[Bill Davis]

HUGE variation in this by region, city, class of equipment, etc.

Last time I used one from a rental house I think I paid in the range of $200-$300 for the hardware and something similar for the operator. But that says NOTHING about the type of jib or the skill level of the op – nor does it address package deals available from an owner/operator.

So your mileage IS going to vary greatly.

Best advice it to call rental houses in your area. That’s what they do and they know all the qualified operators as well.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Interesting story.

The art director and the client both wanted everything shot with an “organic” feel, so I was thinking initially that I’d do most of the shooting with an elaborate Zacuto hand held rails system we had in the field. However, after looking at the first results, the decision was made that with the heavy lenses and settings everyone preferred, we needed MORE stability in the shots. We did about half the shots (most of the moving ones) on a CamTram. It’s 100mm bowl let us switch between that and a Sachtler Caddy Tripod easiily. In our beach locations, we used just a set of simple Bogen Legs for the 5d.

One reason for the mildly “jerky” look is that virtually nothing was scripted and none of the talent was professional. We set out to simply document “slice of life” moments as they came up. The specific father and son shots you mention feature the art director and his son and a good friend of theirs who is playing the wife. (real wife had to work.)

The “star” spot for the client, (first one they wanted to run) is the :15 “Diego’s Apple” spot – and that was ENTIRELY a fluke. Nothing planned. I just saw Diego eating the apple, as as a snap decision,directed the two adults to join him and walk out – and his initial look at the camera – as well as his interim “look back” – neither of which was planned – charmed the pants off the whole client group. In fact, notice that two guys wandered right into the background of that first snap take that everyone loved for the beautiful, if unplanned real shot of Diego – so I had to garbage matte blur the background guys out since I didn’t have releases for them.

The :30 “family” spot, was also a couple of quick takes in between other setups.

That’s the freedom of DSLR shooting, you can get away with minimal setup and lighting and be REACTIVE rather than totally planned.

Yes, the spots are essentially rougher than perfectly planned commercials. Then again, we got 11 15’s and one “30” approved from 4 days of shooting, and so post shoot, instead of the clients debating the merits of one spot, they’re trying to figure out how to pick from 11 that they like. THAT’s a happy client.

This approach is NOT something I’d necessarily recommend for other projects. It requires a simple, clear creative idea (that the agency deserves ALL the credit for generating and getting the client so sign off on!) But that freedom to go out and simply see what develops in the real world rather than trying to shoot storyboards is a GREAT alternative to a crew of 25, a burn rate of $10,000 an hour in talent and location fees and all the stress of attempting to achieve a slice of perfection.

I’m all for that fully planned approach when the economics of the spot conform to that. But for a non-profit with a tight budget, that’s not an efficient approach. I’m jazzed at what the 5d let us do on these. And the client is deliriously happy as well. So much so that they’re bringing me back in two weeks to shoot another project. THAT is what it’s all about in this business.

Horses for courses. And used thoughtfully, for what it’s good for, the DSLR is one fabulous quick pony.

For what it’s worth.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Here we go again.

We keep telling anyone and everyone who owns a spiffy video camera that it’s NOT the camera that makes a great video – it’s the experience and talent of the person USING the camera.

Make-up is EXACTLY the same thing.

If all you want is inexpertly applied shine busting, feel free to do it yourself. If, on the other hand, you want your MAKEUP to have the same professional results as you expect your clients to pay for their video results – then PAY for an experienced MUA. Period.

You spend money, you can get someone who can clear skin, un-hollow tired eyes, and — in a medium that will expose them to dozens, hundreds, or maybe even THOUSANDS of people over months or even years — elevate their appearance from OK to “WOW, you looked just GREAT in that video”

You don’t see the worth in that, fine. Buy yourself some powder and have at it. Just don’t complain when the next video client tells you that their brother-in-law with his new handycam can do YOUR job as well as you. The thinking is precisely the same.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

John,

I don’t argue with your assertion about “complete broadcast devices” in any way, shape or form. My point was the the very NATURE of “broadcast” is undergoing a MASSIVE change. My recent experiences delivering work to major west coast TV stations was SHOCKING at best.

The HUGE tectonic change is that local TV stations – including major network affiliates – appear to be a rapidly DYING breed. The stations no longer have “direct to transmitter” links. Rather, they are assembling their programming from internet data streams that are delivered by the exact same kind of internet connections that I have in my home. (in other words, the data that I functionally upload from my home studio via simple COX broadband is PERFECTLY acceptable for national HD programming.

The point is NOT that the DSLR is in any way “better” than any other camera. The astonishment is that ANY $2500 device is PERFECTLY capable of producing to the FULL standards of today’s American HD broadcast programming.

Paying $16,000 + for a camera with better capabilities is an individual business related choice. And I’ll defend it as well as anyone. I know the major benefits of professional tools in the hands of professionals.

But that doesn’t preclude the fact that for the entire history of broadcasting, the price of admission was VERY high on the production end. Today, it’s TRIVIAL.

My recent DSLR work for the San Diego Blood Bank formed not just the basis for their four currently running commercials- but high-rez still captures from that same footage formed the basis for their website revamps, and the simple equipment workflow (along with excellent agency coordination, writing and teamwork) let us get NINE airable spots out of a 3 day location shoot – all of them distinct and different. Judge for yourself. (sandiegobloodbank.org has the first FOUR of 8-9 spots we just produced online for public viewing.)

All I’m saying is that what USED to be the required gear to conform to “HD broadcast standards” even six MONTHS ago – which REQUIRED the investment of tens of thousands of dollars in gear has devolved into requiring equipment that can be purchased with essentially pocket change.

