Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
There are scads of devices that are test pattern generators…
https://audio-video-supply.markertek.com/search#w=test%20pattern
…but as for a utility that will do that on, say, and iPad or tablet… I’m not aware of any.
I would think that would be easy enough though to snag a simple test pattern file (.jpg or whatever) of the appropriate size/resolution to display as an image on the device. Would that work for the application you’re talking about?
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Others may have ideas, but I’d suggest .mov, .wmv, .mpg, and maybe .mp4 for test files. I think I’d steer clear of .avi files since there are so many zillions of different avi codecs.
Taking a step from that, ideally you’d also want 486, 720, and 1080 versions of each.
And possibly one more step, interlaced and progressive versions of each.
And beyond that, I personally like knowing if a client can play a 24p file, since virtually all of our productions are 23.976fps progressive and I prefer if they can be viewed as they were natively produced, rather than converted. Although the vast majority of the time we do have to convert it to 60i.
You may get to the point of overkill though and overwhelm clients. If you need to narrow that down, I have found that almost anyone can play .mpg files, no matter what OS platform, software, or playback device they are using… so that’s what we usually offer first (either for live events, or for broadcast).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
The “sample folder” sounds like a pretty good idea.
There are a few things we hate hearing…
• We’re gonna play this off a laptop
• Just give us whatever, we can take any type of file
• We can convert it to whatever we need
• We might be putting this in PowerPoint, I dunno
• I have no ideaSounds like you have heard all these before, and much more.
Like you, I try to ask a lot of questions to try to give the clients exactly what they need, that will play the very best, but sometimes it’s a crapshoot.
We almost always do broadcast stuff, but every now and then there is something for a live event. We just did one for a big Chamber of Commerce group for a live awards dinner. Not gigantic, but not peanuts either… I think they spent about $20K with us. I didn’t attend the event (they weren’t paying me enough to sit through that), but my biz partner did. He’s not a technical guy (he’s the beancounter), but from his description it sounds like their playback had inverted fields. These are from files the big-screen projection AV company had tested the day before and deemed perfect (and the files themselves were perfect… I quadruple tested them).
We got to thinking, and looking back we cannot think of a single time where we produced something for a live event where it went absolutely seamlessly and flawlessly perfectly… except those where we were also hired to babysit the actual live presentation.
If something can go wrong, it likely will.
So, I’d say when it is something that you will just have to eventually turn over and say “Here… it’s outta my hands now,” then having test files available to them could be very helpful. The only real problem I see with that is that in the situations we’ve often run into, no one can (or will bother to) run those critical tests until the day of the show. Or the day before, if you’re lucky.
That’s a really long version of what should have been a short answer…. a folder full of test files sounds like a good idea to me.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Well, it won’t apply to the rest of the world, but just the buzz so far and the rather unbelievable story behind its making is enough to make me curious enough to see it.
Ebert, for one, loved it (one of the last that he personally picked for his festival). We didn’t always agree, but I generally respected his critiques.
One different issue I’ll take with Mike (and probably a bunch of other peope)… I actually rather liked The Lone Ranger. In fact, quite a lot. I had no intentions of seeing it after it was so universally panned, but it was what was playing at the drive-in in a neighboring city (yes, an actual drive-in). So, we went just for the “event” of it (grill dogs at home, load a cooler and camp chairs in the Jeep… it’s much more of an outing than a movie). I was very very pleasantly surprised. Believable? Of course not… but a pretty rollicking good time. Or at least we thought so.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Rick Wise] “Eric makes a terrific case for working up through the electric department.”
Indeed he does.
One of the best DPs I was ever around wasn’t actually a DP… he was a gaffer.
He used to be the go-to guy if you needed a gaffer in Atlanta. In fact the first time I saw him was back in my wanna-be actor days on a TV movie. I was just a day-player so hadn’t met the crew and didn’t know the camera op was the DP on the movie… I thought the gaffer Joe was, because he was definitely the guy who was really Making. It. Happen.
I ended up being on several different gigs through the years where he was the gaffer, and frankly he could have DP’d just about anything.
Doing some Googleing, now he apparently owns a lighting/grip company, and doesn’t have any IMDB credits for the last few years. So apparently he never became an “official” cinematographer. But he sure could have if he’d wanted to.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Mike Cohen] “…inside office buildings and hotels, or do the $49 variety you would take camping suffice (I suspect not).”
I actually think they might, Mike. We don’t have need for two-ways much, but when we do that’s exactly what we use…
…cheapo two-ways, bought several pairs of them for next to nothing on eBay…
Actually, they work like a charm. We’ve used them indoors for intercoms when doing a couple of live events (we got headsets for them as well). In your hotel/office situation I’m not sure they would go through tons of steel and concrete if you were on different floors or vastly different parts of the building, but if everyone is in relatively the same region, I know the ones we have would work fine.
Now… I’m not exactly sure of the legalities of using these for commercial use is… but frankly I’ve never let it bother me.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Obviously in that situation you’d need to insist they didn’t bring real weapons, I doubt anyone would debate that. My biggest concern would be that even if told not to, that one of the over-enthusiastic guys would go a bit rogue and still be concealing anyway (“It’s my gun, who’s gonna know?”).
You’ll find out pretty quickly when Faux Bigfoot makes an appearance.
To save time I’d pre-dial 9-1-1.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I’m with Rick… never heard of a key grip becoming a DP. I wouldn’t say it can’t happen, but it’s not a usual career path.
Gaffers and camera ops though do, on (rare) occasion, move into DP jobs. I’d say though that cinematography gigs are not commonly start-at-the-bottom-and-work-your-way-up-to-it jobs… that’s just not the usual path. Same for directors… people not in the biz probably think that an assistant director is working their way toward becoming a director. More commonly though the usual path is 2nd Second AD to Second AD to First AD to Production Manager… with PM being the end goal.
The more usual route to becoming a DP is studying cinematography and/or photography… and studying under and being mentored by another DP.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I meant to mention that when I do greenscreen, if I am daylight lighting (which is the case about half the time), I’ll often use an uncorrected tungsten instrument as a backlight. I tend to like the look when the backlight is a little warm, and that combo is pretty pleasing.
I do that purely for aesthetics, not to help the key. If you are using decent keying (say, KeyLight or Ultimatte, etc.), I’ve found mattes are clean enough if you light both the screen and talent well so that I generally don’t have to worry about battling spills.
I almost always without fail shoot for my own projects… but recently I was a “hired gun” for another director who came in from NY to do a greenscreen shoot here. The talent was a late-middle-aged guy with fairly greyish-white hair. It was an all-tungsten setup… and the director asked me to put some quarter CTB on the backlight. I’d never put blue on a backlight in that situation before, but he said it was a look he liked. We tried it, and yeah, it did look pretty good (and the matte was clean as a whistle).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I also always caution people not to light the screen more than is needed. I don’t mean intensity, I mean area.
A bigass multi-sided cyc doesn’t need solid lighting everywhere if you’re just shooting a locked-down 80mm talking head shot… in that case just light the screen area that’s in frame. Otherwise you’re just wasting time and energy creating potential greenspill and reflections, especially in a wraparound stage environment.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
