Caltrops - Rants - Re: Great! Thanks.

Forum Overview :: Rants

by I need clarification 06/15/2003, 2:07pm PDT

TheVacillator wrote:

If you don't mind me asking,
which forums are you lurking/browsing/posting.

I ask not becasue i intend to flame/bait/troll you there but because i'm just starting out in this particular industry, along with DV camcorders and indie filmmaking and really like to know where the idiots/idiots/idiots aren't.

Am I the idiot you're trying to avoid? Or... okay, whatever.

Well, first of all, to clear up any potential confusion, the camera I'm shopping for now is a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera - a high-end still camera, not a video camera. For the record, I think I've finally made my choice. The projector I'm shopping for is actually just an overgrown TV, and again I think I've made my choice.

Which industry are you starting out in? DV filmmakiong? I haven't been in the DV cam forums in a while. I bought the Sony DCR-TRV900 with some unused vacation pay when I switched jobs, and there's really only one page you need to read with that one. That was almost four years ago, but I've been happy with it since. If I were going to buy a new one (of course, depending on funds), I would either look at a progressive-scan one (although one can assume Sony will eventually bring their 24p technology down from Lucas-ian costs to the pro-sumer market), or wait for Canon's upcoming Xl2 (so new and upcoming I can't even find a decent site to link to, but I'll keep looking). Okay, I found one that mentions it just briefly in the course of discussing quite a few of the higher-end options out there, and it's a great site to read in any case. And here is the link, right here. Goddamn, looking at that page again - that Viper at the bottom looks great. Sony should watch out for that.

Another site to watch for upcoming equipment news is Supervideo. The problem is it's almost unreadable sometimes (combination of presentation and grammar), but they do seem to have the jump on a lot of sites as to what's around the next bend.

As for forums (hey! I'm finally getting around to answering your question!), I would start with Creative Cow (stupid name, I know). It has a lot of great stuff about post work in DV, which is what you'll really want support in, once you get the camera. All the higher-end prosumer cameras available these days produce good images - the real work will come with how you capture, edit, post-process, and present it. Oh, not to mention how well the script was written, story was told, characters realized by the actors, etc., etc. I think filmmaking.net has some forums, though I haven't really read them.

I think with forums focused on higher-end equipment, you tend to get a different sort of idiot than you do in the typical games-related forum. In fact, I would categorize them more as zealots and eXtreme techno-geeks rather than trolls. They will argue for days over exactly how many usable pixels the new CCD from [whoever] gives you and exactly how many lumens it takes to properly light blah blah blah. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's just interesting, and sometimes you just have to know when to not even bother reading a thread.