[Mark Suszko]

I take a different tack here and “pre-modify” these clips in a separate project into something I want to use in the actual project timeline. I might use Motion or FCPX for that.

The question that arises for me is making sure the final output is properly going to display on those vertical display screens.

[Mark Suszko]

First off I’d take a snapshot of it as-is.

Seems like this kind of thing is what Roles and Auditions are for? I could be wrong…

[Mark Suszko]

Nothing but love for ya, KISS man. ☺

My tastes in music are pretty eclectic. At my last uke jam we did Abba followed by Iggy pop, Neil Diamond and Madonna, plus Muddy Waters followed by Katy Perry.

Though these days I wanna sing like St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Or Otis Redding. Kinda the same thing:-)

Seriously, if you want to fall down a youtube music rabbit hole, I recommend Scary Pockets, Live from Daryl’s Place, and everything Leonid and Friends are doing.

[Mark Suszko]

I thought this was a Florence and the Machine thread….

[Mark Suszko]

In my boxes of memorabilia is a dub of a PSA shot in my studio with a super-young freshman Illinois state senator. Very articulate guy, out of an assembly-line parade of about ten legislators coming thru to read off the prompter and split, he made my work easy with his poise and skill in oratory. Had a funny-sounding name, partly Irish, maybe. O’bama, it was. That guy is going places, I thought.

[Mark Suszko]

MotionVFX.com

[Mark Suszko]

You have what you have. And you don’t have the money to make it higher rez. The proper answer from a business standpoint is, pause the project and go raise the money to do it right.

Yeah, that doesn’t get me anywhere here either, lol. But that’s the real, best answer.

Last weekend, I watched a free stream of the original version of “The Thomas Crown Affair” starring Steve McQueen. I recommend you watch it this weekend, particularly for the multiscreen PIP visual effects editing techniques used by Avildsen. Depending on the content and themes of your doc, maybe the low rez footage would work if you took it apart and put it into a multi-screen approach like this. That opens up the ability to add other higher rez footage, b-roll, or backgrounds in with the multiscreen, and gives you a 16:9 frame to present on the screen.

Make the problem look like an intentional aesthetic choice.

[Mark Suszko]

You can’t “tech” your way around human nature: if it’s worth pirating to someone, they’re going to find a way around your encryptions anyway.

My take is, instead of fighting that human nature, leverage it. Typically, by “giving away” the content, and not making money off the end-user viewers but rather from a sponsor or underwriter who pays you a guaranteed amount up-front. They would *encourage* the widest possible distribution of the material, since that maximizes their reach.

[Mark Suszko]

I saw the dojo picture. Posting the images does work here, I do it alltime. Make sure it’s a jpeg and not overly big.

Are you shooting reversals at all, or is it all from one angle only?

[Mark Suszko]

I’d want to understand the blocking and camera shots you’re after. That makes a huge difference.

But a few impressions and questions from the photo of the dojo;

I don’t know what the “tone” of this shoot is supposed to be: is it an actual martial arts teaching thing, where you’re going for a more immediate sports-type look, or is it something dramatic and artistic, with movie-type mood lighting? Is the camera fixed or moving? is there more than one simultaneous camera or camera angle?

My impression from a quick google is that one Arri skypanel alone isn’t going to be enough for anything but maybe single shots or at best, a 2-shot.

I’d probably buy rolls of window gel, to match the indoor color temp of the indoor lighting, instead of renting the skypanel or shoot at night and hit the windows with some blue lights from outside… if the windows need to be in the shots at all. It’s your script and your blocking, so that’s under your control. If you can leave windows out of the shot, it makes life easier in terms of backlighting and color balance issues. If you treat the gels kindly they can be re-used a number of times.

I’m sorry about all the speculating but really if you want the best help, we should be seeing a storyboard or some overhead drawing showing the blocking and filling in these missing details, and then the right tools and techniques will tend to present themselves.