[fpgaminer]

Jason Scott is such a weird and wonderful person. I highly recommend watching BBS: The Documentary. Episode 8 was especially interesting and moving in a way I didn't expect. I would say, in brutal honesty, the production values are (unfortunately) low, but the content is pure gold, and well makes up for it.

So my thanks go out to Jason Scott and the small crowd of computing historians he unofficially represents. As a modern software and hardware engineer, it is both a joy to watch the old, and a comfort to know our work of today has a chance of being preserved in the years to come.

[textfiles]

Nope, I'm going to do it, I'm going to focus right on one sentence and ignore all the compliments.

The BBS documentary was shot across 4 years on my own dime (no crowdfunding, my family helped pay for the camera) and traveling to 20 states, from 2001-2004, and then released in 2005. (10 years ago). This means some footage was shot as long as 14 years ago.

"Production Value" is a very specific term - it is almost always used to indicate skill or attention to the final product. All along the way for the BBS Documentary, I had to make choices. Remember, the Canon XL1 I shot with cost me $4000 in 2000, when it was bought. And instead of going with a handful of people, say, under 15, to tell the whole story, I chose instead to interview 201 people. This meant that sometimes in a single day I'd drive to up to 4 different homes, with miles between them, set up all the equipment myself, conduct the pre-interview and interview, and then move on to the next location. In one case I drove 500 miles to grab an hour interview with a figure who had popped up, and then drove back.

This was before DSLR became prominent, before HD was the norm. I could have gotten a full crew, but everything else would have suffered: the breadth of subjects, the locations, the variant voices. It's a choice I'm fine with.

I recognized, after BBS Documentary was done, that I'd want to move to HD, but in 2006, when I started filming GET LAMP, that cost me $10,000. I paid larger numbers for the new movies - $20,000 for the DSLR equipment. (Both GET LAMP and the new films are crowdsourced, based on the reputation of BBS Documentary.)

Choose your words carefully, please. I'll take "Dated", I'll take "SD", I'll take "Videotaped", but please don't imply I didn't sweat bullets over every aspect of the production, and that everything in there wasn't a best-of-all-circumstances choice made with the intent of finishing a project that many (at the time) thought was impossible.

[fpgaminer]

Aww geez, I had no intention for my remarks to be disparaging; quite the opposite.

I completely agree that, given your constraints, the better use of money was to interview more people. What I meant was that it's a shame you had to choose. I believe your efforts deserve more recognition, and more funding so you don't have to make compromises between interviewing more people or having more crew. You should have both. That's what I intended my remark to convey. By no means did I mean "This film is crappy, but I love it anyway." I meant "This film is wonderful. I wish the creator was better enabled so there were Blu-rays of this stuff, with crisp, clean HD video." Stuff like that.

> Choose your words carefully, please.

I truly did. I usually spend an inordinate amount of time writing emails/comments, trying to choose words that are clear and concise. Its a byproduct of my social anxiety (it stems from an ever-present fear that what I'm doing/saying will be misinterpreted). In fact, I'm probably going to miss breakfast because I've spent the past 45 minutes trying to write this comment and clear up the confusion... But, yeah, sometimes people have different meanings for different words. It isn't a reflection of whether they took the time to choose the words. Its a reflection of different cultures, and how they apply different means to words. I'm not a film maker, so I guess production value means something different between us. I'm sorry my comments did not communicate effectively. I truly respect you, and your work. Please keep making documentaries and doing what you do! There needs to be more of it!

[rwallace]

As someone who liked your documentaries, I think you're misinterpreting the previous poster. 'Production values' doesn't refer to skill or attention - those qualities are clearly present in your work. It just refers to those aspects of a work which are simple functions of money spent. To say your work has low production values, then, just means you clearly didn't have a large budget, which is true but nothing to feel bad about - you did a great job with the resources you had.

[textfiles]

I'm hoping that's the case, and I'm sure I'm oversensitive on this topic. It's just that subject was particularly important to me, and any impression that I didn't care so much about capturing that story before the chance to get the story was over just makes me over react.

[rattray]

"High Production Values" implies, to me, cameras that cost many tens of thousands of dollars, several cameramen, dozens of other crew, etc. One person working extremely hard for many years with the most expensive cameras available on a high personal budget speaks _quality_ to me, but I would still use the phrase "Low Production Value". So I'd use that phrase reverently in this case, not derogatorily.

It's pretty awesome to hear the backstory too, so thanks for sharing =) I think I have a new documentary to watch!

EDIT: In other words, at least to this layperson...

> "Production Value" is a very specific term - it is almost always used to indicate skill or attention to the final product.

... isn't true for me. I use that phrase to refer to budget and equipment, not skill and heart. I think the same is true of most other people outside of the film world.

[fpgaminer]

Yes, I think you express my meanings clearly. Now I feel bad, because I had hoped to make Jason Scott's day better by recommending and praising his work, but I think I ended up making it worse :(

[textfiles]

We hugged it out, all is good. Apologies for the derail; the "artiste" is hypersensitive about his children.