[Todd Terry]

Steadicam shooting can indeed affect the speed of a shoot (and edit). Sometimes it makes it faster… sometimes slower.

If you have a difficult interior lighting job with all sorts of people and sets and props and a lengthy shot with complicated choreography… then just the setting up, blocking, rehearsals, and busted takes can make doing that as a Steadicam scene take longer than doing it the conventional way.

If you have an easy-but-lengthy walk-n-talk available-light exterior, then shooting Steadicam can be significantly faster than doing it the conventional way with lots of setups in various places and/or laying tons of dolly track, breaking out jibs or cranes, etc.

It’s kinda a wash, it just depends on the complexity of the scene.

I know this goes for me, though (and I’m betting for many, if not most), I would rarely if ever choose Steadicam shooting over conventional setups only because it might be easier or faster. I would only choose Steadicam shooting if it was right for the scene, if it was the appropriate technical way to capture the action, if that’s the look I wanted and my vision for the scene. Speed or ease would rarely if ever factor into the choice. Choosing to do a Steadicam scene because it is easier or faster is definitely a producer’s way of thinking about it, rather than a director’s way.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Oh I’d very definitely charge for that time.

A project that is three days or three weeks old (maybe even three months), the client should have reasonable expectation that you are keeping that project “active” and ready to go. But one that is three years old, obviously that is going to take some work to get it back into shape to start editing on it again.

I haven’t had that exact situation before, but we have on numerous instances had to revisit projects that were years old. Many of them were quite large (several TB in size), and it does take not insignificant time to reload them from their archive drives back into the suites’ RAIDs. Plus they were often created often several generations of software back, might use filters or plugins that are not in play any more, and other things that require massaging to get back into ready-to-edit shape. And we charge for that time.

If you hire someone to paint your house, he might have to do some scraping on the old paint to get it ready for the new job… even if the same guy did that paint job years before. And he’ll charge you for it.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] ” really hate it when production companies use really obscure names that don’t say anything plain about what they do. It’s a hipster trend”

At Fantastic Plastic we hate that, too, Mark…

🙂

I won’t give you specific name advice… just test it out a potential name ALL the ways you might use it. Read it. How does it look on paper? Say it out loud. Are there any clunky words that might look fine but are hard to say outloud or together? Does it lend itself to a good logo treatment? Does it end in an “S” which causes its own set of problems with possessives.

And obviously… make sure no one else is using the name.

And double obviously… pick something that the domain name is available for.

My own company was started a while back now, 17 years ago (you should see how old we all look at the Obscure Hipster meetings), but almost as soon as the internet was born someone else registered fantasticplastic.com. We ended up having to buy it from a group of vintage record stores in Washington… and it was not cheap. Pick something you can get for $16.

And as Nick said, pick a name and stick with it. Even though our company name is not super representative of exactly the kind of work we have evolved into doing now, it is an established name in our market and I wouldn’t dare change it now.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Well, firstly their intended formats are wildly different…

With a 4K camera you are typically (although not always) shooting with at least a 35mm-sized sensor. The 2/3″ camera is using a much smaller sensor that is… surprise… 2/3″ of an inch measured diagonally. A 2/3″ sensor is roughly (not exactly, but in the ballpark) the size of a 16mm film frame. So compare that to a 35mm film frame and you’ll see the huge difference.

So why does that matter?

Well, a lens has to “cover” the format that you are shooting. A lens doesn’t really make a rectangular picture… it really projects a circular image. And that projected circle, at the film plane, must be at least as big as the sensor… 35mm, 2/3″, whatever. Take a lens that is made for the 35mm format and it projects a big enough image circle to cover that sensor. Which also means that it will also work fine (assuming it is the right mount) on a 2/3″ camera, 16mm camera, or anything smaller. Now conversely, the image projected by a lens made for the 2/3″ format will likely only project an image a little bigger than it needs to be for that small frame. If you were to put it on a bigger-sensor camera, you’ll see the corners clipped off, or in radical instances even a black frame with a circular image inside it. Like looking through the peep hole in a door. This is why most all 35mm lenses will work on 16mm cameras, but 16mm lenses will (usually) not work on 35mm cameras.

