[Todd Terry]

[jim brodie] “witness the stylistic fiacaso of David Letterman’s interview show Netflix.”

Wow… I have to take issue with that. I think Letterman’s Netflix show is one of the most beautifully staged and plotted shows I’ve ever seen in the two-guys-sittin’-in-chairs genre. It just blows me away, actually.

That being said…

I don’t have any advice other than to echo “just do it.”

Last year we did a several-minutes-long promotional video with a local hospice organization, they were opening a new facility. We did a video tour of the (very nice) place, interviews with a few doctors and nurses, but none of the “patients” were real… they were all actors.

Flash forward to a couple of months ago… this same organization asked if we would make a short video with one of their patients who had been discharged, he was in the last stages of his illness and had basically been sent home to die. I begrudgingly did it, not thrilled about it because we agreed to do it pro bono… and our crew schlepped about 20 miles away to shoot with this guy and his family. He was very ill (frankly they weren’t even sure he would last the rest of the day… although he hung on for about three more), and it was heartbreaking… but it was also one of the most wonderful things we have ever done. I sure wouldn’t want to do it every day (besides being free, it was emotionally exhausting), but we were so welcomed by the family and told so much what a difference this made during this hardest time of their lives… that it made me feel bad about being cranky about the whole affair to begin with. It was pretty great.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

You’ll have to get a quote from Canon repair to find that out. And I’m not sure I’d go with a third-party repair (if anyone will do that), I think that’s a job for an actual Canon repair.

Just a wild guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised at a quote in the $1500 neighborhood… maybe a little less, maybe somewhat more.

Get a real quote..

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Your reel is very very pretty, BTW.

Yeah, I stalk newbies here, so I know who I’m dealing with.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Patrick Corr] “I do struggle when I have to make snap decisions under difficult time constraints when I don’t have time to really plan out locations”

Well, planning of course is a great thing, it’s a necessity not a luxury and you almost can’t do too much of it.

But… looking back over the last almost three decades that I’ve been doing this, I would say some of my best looking scenes where those where I was thrown a curve ball and had to come up with something I wasn’t expecting… those “happy accidents” as Bob Ross would say.

You seem to have a handle on it, you’ll get there.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I know it was probably a grading nightmare, but I actually greatly prefer the lighting on the guy in the lab.. it just looks much more natural.

The guy in the workshop there isn’t bad, certainly not temperature wise, but it’s not as interesting as the other, by a long shot. A back/rim/hair/side light on him would have been helpful, to help pop him out of that bland particle-board background. Also, your key on him is a bit backwards from what most people would consider “normal” portrait style lighting… you’d more often see the key on the other side of the camera (more lighting the opposite side of his face), but that’s not a hard and fast rule. If you want him to appear illuminated from some natural source (say, we’re assuming that workshop has a window to the guy’s left), then that’s the appropriate side… but at first blush it’s just not aesthetically the best look for him in an interview-type setup (as opposed to some narrative work, a scene from a movie or whatever)… where normally your subject would face toward the side the key is on rather than away from it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

You don’t sound amateur, at least you are asking the right questions.

You’ll want to go with your predominant source… or the one you can’t change… as your guide for color temperature. Since you can’t change the color of daylight (and gelling that many windows would be a nightmare), you should think of something in the 5600°K neighborhood as your “target.” Ergo, try to match the lighting on your subject with more or less the same temperature. I would have cooled down the LED fixtures (raised the temp) to match that. As you said, you found color grading easy when you did that, and that was the right choice. The ceiling flos are always going to be an issue. Of course it depends on what tubes are in there… in the “olden days” you could bet on the flo tubes to be quite cool… which would be a good thing, since their temps would be more on the daylight end of things. These days though you’ll just as often find very warm tubes (such as here in my office right now), and that’s going to prove more problematic. If I am on a location with flos, I will generally turn them all off and light the room myself. Cheap consumer flo tubes are always going to have a bit of that sickly greenish/yellow spike in their spectrums, no matter what color temp the tubes claim to be.

I believe you actually posted the same picture twice in your samples there (I certainly can’t see any difference, and they have the same file name)… but whichever that one was, you did a fine job with it, I don’t see any cringe-worthy issues at all… the grading actually looks pretty good… the focus, on the other hand… hmmm… but maybe that was just a test shot.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Tom Smith] ” I believe that it is perfectly legal to film and audio record random people in public places”

Well, that be technically true. In many (maybe most) cases it’s legal to film those random people. But here’s the kicker, it is only legal if you don’t do anything with the footage.

If you take it home and throw it in a drawer, then pretty much no harm, no foul.

It’s the instant that you use or distribute those people’s images in any sort of commercial application that the liability kicks in. Swiftly.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Here’s the problem… you have zero argument if you use “The boss told me to do it” or “But I’m just working for another guy and he said it is ok” defense. It won’t fly.

One person cannot give another person permission to break the law on their behalf. If that was possible, there would be a lot more professional hit men out there.

Here’s the analogy that I use with clients… it most often comes up when a corporate client wants to use music for which they don’t have the rights, but tell me “It’s ok, we’ll be liable for it.” I tell them to imagine they are stopped for speeding. You can’t tell the cop “It’s ok, this is my friend’s car, he told me to drive as fast as I want, that you can send the ticket to him.” It doesn’t work that way, the cop is still handing you the ticket.

Follow John’s advice and get releases yourself, if you have to. If your client won’t abide by that, you shouldn’t take that job… after all it is protecting them just as much as it is you.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

As long as you are doing just head-and-shoulders portraits, you could go to Hobby Lobby or Michaels and get the largest sheet of white (or whatever color) foamcore that they sell. Only a few bucks. If you want a gray backdrop, buy white… white is whatever color you light it. Don’t light it fully and you have gray.

If you need something bigger, try a local sign shop. We buy 4×8 sheets of foamcore there (we cut them in half to make 4×4 bounce cards) where we get them for a fraction of the price of what you’d pay at FilmTools or other industry sources.

John’s white sheet is the perfect no-cost answer, but you seem to be struggling with wrinkles, which is why I’m suggesting something rigid like foamcore.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

https://youtu.be/1aNVN-911Tc

T2

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

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