[Todd Terry]

Hi Ty…

Ok, first a little optical/mechanical/photographic history…

Cine film cameras typically had (and still have) a moon-shaped spinning shutter… basically a mirrored disc that’s cut in half and and spins around the center point (or what would be the center point if it was still a full circle). When it’s at one position it is exposing the film, when it is at its opposite position it is reflecting what the lens sees to the viewfinder.

If it is spinning at 24 revolutions per second and is exactly “cut in half” (a 180° shutter), then each exposure is 1/48th of a second.

Ergo, the 1/48th shutter speed is considered “normal.” Now, note that all shutters aren’t exactly 180°… my 35mm camera for example has a 170° shutter… but for simplicity’s sake we’ll just talk about 180.

SO… a “normal” shutter is “one over twice the frame rate.” In the video world, if you are shooting 24p, then it’s 1/48th. For the 30fps you are shooting, “normal” would be 1/60th.

Now, of course you don’t have to shoot at “normal”… but it tends to give the most pleasing look to motion. As you’d imagine, at 1/48th fast motion will give a fair amount of blur in each frame. Some people might think it’d be better to shoot higher, so each frame is good and crisp. But your brain needs that blur to interpret motion as smooth. Too high a shutter speed gives you the “narrow shutter look,” which is very choppy and staccato. It’s used for effect often in features to make action movies look more “actiony.” See “Saving Private Ryan” to see it used very very well. See “Gladiator” (and a zillion other movies) to see it used poorly. We call it “narrow shutter” because in a film camera that mirrored disc has a movable section that literally physically makes the exposure hole more narrow.

On the opposite end, too low a shutter speed gives too much motion blur, and moving images can look sort of, well, “mushy” for lack of a better term. If you are shooting 30p and a shutter speed at 1/30th, that might be ok for subjects that aren’t moving very much… landscapes, still lifes, very very slow tilts or pans, talking heads, etc. Or if you are shooting in dim conditions and really need the slower shutter for exposure. But if you are shooting anything with much movement you’d probably get more pleasing results at 1/60th.

You can (and would want to) also shoot at a higher shutter speed if you plan to slow-mo the footage using some kind of frame interpolation software (Twixtor, etc.) to recreate the missing frames… in that case you’d shoot at an appropriate shutter speed for however much you intend to slow mo, as if your camera could overcrank like a film camera. But that’s a hole ‘nother can of worms.

So… yeah, you can tweak your shutter speed, a little up or a little down to compensate for some exposure, but I wouldn’t do it much unless you purposely want to start affecting the motion look of your images.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’ve not really found that the size of a job (or size of a client) is relative to the pleasurability of the client to work with… or really the profitability, for that matter.

We’ve had small clients that were a pleasure, and small clients that were a magnificent pain in the ass. Same for the big ones.

It all depends on who you work with. Producing almost nothing but broadcast commercials, many of our clients are advertising agencies. Some of them a peaches to work with, but we also find that many of them (even otherwise good agencies) know bupkus about television. For those who realize that… they are a pleasure. Those that don’t know TV but think they do, well, can be a bit more of a challenge. Strangely enough our three very largest clients (and two of them are multi-billion dollar outfits) do not have ad agencies and we work for them directly, not only as their production facility but at their creative agency as well. We love them.

We’ve also found that bigger does not always equal more profitable. We’ve had small jobs that actually had huge profit margins because we didn’t spend much real money on their gigs… just brain power. Conversely we’ve had jobs with huge budgets… but in the end on paper you’ll see that most of the money went back out the door… for talent, locations, sets, travel, crews, equipment, and a zillion other things… leaving not nearly as much money in our pockets.

Take voice tracks for example… if I need a VO with a little no-budget gig I might end up spending only a couple hundred bucks for a narrator, but I can mark him up 100% with no worries. But if I have a big job that warrants a bigshot known narrator that costs us a couple grand rather than a couple hundred… well, we can’t afford to mark that guy up by nearly the same percentage.

Smaller can also equal faster which can be a good thing. Personally I really like the jobs where I can spend a day or two max directing on location or on stage… shoot the footage upstairs for another day or two in post to edit… then get it out the door, cash the check, and move on. For a really big job that drags on for a while, that can also delay getting money in the bank.

So… here it’s a mixed bag. You never know what’s coming up, or how much of a cakewalk (or lack thereof) it will be.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I don’t think you are going to have too much choice except to go the DIY route and light your cyc with florescent shop lights, the Home Depot or Lowes variety.

The constrictor is your $1000 budget. To light this the “right” way with “real” instruments (Kinos, or whatever other method you choose), you can easily spend a grand (or more) on each instrument… and you’re going to need several.

Unless you can multiply your budget by a factor of at least a few, that doesn’t leave much choice other than shop flos for this type of work. The good news is that they can work very well… the only issue I’ve ever found with them is getting over the embarrassment of having a real DP come in and see them. But they do work, and are dirt cheap. They’ve been discussed many times on the COW (and how to easily modify them), just search “shop lights” especially in the Lighting and Cinematography forums.

Of course, this is only for wallwashing and evenly lighting your greenscreen space… I’m not talking about lighting talent, just the green… but I think that’s what you were asking about. Of course with talent you’d want to light them very separately, using whatever kind/style of instruments you need to get them to look appropriate for whatever particular environment you are compositing them into. Just make sure you are lighting talent and greenscreen as separately and independently as possible.

