Thanks everyone, I appreciate the advice. Like I said, I know hardly anything about shooting on film. I was hoping that if I can put up the money for a short on actual film, I could find someone who can handle the technical stuff. I've been disappointed with a lot of digital problems I've had, even when I've hired people to provide more professional results that I could produce. I know some people would tell me that working with film could prove more difficult and frustrating, but I'd still like to try it at least once.
Any suggestions on trying to find a film person to help me? Should I check local film directories?
Here is a suggestion. If you want to try working on film to get a feel for the difficulties and oprtunities of the medium why not shoot a spec 30 second commercial or 30 second promo for a film you would like to develope.
This way the costs pertinent to that medium, which may be much affected by innexperience, will be reduced. The project length naturally puts the burden on all the other aspects of production. IMHO the most important aspect should normally be concept development. This can devolve into ideas for the realization. How you formalize and realize those concepts. If your development proces is loose, chances are you will spend more on film. Spend energy and thought on development.
In the limit (as in mathematical proof) the medium of film I believe will have an evolution into a medium for artists only. Think Lynch doing Erazerhead or Chris Marker doing La Jette, but imagine that history haden't yet happened. It may be wasred somewhat on narrative film makers as a medium. If film makers and thair audience can't tell the difference between film and digital it (film) may dissapear quickly as a mainstream production and exhibition medium.
We live in a world where we are told that everything can be expressed as a collectiuon of discrete parts. The world is deconstructed. An image is encoded as a matrix of zeros and ones that are transposed off to somewhere else. But like the frog that we may have been forced to disect in class, the analysis of parts is an exercise that can easily end the life force or whole value that glued all the parts together.
When light collides with a piece of celluloid it is a kind of total event leaving a vivid record. Analogous to the way all impacting experience on us (mind/body/physiology) leaves a record. These impressions don't easily dissapear. even if they are undersired. I think we are obliged to find or make images of significance or unavoidable fascination and then learn how to deal with them. I think there will be some artist who will linger in the world who will find film as a medium a fascinating loadstone in this respect.
There is a line that is being crossed as film dissapears from our experience in the mainstream cinema. It's a validation and reinforcement of the completely eroneous idea that only the surfaces matter. If we make digital look like film, who wiull ever know or remember it. But consider this, if you could have a rubber doll that looked , sounded and did everything in an identical way to your life partner, would you accept them as being of equal value? To accept that (the rubber doll) are you really even human enymore.
So please go ahead and enjoy film medium while you can. A good DP and maybe producer or assistant director who has worked on Indies on film will help make it work.
Cheers,
Gregg.
