[Leo Ticheli]

I know some people with whom I’d trust my life, but not my VariCam!

I’ve rented my camera only once, to a great guy and a terrific shooter; he treated it with great care and returned it in pristine condition. Even so, I am very reluctant to rent it out again.

In this business, a job can pop up in an eye blink; being without a camera forces you to either rent or do the unthinkable – turn down work.

Perhaps you could consider packaging the camera and yourself as either operator or camera assistant; that way you could be in control and on the spot to say something like, “no, you can’t submerge the camera in the swimming pool or tie it with twine to the hood of a bouncing dune buggy.” This also avoids the almost irresistible temptation some have to explore the depths of the engineering menus requiring a trip to Japan to reset.

Good shooting!

Leo
Director/Cinematographer

Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

Thanks, Wally, that’s very useful information about FCP 4.5.

Keep us posted!

All the best,

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

Panasonic DVCPro HD decks, both in the camera and outboard, always capture at 59.94 all the time; what matters is the frame-rate set on the camera. If your material was shot at 24 fps, it must be non-drop frame.

I’m not sure what you mean by lack of frame accuracy coming out of FCP. How is this revealing itself? Are you simply controlling and recording to the D5?

Just as a test, you might try doing a 1080i edit directly from the deck; I really think that might be your best bet. You can still run the material through the Terranex to satisfy any requirements the network is demanding.

Please let us know how things work out. Hope you nail it down soon.

Best regards,
Leo

Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

At 24 fps there is NO drop-frame from VariCam. Period. Here’s the information straight from the camera manual:

“When the frame rate is set to 24 fps, this unit will
perform the processing in the non-drop frame mode
in order to maintain the continuity of the frames
even when the time code has been set to the drop
frame mode.”

We don’t edit 1080i, but it’s available for you if you choose. We’ve only experimented with 1080i out of the decks to make sure it works. It does.

Perhaps you can talk to the production company and urge them to adopt a more straight-forward work-flow in consultation with the network. It’s not always the case, but usually simpler is superior, with fewer steps on the video.

Hope you solve your problems!

Best regards,

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

I understand your reluctance to upgrade; perhaps you can use one of your suites as the test while you leapfrog to the next OS. FCP 5 is very powerful and seems to work well with our DeckLink HD Pro cards. Surely it works just as well with AJA.

There are a few advantages to editing HD in a 24 frame timeline. Aside from the savings in disc space, you eliminate the 3/2 pull-down cadence so you can edit on any two adjoining frames. Breaking the cadence in pull-down can have very nasty effects with machines that try to remove the combined frames if the cadence is broken.

I would cut the show either with a 24 fps timeline or directly to 1080i. Perhaps you can talk to the network and get them to revisit their Terranex demand.

Otherwise, you’ll just have to learn to love it!

Best regards,
Leo

Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

There is NO drop frame in VariCam footage. To get to a non-drop format, you have to edit your drop-frame show with accurate running time, then clone to a drop-frame tape.

Some questions:

Why not FCP 5.0?

Was the project shot at 24p? Why edit in a 59.94 timeline rather than 24p?

If you were going to 1080i, why did you not edit at 1080i? The Panasonic deck can output 1080i, and it’s usually better to work in the final format. Why use the Terranex at all if you can simply spit out 1080i natively?

Best regards,
Leo

Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

Golly, I must have cut class the day we discussed, “meta-awareness.”

The very simple reality is that any move which draws attention to the camera screams, “look at me, I’m a camera, this is being photographed, forget about being involved in the story!” If that’s what you’re trying to say, fine. Zoom away. If you want your film to look like a bad home movie or an equally bad Kung Fu movie, zoom away. If you want to be avant-garde, zoom away. If you simply want to be perverse, zoom away until you break the rocker switch or your audience throws shoes at the screen. Otherwise, avoid obvious zooms.

Look, the art component of this business is about a lot more than just breaking rules; it’s knowing when and how to break them.

Good shooting,

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

A dirty lens can be cleaned; a scratched lens is another story. Don’t toss your lens hood unless you’re replacing it with a matte box.

I always carry a flashlight, really, two; one on my key ring, a Photon (everyone should have one), and a larger one, a SureFire. A good camera light is one of those little doctor’s penlights with the momentary button on the base; they’re light-weight, compact, and just the ticket for checking the lens.

Good shooting!

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

I find both Kino Flo and Mole to be excellent. The Kino’s seem more modern in physical design, much lighter and easy to rig in tight places. The Moles seem more traditional, a heavier, perhaps more robust design. I love them both.

Kino Flo has a much wider range of fluorescent fixtures; I could replace the Biax 8 with a Kino product, but none are as compact as the Mole.

I use the Mole Biax 8 as a key.

Good shooting!

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA

[Leo Ticheli]

Certainly color temperature is important to the look of a scene, and we may choose to warm a daylight key to a much lower Kelvin than the ambient & background lights. I don’t think tungsten lights have a different character, just a different color temperature.

I’m not sure what you mean by tungsten bulb quality, unless you’re speaking of keying with a naked Fresnel rather than a diffused soft light. Sometimes a hard source makes a perfect key; it just depends on the look you’re after. A Fresnel with diffusion looks very much like a Kino with diffusion. With perfectly smooth diffusion in either case, it’s the size of the aperture of the light source relative to the subject that determines the softness of the effect.

Shooting in the studio with all tungsten lights, I frequently put warming gel on the background where I’m suggesting interior lighting is playing against cool daylight. Of course we light in-studio “exterior” windows with HMI fixtures so the light will be bluer than the “interior” lights.

Good shooting!

Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA