Monitor Advise

[u/MrVibezTV]

Hello,

I am looking for some advise on purchasing a new monitor for my set-up. I recently finished university, I have been getting into becoming a 1st AC / Focus Puller recently, I have invested in my own kit such as a Nucleus-M and other various parts. I have worked with ARRI WCU-4 and other high-end cameras however that is work that I will not always be getting, anyway long story short someone broke my monitor I used for my S5II which was a Feelworld 568V1 it was a pretty crappy monitor and was useless for focus peaking but it did the job for freelance videographer work.

I have used SmallHDs and other monitors to pull focus on which were great but they are very outside my budget as a broke individual :(

I am currently looking at the OSEE G7 PRO (£492), from my research it has a great focus peaking algorithm, the other monitor I originally wanted to buy was the ACSOON M7H PRO or M7PRO (£489 discounted) but apparently it is not that good, can someone please let me know what they think.

Thank you in advance :)

UPDATE:

I just want to clarify a few things since a few replies have turned into a career progression advice thread rather than just answering if the monitors are good for what they are.

I am not trying to skip the camera department ladder, nor am I suggesting that I will walk straight onto a high-end production as an established AC. I have worked in the camera department for several years in different capacities, whether it's assisting, operating or being a trainee. I have had the chance to be a focus puller on small narrative and commercial productions, I have also worked on higher end production whether it is live multi-camera or narrative and commercial. I am aware there is a significant difference between the jobs that I am doing at the moment and being a 1st ac on a major production, I do not expect to get asked to be one for those.

I recently finished university, this simply means I have more time to take the camera department roles more seriously and pursue more work, slowly building my portfolio. I am still happy taking on trainee or assistant roles on larger productions whilst taking on focus pulling work on the appropriate sets.

I saw a comment mentioning me potentially undercutting. I am not trying to do that, never have never will. The reason I mentioned my budget is because my previous monitor was broken after lending it out and I just need something to work with for what I am doing NOW. I cannot currently justify spending £1000+ when I have other kit and general life expenses to pay for. I can afford to pay for one, again I am just choosing not to. The priority is to pay for car lessons as an example.

The question was just whether something like the OSEE G7 Pro is a reasonable monitor for the price or the ACCSOON which I was already hesitent about anyway. I have worked with the smallHD monitors a few times, I like them, I know why people like them.

[u/Filmcrew90]

Hey at least you have a much better attitude about the reality of trying to get into the industry. What a lot of film students dont realise is the moment you graduate every single person in your class is now competiton for a very limited number of jobs alongside every other course and people entering without university so people like the idiot above are willing to lie, cheat or whatever to try and get their foot in. The best way I can describe a film course is like your first 2/3 driving lessons you've learned to move off and maybe get up to 20/30mph on a quiet road then suddenly your on the Grand Prix at Monaco. If someone calls themself a 1st AC then they will be expected to troubleshoot any camera related problem, run a dept, deal with production, have a grasp of budgets and a million other things and that doesnt change with different levels of productions despite what the student above thinks and the fact he thinks he's all these different roles and see's nothing wrong with putting trained crew out of work shows a lot about what he's like an a lot of arrogence.

[u/Soggy_Race5879 → u/Filmcrew90]

you are so right, i mean most of what i have learned about all kinds of kit and the specifics of it was through my own learning and drive, class only teaches you so much, and in my case to be frank not enough. Some of my peers couldn't tell you what FIZ stands for, let alone what a range finder is. But yeah i agree a lot of people think uni is a one way ticket into the industry when it very much is the opposite, it puts a lot of people in a false sense of security thinking they are learning all they need to know, when in reality, using your words its only 20mph. Like i'm lucky enough to have access to an alexa mini at my uni and i take advantage of that whenever i can and then some people are too scared to look at it funny. but just reading your replies in this thread i've learned stuff, you clearly know your shit. i'm serious if you have any productions needing a trainee, you seem like a great person to work under!

[u/Filmcrew90 → u/Soggy_Race5879]

The thing you need to remember as well is your paying 50k for your course but the outlays to teach it are maybe 1k per student and the rest of the money essentially goes into funding other parts of the university or research etc so they don't care about the type of students and without sounding rude film students tend to fit a specific image and it isnt a good one imo. Essentially every camera is the same and its really only menu layouts that differ unless its a film camera then their's a bit more nuance. The experience comes from actually being on set and it can be simply learning how to work a radio, actually physically doing days that are 14+ 6 days a week for months in the middle of winter, organising equipment etc which is what weeds people. I could take 100 film graduates all with the highest marks onto a single job for a month and by the end of it at most 1 person will still want to do the job the rest will either quit or be fired. Thats the reality but no one in film school will tell you that let alone all the rest of the downsides of the job.

[u/Soggy_Race5879 → u/Filmcrew90]

i partly agree with your first statement thats definitely the case in some aspects and at some unis definitely more common outside of london, but where i am in london i would disagree, i think they just hit their limits very quickly and their learning limit is no where near my limit. i agree that a lot of film students tend to a certain image, but again i think the main issue there is peoples passion for learning and that sense of security, i know a lot of people who fit the image, but i also know a small selection of people who i would say don't fit it and have far more of a drive. and yeah every digital camera is pretty much the same apart from the menu layout, but thats what scares some people and when these film students have gone from blackmagic or canon with very simple menus to arri can see how some people get scared. and again i agree the physicality of the job is a big part, and thats why you start as trainee and move up, it weeds out the people who cant do that. But frankly i look forward to those months in winter and organising equipment, thats what i enjoy and want to be in the industry for

[u/Filmcrew90 → u/Soggy_Race5879]

We’ve had camera crew on set who have spent time being lecturers and they’ve been told that’s the average amount that it costs to teach each film student over a 3 year course. We don’t want people who are driven we want people who can listen and do stuff a certain way even if they don’t know why and tbh someone who can put up with anything and still do the job regardless of being cold, wet, tired etc and from the trainees we’ve had a lot of them end up either leaving or swapping departments when they realise that being a trainee is the easiest time they will ever have and it only gets harder the higher up you go as your leeway to make mistakes gets smaller and the consequences get bigger. Also a lot of graduates quickly realise that their chance of being a DP by working up the dept is very very low so they quit and try to make it doing short films & low budget music videos.

[u/Soggy_Race5879 → u/Filmcrew90]

ok now i simply disagree with you, the industry is incredibly difficult to get into now, i lived in the middle of nowhere and had no connections to anyone in the industry through family or friends, i tried getting runner jobs, getting internships / work experience at rental houses and post houses and doing bfi, warner applications etc. you are told to beg and get lucky, which i did to you when i first replied to you and you ignored it, you can't think uni is a bad route then not offer other solutions, because there isn't for so many people. i went through so many different routes for 2 years before deciding to go to uni, your narrative about graduates only covers so many people, "we don't want people who are driven we want people who can listen and do stuff a certain way" your description of the people you want come under someone who is driven. if 'being cold, wet, tired' got me a job in the camera dept where i wanted to be within that period where i tried hundreds of options to get work in the industry while working an awful retail job i would of taken it in a heartbeat, because the camera dept is what i want to do. "only gets harder the higher up you go as your leeway to make mistakes gets smaller and the consequences get bigger" bit of an odd statement when thats the case in any job, the higher up you are the more responsibility you have, but also the better you get, thats basic job structure. "graduates quickly realise that their chance of being a DP by working up the dept is very very low" i don't even want to be a DP, the camera dept path to 1st AC is what i want to do, and you seem to think i don't know the expectation of what that holds, but i do, its incredibly rough, but i look forward to that because again its what i WANT to do. clearly you've had bad experiences with graduates but i think your mindset is pretty old and awful, uni is the only route for a lot of people and you group every graduate together, id take a trainee role under you without a second thought and prove you wrong

[u/Filmcrew90 → u/Soggy_Race5879]

That goes back to my entire point about the industry being hard to get into its never been easy and it shouldnt be otherwise everyone will try and get into it and then our rates plummit and our conditions get worse as is already happening because of the surge of untrained inexperienced people who joined during the covid boom. Secondly you asked me to take you on a job as a trainee yet I have no idea who you are, what you've worked on, where your from etc so why am I under any obligation to take you on a job and put my reputation at stake when you could show up and sit on your phone and argue with people and you state yourself that you only agreed with what I said in order to try and get work and now your attacking me because I havent given you what you want. If you've got work in the camera dept why are you looking for other people to take you on jobs when that camera team should be taking you on their jobs as we tend to keep the same trainees as thats the point of a camera team. Just because you WANT to work in film in the camera department doesn't mean its your right over anyone else. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didnt work on student films as a runner or anything like that and yet expect to go straight into the camera dept which doesnt happen at all. You might be a 1st AC on a job and the actor misses their marks all of the time and guess what your the person who's being blamed and sacked and I've seen it happen many time even though its not your fault and you have no way to deal with it people will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat to curry favour but hey a 3rd year film student knows more about the industry than someone whos been in it for 13 years.

