[Moira Elefson]

If you had CS five you would have the puppet tool in your arsenal. Very helpful in these situations. You can use the warp-transformation but you would probably have to break the logo into several parts (using masks preferably).

[Moira Elefson]

Hopefully not getting too off topic:

I can attest to the fear of looking for certain advice here. COW has been one of the best recourses in my endeavors for both technical advice as well as personal career advice. The latter however was at a large cost/risk that I didn’t realize initially and have since pursued alternate means of obtaining advise (i.e. not using COW) in the categories of careers, job-hunting, cover letters, etc.

I do think that any anonymity would be chaos save for Mark’s “Ann Landers” idea.

[Moira Elefson]

Good deal from Canon then. I haven’t had to send anything into Canon yet, but I sent my old (2003) Nikon D2H to Nikon to get an estimate on refurbishing it and getting some errors fixed in the hardware (one of which was common) and 3 weeks later I got the camera back completely refurbished and fixed. All the grips were replaced, the main circular button that was broken was replaced, the D2H shutter issue was corrected, the memory card door was replaced, everything professionally cleaned, and a few other things all for free! Not only is the camera long out of warranty, but it was returned in only three weeks! I was just expecting an e-mail saying the price in three weeks, not the camera! Maybe the fact that it was originally a $3-4K camera but it’s still nice to see them take care of a customer like that; Canon included (based on your experience).

[Moira Elefson]

Ah, I was just saying in another post – I use Nikon primes with my 7D, the adapters should work just the same on your Canon.

I use the ‘Cinevate Inc’ Nikon to EOS adapters for my lenses. They’re about $40 a pop, pretty nice construction. The adapters fit VERY snug on the Nikon lenses – so I bought eight of them and bought 8 Canon Rear-lens caps (Adorama brand looks nice and are only 4 bucks ea.). Now I can just leave the all the adapters on all the Nikon lenses and can quickly switch lenses. It is a bit extra money (and you may have to wait to get 3 or more like I did; backorder) but the money you save on those old Nikon primes easily makes up for it. Again, you wont want to be putting these Cinevate adapters on and off; it’s really hard! Don’t under estimate it, not only are they snug, but the little button (locking pin release) on the adapter is hard to press while turning the adapter because it’s so small. The only reason I ever take the adapters off is to occasionally use the lenses on my Nikon D2H or D90.

As for what lenses to get, go for the 50mm, 24/28mm,35mm, 85mm, 105mm – probably in that order. Those will cover a good range and 50mm is the best in low light (for the money) and also the cheapest lens (because they made hundred’s of thousands of them). The 85mm lens, if you get a fast one, will be your most expensive lens early on. Make sure you shop around and wait for a deal (Adorama and B&H and trusted sites and have great ‘used’ selections). Once you get the basic lens set, you can get some higher end stuff like macro lenses, high zoom lenses (I might start saving for the EF 400f4, but probably not haha), Canon EF lenses, etc.

[Moira Elefson]

Wow!I can’t believe that is common for Canon glass.

I use a full set of Nikon primes on a 7D and they where made in the 1970s and 80s and work flawlessly. Some have some loose/stiff focusing but once the follow-focus is attached you can barely notice. I know the lenses they make today (Canon and Nikon) are very nice but I do prefer the older lenses that use a lot more metal rather than plastic. I already dropped my 18-55 kit lens and cracked it good. O and the older lenses typically have manual iris rings as well, which I like. Only downside is no auto-focus (when using Nikon lenses on 7D) but I don’t do any event-projects anyway.

I was interested in getting some Canon primes for photographic reasons (auto-focus would be nice!). Is Canon fixing the lens for free?

[Moira Elefson]

Ah – also I’ve seen some dell flyer-ads in my mail and they have some pretty good discount codes on them (unfortunately none recently) that I think would apply to any purchase (even the mobile workstations). These discounts may be what they find for you over the phone, but if not, then it may be additional savings!

[Moira Elefson]

Do the Dell laptops have the kind of graphics card to use the mercury play back system?

I was thinking the same thing. It looks like only the Mobile Workstations support the mobile Quadro cards. Check with adobe’s site to see which cards specifically are supported then try configuring a laptop. You will pay a lot with dell but you’ll also get a their warranty and support.

There are two types mobile workstations, one of which is more portable and cost effective but also more limited in it’s options. The larger one can come stalked with lots of memory, powerful processor and much more, but most importantly, it has lots of mobile graphic card options. If you decide to buy, I would put it together over the phone and ask them to help you bring the price down after you build it. When I got my XPS studio laptop I was going to get it at best buy because of the coupons I had or something but when I mentioned this while asking about some other things on the phone with dell, he said that he can help me get it lower so that I buy right from them instead. Obviously we didn’t change the build or anything, he just found discounts that my purchase was eligible for. Saved a ton. They can also make sure you have all compatible components too (like 64-bit OS if you have 4+ GB of memory).

