[Mark Suszko]

Couple things to try before roto, which is your final answer, I am afraid…

Do a pass on the footage to turn the blue tarps into green… that is, fill the tarps with a digital green. Now color-correct the footage to suppress the blue spill, and I think the green may still be ok to effect over.

Depending on the keying software, you can apply spill-suppression which tints the footage opposite the keying color.

[Mark Suszko]

Best to rent these unless you are going to use them weekly. You get more crane/jib for the money that way as well… like a dolly and circular track to really make the shot swoop nicely.

[Mark Suszko]

Answered same post in the other forum, gave several tips.

[Mark Suszko]

These guys are right: there is no reason the interview MUSt be boring, no matter the subject, if your interviewer asks the right questions. Now, there are simple and easy and inexpensive things to do to spice up a setting for the interview. It depends a lot on what kind of message you’re trting to out out and etc.

Some people hate white-walled rooms, but to me, they are a blank canvas for me to play on with shadows cast by cookies and gobos. One of my favorite things is to shoot into a corver of a white-walled room and sublty gel each wall a different color wash. If it’s a corver that also has a column in it, that’s even better, as the different planes and angles take the shadows differently and add some depth without being distracting.

You can get fancier, obviously: if you shoot everything greenscreen, your options are infinite. But you can also do stuff like bring a slide or video/data projector along and throw images and type on the walls and floor and etc. You can bring in muslin or photog’s paper backdrops and throw slashes of light across them, etc. It’s up to your budget and imagination. I have shot in regular motel rooms and gotten nice blurred BG behind the interviewees that looked great.

And there are variations like shooting walk and talk or drive and talk, etc. There really isn’t such a thing as a boring interview shot that you can’t make better. If you WANT to.

[Mark Suszko]

just to add to the good stuff thus far, part of it to me is, does the screen time “feel” like enough time has passed for the ‘realtime’ to be realistic? You know, one of those times when the hero is on a ten-second countdown, yet takes time for a 30-second speech before cutting the red wire… or was it the blue W-
BOOOOM!!!

Sometimes you want to up-cut the expected time of a key even in order to shock or grab attention, or reinforce suddeness.

Think of it another way: in pleasant situations, time seems to have rushed by, and in scary or unpleasant ones, it slows to a crawl. Except for a few experimental films shot in real-time, we truncate time in our programs with edits. How we enhance or detract from the perception of time’s flow equals “pace”.

[Mark Suszko]

If it wasn’t mentioned up front, I think it’s poor form to try to retroactively apply it. I say you put him on the “not so good” list, and he’s on a cash prepaid in full basis for any and all work to follow. Meanwhile, keep sending registered letters he has to sign for, to create a trail in case you have to go to court later. At 120 days, turn it over to a collection agency or write it off for tax purposes.

If the guy is just a client, you have little leverage, he’s not planning on coming back, but if he’s a local producer that works with the same small group of vendors and you, you can sometimes use the leverage of reputation. Once everybody knows he’s a bum, he loses their cooperation: they may still take his business, but it will always be on unfavorable terms, cash up front, no credit, no releasing tapes without payment in full, no special discounts or favors, that sort of thing… and he will be miserable.

Understand, I wouldn’t go threatening to defame him in the production community, or public forums, particularly if he’s the litigious type. But there are ways people find out about who is a stand-up guy and who is not.

Something Leo T. once said bears repeating too (paraphrasing): everybody gets into some bad luck from time to time, and if you’re not 100 percent sure the guy is a crook, your better nature should be to find out if he’s just got a temporary cash flow problem, and maybe you can help him thru it if he would just send you a token percentage for now – until he gets on his feet… say, 20 bucks a month or a week, then the balance when he can manage it. When he’s back on top, he will surely remember you as a special friend, and perhaps more work will come of it. It’s up to you and your budget just how generous you can afford to be in such a case, and nobody can tell you exactly whre to draw such a line. Myself, I tend to be on the cynical side, having been burned often enough already. I give everyone just one free shot to try to rip me off, then it’s war. The minimal payments also help your legal case, should you need to sue later anyhow. The are evidence of a contract demonstrating consideration, is the legal term, though I’m not a lawyer.

[Mark Suszko]

Sounds like he’s asking for a contingency fee for keeping himself available to you “on-call”. That sounds fair to me, if you can’t lock down the time frame, he can’t be turning down other potential work just on the chance you will book him.

You could put him on a retainer, you could have a gentleman’s agreement that if he doesn’t hear a word from you by x date, any further waiting will be compensated for, in some mutually agreeable fashion. I think the amounts and the time frames must vary quite a bit. When I used to do weddings, I booked with a third to a half-payment up-front, and this I would refund if the gig was cancelled within 48 hours of the shoot or earlier. I had to do that once, the wedding was canceled. Canceling after I’ve laid out money for rentals or turned down other work meand I keep the deposit.

If you want to hold a guy to work for you, without a set time, well, let’s make it me, as a hypothetical, I would expect a firm commitment three days to a week ahead to book the room. I would tell them there is no charge for me to wait as long as there is nothing else coming up, they are “penciled in”, but this doesn’t commit me to do the work until they make it firm with a down payment.

If I get another conflicting job offered to me in that week, I call you and say “decision time: they are ready to go now for four days. If you still want me in that four days, I need a commitment or I have to take the other gig, it’s just business. Man’s gotta eat, after all. Now, I WANT to work on your project very much, but you’re not ready. If you don’t want me to take the other gig, I want a half-day added to your bill for each day I have to wait, or we can push the start date on your production to after this current gig, and I won’t charge you anything extra.” I think that would be emminently fair, myself. Other prople probably have different systems, if you do, I’d like to hear how YOU handle this.

[Mark Suszko]

I can’t tell from here, you should ask them. The small size of the production does not necessarily mean there is no risk. If you shoot in public places, you may need to take precautions so you don’t distract someone into causing an accident, what theycall being “an attractive nuisance”. Stuff like that.

I was doing a job once a long time ago with the state and local P.D. and they blocked off a cul de sac and wanted to shoot a simple mock traffic stop in front of a friend’s house they knew was vacant. So picture a squad car, unmarked “perp” car, me with a full size betacam on tripod, with all the accoutrements, and staff standing near me. The cops stage their bust, and afterwards, we find out some lady saw the whole thing out her front window, including me and the camera, blotted that fact from her mind, decided this was a real take-down, and she was cowering on her living room floor calling in to 911.

Lucky the 911 dispatchers already knew what we were doing, or there would have been hell to pay, and that’s just one reason you might need insurance…

[Mark Suszko]

See, that’s why those spots, as funny as they are, are a failure: they are for an investment company, and you don’t even remember it’s name.

[Mark Suszko]

Every major city and state has a film commission or something with a similar name, look them up using Google and ask them, they will quickly get you up to speed.