[Todd Terry]

[Robert Ruffo] “People who are selling their Steadicam rigs to buy this are quite frankly amazingly stupid.”

Well I might considering exactly that, and don’t really consider myself amazingly stupid.

Of course I realize they are not interchangeable tools. While similar, they are two completely different things with very different capabilities and usages. I don’t consider them purely “swappable” by any means.

I’m considering selling the Steadicam because I simply don’t use it. 20+ years as a Steadicam operator, and I’m a bit over it. My back doesn’t particularly like it any more, plus these days I don’t really shoot 35mm or any other heavy cameras anymore with very much regularity, and our rig is way overkill for the little C300 that is my primary shooter now. I really can’t remember the last time I suited up the rig, it just doesn’t see action any more and the big case is just gathering dust and taking up valuable real estate on a studio shelf.

The MōVI on the other hand, I might actually use. So, I don’t think selling my Steadicam and buying a MōVI is stupid, amazingly or otherwise. I think its selling one thing in other to buy another… not swapping one tool for another that supposedly does the same thing. It’s like selling the sailboat you don’t use anymore so you can buy the sports car that you will.

I might wait, though. This is a first-generation toy that I would expect to evolve a bit before it really “settles.” I was chatting with Brian Valente (the RedrockMicro guru), and he said that his tech guys gave it a good going over at NAB… and while it seemed like something with amazing potential, that the version seen at NAB seemed just a tad “beta,” in his words… with refinements expected to come.

We’ll see what happens in the near future.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Dennis Size] “…depending on your OCD level.”

Best answer I’ve heard on the COW in a while. Nice, Dennis!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I spent much longer in TV news than I cared to (“I’m not a journalist, but I play one on TV”)…

An OTS is a term you’d hear sometimes… but not to the degree where I’d consider it quite an official term. Having worked at one network affiliate, and visited other television stations as a “journalist” (also making air quotes with my fingers), and many more directing promos for various stations… I think it’s almost safe to say that just about everywhere I went called them something different.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

What these guys said is pretty much what we did once…. I never did a hand coming out of a grave, but I did once do a human head in a picnic basket.

Ok… it’s not as morbid as it seems… it was a PSA for a Shakespeare in the Park production and a couple on a picnic blanket in the park opened their basket to see inside it the disembodied head of Sir William reciting “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

For the wide shots, it was just a basket on a blanket on the ground… you couldn’t see in the basket. For the closeups, we had a board that we actually just rested between two picnic table benches… the actor sat on the ground with his head up through the hole in the plywood (and hole in the bottom of the basket).

Now, our board was covered with a picnic blanket, but it could just as easily have been covered with dirt, or even sod (although sod is heavy, would need a sturdy construction).

As was said, it’s all in the framing.

One anecdotal story that’s slightly related… a zillion years ago before I was a wanna-be director back when I was a wanna-be actor, I was appearing in an episode of “In the Heat of the Night” (whether or not you remember that NBC Carroll O’Connor show will be very telling of your age). Anywho, we had one scene in a cemetery one day… and they were very careful to keep all the action and cameras pointed in one particular direction. I finally noticed that was so only the fake prop tombstones would show… they were being careful not to photograph any of the real headstones. I wondered, to myself, why that was… and if they didn’t need the real stones, why were they bothering to do it in a cemetery at all?… they could stick their fake stones up in any field. I later inquired and learned that it was because the empty grave itself in the scene was real… waiting for some poor late soul to be planted in it later that same day. Now, this was a big-time high-dollar network primetime show… but I guess they still didn’t want the bother and expense of digging their own hole. Which I thought was a little odd.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

That’s a really great piece, beautifully done…

But as for….

[Jerad Hill] ” I am assuming this could be done with a DSLR shooting at 60fps.”

…well, no.

I’m not saying you couldn’t do something cool with your DSLR, but it’s not going to look exactly like that, or even fairly close. My guess that was shot with some flavor of the Phantom camera, as some of those shots were really really high fps… many many times faster than any DSLR would do… we’re talking way up in the hundreds of fps, if not 1000fps+.

You could try something like that with your DSLR and do the super slo-mo in post with some kinda of frame interpolation method such as Twixtor, but the results aren’t likely going to be nearly as good as in the sample.

The technique is mostly fairly straightforward… just the usual speed ramps (easy breezy) and some really fast dolly moves (not as easy) but technically it’s not too complicated (if you have the right camera). Aesthetically, though, it’s really beautifully done… one of those jobs that makes me say “Oh man, I wish I’d done that.”

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

That did the trick, Tim… one little checkbox, easy fix.

We looked and looked for something to that effect, but just didn’t see it or wasn’t looking in the right place. That’s an option that I never even knew existed before, so didn’t know it was possible for the timeline to not play when hitting ENTER.

Much thanks Tim for your fast wisdom and easy breezy fix.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I couldn’t say, Tim… it’s not my personal suite but I’ll have the editor who calls that room home check that first thing.

Sounds like something that’s entirely possible… frankly, I didn’t even know there was such a checkbox, every version of Premiere that I have ever worked with in the past 16 years (going back to 4.0) always worked the same way… hit enter and you play the timeline. I wasn’t aware there was an option for it not to, but it makes sense. Oddly it was working as we were used to up until today suddenly… and the editor says he didn’t change anything or adjust any settings… but things do happen.

Thanks for the tip.

By the way, awfully good to hear from you, Tim… been a long time since we crossed paths.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’ll have him try that.

Open to any other ideas, too… if anyone has encountered this.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hitting the return key plays the work bar area (and renders, if anything needs rendering). But if no renders are needed, it will just play it. Or, at least it’s supposed too. That’s the way I do it 99% of the time… couldn’t live without that.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Yes I’ve seen it and it’s pretty awesome… except that its maximum speed is waaaaaay to slow for my usage.

I’ve been talking with Brian Valente at Redrock, and he says that at its fastest speed it takes 30 seconds to go from one end of the slider to the other.

I need something about three times that fast.

I can see how it is useful for long interviews, but in many of the demos I’ve seen its moving so slowly that the movement is almost imperceptible. I usually do commercials (not long-form things), and it’s not usual for shots to be only a second or two long. Brian looked at a sample spot I sent him, and agreed saying there probably wouldn’t be any noticeable movement in my shots if I had used the One Man Crew.

I’m hoping they ramp up the speed in future generations. It’s cheap enough, I’d buy one today without hesitation if the darn thing would move faster.

T2

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