleylubben.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0q_VGacfNk

By far, the most searched for terms on the internet are related to pornography. Pornography is rampant in the world today. Perhaps more than anything else, Satan has succeeded in twisting and perverting sex. He has taken what is good and right (loving sex between a husband and wife) and replaced it with lust, pornography, adultery, rape, and homosexuality. Pornography can be the first step on a very slippery slope of ever-increasing wickedness and immorality (Romans 6:19). The addictive nature of pornography is well documented. Just as a drug user must consume greater and more powerful quantities of drugs to achieve the same “high,” pornography drags a person deeper and deeper into hard-core sexual addictions and ungodly desires.

The three main categories of sin are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). Pornography definitely causes us to lust after flesh, and it is undeniably a lust of the eyes. Pornography definitely does not qualify as one of the things we are to think about, according to Philippians 4:8. Pornography is addictive (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19), and destructive (Proverbs 6:25-28; Ezekiel 20:30; Ephesians 4:19). Lusting after other people in our minds, which is the essence of pornography, is offensive to God (Matthew 5:28). When habitual devotion to pornography characterizes a person’s life, it demonstrates the person is not saved (1 Corinthians 6:9).

For those involved in pornography, God can and will give the victory. Are you involved with pornography and desire freedom from it? Here are some steps to victory: 1) Confess your sin to God (1 John 1:9). 2) Ask God to cleanse, renew, and transform your mind (Romans 12:2). 3) Ask God to fill your mind with Philippians 4:8. 4) Learn to possess your body in holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4). 5) Understand the proper meaning of sex and rely on your spouse alone to meet that need (1 Corinthians 7:1-5). 6) Realize that if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). 7) Take practical steps to reduce your exposure to graphic images. Install pornography blockers on your computer, limit television and video usage, and find another Christian who will pray for you and help keep you accountable.

i’m doing my ba hons degree in television production and am looking at potential courses to do for post grad, as well as places. like in england, but would like to go to california.

Hi Liam,

I don’t know about schools in England, but maybe I can help you with American schools. First off, there are many film schools in the states. Most are pretty bad. The few famous ones owe their reputation mostly because of the few famous directors who were once students there.

On the West Coast, there is USC and UCLA. I had just graduated from New York University’s Film School (in 1995) and since I was looking for a graduate program in film, I visited both. In terms of tuition, they were both ridiculously expensive then, they are worse now. Now the differences: USC, former home of Spielberg, Lucas… works like this: one student gets to make a film, the rest of the class has to work on it. Since film schools are just as corrupt as Hollywood itself, who knows who will be directing, and who will be carrying equipment… When I found out about that, USC was out of the question. UCLA, former home of Coppola, had just closed their undergraduate film program, but the graduate school was still going. However, I looked at the curriculum, and it was identical to my undergraduate curriculum at NYU,,. So I thought, what’s the point?

So I came back to the East Coast, to my old school NYU (former home of Scorsese, Spike Lee, Stone, Jarmush, and myself :)) and checked out their graduate program. Again, it was the exact same thing as the undergraduate one. What I found out was graduate film schools were basically for students who had studied something else first, like English, History, Philosophy and who wanted to apply their knowledge to film.

The best thing about famous film school for me was not the program, not the teachers, but the students you get to meet. These schools are super selective, so if you can somehow get in, you are going to meet some really cool, talented, and borderline insane students. That created an awesome atmosphere where we all learned from each other, we all shared the same passion (no limits on how long we could talk about movies…), and we all pushed each other to do the best we could.

The bad things: tuition price, having to pay for your films on top of the tuition (a decent thesis is going to cost around $20-30,000), corruption within the administration and faculty, pretty low quality of the classes, not very good teachers, 1% chance you’ll be doing what you wanted to do when you graduate, 0.01% chance if what you wanted to do is direct movies.

To sum it up, you have two options:

Option 1: Go to film school, spend 4 x $50,000 + $25,000 (thesis, if you get picked) = $225,000, win a couple festivals, and get your first job as a PA unless your dad is a producer.

If that’s your decision, then what school you want to go to depends on what kind of films you want to make. If you want to work on big Hollywood productions, go to UCLA. If you’re more of a Scorsese type or European filmmaker (and you’d rather go to a school located at the heart of New York City instead of a campus) go to NYU.

Option 2: Don’t go to film school, use the $225,000 to make a feature film, and who knows, if it’s good and fairly commercial, you just might get a distributor, and funding for your next feature film.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

I moved to London to get a job in the post production.

Problem is I graduated in Media Production in 2001 and pissed the last 8 years away in stupid admin jobs.

I film and edit weddings still but don’t know how to get a foothold in a professional capacity.

Help?

I don’t know, I have a very similar degree to yours and found it as difficult as you. I know someone who didn’t get a degree but went to one of the tv companies (I’m pretty sure it was the BBC) and did their in-house editing course. A lot of companies will only take you on and train you themselves. We did a lot of camera work as well as editing and we were told that companies such as the BBC wouldn’t take us on because they would have to retain us. I eventually re-qualified as a nutritionist, but would have loved to use my film degree.
The best advice I can give you is to write spec letters to all the production companies you can. Offer to do unpaid work experience to get a foot in (and unfortunately a lot of these companies will expect unpaid work experience anyway). Also enquire into any in-house training they may have. And make copies of your editing and make an appointment and take it in to show them.
Good luck

What is going to happen to Brittany Murphy’s films that she was making but then died?

She was making:
The Expendables (2010) (post-production) …. Amy
Something Wicked (2010) (post-production) …. Susan
Abandoned (2009) (post-production) …. Mary

so what will happen to those movies?

well it depends how far along they got. if it was quite alot, they might put a fill in for her, like they did for heath ledger in the imaginarium of dr parnassus. or they could always just re-shoot the movie, or change the story line up.