[Mark Suszko]

I think there’s more people that are in sympathy with Bob than not, it’s just a matter of degree. I think we basically all would agree that production interns do a lot of work for little recognition, with the implied social contract that they will get *something* back out of the transaction. How much they get back out of it depends somewhat on their negotiation skills but also on the attitudes and morals of the employers. A great employer will think of interns the same way the trades masters of old had apprentices – people you bring up in the trade in exchange for their commitment of time and effort. Bad employers think of internships as just a way to scam free labor.

There’s scutwork… and then there’s abuse.

Legit drudgery/ menial tasks like organizing a tape library, making dubs, data entry supporting an edit, cleaning and putting away gear after a production, picking up props and supplies from suppliers, parking the vehicles, …and maybe picking up coffees and lunches for the crew… these are low-status, untrained, yet necessary tasks that contribute to overall project success and that a production intern could expect to be part of their day. But low as they are, the work should offer *some* kind of compensation, be it money, academic credits, access to the gear and some training… something. I think bathroom cleaning and carpet cleaning or floor waxing is a step too far removed for a production intern. Particularly unpaid bathroom maintenance. That’s just abuse, and it’s robbing a legit maintenance worker of their living.

It has been a long time since I had the pleasure of working with and mentoring interns. But we always took them seriously, and for every hour of menial tasks they did, we spent at least as much time teaching them lighting, camera, sound, and editing techniques, coaching them, helping them prepare their own productions and demo reels. When they left us, be they high school seniors or college postgrads, they had a a demo reel and a year’s worth of production skill on industry-standard cameras, lighting, sound and editing systems, and experience working as production crew, gained over just a handful of months. Plus an academic credit, and for the postgrads, a small stipend. They could walk onto a set anywhere and be productive immediately. They could be handed a script and execute it. And if they were very good, they had us as a respected reference.

I don’t know enough about the McBride situation to make a definitive judgement, but it sounds from my initial surface impressions like a personal services assistant position and not a production internship. Personal assistants get all manner of ridiculous demands made of them and that’s understood. And they should expect to be paid for the work. I would think toilet cleaning would be a step too far, particularly if uncompensated.

[Mark Suszko]

Ladder with hi-hat and c-clamps, done. That’s what I do.

[Mark Suszko]

Why not just grab the puppet outlines and paint it up in Photoshop?

[Mark Suszko]

Bill’s got a very good point. He’s also assuming the sheet o glass isn’t as wide as the room, which would be expensive.

So, unless your actors are not gifted mirror mimes like Harpo Marx… whaddayado?

I have one idea; ultra-thin black vertical thread, under tension. Just one, where the hands must almost- meet. Use a wire removal rig like mocha or just paint it out in AfterEffects afterwards. But the thread gives the actors a practical target for placement of the hands, and limits their movement. Practical shoot with both actors maximizes the benefits of their timing and acting chemistry. Shoot with soft light and no shadows.

I have a second idea: shoot them one at a time, against a hard green cyc. They can beat on the virtual glass/force field all they want. Composite the two sides. Harder to edit because the actors can’t directly react to each other – the editor will have to help with their timing. Suggest they use a practice session’s audio as their guide, and loop the actual dialog/foley later.

[Mark Suszko]

If you can’t use the Mocha tracker method, the Healing Brush in photoshop will do an amazing job here. You’d export the clip as a “frame movie”, and open it in photoshop. One swipe with the stylus or mouse per frame, done, and it blends including the lighting changes, which I’m not sure the Mocha based one would do as well.

AfterEffects is supposed to have this ability added to it, that’s what you pay the subscription for… but that hasn’t been released to an upgrade yet. Only seen in trade show demos so far.

[Mark Suszko]

Add” “archivist” to your resume:-)

You have many decisions ahead. One of which is, what common standard, if any, do you want to transcode all this stuff to, so it stays readable and usable?

When we had this discussion, we couldn’t afford totally uncompressed storage for the volume of material we have, so we settled on ProRes 422 for everything meant to last. I don’t know that that’s a permanent choice, going forward… There are more compact formats out there, and newer ones, and it’s always a guessing game as to what will remain viable over the years… so you also have to plan for occasional updates and migrations of the existing archived materials as new and better formats come up, and old ones lose support. This is job security for life because the issue never remains static. I wonder that other COW users think is a dependable codec to standardize on?

And you really don’t want to put all your archival “eggs” in one basket – i.e. just one server or RAID. Just makes it easier to lose everything in one catastrophic event. So, plan and budget to back-up the backups with offsite duplicate storage. And yes, that just doubled your costs.

[Mark Suszko]

You can rely on every bit of the advice already given. It used to be easier to just roll the dice and rip off this kind of material, but those days are waning as AI automation is getting better and faster at finding violations, and the penalties from YouTube and other social get stiffer.

Stick to our guns on this and if they won’t bargain, you should refer them to your biggest rival. Let that guy enjoy what’s going to happen eventually.

Also, clients who demonstrate their snakiness in this way are warning you that you are going to eventually get ripped off by them as well. it’s just not smart business to keep a cheap, lazy and sketchy client, even if the money up front is good. Be sure to get paid in advance from this client.

[Mark Suszko]

IR LED’s can be worn and tracked by cameras in any light conditions. There used to be an automated tracking PTZ camera system that tracked the speaker walking the stage by an IR emitter in the hand-held mic or by a clip-on IR pendant.

Give the tracker three LED’s to track on the talent, and three static ones on the set, and that might be enough for the projection mapping to target?

[Mark Suszko]

We use the Teradek BOND, which plugs in between the back of our cameras and the Anton Baur battery pack, (which also powers both). We like them a lot. But we use that for simple news live shots and feeding back pre-shot footage to our home office from the field. The “Sputnik” IP receiver at the home end then connects to our streaming facilities.

That’s probably not going to be the best fit for your situation; the BOND uses six cellular modems to spread it’s HD signal… and that’s just for one camera, one receiver. It would be too cost-prohibitive for multi-cameras, unless you ran multiple cams into a switcher first and then fed that output to the BOND by SDI cable.

One of the other options is probably better for you.

If you want to leverage your existing hardware, you could look at BoinxTV aka mimo live. This is a switching and streaming app that connects cameras to a laptop and lets you use the laptop like a portable switcher, including graphics and effects. Essentially the same as MEVO, but using your cameras and audio inputs, plus a powerful laptop. I believe it can also record internally. https://boinx.com/mimolive/

For a bit more money, there’s the Newtek Tricaster, which they are promoting very heavily. it will stream, and it’s a more powerful live switching/fx machine as well, plus they tout it can interface with cheap robotic PTZ cameras easily thru a proprietary cable system, making it a one-person band, potentially.

I won ‘t bother giving you a Newtek url. They’ll find YOU 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

The simplest thing for a one-operator situation is to just use an iPhone and it’s built-in streaming. Add in an audio input for the mic, then use any of the available streaming apps. Not very pretty, but… also, have you seen the MEVO?

https://getmevo.com/