The Only Thing For Sure Is Change
NOTE**. I wrote this blog 11 years ago in 2011. I thought it was fun and still relevant for 2022 so I added it to our website. Plus I get to add some cool old production photos from our TV commercial production days. Change never stops, especially when it comes to technology. Although we have pretty much made the transition to still photography, film and video production is set deep into our DNA. It will always be a part of our skill set. And oddly enough, shooting stills on film is making a comeback, just like vinyl records. Got to go break out my old Steely Dan. - Russ
The Only Thing For Sure Is Change
August 21, 2011
This has been one of my favorite quotes, or sayings, for many years. Who knows where it first came from, I'm sure it's been around since the beginning of time. Some cave man probably said something similar the first time he sat by his fire smoothing out his cool new rock wheel.
I remember when I first heard it. I had a friend who was a bartender at the restaurant I worked at when I was in high school. His name was Gil. Gil was my philosophical friend and he understood ideas like "The Secret" long before it became a movie or a book. We had long deep discussions about all sorts of concepts that I found both fascinating and influential to me over the years. Nothing more so than the concept of "the only thing for sure is change". Think about it.
Change can be a lot of things, change is actually everything, and I guess change was happening pretty fast back in 1975. But it was not happening as fast as it is today, no way.
Especially when it comes to technology. The advances in technology over the 35 years since I graduated from high school are pretty amazing and you all know what they are. But the advances seem to be coming even quicker now, especially in the "film" production business where I make a living as a Director and Director of Photography.
First off I need to explain that it really bothered me when people would use the word filming when they were actually shooting on video tape. "Hey we're filming today, using a Sony blah blah blah", and I would typically answer, "No, you are not filming damnit!! You are video taping, you freaking moron!!" Yes, I was happily a film snob. Those same guys swore up and down for years that video tape looked just as good as film. "Uh... no it doesn't you freaking moron".... We had this back and forth for years and it was always fun. I remember when they first introduced the Sony CineAlta HD camera to our market, and the dude / rep from Chicago came to town to demo the camera on some really expensive HD monitors. He challenged us to tell him which version of the same scene was shot on film or with the Sony. I picked out the film version pretty easily. It was the one that had some movement and just enough grain in the image to make it look just that much better. Film was always the gold standard in my book. I felt pretty good about myself that afternoon. We film snobs can get that way.
Now, I don't get so worked up about it. Sadly no one is shooting much film anymore. Not in stills and very rarely in motion. The word film has a completely different meaning now and I'm OK with it. "Hey we shot a film this weekend, it's really awesome, you'll have to come see it."
Six years ago we shot 100% of our TV commercials on Kodak film. Today we are just about 100% digital. It was almost a year ago that we shot our last film project, Christmas commercials for Build-A-Bear Workshops. In between the transition from film to digital we shot with either that very same Sony CineAlta or the Panasonic VariCam. Those were cameras that recorded HD images to video tape. Now everything is on hard drives and I still have a few boxes of tape in my storage room that are pretty useless. Today, we shoot mostly on the RED camera for our TV commercial projects and the RED has already evolved three times since we started working with it a couple of years ago. From the RED ONE to the MX, and now to the EPIC.
Let’s not leave out the fact that every time the cameras change, so does the post production workflow. As an Editor as well as a Director and Director of Photography, it is mandatory that I keep up with the post production workflow.
When I started in the business, and was taught to edit, we were editing on film using what was called a KEM flat bed editorial machine. We literally cut film with razor blades and spliced it back together with tape. In 1987 the new thing was editing on 3/4 inch video tape machines. I got a loan and bought a system which we used until around 2000. We then made the move to Apple’s Final Cut Pro. I love Final Cut Pro. It is a computer based non-linear digital editorial program. Quite a mouthful huh? But after riding Final Cut Pro from version 1 to version 7, Apple has just decided to completely overhaul a perfectly wonderful editorial program because they just cant help themselves…. We’ll see what Final Cut X turns out to be. So far the reviews are pretty rough.
So what happens from here? We transitioned from film to digital in 6 years. Where will we be in 6 more years? I know that it's going to be different. It has to be.... The only thing for sure is change.
POST NOTE** How about an 11 year later update instead..
From a video production point of view, we shot with the RED cameras for a few more years until Arriflex introduced their digital cameras and they made it to the Kansas City market. Arri as we called them, was the camera maker that I grew up with (See those still photos). They made some of the most iconic film cameras in the industry. Their digital offerings like the Alexa and the Alexa Mini were my camera of choice for commercial work, and they still are. For documentary projects we shot with a Canon C300, which allowed me to use my collection of Canon lenses. On the still photography side of things, we have been primarily using Canon cameras. We went from the Canon 40D, to the Canon 5D MK2, to the Canon 5D MK3 and my current camera, the Canon 5D MK4. In 2018 we also invested in our first mirrorless camera the Sony A73. It’s a beautiful camera, and a true game changer for portrait work thanks to the eye auto focus. It’s amazing technology. I still prefer my Canon 5DMK4 for Landscape work due to the higher resolutions and simply because of all the lenses I have in my bag. I’ll probably make the move to mirrorless for landscapes very soon, because you guessed it… the only thing for sure is change :)
That is me, with a lot of hair, shooting the World 600 Stock Car Race in Charlotte, NC in the mid 1980’s. The camera is an Arriflex 3 35mm film camera with a 25-250mm zoom lens.
On Set shooting a TV Commercial for McDonalds in 1987. Kansas City Royals pitcher Dan Quisenberry was the Star. Shooting with an ARRI 35BL Evolution camera.
This was the first shoot together for Chris and I. It was for Belfonte Ice Cream, a local dairy. The camera is an Arriflex 35 3 film camera. Some of my favorite people, also known as my film family, are in this photo.
Shooting a TV commercial in Green Bay, WI for Cellcom Cellular. Shooting with a RED digital video camera.
Director of Photography Drew Eldridge taking an epic selfie with all the toys. Shooting on an Arri Alexa Digital Cine cam mounted on a Ronin stabilizer and assisted by an Easyrig system to take all that weight off. We were shooting a TV commercial for a local grocery chain.
Shooting a documentary in the summer of 2019 with my dear friend Brent Jones, who unexpectedly passed this summer. Brent’s documentary “BobbiJo Under The Influence” is an amazing multiple award winning documentary. Hit the link.
For most of the interviews we used the Canon C300 and Canon 5DMK4 as our main cameras.