[Richard Herd]

You might be jaded. [Bill Davis] “For this, forget all the fancy “boy meets girl” stories and concentrate on PROMOTION specials.”

Six shots — camera shots, not booze!
Shot 1: girls walk into club
Shot 2: boy looks up from bar
Shot 3: Slo-mo of girls again
Shot 4: guy meets girl at bar
Shot 5: Guy and girl dancing
Shot 6: Guy and girl in VIP
TITLE: Call to action

Surely, you don’t think this is fancy. The call to action–about 5 seconds–is where the promotion is dropped in as needed. 6 shots in 25 seconds, that’s 4 seconds each, plenty of time for the audience to see the frame for a rack focus, move the camera, any number of bona fide camera moves.

[Richard Herd]

Here’s a link to the bulb: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/19621-REG/General_Brand__ECT_Lamp_500W_120V.html Keeping this clean is very important, ’cause if it explodes from over-heated grime on the bulb, they are quite nasty.

The fixture I use is a standard worklight from Home Depot. They’re hard to find, actually, because they’re in the wrong department! Not lighting department but tools and hardware. These gadgets have an aluminum reflector I cut off and recycle; it also has an attachable clamp I don’t use but probably could be useful.

I use white and gel as necessary. In my opinion, it’s wise to keep people’s faces natural (unless there’s a surreal story line). The audio will sell the nightclub feeling more than the bizarre light. Sure, you can get that in the trippy lighting in the background or have the subjects sit where the light will sweep passed them from time to time.

[Richard Herd]

Corporate budgets and bids are highly secretive. Often there’s a non-disclosure agreement included with the other paperwork. I have access to some proprietary information. My opinion is $120,000 would need to generate $156,000 in sales in 2010, and the piece needs a long shelf life–a measurable return on capital employed.

[Richard Herd]

[Mark Suszko] “My advice is to first work much more on developing the ideas before shooting begins.”

Mark is totally correct, as per usual.

I did a fair number of these a while ago, and let me tell you: it is really easy to make a really really really bad video because first and foremost the subjects are not actors. And number two there is no clear call to action. Let put on my advertiser’s hat for a second. You can easily tell a small simple “boy meets girl” story.

Forget location audio.

Having said that, lighting the scene is the easy part. For these I like to use (and I’ve said a million times) Chinese Lanterns and 500w photofloods, because as people are dancing you can hang the flood above them in the middle of a group and get an exact perfect sphere of light emanating in all directions. You can even put one below them, or just off frame. Because they are relatively inexpensive, you can get a lot of them for a very low price. Because they’re light — that is “not heavy to carry” — you can hang them from a boom pole and follow your subject in clever ways.

Also I believe having a few practical bulbs in the shot helps sell the illusion.

[Richard Herd]

Charge Normal Rates. I can’t stress this enough. (While I’m no longer in business as a one-man show, because I was hired out of the boutique thing and into a big corporation), I still have to rely on some media being created by some other people. And the contract my corporate lawyers force my vendors to sign is a bit exploitive in my opinion. Believe it or not, you might even be in a position to negotiate something like a service agreement. For $X * Y% I will drop everything I’m doing so you receive first treatment, on a moment’s notice. In big huge corporate structures, like those between an ad agency and client, ideas get kicked around for several weeks before anyone finally says go. When they say go, they expect it finished on a rushed time schedule. Of course, you’re willing to meet their demands, but since you have other clients, you need mo’ money to put them on the back burner. Again: my vendors do this for me. We pay a premium for faster service than what normal rates imply.

[Richard Herd]

How do you reballast?
Thanks!

[Richard Herd]

What about rental options:
Thomson Viper.
Panavision Genesis.

[Richard Herd]

You don’t make a billion dollars and then disappear from the literary canon. Would you like egg on your words?

Moreover, Hamlet isn’t classic. It’s Renaissance. 🙂

[Richard Herd]

I love my Miller DS 10 with carbon fiber tripod. I bought it 5 years ago, thinking I’d upgrade, but nope. I literally carry it everywhere–no problem. Even works well with a 35mm adapter.

[Richard Herd]

I think you’re right on track aiming at the 2 minute mark. Believe it or not, that’s still an ambitious story.

How do you light it? You light it so it is properly exposed. What is a proper exposure? Whatever the story, scene, and face demand.

I use that camera you mention quite a bit. First thing to do is turn it to full manual mode. There’s a few flip switches and a few soft switches in the menu items. Now, you control the camera.

Next, turn on the zebras and set them to 80%–again, the how-to is in the manual and the switches are in the menus. That means the camera will examine the light in the frame and measure it on a scale from 0 – 100% and anything that is “at or above” 80% will have a nifty little zebra pattern across it. Put a human being’s face in the frame, and that’s what you want 80% to be–unless you don’t like it, then adjust the iris and adjust the zebras, until you get a match for what you’re looking for. Then Write down that f/stop.

Next, turn on the zebras and set them to 100% — anything at or above 100% will have a nifty little zebra across it. 100% has the dubious distinction of being clipped. That is, you cannot recover the image. It is gone. No data has been captured. So you want very little 100%, if any–a few highlights here and there, no problem.

You can mess with that zebra all the way down to a very small number, say 0% — all on the same f/stop, mind you, the one you wrote down above. 0% has the dubios distinction of nothing being there, no data. You cannot recover it from post. Opinions differ on how much black should be in a frame. My opinion is: I don’t like it. I like to put my black point in via post production and I like to add a little color to the black. If there’s no data, it can’t be manipulated. So what do you do? Answer: experiment.

So!!! When you light, be sure to set your frame, and check the zebras all through the range, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100%. Roughly speaking these will correspond to the straight line of the luminance curve in Apple Color (or other color correcting programs).

If you are careful to capture picture data (and that’s the way to think about it, as data) all through this range, then you will have a nicely exposed image, and you will have enough data throughout the exposure to adjust it in post.

I mention using the zebras on your camera because they are built in, and you do not have to pay for additional equipment, but there is other equipment available (a wave form monitor, a light meter, for example) that are more accurate and a bit faster.

In my opinion, and this is my free advice, your money would be better spent on renting a wave form monitor than on a 35mm depth of field adapter, because the DOF adapter requires that you understand exposure in order to control the DOF. This little post is about exposure, so once you get that down, you can move on to Depth of Field. (Make sense?)

What lights do you need to achieve precision? In my opinion, the bare minimum light bulb you need is a 500 watt photoflood — you need three or more of those, along with china lanterns and a ceramic shop light from a hardware store with its tin reflector cut off. I assume your budget is limited, because, obviously, there are more expensive lights. A 500w photoflood is a great choice because you get an even globe of light at tungsten color balance. That light can be bounced, flagged, diffused with any number of cheap items: poster board, shower curtains, silk, You would then need to experiment by moving the light closer-to and further-from the subject, and to the sides and behind, until you see something you like. Write that down, too. Maybe draw a little diagram.

As far as pacing, you might consider selecting specific coverage: opening with long slow tilts/pans and dollies. Then as the drama unfolds evolve the camera to swish pans and swish-tilts. Quick static shots, crossing the 180. Be sure to stick to your 2 minute time frame. One big big big problem I’ve seen with newbies shooting shorts is they overshoot. It’s easy to understand how it happens: when you get the shot that feels you good you stick with it. Be strong and move on after 3 takes. Never say, “That was perfect. Let’s do it again.” Instead be disciplined and say, “That was perfect. Let’s move on.” If you’re movie is 2 minutes long, then you should have about 6 minutes of total footage to wade through during editing. If you have more than 6 minutes, be sure to evaluate why you have so much footage.