Folks following me on Twitter and watching the comments here have noticed that I’m a bit obsessed with an offhanded comment made on the Rebel Café. In response to some technically sound but rather dry sample footage from the Ikonoskop A-cam dII, Gage replied:
I need to see a subway short.
After I cleaned the coffee off my keyboard, I contemplated the profundity of that statement. See, it wasn’t long ago that when a new camera showed up, we wanted to see test shots of Macbeth swatches and resolution charts. Or at least we thought we did. But lately, some crazy filmmakers have brought art to a technology fight, and they are kicking ass. There’s the D90 Subway test, and one shot with the RED One as well. And there’s Reverie, AKA The Bourne Zoolander (you know I love you Vincent). These aren’t really short films, they’re emotional trigger experiments. They’re camera tests designed to tickle our cinema bone rather than satisfy our slide-rules. They promise a cinematic feel rather than razor sharp 4K filmouts. We watch them on our computer screens and on our TVs. You know, where we watch everything.
For every piece of footage that seemingly proves that the Nikon D90 D-Movies are unusable, there’s at least one that shows how great the footage can look if you work within the camera’s limitations. Ditto the 5D MkII. Folks seem less interested in how a camera fares on a test bench than how it handles being serupticioulsy weidled in a no-photography zone. After Gage’s comment, the Ikonoskop guys actually posted a tiny clip that’s kinda like a subway short!
I told Gage I’d make t-shirts, and I did (all credit goes here). Proceeds go toward buying Gage a beer.
A month ago I wrote that “buttons and features and resolution charts just had their ass handed to them by sex apeal,” and now that movement has a mantra. So when a camera company comes at you with specs and megapixels and data rates, you know what to tell them.
I need to see a subway short.