This does NOT speak to the WORK QUALITY of needing to know how to write, light, shoot, edit, and even BUY MEDIA – none of that has changed at all and the difference between professional and amateur work will, forever in my opinion, be evident in the work you produce.

But the pressure on equipment is VERY MUCH ON and the DSLR thing was the heaviest weight we’ve seen so far in a downward direction.

Less than a year ago, everyone below the broadcast level was looking for Panasonic P2 shooters. Today, that’s TOTALLY shifted to DSLR shooters. And the broadcast work is FOLLOWING that curve – for better or worse.

That’s the market speaking. Loudly.

For what it’s worth.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

He he.

Maybe they’ll replace that front-facing camera with a retina scanner then we can edit by just LOOKING at the proper IN point – and mumbling CUT – LOOKING at the proper OUT point – CUT – and then LOOKING at the footage to be removed and mumble DELETE CLOSE GAP.

We could all learn to edit while simultaneously resting in BED!

I’m in.

Progress, I tell you!

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

You should be able to set a custom bit rate directly in FCP using the Quicktime Conversion Output settings.

If you want a more automated process check out Telestream Episode – the $500 version will do this and also once you get it set to taste – you can save everything as a preferred drag and drop workflow.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

If you have Final Cut Pro you HAVE ProRes. It’s the apple codec that the FCP high def workflow is currently built around.

You should be able to import the T2i native H-264 card files into FCP and re-encode them there.

Try the log and transfer function in FCP and see if the entire CARD will show up in an attached USB card reader. If so, log and transfer will do the re-encode automatically during ingest.

Good luck.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

I just went through the SAME run-around with a west coast broadcaster.

In the end I called one of the the stations in the time buy and asked for the “chief engineer” – what I actually got was the station in-house production guy because (as he confessed) they had SHUT DOWN master control and are currently serving all their content out of Atlanta!

Anyway he walked me through the production settings he uses directly in Final Cut Pro to output the STATIONS promo work (which are NOTHING like the published standards, btw) and that was that.

The spots (15 sec HD broadcast ads) went from about 330 megs down to about 23 megs each – and are looking FABULOUS on the air.

Then to my surprise with the second flight of spots – I did ALL the spots with those same settings and not a SINGLE station rejected them.

YMMV. This worked LAST week – no guarantees that it will work NEXT week.

The best strategy is to call someone beyond the media buyer and/or sales people and get to someone who does the station’s in-house work and ask THEM what they REALLY need.

You might be surprised.

I sure was.

“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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

I truly WISH I could re-buy into the Sony vision which powered the first 15 years of my career. But I’m afraid they’ve lost me. This camera would have set up Sony for another decade of my business if it had come out in 2002. But a $16,000 video device with DSLR lens capabilities arriving in an era with you have literally THOUSANDS of folks already shooting 5dMkii’s is a boat missed.

Which is truly sad. It’s likely a great camera. And I’m sure it will be VERY popular in the last years of the traditional broadcast business model (what’s left of it) but I’m truly afraid the ship has sailed.

I’m partially convinced of that because I just delivered a flight of 4 high-def commercials shot on the 5d to various stations including major network affiliate on the west coast a few weeks ago via the internet.

After working for DAYS on making sense out of all the stations various written encoding standards, I finally reached a guy who told me to IGNORE all the published standards and instead simply set me FCP HD output files to the same settings he was using for in-house work. EVEN THE STATIONS ARENT ENCODING THEIR OWN WORK WITH THEIR OWN PUBLISHED STANDARDS! THEN the guy confessed that he wasn’t even an engineer. The station had stripped out Master Control months ago and all the broadcast work was now being served from Atlanta. So my files would just be forwarded via internet to them for re-deployment back to the broadcast city.

Essentially, my ProRes output stuff got re-sampled down from 330meg files down to about 23meg files using his output settings – directly out of FCP (making my investment late last year in Episode seem pretty foolish) but looked GORGEOUS on the air.

The whole broadcast industry is being gutted and re-invented under our very feet.

So my advice is to hold on and don’t invest any more than you MUST in gear. Because in the real world, they’re using about 10% of the actual data that even a DSLR generates for High Def broadcast thanks to the new compression standards.

Sheesh – technology is SUCH a rocket ship right now.

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’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Like everyone else here indicates, there’s NOTHING wrong with using what you can afford in your early days. I remember hauling my fluorescent shop lights on stands into stores back in my early days.

Just understand that what ALL of these do is simply vomit a LOT of generic lumins in a general direction. It’s fine for brining up the overall light level and even filling in eye-socket shadows that can come from overhead fluorescent lighting in stores. PLUS if you can populate your shop lights with EXACTLY the same kind of tubes that light the rest of the store – you won’t have ANY color temp issues.

HOWEVER. All of this has as LITTLE to do with actual movie or quality video lighting as house painting has to do with fine art. Both shop lights and video lights put out visible radiation. But while there’s craft (and a LOT of hard work) involved in painting a house and nobody would or should expect that the time someone spends painting houses in ANY way gets them prepared to paint a person’s portrait. If you aspire to be a portrait painter, you MUST get the proper brushes and canvas and start learning portrait techniques. Time spent doing ANYTHING else is time NOT progressing toward your goal.

And in video lighting, time spent with shop lights and rigging work-arounds might be fun, can certainly can be financially necessary – but it simply doesn’t start your REAL skill development.

Just so you understand.

“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’Conner