[Bill Davis]

[Craig Seeman] “And that’s when I go back to my tungsten lights. I don’t see any “reasonable” cost/control replacement for these yet.
“

I completely agree, Craig.

I can make a basic limited area interview scene look good with my LED kit.

If I have my Arri kit- my grip bag, and access to stingers and dependable power – I can usually make the same scene much, much better than just “good.”

With the hassle of schlepping lights and grip on a plane cross country to NYC (don’t even mention the insane cost of the overweight baggage these days!) an all LED kit is a great tool.

It’s just not a particularly good tool if it’s your ONLY tool.

That’s my position in a nutshell.

David (presuming you’re reading this)

This is precisely why I own tungsten, LED and Fluorescent lights.

Each has their place and something they do better than the alternatives.

Tungsten is extremely controllable and lets you “paint” with your light – but it’s heavy, sucks power, and generates tons of heat for the light.

Fluorescent is flattering for most human faces without the hassle of a bag over a tungsten fixture and the extra power needed to get the same light through the diffusion – drinks power more politely then tungsten, and you can swap out daylight or tungsten equivalent tubes for different locations.

LED sips hardly ANY power compared to the competition. And the light output per watt efficiency is nothing short of amazing. But it’s WAY more difficult to control than tungsten, can be finicky as to spectrum, and takes quite a bit of getting used to, in my experience since you have to toss out most of your grip and control experience since the light generation is so totally different.

And that final one is the big issue.

If you buy nothing but LED – then you’ll never LEARN to use the more traditional tools like tungsten fresnels with barn doors or cookies to paint with your lights. So when the new generation of LED fresnels finally gets affordable, you’ll likely have a “knowledge defect” to overcome simply because you’ve never practiced with tools that let you get those kind of results.

My thinking anyway.

YMMV.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Aren’t all the “transitions” in X just constructs built in Motion code?

As such, if you don’t like what they do – can’t you just go into Motion and re-craft them work precisely the way you prefer?

All the titling works that way – are the transitions any different?

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Here’s the deal overall…

An “all led” kit makes perfect sense if the job is suited to it. The last time I had to do interviews in NYC – that’s exactly what I took with me. And I got fine interviews with it.

Why?

Because the subject was a single person (limited area to light) the location was contained (hotel room not a factory floor) and the power efficiency of LEDs meant that I could go “all battery” and eliminate packing power cords – which typically weigh more than batteries and are (usually) a much bigger hassle to travel with.

If that’s what you do – hotel room interviews – LEDs are great. And you can use them as key, background and rim (hair lights) perfectly well. Add a pop up bounce and you can do an interview in a contained space with no problem.

The problem comes up when you’re not doing a single person interview – and you’re not in a small hotel room – and you’re not shooting constrained to working with battery power.

Then you need a totally different array of tools.

If you want to control light, fresnels with barn doors, ellipsoidal with pattern projectors, and similar tools will do a vastly better job than any LED array of helping you create more visually interesting backgrounds.

And if you need to brighten a big area like a warehouse interior or a street exterior – then LEDs are nearly useless.

An all LED kit is like having a box of crayons with which to do art – and when you open the crayon box, all you have is a dozen shades of red.

Can a great artist do something amazing with that? You bet. But most artists like having a wider array of colors to work with.

Make sense?

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “What features would you want to see on the 2012 Mac Pro?
“

I want Apple to surprise me. Every other manufacturer on the planet starts from what the new “generation” of components (busses, processors, drives, etc) do – then simply boxes them up with different name badges, case designs, and maybe an eye to the failure rating of the particular batch of parts they pick out to use.

That’s efficient but vastly boring. It’s a nearly total “component assembly” design process. It’s how dishwashers, stereos, and burgers are all produced today – largely built on the old-fashioned chinese restaurant model of business (pick one from column A, one from column B, etc.)

Apple does this at some level as well – but at least they put some creative energy into looking at the places where they might be able to specify better tolerances and apply more exacting problem solving skills around the board level similarities.

Apple is unique since they, more than most, invent, spec, and manufacturer MORE of their own solutions in more areas than most companies. So they have a chance to innovate rather than exclusively increment their machines.

So that’s what I want them to do. Go big. Go bold. Take chances.

Piss people off if you must. But lead by bold example. Just never “go small” -there’s a zillion other companies ready willing and able to do that.