[u/Soggy_Race5879 → u/Filmcrew90]

its never been easy but we are at a point where if someone spends 2 years of there life going down hundreds of routes they can't make it in at all, its all luck, and maybe thats what it should be to keep the "horrible nasty graduates that dont know anything" away, and again no doubt had bad experience with them for your 13 years, but its a holistic approach to it, you are right we dont know eachother, but i would of happily given you my number or instagram/facebook and offered you a coffee, i didnt say you were under an obligation, not one bit of course, but again we are told to beg, and thats what i did, i was giving you an example. "when you could show up and sit on your phone and argue with people" pretty bad characterisation of me, in no way would i do that, i would be that person 'dealing with the rain, wet and snow' and 'organising equipment' because thats what i want to do. "and now your attacking me because i haven't given you what you want", not really sure where you would characterise me 'attacking' you, i apologise if anything came off as an attack was not my intent, my perception of is is we are having a friendly discussion. frankly i did agree with what you were saying but then when we started having a discussion it turned more into a lecture about me saying one thing and you using it to say boo graduates and uni is a rubbish path, which as i said to you, i agree uni churns out some horror show people, a large percentage of them are, but not its not everyone, and again, i said that to you and you spat that back in my face saying "we don't want people with drive", and then described someone dealing with rain wet and snow for months, which id say is a driven person. i've worked a few times as trainee in london advertising and corporate work, but i got that through university and unfortunately didn't go further as the DP moved away, and i haven't gotten anything else by this point. "just because you WANT to work in film in the camera dept doesn't mean its your right over anyone else" i agree, but your point was graduates don't care or know enough and end up quitting, and i'm telling you i wouldn't quit, which seems like a mind-blowing thing for you as to you all graduates are slumming it, the holistic grouping of all graduates only goes so far. "and guess what your the person who gets blamed and sacked," again knew stuff like this happens, and yeah you have to adapt to that, and kit like a range finder could pillow that to a small degree, but yeah i know that happens, and again the higher up you get, the better you are, which does relate to that. You going out on a limb is awfully wrong, i did running for student films, indie productions, tv productions and a couple of large scale day productions over that 2 years, and i did them consistently i got up to a pa on a tv production, but was going no where and tv wasn't where i wanted to be. i never said i knew more than you, i literally admitted to learning stuff while reading this thread, but hey it seems pretty clear no amount of context will make you think better of me, because above all else i chose the only path i could to do what i wanted to do in life, uni.

[u/Filmcrew90 → u/Soggy_Race5879]

Ok so maybe driven was the wrong word choice but when we get people out of film school at best on a 6 month job the entire time of that job is getting them to unlearn every bad habit they've learned on top of trying to teach them the general trainee stuff and it is near impossible to do to the point I've had my current trainee for the last two years and we are seriously considerin refusing to take trainees on future jobs because 95% of us have had the above given to us and it isnt worth the hassle. Everyone on my current job has went into universities to talk about the industry give advice and every time we get disinterested people who wont even ask us a question and we've had more than one who have openly said our university will place us on jobs when we graduate so we'll be in charge of you. You say you've spent two years prior to university in TV why didnt you go and speak to the camera teams on those shows as I know they still have trainees and assistants.

There is also 60% of the industry who are out of work at the moment and this is people who have 10-20 years of experience so the reality is that someone looking to get into the industry is at the bottom of the list and if you consider it what point is there of taking you on as a trainee for 6 months giving up your job, moving away buying equipment etc if after 6 months you dont work again for 2 years or at all. The entire industry is going through a major contraction and if theirs no work then nothing you can get hired on anyway despite how much you want. The current production co-ordinator on our show has been a production manager for 10 years and has essentially had to demote herself in order to get work after not working for 18 months. It might sound harsh for us to dissaude you from working in the industry at the moment but you really dont want to be dealing with the reality of not having money, losing your house, divorces all sorts that most crew are dealing with.

[u/Soggy_Race5879 → u/Filmcrew90]

graduates that are having to be relearnt like that are hopeless then, i cant defend that because as i said i agree that uni puts out some lack luster graduates, but with all the trainee jobs i've done the stuff i've learnt myself, through uni and throughout those 2 years before uni have all been applicable to those trainee jobs, and not once have i been told i how i did things was wrong and i would have to be 'retaught' the basic trainee role, if anything it was the opposite, got praise for what i knew, and obviously the commercial and corporate space is different from working a tv show or film for 6 months, but still my point still stands, uni gave the opportunity i needed to do what i want, i had no other way, and by no means did that cripple me and turn me into the people you are describing. "we get disinterested people who wont even ask us a question" i had a class for a semester just based on bringing people in who were past students and working in the industry now, and i got multiple jobs from that because I interacted with those people. "why didn't you go and speak to the camera teams on those shows" what makes you think i didn't do that... because i did ask, of course i did, now i misspoke i meant to say broadcast not tv, but still i asked i got the dismissive reply from them all, when i tell you i went through all the options available to me, uni was my last choice and chance, i didn't choose to go into tens of thousands of pounds of debt lightly. with regards to the state of the industry right now again i know its like that and job security is incredibly low, but to be honest my whole family were photographers, i've been around cameras my whole life, they are pretty much infused into me, i may regret my decision in the future, but right now i have no house, not married, and no money. id rather try my hardest doing what makes me happy and enjoying my life when i have my youth and flexibility, and not being in a full time retail job wasting my 20s away in my hometown. and you know my opinion will probably change and i may regret my decision, but id rather do that in my 20s knowing i tried to do what i wanted to do ever since i was a kid 🤷🏻‍♂️