[Bill Davis]

If I could just note…

“As close as possible” is the operating term here.

Understand that unless your shooting something with relatively flat “high key” lighting, there’s an excellent chance that even the same cameras, set up the same way, will produce different (sometimes VERY different) pictures.

Think about it like this.

Lets say you’re videotaping a band on stage.

A camera at the FOH position will likely see a well lit array of faces against whatever background the set designer specified. Move that camera to the stage right wings and it’s likely shooting across the stage into the darkened wings stage left.

Not only will the background be different, but the light hitting the faces of the performers from the front will appear to be SIDELIGHTS to a camera in the stage right wings. And the back half of all the faces might be in shadow.

So everything about those two shots, the exposure, the color balance, the distance from object to camera will be different. So it might be VERY difficult to match those two shots.

If I was shading the cameras, I might choose to brighten the wing camera to add some detail to the large amounts of shadow highlights in that shot, but that would make that signal stronger than the front stage shot. Then 10 seconds later, that camera OP might decide to swing to the shiny cymbals and need to iris down to compensate.

Just saying that sometimes, no matter what you do, you can’t expect two camera shots to stay matched precisely. You’ve got to treat them as individual signal sources depending on what you see on the monitors and make decisions on what’s the best compromise.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

I’m surprised that nobody has noted the real WHY reality shows dominate TV so much these days.

They’re incredibly CHEAP to produce compared to scripted drama.

I’m sure at some point somebody said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could make ourselves a whole hour of TV without paying any of those pesky writers or talent?”

Heck, they did it back in the early days of “What’s my Line?” So let’s re-configure TV as a place where original ideas and scripts aren’t important and nobody will realize that we’re feeding them recycled 1950’s game shows if we make the LIGHTING really cool! (DMX free “Millionaire”? I don’t think so!)

Then we’ll replace actors with “edgy” real people who aren’t afraid to make asses of themselves on national TV. And an industry was re-invented.

I do agree with another poster who noted that at least some of the reality shows like Project Runway, the Cooking Contests, the “decorator” shows, and the “mechanic” shows at least elevate people who have some actual talent for creating stuff. And at least that’s a decent role model for the nation’s youngsters.

Seeing people on TV who actually do productive work has been missing since the Ward Cleaver phantom job era.

[Bill Davis]

Before you buy the Avenger stands, check out the Bogen “Stacker” stands.

It’s a unique design where each stand folds flat and nests into others. You can typically get 3 of these into a little more than the space of a single traditional stand.

They reach to 7′ and are very well designed and well built, tho the thumb actuated friction collets are such that they’re not appropriate for heavy fixtures and if you want to use them with softboxes, you’ll generally need to rig some form of sandbag or they’ll tip.

For anything lightweight like a Tota, V-Light, Lowel Pro, or Arri 150, however, they’re PERFECT.

I’ve been using them for more than 4 years and they’re my “go to” stands for light traveling.

[Bill Davis]

I agree, there’s a LOT right with this.

My advice is a bit different, tho.

This is NOT a documentary. It’s essentially a sales video. As such, you have two audiences you have to please. The first is the client. It’s got to sell stuff. The second is the audience. They’re giving you their time to watch this. Respect that time.

The talent (who is knowledgeable and looks great on camera) sometimes has a speaking style that gets in both his and the audience’s way. He starts, hesitates, changes course, digresses, and clarifies as he speaks. From a purely informational point of view, the viewer has to weed out a lot of extraneous stuff to get to what he’s saying.

Since, again, this is NOT a documentary – and his sole purpose is to tell his story about the product. I believe it’s fair for you to help him do that as clearly as possible.

So I’d go in and RUTHLESSLY edit his speech for maximum coherence. Not change anything, just extract all the non-essential miscues where possible. If his recording is something like. “um – ah – well we… the thing is, it’s not essential…but the Gizmo VX 5000 lasted when all the other gear got trashed.” underestand that you DON’T NEED to keep all of that. A better edit is simply “the Shimano VX500 lasted when all the other gears got trashed.”

You’ve got lots of nice b-roll to cover the resulting jump cuts.

Bottom line: Respect your audiences time.

As the editor, it’s your JOB to cut out the distractions and help your audience get to the core of the message.

For what it’s worth.

[Bill Davis]

Just to add a note on the green “spikeyness” of fluors – I’ve been testing Richard’s Cool Lights Studio Fluorescent fixtures in my studio and I have to say that I’ve seen NONE of the green spike problems that were associated with old style fluors.

I even took them out on a field shoot for a large retailer, and while the studio rigs are a bit fragile for traveling (probably why he also makes them in a coated fiberboard configuration like Kino-flos for field work!) the light itself is great.

I’m working with the 3200k lamps since my client has re-lamped their 1000+ stores for maximum energy efficiency using industrial overhead fluorescent fixtures that put out 3100 kelvin according to my camera.

The extra benefit is that I still get to use my tungsten Arri kits for spot fill and problem solving.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

Sounds like the ideal circumstance for a RedWing boom w/ 48″ extension.

If that’s not enough, a Matthews MiniMax might give you more reach – but less payload.

