[Todd Terry]

One of my good friends is a patent attorney. Thinking maybe I should call him to see if anyone has snatched up BLACK limbo yet…

…or the mottled gray painted canvas… I could be living large off all those school portrait residuals….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] “October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys.”

Yes, and it’s one of those fun facts that Homer mentions EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. …that the subject of the name comes up.

There was actually more name changing. Originally it was a short story in Air & Space magazine called “The Big Creek Missile Agency” and I’m guessing a publisher suggested a change to “Rocket Boys” for the novel… and then on to “October Sky” for the movie.

[Mark Suszko] “You have cool friends!”

Well I know plenty of dorks, too. But yes, Homer is a good guy. I know lots of showbiz types who are in the “I’m not anybody…yet” category, and a few who are rich and famous… but Homer’s the only one I think that I’ve known through both ends of that spectrum. Rich definitely seems better. He’s really a great writer though, and I heartily recommend his books (there are scads of them now).

But the point being… he was never married to the title, and I think that was definitely the right choice.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Mads is giving great advice here. Take it.

I’d caution you though not to attach TOO much gloom-and-doom to the name change issue. That happens ALL the time.

You may think your film has a great title… but it may not. Writers are fairly well known to often (not always, but often) give their work titles that, well, aren’t that great. Or more importantly in these situations, aren’t that marketable… they are too close to a project to be able to objectively judge what’s a good title and what isn’t. I remember numerous critics saying how much they loved “The Hudsucker Proxy,” and it was a shame that the such a clunky and obtuse title at least partially helped kill it at the box office. The Coen brothers resisted (successfully) any attempts to change the name, and the film tanked. Which is a crying shame, it’s a GREAT movie.

I have a friend here in town, Homer Hickam, who embarked on a mid-life second career as a writer. He wrote an autobiographical novel about his childhood and building working model rockets with his friends in 1957. The novel was called Rocket Boys (and it’s great… pick it up). Universal optioned the book and wanted to change the title, thinking Rocket Boys sounded more “Disneyesque” and people might think it more of a kids’ movie… so they retitled it October Sky (also a good movie and pretty faithful to the book… starring Jake Gyllenhaal as my friend Homer, and Chris Cooper as his dad… a good movie). After the movie came out subsequent re-printings of his book were also re-titled October Sky (although you can still get it as Rocket Boys).

Anywho… I don’t think Homer was crazy about his book’s title being changed. I’m sure he thought (and I agree) that Rocket Boys was a better title than the obscure October Sky. But… he got over it. And cashed the check. And now he drives pretty nice cars and owns a swanky vacation home on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands. I don’t think he regrets not fighting for the name.

This happens with books ALL the time (those are the ones that we can readily find out about), but it happens with movies with great frequency, too.

DON’T take a bad deal, get a good deal (the most obvious advice ever since “Buy low, sell high”)… but don’t put too much weight or importance on the title. If that’s the only thing standing in the way of a good deal, change it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks John…

Yes I’m familiar with The Slider sliders. They are definitely the “big boys,” although actually I haven’t seen one in quite a long time… I’m sure plenty are still around though.

This vendor is making much smaller units, The Slider would easily ride a Panavision Millennium and a Worrall head… whereas this guy’s are more for the DSLR and small-bodied user (such as my C300, maybe the Epic, probably not the Alexa)… and probably for shooters more likely to be solo in a hatchback rather than with a crew in a 2-ton grip truck. I probably should have outlined their scope and place on the food chain a bit more accurately.

I personally like short sliders… my most frequent slider moves are probably only a couple of feet or less (and we’re very often in tight locations where a five-footer would be physically impossible… by quite a bit).

I’m trying to give them as much input as possible though… thanks for the opinion! Any others??

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Nick Griffin] ” Not sure if you have anything like that there and seriously wonder if anything like that exists for crew members.”

That definitely exists, although we always hire directly and have never used those services.

I have a friend who co-owned one of those companies for many years, it was called “ProCrew” (she eventually got out of the business). They provided crew members, took care of booking, payroll, insurance, all that jazz, and did union finagling as well, as they were all IATSE members. Her company mostly provided crews for stage and theatrical productions (touring Broadway shows, concerts, arena-type events) but they also provided personnel for film crews as well.

