[Mark Suszko]

I’ve used his lights my entire career, and continue to do so. Was given a new kit this past year to replace the Onmis I’ve used weekly for over 30 years. Except for the stands, everything was still in reliable working shape in that old kit, just a bit scuffed-up . I wish I could say as well for myself:-)

[Mark Suszko]

If you need a corner or 3-wall /floor space with curves, commercial solutions for this are usually comprised of modular plastic panels, either of thermo-formed plastic or molded fiberglass. They don’t have the dimensional stability issues of wood- based construction, and can at least theoretically be de-constructed, moved, and re-assembled. Making these from scratch is expensive and time-consuming, as you have to first build molds and jigs to support the fabrication. An air-inflated structure might be possible, and theoretically could be more portable, but brings it’s own issues. This is the top-of-the-line way to make such things and the costs reflect that.

If all you need is a flat wall that curves at the floor, that’s much easier; Rolls of photographer’s background paper will do. They are not hard to overlap and seam with tape, to make them wider. But they’re fragile.

If that’s too fragile, or not wide enough, the back side or “felt” side of inexpensive rolled vinyl sheet flooring actually makes a great, sturdy surface for a cyclorama or limbo wall that can run down a wall and curve down onto the floor, continuing right up to the camera. You just have to prime that surface first, with a latex, water-based (not oil-based) primer… then paint it grey, green, blue, white, whatever. The flooring can be the ugliest, cheapest stuff that’s on sale; you just want to be sure the backing is clean and even, without any embossed patterns from the top side coming thru. The backing is the part the camera will see. Trap the top edge of the vinyl sheet in a sandwich of lumber boards, screwed together, the screws going thru the vinyl as well as the wood, and then hang that board on wall hooks, your lighting grid, or whatever. You can in theory take this all down and roll it up for storage or transport, but it will be pretty heavy. The material is sturdy to walk on with regular shoes, even spike heels, and cleans up with soap and water, but also keep a small can of your paint for touch-ups as needed.

If you can find a supplier to sign-making businesses, see if you can find a very wide roll of the very thin plastic substrate known as “Sintra”. It’s basically a foam board based on PVC. In the thinnest version, it acts like thick paper stock. This I find makes an excellent and much lighter substitute for the vinyl flooring, and doesn’t require painting or finishing. It might also be shaped a little with carefully applied heat, to mold around a curved or hard-cornered object, for example. It can be glued and joined at the edges with contact cement, preferably latex-based.

[Mark Suszko]

A simple diagram of the space you’re using and a list of the type and kind of instruments you have, might help generate some ideas. It would help to know how close or obtrusive you can get the lights to the talent, for example, what the “throw” distances are, how high the ceilings, and if the lights need to stay hidden or can go on a truss, even how much power you have available. We might come up with a better way to use what you already have.

But like the drag racers say: “there’s no substitute for cubic inches”, in lighting “there’s no substitute for more lumens”.

SInce your place is a House of Worship, your budget’s are modest; I get that. You should be scouting for used instruments on ebay, mccom, places like that. The lighting industry has gone thru a revolutionary period the last few years and a lot of folks wanting to get with new technology got rid of or are getting rid of older, yet reliable gear that’s still perfectly serviceable for certain applications like yours. I’m specifically thinking of fresnel spots and ellipsoidals that can be converted to LED-powered sources, or used as-is.

[Mark Suszko]

What is the format/codec the cameraman is giving you originally? This Sony camera shoots XDCAM, DVCAM, MPEG4, and MPEG-2, with variable rates.

Asking FCPX to handle some or all of that transcoding in the background during ingest is probably not the best way to go.

Compressor should be able to handle all of them, though. Probably what I’d try is to set up a preset batch mode in Compressor and then set Compresssor to hand-off transcoded prores files to your FCPX media drive, before import. Compressor and FCPX are designed to work together this way.

You could also try using FFworks if you don’t own Compressor.

[Mark Suszko]

I think the editor part of me likes your idea of giving the client an SSD of assets for them to be in charge of. But it also cautions that clients are unreliable in terms of responsibility for assets. The only upside is, if the footage gets lost, they can only blame themselves, not you.

The businessman part of me says, don’t include the project files, copyrighted stock or music you paid for, or any other “secret sauce” on that drive, that the client or another editor could use to re-work your project. You want them to come to YOU for that, so don’t give away your chance at repeat business and don’t give a competitor the keys to your stuff.

There are a lot of good trainers out there, Ripple is popular. Lynda and Creative Live are a few more. I like Larry Jordan’s tutorials, and he has one specifically devoted to FCPX workflow that you might want to watch. Larry’s friendly, low-key, talkative approach assumes you know nothing to start with, so some experienced people may get impatient, but he’s thorough and very organized, each step building on the previous one, and he eventually gets there in a disciplined and comprehensive fashion, which I appreciate.

[Mark Suszko]

This week Samsung said they’re going to stop making BluRay Players. I’m disappointed by that a little: using h265, you can really cram a LOT of archival onto a piece of sturdy, physical media. I think BluRay was to overpriced versus DVD when it came out and most people didn’t really get the value proposition. I know folks that have multiple, Bluplayers that have only ever used them for their streaming functionality.

h265 came out too late to save DVD as well. But I’m not convinced everything belongs exclusively in the cloud yet.

If they stop making Zagnut bars, I will not be responsible for my actions.

[Mark Suszko]

Alternate interpretation of events…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRAhyl1fC4w

[Mark Suszko]

I used the firestore a time or two as well, I think as a rental. The on-board internal batteries, like the citidisk, were never quite long-lasting enough. It worked okay for shooting commercials, but for longer-form work it would always make me nervous. As I recall, our guys didn’t like the fact they couldn’t see an on-the-spot playback out of it for confidence monitoring. Had to trust they’d set it up right and find out when they got back to the shop. I recalled telling them this was no different from changing film mags in a bag and hoping you set the camera and film up right.

You could go the ninja recorder route with SDI, set time-of-day, free-run time code, and simply rely on “dual system” sound… you still got a stand-alone boom operator/mixer operator/recordist on hand, right? ☺

[Mark Suszko]

“What advice would you give to someone new to the business?”

Welding school. The money’s better.

More seriously… this is, to my mind, a new Golden Age of production; so much more content being produced and so many more platforms to show it on, seems like a lot more people can break into the biz and make a go of it. That’s not exactly true, or, more accurately, that’s only -partly- true. There’s more production, there’s more content, but it’s fighting a lot more competing content, all of it competing for the same original number of eyeballs, on lower budgets than historically considered “normal”. this drives profit margins into the basement, so only mega-hits pay off their startup costs and make profits. Then everybody slavishly copies a recent “winner”, ignoring other potentially better properties and ideas because they’re risk-averse. That’s always been the case in Hollywood. But now, the tools have made everything cheaper to do, IF you know what you’re doing. I wonder at how much more a young Roger Corman could do with the tools of today, versus back in his prime. There’s more content out there, but more of it is also of relatively lower quality, technically or creatively, because the “money barrier” of production costs used to filter out those wannabees who weren’t competent enough to arrange enough money and technical talent to do a job right. Maybe “Golden Age” isn’t the best name for it; it’s a new “Wild West”. We as consumers benefit from having more choices. For producers, it’s less expensive to make a show but harder to get it to pay it’s way.

[Mark Suszko]

We used the CitiDisk unit with a Panasonic DV /HD equivalent to your Cannon… it worked great. Internal battery wasn’t the longest-lasting thing, though. If you want the most compact solution with the least amount of gack to plug-in and thread around, the CitiDisk may be your best bet. I’m surprised they’re still available.