[Walter Soyka] “Does Thunderbolt let you consider an iMac or even a MacBook Pro instead of a Mac Pro for your work?
“

Thunderbolt has the promise to change everything. If we ever get to TB level 3 (all optical) – with 100 times the throughput of current buss speeds – then everything changes. Anything hung on the TB chain acts as if it’s bolted directly to the processor. So the requirement for one box to hold everything disappears.

The computer becomes the LAN – and vice versa.

Till then, we struggle along watching the incremental changes that lead the way to the big disruptive ones.

My view, anyway.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Craig Seeman] “Again the issue is control. Cool Lights seem to have 2 way barn doors with an egg crate option. Flolights seem to have 4 way barn doors with a defuser option.
“

Craig,

Yes, the barn doors for the Cool Lights are 2-way – but I’d caution you not to think of cutting any LED fixture via barn doors as similar to cutting either an open face or fresnel instrument.

Same with egg crates.

These wonderful tools were designed for the way light was generated in the tungsten era. And while they do have some effect with LED units, they definitely DO NOT work the same.

Each LED lamp is essentially a tiny spotlight. So “cutting” the beam with a solid surface such as a barn door doesn’t actually cause the edge of the light beam to be cut off. All you’re doing is masking rows of LEDs. The row next to the one you’ve blocked still emits light across the line of the door.

In practice, barn doors on an LED only function to the extent they block the entire array of LEDs. So setting up a “box” around the light will keep spill somewhat contained, but it’s largely an “all or nothing” deal. The moment you allow the light from even one row to be unblocked, you’ll see the output of that row of light emitters across your entire scene and the spread of them will be unrestrained.

That’s fundamentally different from how lights have traditionally worked.

No “flat panel” LED should be thought of as in any way similar to a single source light. So traditional approaches to light control just don’t apply.

We’e starting to see more “pro” LED units coming from companies like Arri, but they use LED arrays to generate light inside a housing that focuses that light through a lens to make them more controllable.

But right now, that much more sophisticated technology is expensive.

So if you want the cost, weight and energy benefits of LED – you have to accept that you’ll have to learn to use them properly.

And that means not thinking of them as “the same” as other types of light sources.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Herb is correct on all counts.

The lesson I took away is that it doesn’t matter so much what *I* think matters. It’s all about what the client thinks matters.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Anecdote signifying nothing really… or possibly everything.

My first serious VO demo reel a hundred years ago. I start by saying “Hi, I’m Bill Davis and I’ve been doing VO work for a few years… then I splice in a light toned spot, a high energy read, and then a really goofy spot where I had to do the voice of a cartoon style chicken (badly) – then a half a dozen other snippets, goofy voices and clips of narration. I think I spent two full days working my butt off to make it as perfect as possible.

Local agency hires me for a series of 12 spots largely off that reel.

We’re doing our third session and there’s a lull while the producer phones the office to check on some copy. Somebody mentions demo reels so I ask – “hey, did you guys hire me because of that great “chicken voice” on my reel”

The producer looks puzzled.

I say “the chicken voice I did for that fast food joint?”

He looks at me and says the following.

We had a stack of about 20 reels. I think yours was the second one we listened to.

I remember you said “Hi, my name’s Bill Davis” – and the client said “he’s okay, now lets get back to work on the copy…”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

You’re making it too difficult.

Set your in and out in the Event Browser.

Hit Command K to bring up the keyword editor.

Type whatever tag (or tags!) you want to apply. Every time you hit return, you’ll see the cute animation as that individual keyword is applied to that range of the source clip – then if you want to append additional keywords, just type a new one and hit return again.

That’s it. You’re done. Command K again to remove the keyword HUD until you need it again.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Cool lights is a great company and they stand behind what they sell. Their stuff represents a good value for a very fair price.

That said, what you’re considering for a “starter: light kit is actually pretty limited.

It’s pretty much a “single person interview” kit.

There’s nothing with punch for large areas. Nothing with an defined edge that you can cut and shape. And nothing that you can control beyond dimming.

Essentially, you’re assembling a light kit that does one thing pretty well. Wash relatively soft light over a limited distance from three directions..

So, the kit you’re talking about will be pretty decent for hotel room or office interviews, (presuming you add some kind of bounce fill and use the 600 for a background light) – but not very flexible for much else.

My 2 cents, anyway.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[David Roth Weiss] “My 2 cents, anyway.”

You’ve spent your 2 cents way too many times Bill.”

Nice to see you’re making points about my arguments and not about me…

oh, wait…

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor