Sean Anderson
Video Production Team Member at Fotodiox
I'm a young filmmaker in Chicagoland.
Racism and sexism come from a selfish heart. You put your comfort before serving others and you only work with someone from your culture who makes you feel comfortable. This will be a problem as long as we are selfishly motivated beings, and can't be fixed by finger wagging or being intentionally inclusive to make yourself look good, which is just as selfish as exclusiveness and rings very hollow indeed. It can only be fixed by being selfless and willing to be uncomfortable and work with people who don't immediately fit with you. That being said, a film will often be artistically bankrupt if it starts with inclusiveness. Inclusiveness can be part of the casting process and scripts are always flexible--you can change the sex or the race of a character--or perhaps your film is about inclusiveness or about a different group of people than you; but sometimes you as a filmmaker have to make a film about your personal experience, so if you're a white male filmmaker, you will often make films about what that experience is like, same for black, female etc. I don't see this as racist as much as "writing what you know." It's not so much the fault of white filmmakers as it is the fault of studios that so few minority films get produced. I think the key is to support minority films and filmmakers--let's put our money where our mouths are.
I love Super8, especially Tri-X B&W Reversal! It really suits my aesthetic. I shoot with a tiny Canon 310XL and I'd shoot with it all the time if I could afford it. Here's a film I made with just one roll.
Put a camera in a garbage can and dropped it off a parking garage on a home-made zipline : )
I'm all for the new genre/art form of web filmmaking--I've been doing it for 10 years--but I have to protest this video. Web filmmaking is not the same thing as being a traditional filmmaker. Let me rephrase Casey's argument to show how bad it is:
I wanted to be a concert pianist, but I didn't takes lessons or own a piano and I didn't really make the effort to figure out how.
But then I tried really hard. I spent a lot of time around other people's pianos. I helped concert pianists turn pages. I played little tunes on pianos in bars and at parties. I even won some local talent shows.
But I still wasn't a concert pianist.
So I bought a tiny portable synthesizer and went out on a street corner and played simple tunes on it--but I played tunes every day and a lot of people watched me and liked me.
So now I consider myself a concert pianist, and you can be one too! The art of piano performance is everyone's now because portable synthesizers are cheap and there are a lot of street corners!
Casey should just say he's a web filmmaker and be proud of that, but saying he's the same as a traditional Hollywood filmmaker just isn't honest and snubs an art form that takes a whole lot more care and effort than pointing a DSLR at your face and occasionally cutting to time lapses and drone footage.