Really? We're gonna encourage breaking someone's neck over a thread in a BBS. That's what we're doing now. Okay. What is so hard to grasp here? This is a practical thread by folks who've made films to help people starting out or wanting to level up. This isn't a free for all dumping ground for crap y'all find interesting about film that has no practical application. That stuff deters from why this thread was started and derails the conversation into minutiae that doesn't matter and doesn't help. It's not gatekeeping. It's deferring to experts... who I dunno might actually know what they're taking about. But then again, this board seems to attract a lot of armchair quarterbacks.
Maurice is completely right. I've started teaching a filmmaking class for the new semester to a high school class, and I want to thank Maurice for his many articles on sound he did over the years. My expertise has long been animation and storyboards, but i still acquired significant working knowledge of filmmaking by osmosis. Well, my class and I did a cutesy 2 minute no-budget semi-zombie film that was equal parts thriller with comedy thrown in. A mere 8 shots was all that was needed, and the students used as castmembers did superwell even if none of them are likely to win Oscars for their efforts. But the true biggest task for me for two weeks was to assemble the recorded sound (on my Samsung S-10 phone), with sampled sound FX, some foley, and "stolen" pop music bits (student film, remember?), that took so many hours to edit them in and then to do a proper sound mix on Premiere Pro. I used many of the technical tips offered by Maurice to organize what I needed to do. Look, if Maurice had been doing a "How to do Martial Arts" feature, people would be foolish to chime in like experts if they'd only watched the Karate Kid and the UFC.
I've said before, but it bears repeating, that Maurice's generosity has been enormous. I know a little more about sound than other aspects of film production and his posts about it are spot on. Anyone who wants to do a fan film or improve their work should be tapping the knowledge in his posts.
It's not gatekeeping for someone with practical hands-on knowledge of something to not treat someone sans that experience as a peer. Peer meaning one that is of equal standing with another. I'd never presume to walk into a topic on music started by a musician and offer advice on composing and playing, as I have no experience with those. Many times in this topic when someone asks about something outside my experience (e.g. specific equipment) I say so, and I don't Google a potential answer. That's the issue. People with no experience presenting posts as if they were peers is counter-productive because that's effectively the blind leading the blind.
Neither, because the neck injuries aren't in a literal context and are metaphorically self-inflicted. It's disappointing to read this kind of comment from a moderator. No rational person could come to this conclusion base on what he wrote. Even if we were to take Yudu's statement literally, this still wouldn't make sense. If I were to say that "juggling knives is a great way to acquire a stab wound", would you accuse me of threatening to stab anyone who dares to juggle knifes? Such a conclusion can only be reached through cynicism. This is a completely valid concern. The question is, who gets to decide what advice is "crap" and has "no practical application"? It's gatekeeping based on perceived expertise, where only the "experts" get to post. And who gets to pick who the experts are? Why, the community... of experts! As stated above, it's most certainly gatekeeping. The group of "peers" is gatekept by "experts" who determine if someone has the "expertise" to post. I'm not saying that expertise isn't a valid basis for gatekeeping, or that all gatekeeping is automatically a bad thing, but let's not pretend that it's not something it clearly is. However, let me offer an alternative: we politely ask people to limit their post on this thread to only those things for which they have relevant personal experience, and if they begin talking about things we believe to be inaccurate or constitute "bad advice" based on our experiences, we can offer correction and encourage them to continue exploring the topic in another thread. It's cynical to think people want to actively degrade or destroy this thread. I think a little faith in their humanity would go a long way, and faith in humanity is what Star Trek's all about, right? "Standing" is meaningless in the context of a hobby where people are Guideline-defined as being "amateurs" and whom have no official authority over one another. By the way, treating others as if they're not your peers is the definition of "looking down" on them.
I see you're learned the Christopher dodge around the post not poster rule. You just called anyone who draws a different conclusion "irrational". As such, I'm done arguing with you.
Ah, I see you both managed to call me an idiot and a cynic in the same post using "post not poster". Well, you're half right. You can guess... oh fuck it, spoiler alert: it's a cynic. Though I like to think of myself more as a realist. Or a optimistic pessimist. Also, we got DMs if you want to speak plainly and directly to my rationality. But mind you I don't suffer fools, so DM me at your own peril. The experts. The ones who practice the craft, like Maurice and myself included. Or any of the dozens of other filmmakers here. Oh, the "perceived expertise" of "experts" get to post. Did you recently get a job working for FOX News? An expert is an expert because of the experience or expertise they have in a given subject. It's that simple. You don't become an expert without practice, education, or working in the trenches. So I'll ask again: What is so hard to grasp here? If you want someone to tell you you're right or validate your misconceptions on what constitutes gatekeeping or experts, fish elsewhere.
Or all three. If someone wants to create a thread where anyone, inexperienced or otherwise, can share stuff they think fan filmmakers might want to know, more power to them; the Post New Thread button is right there at the top of the forum. Have at. But this 12 year-old thread has had a specific focus and approach and has from day one, and I don't see why it ought to be changed when the obvious alternative is right there.
There’s no gatekeeping going on in this thread. And I’ll happily attest to the fact that Maurice is just eminently helpful and generous with his time to those looking to learn. He’s the least gatekeepery person I know.
Hey thanks. I don’t want to continue beating a dead horse so I’ll sum up and move on. The whole point of this was to be an easy-to-access resource for fan filmmakers, with practical hands-on advice by people who've done it and can attest to whether a given bit of info actually works or what their experience with it has been. Just because someone posted a video or an article online doesn't mean their advice is necessarily good or practical, even though it may appear so to someone who's never been on a film set or worked in pre- or post-production. That experience is critical for evaluating if a given piece of advice belongs here or not. A great for-instance is that video about screen direction shared upthread: no-one I know who's shot films would actually buy the case being made there and wouldn't have shared it in the first place, because it's harmless but baseless advice.
