Keep after the clowns, Jeremy! These self-important corporate dweebs really p*** me off. I had a run-in with one last year. I was shooting on a public sidewalk with a women's clothing store in the background. I couldn't even see their sign or logo, just stuff in the window. The scene was two women walking down the sidewalk and talking. I was a transitional scene. They stop to look in the window and I move around behind them to see their backs, and then through the magic of trite transitional editing techniques, when the camera moves on back around to the front of them we see that they are in a different location. It was all hand held with a DSR250, no Steadycam.

So, this arrogant corporate conglomerate employee came out of the store and inquired as to what I was doing shooting in front of their store, I didn't have permission to include their store in my shot, etcetcetc. I ignored her and got the shot. Then she started ranting about their proprietary logos and stuff, and her attitude sort of caused me to lose my cool. Normally I'm polite to people, but her I-Am-Superior-to-You-Because-I-Work-In-KorporateAmerika attitude p***ed me off big time.

So I pointed out that it was a public sidewalk and if a permit was required for shooting on a public sidewalk I would have got one from the city. She kept saying I couldn't shoot her store. I pointed out that her store was in the way of my sight and therefore would be in the background of my shot and it would be her responsibility to move it if she didn't want it in the shot. Then I pointed out that the show I was working on was a corporate motivational show designed mainly for women and was going to be sold to people in business, and the only reason I stopped to shoot in front of her store was because of the corporate type women's clothes in the window. I also said that I figured her store's owners would appreciate the free advertising to their target clientele, but that since she was so insistent that I not identify her store, I would most definitely use the shot that EXcluded, rather than included, the store's logo.

I've mentioned this before but will do so again--Lawrence Lessig has a book called something like "The Death of Ideas." I don't think that's the exact title, but you can track it down if you're interested. It's all about how KorporateAmerika is stifling the free flow of information by these tactics--like, in Hollywood movies, the studios always cave in to the corporations, and if there's a scene of a car driving down the street and a McDonald's in the background, the studio will avoid the sign. There is no legal reason why they should have to do so, but the corporate lawyers have made such an issue of trying to make them do so that they do it without even fighting any more. If a company builds a building, it's in a public space, most likely financed with tax breaks, meaning public money. They don't own the air space over the street or the view. Everybody has to fight against this type of coprorate control just as strongly as we have to fight against government censorship. I'll grant that this is a little different from you taking a camera into the store. Maybe they have a right to prohibit that. However, you had permission. If the weasel who threw you out had half a brain in his head, he would have realized you were a customer. So this is really about decent behavior and customer service, or the lack thereof. I didn't mean to hijack the topic, but I think my point is related. It's all about that corporate mentality that tries to control thought.

So, er, Jeremy... didja buy the plasma?

"No I didn't buy the bloody plasma!"

Bloody -- plasma. Get it?

So, this arrogant corporate conglomerate employee came out of the store and inquired as to what I was doing shooting in front of their store, I didn't have permission to include their store in my shot, etcetcetc. I ignored her and got the shot. Then she started ranting about their proprietary logos and stuff, and her attitude sort of caused me to lose my cool. Normally I'm polite to people, but her I-Am-Superior-to-You-Because-I-Work-In-KorporateAmerika attitude p***ed me off big time.

Bill, even though this is completely off topic, I thought I'd follow up on your message. A few years back I made a doco series about a group of Apple computer resellers. They were merging their 35 stores in order to form a big company which would then list on the Australian Stock Exchange. It all ended very badly for the resellers, and there was great fear and anger on the part of Apple that Apple would come out looking bad. Naturally I had a legitimate reason to depict the Apple logos throughout the series.

The advice my lawyers gave me, was that the 'depiction' of a logo or trademarked image was legitimate because we weren't attempting to use the Apple logo or artwork to promote another business. We weren't suggesting by the depiction that we were an Apple-affiliated company, or that Apple endorsed us, and so on. Of course, we weren't defaming Apple either. The series went to air with all of the various company logos depicted throughout.

I certainly know what it's like to have a big multi-national breathing down your neck.

Keep up the good fight.

Nigel

So, er, Jeremy... didja buy the plasma?

"No I didn't buy the bloody plasma!"

Bloody -- plasma. Get it?

Hehe - actually my motivation is not to get something physically out of this scenario, what I would love to see is a greater awareness of consumers (especially the more technologically educated ones like the great people who visit these forums) and a better training and selection process for the management members who are "climbing the ranks". I don't want the individual fired, thats not my intention to see someone on the street, just a lesson deeply learnt that the consumer HAS got a voice and MUST be heard!

As a follow-up to the story - I am receiving a personal visit tommorrow from one of there senior management members so we'll see what the outcome will be.

I'll keep you guys posted

Cheers

It's so sad to hear such 'horror' stories. It's even sadder that the corporate attitudes described are borne out of fear - the fear of losing something; whether it's money, respect, corporate edge or reputation... the result is the same.

i.e. Honest, thinking people decide to just walk away...

Unfortunately, by walking away honest people give these morons the impression that any resistance to their sanctimonious, supercilious and dictatorial misconceptions has been eliminated, and they have free license to then treat everyone with equal disdain.

It'd be nice to think that these pieces of human efluent will just simply go broke due to their appaling behaviour... but the truth is they only seem to profit more.

On the other hand....

I was fortunate enough to find a small electronics retailer of the Sharp Aquos LCD HDTV that I was interested in, and he was more than pleased to let me hitch my HD-10u and FX-1e up to it for testing. Not only did I get to see what I needed to see prior to deciding to purchase, but other browsing 'potential customers' were attracted by what was going on.

The store owner was very happy to let me answer questions about what was going on as he realised the value to his business of people seeing exactly what a HDTV could do when set up and used with supplemental HD quality gear.

In certain circumstances, small businesses are definitely superior to large corporate outlets for these more 'exotic' hardware purchases. Large corporations cater to the mind-numbed herd, so thinking individuals are aberations they just can't - and won't tolerate.

Bottom line: purchase as much as you can from smaller personalised businesses.

Bottom line: purchase as much as you can from smaller personalised businesses.

Steve - I wish it were that simple. The sad matter of fact is that in SA, this is the first monitor I have seen readily available (other stores say "waiting for stock sometime in the future") and the first to truly support 1080i - sad but true - and what makes it even sadder is that this store group are the only ones selling this monitor which makes it even more aggravating.

I, like you, also prefer the smaller retailer for a very simple reason, your needs are better served by the smaller guy purely because he takes an INTEREST in what you are after and customer service levels increases 10 fold.

Cheers

Of course you were right about the loss in vertical resolution when shooting at 1/25 sec shutter and slower. I was just too ignorant too see it in my own experiments.

What fooled me most was that I couldn't see pixel jaggedness; alternating pixel lines weren't identical, which I thought they would be if field doubling was used. Instead the cam does bilinear sampling to recreate the dropped field from the kept one. A thrown away odd line is recreated from averageing between two adjacent even lines. This is of course still half resolution, but smooths the image out, and if I had studied the effect on a proper monitor it is obviously a reduction in vertical resolution. I was too obsessed with finding aliasing in blown-up snaps, which are never there due to the smoothing out.

Thanks for your input Boyd, youre always a helpful guy. :-)

Slightly off topic, but just a strange coincedence perhaps, but we have a guy working in our organization named Tony Wilson. Also an Aussie, and also from Sydney.

Any relation perhaps?

James