[Mark Suszko]

Something I really miss from the FCP7 days was, when you used the blade button, if you had multiple layers or tracks of video on the timeline, you could just tap that button repeatedly and each press would slice the next layer down at the same exact spot. I found that super-handy but in FCPX, if it’s there I haven’t found it yet.

[Mark Suszko]

She can also try Hitfilm and Filmora 9 in addition to Resolve.

Multi-screen videos are something any editing or compositing software can do these days. If she’s going to do a lot of that, the process can be streamlined using plug-in effects in Apple Motion or Adobe AfterEffects, or you can also buy templates that have done the hard part for you, yet they remain easy to modify and customize. MotionVFX.com is my go-to for these.

[Mark Suszko]

No, sorry, not nearly complex enough.

[Mark Suszko]

Merci beaucoup; votre aide est appréciée!

[Mark Suszko]

Yeah, but the question was: where can I get it now, because his site is 404.

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks, Jeremy, I’ve done that before and I might again, if I don’t find a better idea… but my experience of noodling with the negative values on the fisheye was… well, I eventually got something I could use, but I never was truly happy with it.

[Mark Suszko]

Enjoyed exploring the link to his rig; it is very well thought-out and looks like it can give amazing results.

Wondering if he can try tilting the lightboard forwards just a few degrees, and putting the confidence/framing monitor above the lens to make the apparent angle difference a little greater. Angle of incidence… you know the rest…

Just spitballing crazy ideas here…

Video projector on ceiling shooting down onto the floor, with a very large size. Your gaze flicks down to that. Could make a reflective screen on the floor at a shallow angle that won’t catch on the vertical glass.

Or…. a second pane of first-surface glass anchored at the base of the lightboard at 45 degrees, with a flat monitor on the (black-cloth-covered) floor pointed up, makes an invisible prompter only the presenter can see. Mechanically, the extra glass would be heavy, fragile, and unwieldy to support.

But it need not be glass…

There are mylar films used for live stage “holographic” performances. They use that in a multimedia experience at the Lincoln Presidential Museum here in town, and in the correct lighting it is invisible. It needs to be held under tension in a frame but that could be very lightweight, even scaled to the size of the lightboard itself. With good depth of field control, I think his camera should shoot thru it without losing a whole f-stop, and resolution of the lightboard and presenter would still be good. The prompter could perhaps be a freestanding unit half-way between the camera and the lightboard… The benefit would be that the powerpoints and even prompter copy can all be there invisibly on the lightboard, from the POV of the presenter.
Now, the prompter layer is invisible to the camera, but the reflection back to the camera off the lightboard would maybe still be obvious… unless it was the same size as the original board?

Todd, love your concept of a temporally-offset projection system, visible to the live talent but not the camera. It’s like a video version of the “interrupter gear” that enabled WW1 airplane machine guns to shoot thru the spinning propeller. Isn’t this similar to the active electronic 3d visor viewing systems in theaters? This might be something easier to do with lasers and a motorized shutter stolen off those old film cameras adapted for dealing with TV CTt scan rates…

[Mark Suszko]

To an extent, the answers you get depend on your own intentions. For example, you mention weddings, but are you wanting to get into *serious* wedding video, or just a few gigs? Because if it’s only a one-off, you’re better off renting specific gear to each shoot. There’s a break-point in that, if you rent lights more than about 4 times, and still plan to keep doing this, you’re better off owning them outright. But starting out with rentals lets you try a lot more options and learn what you like and don’t like – without having to eat the entire cost of something you bought and then don’t like or can’t use.

Shooting inside a house for dramatic lighting, something that becomes very handy is a long telescoping bar called an “auto-pole”, which is a portable lighting truss that can hide near the ceiling and hold your lights up without floor stands getting in the way and in the shot. Matthews and Manfrotto are sources. The China ball will be a versatile tool there as well as simply bouncing light off walls and the ceiling to bring up the overall levels.

Music videos are such a broad topic, there’s little point in giving advice until you provide a script/breakdown of the specific scene and the intentions.

I’m a generalist: I do a little bit of everything.

I have a pro lighting kit of tungsten-halogen-based lighting gear that’s been in weekly use for decades: so, even though it wasn’t cheap to buy originally, dividing the cost into the time you used it, it was the cheapest thing ever. Not as cheap as buying something more than once because it broke or was otherwise inferior the first time.

Now, old tungsten-halogen lights have arguably had their day, and LED is the New Hotness. That said, there are places like Wedding shoots where you might need very long throws, where the old hot type lights still have more power and reach than comparable LED. Lots of pros are selling off their old tungsten kits now to get new LED kits; that’s also an opportunity to buy quality used gear that still has plenty of life in it, but the depreciation and amortization’s all been taken care of by someone else for you. If they still do what you need, are high quality name-brands with good support, used pro gear is a good value.

But say I didn’t convince you yet…

If you are buying LED lights today, to start your kit, they need to be capable of switching between indoor and outdoor color temperatures, preferably with a smooth, continuous adjustment, and dim without adding flicker to the shot – this is a key difference between cheaper LED and the right stuff. Adapting tungsten color temp lighting to daylight involves color correcting gels that rob the lights of more than half their power. So if daylight is where your projects mostly live, consider that and you may prefer daylight LEDs or even an HMI light like a Joker.

You can’t afford everything you really need on 500 euros. I’d conservatively say you should triple that as a start… but you need not buy it all in one jump. You’re going to have to build up your kit a piece at a time, over a long time. Some pieces, you can make DIY in a thrifty yet functional way. YouTube photography sites show hundreds of ideas for this.

Personally, I would start from a classic three-point lighting kit, then keep adding modifiers and accessories as you go. Extra stands and reflector boards are an early step but very useful and inexpensive. Get some diffusion. An umbrella or two, and a couple of softboxes would be next. Gobos and cookies and additional stands and arms to hold reflectors and bounce cards are something you want sooner rather than later. Some black cinefoil. Clamps and other grip gear. A couple of variable dimmers are nice to have. A big frame and stands for a “butterfly” will be handy for wedding shoots and outdoor things, to create soft shade from direct overhead sun… Then other, purpose-chosen pieces, like maybe a variable-color LED light, the kind used by club DJ’s – these can be handier and more efficient than buying sheaf’s of colored gels for making colored backgrounds. A “China ball” and a pole to hang it from… Actually, a video pico- projector, driven from your phone, can be a very useful lighting tool to throw patterns and colors onto many surfaces. But it will need a way to hold and aim it. Those very tiny cube-type LED lights, running on batteries, can be super-handy as little accents…

Every job you bill, you need to build in a little fee towards buying the next piece of gear. Also try to groom some contacts in the pro video rental business to bring in the extra support as and when you need it. These relationships need to be built up *before* the day you suddenly need a big favor on a shoot day.

[Mark Suszko]

It’s having trouble gaining traction in TV drama applications, and will, until glasses-free displays are dirt cheap and have supporting bandwidth… but 3D is apparently doing well and growing in the more “niche” specialties. So far there hasn’t been a huge explosion of application outside of the Adult industry but really, I think where it is poised to grow again is “event experience” sports and gaming, as well as “event” programming like concerts. I can imagine a Fathom Events PPV theatre concert with 8k feeding 4k3D.

[Mark Suszko]

Look at the solarization effect