I use the master suite as well since it has everything you’ll need and the integration between adobe programs is unparalleled. Like using photoshop with dreamweaver, or photoshop and illustrator with after-effects and after effects with premiere and premeire/AE/photoshop with enocore, story with onlocation/premiere, and so on!

[Moira Elefson]

(Not sure if this was best posted in field production)

Obviously you would get much more bang-for-your-buck with a desktop and if your looking to do some high end graphics or anything of the sort – you’ll definitely want to invest in the desktop.

If you only plan to do up to 1080p editing say in premiere and some more basic graphics, I think you can get a decent laptop for $3K. I do think a laptop is a good choice for production ESPECIALLY with the adobe suite. Adobe Story and OnLocation are great programs and integrate very nicely with all the adobe production programs. Having a laptop to bring those programs into the field can be very handy. Normally I recommend building a PC from scratch as it can be up to 50% cost effective (so you could imagine getting a $6000 desktop with your 3 grand). In fact I built a $21,000 dell-equivalent computer for only about $8,500 and it had several better components and a hell of a lot more upgrade capability. The downside? Any problems need to be worked out yourself (or for me; go to the IT dept.), any faulty components need to be individually dealt with through the respective manufacturer, and you need to take the time to learn a lot about computers. For me, learning about computers and building it was a lot of fun and very rewarding rewarding (although I did have the support of IT when needed). I actually took that knowledge and build myself a $3,000+ computer at home for about $1,200 but that required a lot of deal-searching and cyber-Monday shopping!

For laptops, I would recommend the dell studio XPS as they have really nice 1080p screens. They have a bit of glare to them, but they offer multi-touch capabilities. When using it in the field, which I haven’t done yet, I would imagine it’s nice to touch the screen for quick changes and such. Another field program I use is the Canon software to configure user settings on the DSLRs. You can’t really build your own laptop from scratch so finding a brand is a must. Dell also offers very powerful high end workstation laptops as well, but they’re borderline laptops… I’ve seen some and they’re huge! The can take well over 64GB of memory, have full-size keyboards (number-pad on the right) built in, and with large displays.

Dell also has a ‘rugged-PC’. I actually saw this at an air show where they had all kinds of marine gear laid out. I’m not sure how powerfully they can be equipped but that could be useful for the extreme (or literal) guerrilla filmmaker.

Ok – so I think i started to carry on there… I apologize. If you want to build your own desk top, I can help you out, or at least guide you to some really good recourses.

Last word of advice, make sure you get a video card from the Quadro series. I have two of these monsters running and yes After Effects, rendering, and all that jazz works wonders with them, but what is really amazing is the mercury engine in Premiere Pro. I wanted to cry when I first used Premiere CS5 with one of these cards. Look into the mercury engine at adobe.com. This revolutionary rendering engine allows even low-end workstations to edit seamlessly without ever having to render (or at least rarely). Add in Adobe’s Dynamic link with after effects and your editing workflow will be very fast. Use Story, OnLocation, and some of the other Adobe programs and your production workflow will be guaranteed to not be bottlenecked by software.

[Moira Elefson]

Mimicing shots is definitely a great way to learn, especially when it comes to camera movement with editing. Not to be redundant, but going out there and shooting as much as possible is the best way to learn (as long as your actually thinking and paying attention)

I do a lot of photography and I think it helps a lot with composition. Obviously it does not take into account camera movement or subject movement but there are still some similar concepts that can be practiced between the two (rule of thirds, and horizon lines, etc)

I just picked up Cinematography: Theory and Practice: Image Making for Cinematographers, Directors, and Videographers. So far, it’s incredible. Not the cheapest book but worth it.

[Moira Elefson]

I also tend to be picky with my music. I try to find music early on so that I can match the graphics and editing to the beat a bit. Since the per-video budget is pretty low (in-house corp. video) I can’t get customized tracks for every video. I do end up spending quite a long time searching through countless royalty free tracks but the time spent is worth it and still a lot less time consuming (and usually higher quality) than composing something myself.

I’ll second Stephen Smith on Video Co-Pilot. I use their sound effects collection A LOT and would assume the music collection is equally as high quality.

I’ve used Freeplaymusic.com once or twice, but I think the good stuff on there is few and far between. You’ll spend a lot of time searching through midi-sounding generic tunes. But there are a few great-priced gems in there.

I’ve purchased a couple collections from stockmusic.net – although it’s always been jazz collections. High quality, good price. License option is good too.

I saw an add for 615 Music in Post Magazine. I checked them out and they have some good stuff and are quite accredited but no word on pricing. You have to sign in to browse the music library.

Lastly, if you are musically inclined and have the time, a friend taught me to do some neat things in minimal time with FL Studio. It’s possible to make some quick beat loops that you can layer and cut real quick. The You can simply vocalize a tune (using a mic) to the metronome and FL will identify (roughly) the notes and save them. Tweaking is necessary but it’s pretty neat stuff. Especially if you have a tune stuck in your head but can’t lay out the notes to make it sound right. FL was definitely worth the price.