Considering this is a permanent installation (that I’m guessing will be used a lot) and you admit “I don’t know much about lighting,” It would probably really behoove you get a real DP or a really good gaffer to come in for a day and help you with the space. Getting it setup right in the first place will save you miles of headache and frustration later and help you get good composites right off the bat without having to struggle for days with impossible keys. This forum and the advice you’ve received so far is a great starting point, but it’s really hard to get the kind of advice online that you can get from a pro who can walk on the stage and see exactly how everything is firsthand and can help you select and precisely position instruments.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I certainly wouldn’t charge any less than 50%, that’s for sure.

Here rendering, if any, is charged at full edit suite rate. But we’re not in a position or doing the kinds of projects that require hours of unattended rendering. At best it’s work for 10 minutes, stop and render for two, and on and on. So it’s all full rate.

If it’s something you can literally start and walk away from and do something else (or leave cooking overnight), then sure, a discounted rate is fine and appropriate. But if it requires your babysitting to any degree, I wouldn’t discount it much… if any.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Daniel Stone] “I’m just trying to figure out what union(s) the stadium is ruled by,”

Well no doubt that is IATSE.

There’s not much way around this, you’re gonna have to have a good sit down chat with whomever your union contact/liaison is there to plan this out and find out who can do what and who has to do what, and what their abilities and areas of expertise are. Anything we can offer here is just going to be guesswork at this point.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’ve only had one slightly similar experience in the distant past… with a non-union crew from here in Alabama, needing to shoot in the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, which is a very uber-union house.

We paid off the stage manager, who happened to also be the IATSE shop steward. Literally paid him off. Yes, bribed him to look the other way. This was pushing 20 years ago and I don’t even remotely remember how much (couple hundred bucks, maybe?), but hey, it worked.

And it made me feel like I was in a Scorsese movie.

No doubt there are more above-board ways to do this, but typically if a facility itself is a union house, you have to use union people.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Not a Final Cut user (in any flavor, we’re all Premiere here), but…

Are you using the Canon XF Utility to first manage (back up, log, rename, merge, etc.) your .MXF files before attempting to import them into FC?

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Rich… I wasn’t familiar with the MYT. It looks like great gear… and very affordable, which is an unusual combo.

It also looks BIG and HEAVY, which are two of the things I’ve desperately tried to eliminate. Now that I’ve turned 50 (as has every member of my usual crew) our watchwords are “smaller” and “lighter”… I’m getting too old/tired to travel with 2000lbs of gear.

Over the last year we’ve really pared down the stuff we travel with… which is one reason I went to the C300PL. Not only did we trade a 24-pound camera for a 4lb one (well, ok a 4-pound body… rigged out the camera is still about 11 pounds), but now I don’t have to lug nearly the arsenal of lighting instruments that I used to. That’s another reason I’m doing a lot of slider shots now, just to avoid the size/weight of the jib or a “real” dolly.

I also don’t need anything nearly 4′ long. Most of my slider moves are pretty short and subtle… 2′ or less. The exact slider I want unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist… there’s about three of them that I’d love to combine into the exact features I’d like.

Actually, what I’d really like is for edelkrone to make one that’s a little bigger and beefier than what they have… which I think is just crazy inventive and innovative…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YShr5GfCS7Q&feature=share#aid=P9yBtnWBHCQ

Is that not the coolest mechanism? They are surprisingly very inexpensive, too.

I’m currently over-weighting the little slider I have. The camera itself is not too bad, but I can’t seem to give up my Oconnor tripod head… and the head also weighs 10 pounds, so I end up putting about 21 pounds on the slider (which is a lot better though than the 34 pounds that I used to ride on it). I just haven’t found another head that works as well, as smoothly, and that I can operate so well.

The search goes on…

T2

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

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[Todd Terry]

I don’t use the C100, I use the C300… but I’m 99% sure all the same metadata is recorded on C100 clips, too.

Just open the card (or the card backup) in the Canon XF Utility. Find the clip you want the info for and right click on it. A pop-up dialog box will appear that shows a bunch of choices, including “Clip Properties,” “Camera Metadata,” and “Custom Picture.”

“Clip Properties” will tell things like name, duration, size, timecode, framerate, bit rate, audio sampling rate, etc.

“Camera Metadata” will tell you recording date/time, shutter speed, focal length, focus distance, focus mode, image stabilizer on/off, ISO speed, ND filter, white balance mode, color temp, and a couple of other things.

“Custom Picture” will tell you the values for the several dozen parameters in whatever camera profile you are shooting with.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Not to highjack this thread, but maybe you guys (Rick?) can shed some light (haa… see what I did there?) on why so many people seem to prefer PARs (in the HMI world) to fresnels?

All of my HMIs are fresnels. On the occasions that we have to rent any additional firepower we always get PARs, because that’s all people (at least around here) seem to have in their rental inventory. I hate PARs compared to fresnels. Fresnels just seem sooo much easier to use… and if I never have to swap out a hot lens in a PAR again it will still be too soon. So much easier to just twist a knob to focus. Much more precise, too.

So… why the love affair with PARs? Is it the light output? Am I missing something? And I apologize if I have asked this question before… which seems familiar to me, but apparently the answer didn’t stick.

As for those LED knockoffs that claim to be fresnels… Mark is right, the housing is shaped like a fresnel instrument, but the front lens element clearly is not. Still, I’d like to play with one. I’m curious as to how hard the light actually is, or whether those barn doors are as useless as they are on most other LED instruments.

T2

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