Francis ford coppola's dream come true?

[BM4EVER]

Hey guys,
I remember my older brother getting the DVX100 back in the day. I knew how excited he was to be able to shoot 24p! Looking back now, do you think this BMCC announcement is the same kind of deal? I mean, the GH2 seems to be the best kept secret in filmmaking - $600 for a camera that shoots footage that on a big HD TV looks pro....but this BMCC seems to finally realize Coppola's dream when he was shooting APOCAPLYPSE NOW, and said something like "I look forward to the day when a 12 YO girl can grab her parents camera and make a genuine work of art with it".

With 13 stops of dynamic range for under 3 grand...that day will soon come!

[yoclay]

Well I guess Sofia was a little older than 12, but that basically came to pass anyhow.

[Luis Caffesse]

The truth is... we've been saying that was true since the DVX came out.
Then the HVX... then the 5DmkII... then the hacked GH2...

Now it's the BMC.

Point is - don't get me wrong, 12bit raw at under $3K is a huge milestone - and its one that I never would have believed just a few years ago.
But we're always going to feel like there is a gap between the buget end and high end, because even as our tools get better the high end keeps moving up and up and up.

We got the DVX when high end video was just getting HD.
We got the HVX200 when the high end was just getting large sensors.
We got the 5DmkII and then GH2 when the high end was just getting 4K

NOW we have the BMC... and the high end is going to continue to move up.
At NAB this year RED announced a 6K sensor... 3D is still all the rage in high end production...

Point is - if we can't make something engaging at this point in time with the tools we have at our disposal we can't blame the gear.
Hell, if Coppola had the GH2 he probably would have shot Apocalypse Now on that (okay, that might be an exaggeration, but you know he would have made 'The Conversation' with it).

There are definitely no excuses - not for us, or for the little fat girl in Ohio.

[Matthew Bennett]

I saw that little fat girl's debut feature a while back - it wasn't that good actually. Sorry Francis...

kidding


You're absolutely right though - the camera is the easy part of the equation now.

[popcornflix]

We have long since past FFC's milestone. People have been making compelling films using PixLVision since the '90s, so resolution isn't the issue.
All we really needed was a way to shoot, edit and distribute movies without the big studio overhead.
We've been able to do that for years on the iPhone with YouTube.

As happened with Desktop Publishing and Home Recording, democratizing the means of production and distribution creates boundless opportunities -- and a lot of crap.

The barrier to making a film for most of us isn't a new camera -- it's a rag lit under our ass.

[Grug]

Personally I love Coppola's sentiment, but it doesn't quite ring true for filmmaking. Unlike painting, writing or sculpture, filmmaking, by it's very nature, is a collaborative medium; so the talent of a single artist will never be solely be capable of elevating a film into a masterpiece.