If those don’t cut it, you’ve got to rig a “menace arm.” Search that term and it’ll take you to a cool YouTube video that will likely cause you to consider running out to buy more production insurance.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Helge,

It might be helpful to note that interlaced shooting actually IMPROVES the temporal resolution of a piece of video. The perceived frame rate doubles if you can take two “snapshots” of an object in motion over the same period of time – as in interlacing 60 “half-resolution” frames over the time period that would otherwise be used to record 30 progressive frames.

Given the larger raster of 1080 and the motion smoothing effect of interlaced shooting – 1080i becomes a great choice for objects in motion.

720p would be better if, for instance, you wanted to pull still frames off static or slow moving video. Then the temporal resolution wouldn’t help you, but the higher density progressive raster would.

Hope that helps.

[Bill Davis]

Okay, first the ground rules.

I fully expect you to send me a couple of financial points off the top as your “consultant” should my sterling advice below prove fruitful here…

What you do is you tell the agency that you’re going to give them a HUGE deal. Then keeping your face totally straight, inform them that for decades, the traditional “rule of thumb” for quoting corporate videos has been around $1000 per finished minute.

So that puts the nominal value of this particular 600 hour job at right around $36 MILLION BUCKS. (Keep that straight face, it’s crucial here)

Remember, don’t crack a smile and DON’T laugh – in the arena of government accounting, this is what’s commonly known as “petty cash.”

Then tell them you’re going to offer them your SPECIAL GOVERNMENT RATE of 50% off.

A simple $18 Million.

Remember this client is the GOVERNMENT. A billing of a mere $18 Mil will probably land on the desk of some second assistant of the junior aid to the undersecretary of something or other – and chances are that if you get lucky and it arrives on the friday of a 3 day weekend, they might just sign it and forget about it.

Be sure to do a great job. The government deserves our best efforts.

And let me know when I can expect my consultant fee.

You could do that, or you could do what others have noted here and SCHOOL the client that out of that 600 hours of purported training, there really should be less than 100 hours of ACTUAL content. The rest will be a mess of intro, audience bonding stories,exercises, lunch, personal relief breaks, re-hashing, point reinforcement, digression for storytelling, and perhaps some Q&A.

They need to understand that simply RECORDING a live training situation and then forcing others to watch it in anything like real time is just about the WORST use of video technology that is imaginable.

In order to turn 600 hours of anything into even 100 hours of watchable content, I’d suspect you’ll be spending more like 6000 hours. Given a 40 hour editing week, you’re looking at this project sucking away 150 man/weeks of effort. So if you’re tempted to price it at something that SOUNDS lucrative, say, A HUNDRED GRAND! the project will actually yield about $16 an hour – or about what that 18 year old down the street is paid for working at Home Depot once you factor in the costs of taxes and benefits.

This kind of job is the kind where you have to be very, very, VERY careful. Not just about making a profit, but about creating a program that is boring and ineffective and will suck away countless of hundreds of human hours in wasted time spent slogging through an ill-conceived and less than effective government required training regimen.

Big job. Big Responsibility.

But it sounds like you have some experience, so I’m going to believe that you can do this and do it well. Just make sure that after those two years of man/effort – you have a chance to feel as good about the gig as you did going in.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Wow, you’re brave.

This is going to be VERY difficult to pull off IMO.

First off, most flashlights put out a VERY uneven light. The typical flashlight reflector design puts out a center hot spot with voids nearby. An LED model might be better, but again, depending on the reflector design, you might have similar problems. You could diffuse the flashlight with some frost or tough spun, but then you’d get a GLOW, rather than a recognizable flashlight look.

But the pattern isn’t the largest issue in my view. That’s the ANGLE you could expect. Flashlights are handheld devices. So if you believe in naturally motivated lighting, virtually everything you shoot would naturally be UPLIT. That puts you in the realm of VERY unflattering light. Conan Obrien “In the year 5000” unflatering. Selling the idea that all your actors need to look ghastly through the whole piece is gonna be a little tough.

Then there’s the issue of shape. Simply pointing a flashlight at a subject creates a very FLAT look. What gives characters and scenes dimension is modeling shape with the judicious addition of side or backlight to a key. A flashlight beam makes a VERY poor backlight since it’s no where near broad enough to outline enough shape to separate anything more than a tight headshot out of the darkness. You typically need a broader source for that.

So solutions?

I’d do two things. First, I’d explore having your characters leave the flashlights behind and see if the script will support characters with those headband mounted camping lights. Right there you raise the light source to eye level and softening these with frost or something similar won’t bother the audience since few people understand how the beam of these look. Right there your characters faces will look a WHOLE lot better.

Next, I’d try to motivate a Coleman style propane lantern into the scenes. Then work really hard with your blocking to keep it behind characters or settings such that it motivates a backlight.

That’s where I”d start at least. As I said, you’ve set yourself a pretty tough task to make people look good and keep the scenes working if all you have are folks carrying flashlights around in the dark.

Some ideas to consider at least.

[Bill Davis]

Rosco and Lee both make gels that combine CTO (color temperature orange) with up to 2 stops of ND (neutral density) in rolls.

Cut one or two sheets to fit the LCD or Plasma where it will hold in place nicely via static cling.

Yeah, the full rolls are expensive. But one will last your entire career.

Good luck.