You realize you just proved that there was a more appropriate, better reasoned way of dealing with @Yudu Reeolies's comment? You've just demonstrated that a heavy-handed and baseless claim of terroristic threatening wasn't even necessary. Not that I take your citation of forum rules as anything but disingenuous considering that you remained silent when other forum members accused Yudu of a CRIME, while not hesitating to cite me for expressing the opinion that a self-selecting group of people were behaving irrationally. And even if I wanted to take you seriously, your pal @Ryan Thomas Riddle gave the game away... Not only does he transforms a claim of irrational behavior into him being an "idiot", he takes the word "cynicism", which I clearly apply to the content of his post and not himself, and states that I'm calling him a cynic. So now I have no reason to believe he and others wouldn't have taken it personally even if I'd taken more care with my wording and simply stated that the conclusion was irrational. But don't worry. I'll keep "post not poster" in mind for future posts, if only to avoid this kind of time-wasting rhetoric. Well you're the Award-Winning Journalist. You tell me. Nonsense. You've provided no objective criteria for what makes a person an expert for the purposes of this forum thread, either for posting or for the sake of judging who should be allowed to post. Instead, you say that I must defer to judgment of individuals who have undergone no formal appointment or certification process and assume that they will be completely fair and impartial in their judgment regardless of my past experience. That doesn't sound simple, that sounds like politics. I hate to break it to you, but someone just got not-so-subtly threatened with a forum ban for not deferring to @Maurice's expertise. Outside of being banned outright, what more extreme form of gatekeeping could the forum exercise? And the most generous that Maurice could be to this person is turning a blind eye while it happened.
I am done arguing over this. @jespah may chime in if she likes, but I'm just going to keep posting here as always and henceforth my only reply to non-filmmakers play-acting mentor will be caveat emptor.
I'm getting a headache just catching up. Gentlefolk, there is a great, big wide world out there, past this topic. Personally, I would *love* a topic on the other stuff, the peripherals, like first aid, or finding places to shoot that won't get you arrested (heh), or keeping within a budget. Or something which goes far beyond making films—avoiding scope creep. There's also this topic, which is clearly about the art and the science of filmmaking.. It's about pulling these films away from "Hey, kids, let's put on a show! We can get the barn! I can sing, and you can play the ukulele!" to maybe not the highest of high art, but certainly a cut above. These two topics can coexist merrily, and both do everyone a lot of good. But mixing them together is going to bury the good stuff that falls under both subjects. It's like this, see. I love dark chocolate. Seriously, the more bitter, the better (that's hard to say out loud. Try it. Bitter, better. But, er, I digress). I also love cream of mushroom soup (I make my own). But I don't eat them together. It's not just that I find the idea squickworthy. It's also that it would kill off the fun and yummy parts of both. Sweetening, however slightly, the chocolate? Quelle horreur! Sludging up the mushrooms, milk, salt, chicken broth, and thyme (add pepper to taste and just cook the hell out of it) with chocolate paints a moustache on the Mona Lisa. If the Mona Lisa was mushroom soup, of course. Bottom line: let's all cool down and get another topic going. And let's all respect the intentions behind them both. There's room, in this great, big world, where the nights are as dark and mysterious as chocolate, and the days as warm and comforting as creamy soup, for both. <3 PS I am now hungry.
Maurice, Threads often take on a life of their own, especially older ones. I don't mean to be rude, but starting a thread doesn't grant one ownership of said thread. Back off a bit, please. Also - you're heading into mini-moderating again. Don't. If it keeps up, I'll start throwing warnings myself. It's a frequent complaint I get about you.
As Jespah has suggested, please allow me to offer my meager experience taking the basic ideas from high school students, and to make them into hopefully watchable short films. I might have been tempted to post one of them, but since all the "actors" are underaged that probably isn't a good idea. And because of their inexperience with Film-type scripts, many wrote passages you should only see in novels, like long sentences explaining what the characters were thinking and elaborate backstories instead of simple indications at the visual stage. Nevertheless, here are some of the steps taken from the start to finish: The parameters were to create a 1 to 2 minute film, and the story concept should use students/teens as characters (of course), and there should be a horror or sci-fi element. One of the first two texts handed in were of course too complicated, heavy on dialogue (avoid dialogue as none of the kids were good actors, and even the one boy with a very simple line ("humans! You must come with us!") kept flubbing it repeatedly. The film needed to be about 2 minutes, yet her early draft had action that took place one day, then took place a week later and yet again. There was ALSO a fight scene which I nixed because who wants to have to explain to parents why their kid ended up in the hospital? So I took only the first paragraph of 3, and fleshed it out. If you saw it, you'd see there really isn't that much going on, but there is enough movement and humour that when I've shown it to the school and colleagues, they quite liked it. Basically the story is: Pan to establish EXT. High School setting. follow pan on 2 school girls talking and joking as they walk home (inside the campus). Behind them emerge 3 Zombie-like characters shambling toward them (with music from Return of the Living Dead playing). One of the girls senses something's wrong, to discover the ghouls. Right behind them another one speaks ominously, then multiple hands grope for the girls...They run off pursued by a half-dozen undead, only to jump into absurdity as 2 of them stop and dance to K-pop music...The end... Basically harmless fun, done for no budget, but the result was actually quite nice...