Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Suszko] ” I’m not sure why the DOP is fighting so hard for credit on what will undoubtedly be an immense turkey that may never see an audience anyhow.”
That’s pretty much what I was thinking, also.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, ISCI codes still indeed live, and if a broadcaster requires one you have to get it assigned by Ad-ID… for which they are happy to take your FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS to assign a spot or campaign a prefix (and another $40 for the remaining four digits). A complete racket.
As for farming out delivery, honestly it’s been years since I’ve used a service…. DGFastchannel or Extreme Reach or anything like that. It would make perfect sense if I were sending spots to hundreds of outlets, but most of our stuff is local or regional and it never goes to more than a few places… a dozen (maybe two) at best. They also usually go to the same places, and we have a master upload bible of who gets what, and all their FTP info is saved in the Filezilla site manager so it’s usually pretty much a one-click upload.
A sales rep from one of the uploaders (don’t remember which) called a while back and was giving me the hard sell. Even after knowing our volume, what goes where, and all that jazz… he still couldn’t understand why I wasn’t using them. I told him, “I can either upload spots to you, and then pay you for that… or I can upload spots directly to broadcasters, a service for which we charge our clients. I can either upload and spend money, or upload and make money.” He conceded in our situation he’d be doing the same thing. As I said, would be different if we had hundreds of uploads, but it’s usually no more than a few a day at most.
I did just now double check our upload bible and glanced through all the specs for the big list of broadcasters and cable outlets we serve… not a single one of them required slates, black, or countdowns, and many expressly forbid them. I know in the past a couple of times our spots have been kicked back with a re-upload request because they were accidently 901 frames.
I suppose your mileage may vary.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Incompetent or not, sounds to me like he was still the producer and still owns the project.
Competence is not a prerequisite for ownership.
And once again, shows the importance of contracts/agreements that spell out exactly what everything is.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Light that is harder and at more of an acute angle will make a subject look more defined… such as a hard instrument (an open face instrument, or a fresnel, or other “hard” fixture) hung high and pointed down. That creates shadows, and shadows = definition.
Light that is softer and at a less acute angle, such as a soft instrument (big softbox, umbrella, hard light bounced into a reflector, etc.) and more at eye/body level and nearer the camera (more “straight on”) will make a subject look “smoother” and less defined. Fewer shadows and softer more uniform light = less definition.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I’m not at all surprised that tape delivery still exists for shows… but I thought it was a thing of the past for spots.
Guess I live in a cave. Maybe it’s a cable network thing?… I’ll admit that’s the first time I’ve delivered commercials to a cable network since, oh, the good ol’ BetaSP days when dinosaurs roamed free.
I’m sure it will eventually disappear but apparently still lives on.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Mark Suszko] “I remember when we had to shoot upside-down to make the film “reversible”
Ahhh yes, I did that a few times in the Super8 days of my twisted youth.
With dual perf 16mm that was no problem, but with S8 there were only sprocket holes on one side, so you not only had to flip the shot end-to-end but front-to-back as well. It worked and still gave you backwards action, but the downsides were that it created a left-to-right mirror image… and the emulsion was then on the “wrong” side relative to the rest of the footage, so the focus was a little soft if you were intercutting it with “normal” footage.
As I recall though, those were the least of the problems with the films I was making as a teenager.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Dean Gatenby] “the director was the script writer and producer, only problem was he only really wrote the script and pulled together lighting, cast, crew and accomidaton.”
Hmmmm…. so he ONLY directed, wrote, produced, pulled lighting gear, cast it, organized crew, and arranged accommodations?
That’s a pretty big “only.”
[Dean Gatenby] ” we feel he shouldnt plaster his name all over this production as director and producer”
Again, a little confused… wasn’t he the producer and director? Why shouldn’t he be credited as such?
Not trying to be snarky, and maybe this wasn’t the case at all (not knowing all the behind the scenes details), but on the surface it sure sounds to me like this guy is getting his film hijacked.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Some of them just seem to have blinders on.
A while back, a year or so ago, a traveling equipment rep stopped by to demo a piece of lighting gear. This was already a piece of gear I was familiar with, and actually pretty interested in, although I thought it was a little pricey. On his company’s own website, their own demo videos are HORRIBLE. Like, they’re bad even by YouTube standards.
I casually mentioned to the guy, “Hey, why don’t you give me one of those things… I’ll make you a killer demo video using it and you can replace the one that’s on your website” (and money-wise they would have been getting far the better end of that deal). He responded with “Huh? What’s wrong with our video? We like it.”
Sigh.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Can’t say I really have any interest in the project… I was just amazed at the production values (or lack thereof) of a supposedly professionally-produced documentary (especially the camera work).
It could be that the subject matter was supposed to outweigh the quality. The production values in documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry” were pretty low, but a lot of the work was handheld DV handycam shooting by Sydney Pollack himself wagging the camera around… and the subject was riveting, so it was somewhat forgivable.
Maybe it’s a little like the demo videos you see for production equipment… jibs, sliders, camera support equipment. With the exceptions of Redrock and Zacuto, seems like just about every single demo video for film gear is pure amateur hour. I’ve always ranted that these people are professionals in our own industry… yet the videos are terrible. I think you can only take the “cobbler with shabby shoes” analogy so far…
Oh well….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Mike’s workaround might be better than nothing… but obviously that does you no good if you change any of those parameters after the shot starts. Focal length, obviously, would be the one most likely to change… but I’ve been known to change any/all of those factors during a take.
And of course you must remember to turn that off.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