In a case like that, ProCrew was the actual employer. If you contracted with that company then none of those crew members were your employees… but rather ProCrew was simply one of your vendors.

Another guy in Atlanta (who was considered the absolute “King of Gaffers” over there for many years) went on to start a very similar company there, too.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Divas are certainly great keylights, especially for interview and talking head setups where you don’t have to put the instrument far away from the talent. Highly recommended.

I never use flos for back or hairlights though (well I wouldn’t say never, but rarely). I almost always use a small tungsten fresnel for a back/hair light (usually a LTM Pepper 100 or 300). They are just so much more controllable, and often with a hair light you need a lot of control — say you want the light to spill on the side of a subjects face just a certain way… or lets say you have a gray or white-haired (or bald) subject but he’s wearing a very dark suit. In an instance like that you’d likely want a lot of light on his shoulders, but be able to very carefully flag the top of his head juuuust right. You need a very controllable (and flaggable) instrument to do that. I’ll sometimes find I’m tweaking the barn doors on a backlight just a few millimeters and it makes the difference in a good shot and a horrible one. You don’t have that kind of control with a flo as a backlight, and they certainly aren’t cuttable with barn doors.

HMIs should usually be limited to situations where you need a fair bit of light… simulating daylight, combating windows, etc. I often use a single 1200w HMI in an interview or talking head setup, especially if I’m in a big bright location. I’ll put the head very far back behind the subject (and a bit to one side), and very high (usually maxing out a junior or combo stand). Then I’ll blast it into a white 4×4 bounce that is in front of (and to the opposite angle of) the subject… that becomes the key. Then by finessing the barn doors I will “steal” a little bit of the direct light as a back/side/hair light. Sometimes I’ll need to “Hollywood” a bit of diffusion by hanging it on a grip arm on a C-stand to cut the intensity of the direct light on the subject (but not on the bounce card), but often the direct light is fine. HMIs though I think are generally best left to specific situations, big spaces, bright locations, and frankly to people who are used to using them.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Answered in the Lighting forum where you also posted this.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

You can certainly mix lighting instruments with different color temperatures… they just won’t be the same color.

Sometimes that’s ok… in fact, sometimes we’ll do it on purpose. In fact, if I wanted a sort of moody outdoor stylized restaurant or bar setting, I’d definitely use different colors of light… I might do a back/side splash of light on talent in something like a blue, or maybe even red (depending on the mood). The same thing can be said for instruments with natively different color temps. I use daylight fixtures a lot (HMIs, LEDs, flos), but I’ll often still use tungsten fixtures as backlights, because their warmer look is often desirable.

And of course you can also gel instruments to color correct them to match, although you lose a fair amount of output doing that.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[walter biscardi] “No, they don’t actually “produce” the show.”

Tomato tomahto. I’m using the old Hollywood producer designation… i.e., the fat cat who pays for the shootin’ match… as Walter said “they pay 100% production costs.” In my book (and most people in the industry), that’s the big all-encompassing PRODUCER (the one in all caps), whether or not they have anything to do with the hands-on gettin’-it-done, have a logo on an end slate, or have ever set foot on a location or set.

I don’t really know any of these shows or people, but I bet if you ask The All You Can Eat network, “So do you guys produce Sparky McMuffin’s ‘Great American Waffle Search’?” they’d say yes…even though their producers’ duties end with writing a check.

It’s a more-than-moot point anyway, sounds like they make it very clear who owns what… which is good.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[walter biscardi] “Actually if you’re talking Cable Networks, it’s completely the opposite.”

Originally I was speaking of broadcast networks, specifically. Being an old broadcast guy, I’m still of the opinion that “cable network” is an oxymoron… but actually I think we’re saying exactly the same thing, in different ways…

[walter biscardi] “…they pay 100% production costs and walk away with ownership…”

Exactly… the cable network is paying for the production costs… ergo in that scenario the cable network is the producer. They do own the show, but in that case they own the show not because of simply where it aired, but because they produced it.

Or I can imagine a situation where a cable network might have the opportunity to take an already-produced show and simply buy it. They didn’t produce it, but do have ownership rights because they bought them.

As I said, it depends on the deal.

T2

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