I said I wasn't going go on this thread again but curiosity got the best of me. Haha.
John, I just wanted to say that your comment is so well written!! You clearly put a lot of thought in to it. Thank you for not lashing out, even though my original post initially sparked anger for you. You have honestly given me an insight into why some people are hating on me so badly for my initial post (which I really would have put a lot more thought into originally if I'd known it would cause so much drama). By explaining the thought process of where that anger was coming from, you enlightened me. So thank you for sharing! I completely agree with you about communication being such and important part of filmmaking. It's such a collaborative medium that without it we are screwed!

I like the cooking comparison you made, too! I don't know if I totally agree with you on all of it.... For example; Aren't those chefs going to learn about knives and other cooking tools through experimentation and actually picking the tools up and using them, learning which knife works best for this dish? Or are you suggesting they should go to cooking school first, before attempting to cook?

Some may say yes. Just as some may say that one should go to film school before experimenting with their filmmaking. I did not go to film school and have learned everything I know through creating previous projects - and making mistakes. The reason that I started this discussion on this particular site was because because it is called "no film school dot com" not "i graduated from film school dot com".

Also, one of my favorite directors, Jill Soloway (who won best director at Sundance a couple years ago for her feature and many other awards for "Transparent", her series) openly admits she knows nothing about lenses, camera, techy stuff.... This is not to say that I am trying to model my career after her or that I think it's fine to shy away from the technical side of things. I am constantly trying to get more tech savvy, and find that the fastest way for me to learn is by trying and failing. Not by reading books or watching how to videos, etc.

Thank you for suggesting the reddit filmmaking community. I'll definitely check them out. And thanks again for your great post. It really got me thinking and I hope it got others thinking too! :-)

Thanks so much to those of you who have added constructive feedback and intelligent conversation to this thread.
For those of you who haven't.... My goodness. I must admit, I was not expecting to get so much anger directed at me for posting on a discussion board in a community of artists. I am now being trolled on my personal blog and Facebook by guys who seem to have tracked me down via my NFS profile. So I won't be commenting again.
I hate to say it, but I wonder if I would have copped the same kind of anger if my profile said I was a man. Out of 87 comments on this thread am I the only girl? Posting angry, condescending comments on here is lame enough, but trolling me on other platforms.... come on guys? Don't you have anything better to do with your time? I know I do.
Bye bye!

Hey NoFilmSchool, looks like we have a glitch. Comments have started posting multiple times! Technology screws me AGAIN! Haha.

Hi Jerome - Thanks for you comment. You're right. I definitely didn't do enough of my own research on the ins and outs of RAW. In my defence, I did do a lot of research on it, but it wasn't the right kind of research. After chatting with my DP (and at your request I'll go over that conversation in a minute) I was under the impression that it was an AESTHETIC choice I had to make. So I watched a lot of comparison videos comparing the aesthetics of the two formats. I agreed with my DP that RAW looked great and that what you could do with it in color correction was awesome.

I will now admit something that will make Ninja Monkey and some others cringe. Despite working on many shorts, videos, creative projects in the past, the word "workflow" is new to me! Yep - have at me, Ninja Monkey ;-) But in all seriousness, I've always put that in the hands of my DP's and never had a problem. Maybe I've just been really lucky in the past. Who knows. I guess I was naive to assume this would never be something I needed to worry about.

Now to the conversation between me and DP about shooting RAW. Went something like this, in a nutshell....
DP: I really think we should shoot RAW.
ME: What is RAW and why should we use it?
DP: Much more flexibility in post production to make the image look better. (He goes into more detail about the benefits of RAW)

I then went away and watched all those aesthetic comparisons. We had our next meeting:

ME: I agree the RAW looks great. Are their any downsides to using it? Why isn't everyone using it if it looks better than ProRes?
DP: Well, it's a personal choice. And the files are a bit bigger.
ME: Will that be a problem?
DP: No, we just need to buy one more hard drive and one more card (He already had a few).

After this I hunted on Amazon, got a good price for another hard drive and card, ordered it and assumed we were good to go. It wasn't until our first day of shooting that I realised I couldn't watch the files. And not until after maybe the first few days that he told me we were gonna need even more cards and drives.

In answer to your other question: I had someone on set dumping the cards to the drives but not converting them. Because of the nature of our small project, this person also had other jobs on set (we were all taking on multiple responsibilities). Next time I will DEFINITELY have someone who's sole purpose is to handle and convert footage. But like I said - never had a problem in the past :-(

If I'd had more energy during the shoot, I would have spent more time finding a solution so I could watch dailies, but we were shooting long days, and to be honest, once I got home each night after shooting, I was completely exhausted. I chose to sleep rather than stay up all night looking for an answer so that I wasn't a mess on set the next day.

A few people on this thread have asked "what did you spend all your budget on?" as though I spent it on the wrong stuff. Maybe I did, but I feel obliged to answer the question. So here goes.
- I had a pretty large cast and a union cast so once you're dealing with SAG they chew up a sizeable portion of your budget.
- I paid all my crew each day. I had an AD, DP, AC, Sound mixer, 2 PA's and Scripty.
- I had to hire a couple of my locations
- I had to feed everyone decent food

I'll finish by saying that my DP's footage does look really great. He did an excellent job and worked hard, and I think he felt really bad about all the debacles we had with the files. I also think he learned a lot from his mistakes, as I did from mine.

OMG... Longest post ever. I'm spending too much time on here. Haha.

I love that Edison quote! Thank you for sharing.

Cheers, Tony! I was tentative about checking my post again today, for fear that people were not understanding where I was coming from and that it would just be more guys shutting me down. I really appreciate the encouragement and have gotten some genuinely helpful feedback from this thread after all.