On top of that, lenses made for higher resolution imaging typically have higher resolution (i.e., are simply much sharper) than those made for smaller-resolution sensors. Take a lens that looks perfectly fine on an old standard definition camera and put it on a 4K camera (or even a 1080 camera) and you might find it noticeably soft. It was only made to resolve as high as it needed to and be as sharp as it needed to be (which also means cheaper), which was for standard-def footage. A $100,000 lens will likely never look any better than a $1,000 lens on that camera. The reverse is not true though for a 4K camera.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I think I may have found it…

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/400558-REG/Schneider_68248009_80SSLR_Series_9_Adapter_Ring.html

Tiffen also claims to make one, but I can find no sign of anyone actually selling it.

Apparently for these outside-the-barrel adapters the key search word is a previously-unknown-to-me term, the acronym “SSLR”… which stands for Set-Screw-Lock Ring adapter.

Thanks to all for the guidance.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Rick, I will look.

I would normally think of a “step-up ring” in this size as something that would let you attach Series 9 to 80mm threaded… whereas I’m looking for something that will attach to the outside of a non-threaded 80mm cine barrel.

I’m a little befuddled that this is hard to find. I mean, there’s got to be countless thousands of cine lenses out working in the pro world, and they are typically not going to be threaded and will predominantly have 80mm fronts. It’s almost hard to believe that no one ever needs to attach anything to them. There are some things (like this close-up lens), that just can’t go in the matte box.

I’ll keep a-lookin’…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Yeah Steve, I’ve searched for exactly such a thing and have been unable to find anything.

Lots of Googling will result in references to such a thing, people mentioning that Tiffen or other vendors make such a thing, but I’ve yet to find an actual source that sells it.

Grrrrrrr…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

That would explain it… I knew you had auto something on because you said changing your shutter speed caused no difference in your exposure levels… which is technically an impossibility (unless you are shooting in some sort of auto mode).

The best shooters (me included, although I’m not labeling myself “best”) will always shoot fully manual… no auto anything. No auto iris, gain, shutter, or focus. That’s really the only way to be fully in control of the end images you get.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] “Todd, your method would require constant eye contact”

Multiple screens, and it’s called “peripheral vision.” 🙂

I’d personally use big solid-color changing screens (black to white, etc., as long as the actual glow from the screens didn’t read as an illumination source).

Probably add some audio ticks or very soft bass hits to it as well.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

You sure are getting lots of advice, Greg…. about music rights, mic’ing, business deals….totally unsolicited, I might add! Haha

Yes, I know you are only asking about the music and live playback.

Mark comes closest to the way that I would do it… his “metronome” idea.

Lately there have been an number of Broadway and touring stage productions that incorporate video playback (some with music) or synced screens. After seeing a couple of these it finally occurred to me how they get them right… yes, basically with a metronome. But not a conventional audio metronome, but rather a visual one.

The most complicated one is saw was a stage production of “9 to 5.” This featured a big video screen in the shape of a clock face with moving hands. Occasionally Dolly Parton would appear in this face to say a line or two, and a couple of times even sang a line or two. I kept thinking “HOW in the world do they do this??” keeping Dolly’s video synced with the live production. I finally noticed that the random ticking clock hands that were part of the video’s background plate were actually ticking exactly in time with the music. They were a metronome, and the orchestra conductor had a little slave monitor that he could watch and keep everything in time. Still quite a feat, but doable.

They did something similar (maybe even more complicated since there were 23 screens, all different) in the stage production of Green Day’s “American Idiot.” There were visual cues in the screens that let the conductor keep everything synced up.

So… I’d take the music tracks that you want to use and produce them (on DVD, or other playback device) so that you have a visual on-screen metronome… could be anything… color changing blocking, alternate black and white squares, whatever. If these are on an out-of-camera-view big screen, then your instructor will be able to keep perfect time when you sync it all back up later.

Just one idea.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com