EDIT July 2020: When I wrote this, I was tired. I had been working extra hard. Too hard actually. And I felt my efforts didn’t pay off. So I quit. I wasn’t dealing well with my frustration and burnout. I went away from Facebook for a year and significantly reduced my YouTube content. Life changed after a while and I found new inspiration to continue.
Hi, my name is Tito Ferradans, and today I’m here to say I’m done.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but I am really done. I thank all of you who engaged with me in this journey of teaching and learning, it’s been a blast, but it’s time for me to move on.
If you don’t want to bother with the rest of this post but still want to ask me questions: fill the form and make a donation. I still have answers, but they aren’t for free. I already put enough knowledge out there for free.
How it started
I’ve been talking about anamorphics for a while. The channel is almost four years old, the Portuguese version of Anamorphic on a Budget is six years old and the English translation is five. When I started this there were no SLR Magic anamorphics, there were no single focus solutions, there was only the EOSHD forum and a lot of hunting for information. When I became an admin of the Anamorphic Shooters facebook group it had little over a thousand members.
Look at where we are now. Atlas lenses are out there for a fraction of the price of other cine anamorphics, most adapters tripled or even quadrupled in price on eBay, anything can be turned single focus, the facebook group has more than ten thousand people in it and my channel is about to reach ten thousand subscribers. I get dozens of messages asking about lenses every month and I reply to all of them. Lately I’ve been encouraging people to make financial contributions, but I never held back information in exchange for payment.
I’m a strong believer that education is key for building a better world and sharing knowledge definitely fits in that category. On the other hand – I mentioned this before – making a living out of this has always been a hell of a challenge. For the previous three years, I wasn’t allowed to work in Canada – permits and such – so I took this project as my way to make ends meet.
Time to start working
The situation changed in October of 2017 when I finally became a Permanent Resident. This allowed me to work full time without worrying about being kicked out of the country. I didn’t go to film school three times to work on anything other than film, so that’s what I did. That’s what I’ve been doing. One could say I’m familiar with a camera.
If you’re into film, this is no surprise: film eats away all of your time. You’re either coming up with your own projects or toiling away, 12+ hours a day, on someone else’s film. I think I mentioned this before, shooting tests for the channel got me feeling stuck in a loop. It was like I was filming the same thing over and over again. It got to a point where I know what to expect from a scope by just looking at it. There was no surprise, no excitement. No more “wow”.
On that feeling I managed to add a few more mods to the facebook group and organize the wrapping process for the channel, Patreon and so on. You’ll be seeing a lot less of me in the near future. I’m quitting facebook altogether and switching gears on my career plans. I’m gonna put to use everything I learned making these videos and focus on shooting anamorphic projects – but not so much on teaching all there is to know about these lenses.
This is frustration and burnout
There’s also a “tiredness” factor. It’s four years of answering the same questions. “How wide can you go?”, “Which lens should I buy?”, “What lens works with my setup?”, “What is a good price for this lens?”. And I answered them all. All the times they came up. For free. But not anymore. If you’re a part of the Anamorphic Shooters group, you might’ve noticed my answers have been a bit harsher. I’m tired of all the gear-obsessing, camera-buying, pixel-peeping and hand-holding-while-I-break-it-to-you.
I don’t think I’m in a place of contributing to the community as positively as I used to. Talking about complicated things that beginners won’t understand drains me – and not always have the ultimate answer. I want friends from whom I can learn new tricks. Not one-message strangers but friends I talk about things other than gear. I’m tired of feeling like the dad of the anamorphic community.
I’m Tito Ferradans and I won’t be back next week. See you around, and thanks for hanging out. It was a blast. Let’s make something awesome. I’ll still be writing and making occasional videos (there’s a few left pending I’d love to finish), so I’m not 100% gone, but simply saying “I want to shoot anamorphic on a budget” doesn’t summon me anymore. Thank you.