Cameras Don't Shoot People, People Shoot People

OK, this is a bit nit-picky and silly, but anything other than more Spirit articles, right?

Almost all the photography blogs I read have taken note that the official Obama presidential portrait was created using a Canon 5D Mark II. That's certainly of some interest, but what bugs me is how many of the blogs used wording that seemed to ascribe to the camera the actual authorship of the photo:

photographyblog.com: Canon 5D Mk II Shoots Obama Portrait

canonrumors.com: Barack Obama Official Portrait by Canon

digitalcamerainfo.com: Canon 5D Mark II Snaps First Digital Presidential Portrait

Call me pedantic, but the 5D did not shoot the portrait, and it is not a portrait "by Canon." White House photographer Peter Souza made the portrait, using a Canon 5D Mark II.

Hardly the most important thing to harp on today, but language that assigns creative authorship to technology rather than people is a personal pet peeve. After having never missed an issue, I unsubscribed from Wired magazine the day I read an article about visual effects that stated "the computer removes the blue."

Spirit Press: Film & Video

If you haven't heard enough about how I finally got to do that thing I was talking about, Debra Kaufman has written an excellent article for Film & Video called The Spirit Closes the Distance Between VFX and the DI.

The Spirit, directed by Frank Miller and based on the Will Eisner comic book series, points the way toward a new integration of digital production and post. That’s thanks to The Orphanage, a VFX/production company in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and its co-founder Stu Maschwitz, the movie’s second unit director and visual effects supervisor. “Every movie is a collaboration between visual effects artists and the DI artist, but they never meet and they never see each other’s work,” said Maschwitz. “They get approved in a vacuum. The colorist doesn’t get to pass any wisdom back to the VFX artist, and the VFX artist thinks, ‘We’ll color this in post.’ It’s an important collaboration that’s broken. We’re still scheduling the DI at the end of the process, approving visual effects shots before we’ve thought much about the digital intermediate."

With The Spirit, Maschwitz saw an opportunity. “I thought, here’s a chance to put my money where my mouth is,” he said. “Because of its principle creative, the movie is going to be a visual feast. I wanted to put into practice some ideas about how to better integrate those two really important processes: visual effects and DI.”

Spirit Press: Screen Daily

Are you sick of these yet? Here's an article on Screen Daily about, er, "The VFX genius behind The Spirit."

As for himself, meanwhile, Maschwitz, who is also an experienced commercials director, is developing his own screenplays and hoping for the chance to direct a feature. Making his second-unit directing debut on The Spirit, he enthuses, "was about as much fun as one can have within the confines of the law".

Spirit Press: Current TV

Gabriel Macht plays The Spirit. His brother, Ari, is a producer at Current TV. They decided to team up and interview me for a Current Tech piece on The Spirit's visual effects.

As the film's Second Unit Director, I would occasionally get to work with Gabriel, especially when stunts were involved. This meant that for the first few weeks of shooting, Gabriel came to associate me with being covered in mud, strapped into a harness, hung from wires, and slammed in the crotch with a giant wrench.

This video, I believe, is his revenge.