Rick Wise
1
COW Coin
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Doing so can be difficult. It will help if you can see a monitor that shows the shot. You will need to tilt these highly reflective items so that they do not pick up the green. A soft slightly warm backlight may help. An alternative is to set a screen slightly to the side that neither you nor the products crosses. In post you can drop anything you want in that sections of non-green screen.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Mercali looks to be terrific. What do you guys like for Motion Tracking?
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Indeed, that situation can be very tricky. The obvious thing to keep in mind — which you no doubt know well — is that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. If the light is coming in at 45º it will bounce off at 45º in the opposite direction. When the reflective surface is flat, you can usually place lighting units so that the camera does not see the reflection of the unit. But when the surface is curved, the task can be enormous. Well-placed flags often save the day. Black wrap is also useful, Sometimes wrapping c-stands and light-stands with duvetine also helps remove unwanted gleams of reflection.
A slightly different and probably easier approach is to use very large soft lights. There are special rigs DPs use to light cars which are essentially huge soft boxes longer than the car itself, which is how they get those excellent highlights along the folds of sheet metal. Several 4×8 white foamcore sheets strategically placed end to end, illuminated with roughly equal intensity by floor lamps whose own reflection is blocked by duvetine or black foamcore can, with a lot of work, emulate such a look. Or else overhead space lights or “chicken coops” through a giant silk.
I suggest you make sure your client understands that all this takes time, time, time, and crew, plus grip and electric equipment, to do right.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Ha! You got me there!
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
The only way to do this comfortably is to make sure the lighting on the speaker is at the same general intensity as the power-point presentation. That usually means you have to dim down the lights on the speaker. The usual methods are wire scrims on the lights, grip scrims in front of the lights, or ND filters in front of the lights. You can also dim the lights with a dimmer, but that will make any lights the dimmer(s) control turn much warmer than you may want.
If you have any control over what projector is used, try to get one with as much sharpness and brightness as possible.
You are correct that overlaying the slides in post will be an editing nightmare.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Thanks, Steve. My wife would love to take over control of my spending….
About your “favorite” add-ons, I can’t find anything there that you can’t do within Vegas. I must be missing something. I hate to argue with those who know much, much more than I do. On this topic, my knowledge is limited. Nevertheless, I just have to say, “show me….” Show me something there is no way to do within Vegas.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Thanks, John. I was thrown off the proper course when I tried the “open still image sequence” and I got a new window asking for the tape’s name. This time I didn’t answer the question, and I got a single segment of all the images together.
Note, if the sequence runs too fast, you can control-pull the right edge to slow it down to taste.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
John,
It seems to me that the time lapse solution you describe above could create what she is looking for.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
John, This is another hidden Vegas treasure!
I’m not at all clear what you mean by “cineform intermediate templates”. Where are they, how are the labeled?
Also, for “the other way”, can’t you just import all the stills generated by the script? If you select the first still and check “Open Still Image Sequence”, you have to re-digitize from the original tape. Does that really produce a better quality image than if you run the script with your Vegas set to “best” AVI render?
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
You keep looking for “rules.” Instead, go to a museum for say 5 days in a row. Each day find one painting you really like. Spend an hour looking at it. Look at it up close. Look at it from afar. Look at is as you walk up to it. Look at it as you back away from it.
Look for composition. Look for lighting. Look for color. Try to find “reasons” why you like it.
At the end of the 5 days you will have a much more educated and much more thoughtful eye.
As for your TV screen, remember that TVs are balanced to daylight. That means, if you are lighting with tungsten units, put 1/2 CTB gels on them and set your camera to “daylight” color balance. You will be a little bit warm, but that’s usually good. If you light with raw tungsten and set the camera to tungsten or “indoors” the TV will be very, very blue.
Also, if the screen is a an old fashioned CRT you will have scan lines rolling about unless your camera has clear-scan. If the screen is LCD or plasma, you are probably going to be OK. Fire up the camera on the screen, and you will know right away if you have a problem.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com