Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
God that parody is BRILLIANT. I wish I had done that.
As for the real campaign… I can understand a bit why there might be some backlash against this… but you have to look at the big (or maybe rather the small) picture…
This was not a piece designed by psychologists, to see what women really think about themselves. It wasn’t created by by women’s studies experts to look at the effects of perception and society. It wasn’t made by some advocacy group wanting to help women feel better about themselves.
It’s advertising. Period.
We say our job around here is to “sell soap,” and that’s what this is trying to do. Literally.
It’s manipulative. Very very manipulative. And I’m not using that as a dirty word, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do… just like all advertising is designed to do.
Look at these gals. No, none of them are Russian supermodels. But they aren’t the average lady picked out of the line waiting at the DMV, either. Most of them are (by our current aesthetic standards) actually quite pretty. A couple of them, very much so. That’s pretty much the way advertising works. Heck, even look at the forensic artist. When watching that here at our office the first time a few days ago, my business partner said “Wow, the artist looks like George Clooney.” And yeah… he kinda does. Sadly or no, we don’t usually pick ugly people to be on TV. You’re never going to see Honey BooBoo’s mom in a Dove commercial, even one celebrating all women.
And I disagree a little bit in the argument that men don’t care what they look like. I think we all do to different degrees. We all have doppelgängers… and years ago I had two: William Hurt (although he’s a bit older than me), and an actor named Michael E. Knight who played “Tad” on “The Young and the Restless.” In fact, a number of people called me “Tad” instead of “Todd.” I liked that. They were both good looking guys. Flash forward 15 years, yesterday standing in a line a stranger tells me “You know, you look just like Jimmy Buffett.” I tried to pass that off on my baseball cap, Hawaiian shirt, and cargo shorts… but that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. Not that Jimmy Buffett looks bad, but who wouldn’t rather look like a soap star?
But I digress. (actually my true doppelgänger is Boise State football coach Chris Petersen… I have to admit I look like him, though most people don’t know him)
The Dove campaign is just advertising. And I think it’s darn brilliant.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[stan welks] “Siskel & Ebert (amongst many other shows) use to show clips from movies on their TV show and often times did not have favorable things to say about the movies. “
True… but those clips were always provided by the studios, in hopes of getting a favorable review. They were not out grabbing clips that weren’t already being made available to them. In fact I can recall a couple of times them mentioning some obscure film and saying “… unfortunately we don’t have any clips of it to show you, but…”
It would behoove one to be very careful when doing this… and frankly, I’d consult a media attorney (not your usual lawyer, but specifically a media lawyer).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
You’re a little bit stuck… barring firewire (or HDMI), there’s no way to get the pure HDV signal out of that camera. You could jump through some hoops and capture via the analog outputs, but you need the right hardware to do than and you would no longer be capturing a digital HDV signal.
Bottom line is you are going to have to buy/borrow/beg/steal a playback device. Compound that with the fact that if you shot in Canon’s 24f mode (I believe the HV30 called it “cine mode” rather than 24f), the you have to use a Canon camcorder as playback, another device such as a Sony HDV camcorder will not work (there are a couple of later-model Sony decks that will play 24f footage, but you’re talking thousands of dollars there).
I’d hit eBay and look for a gently-used HV30 or HV20 (the HV20 will work just fine).
You might even pick up a spare one if they are selling cheaply enough… since you say you have hundreds of hours of tape to ingest, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wore out a device or two. They’re cheap and not exactly built like tanks or for such heavy uses purely as playback devices.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Awesome Rick… you are the first person I’ve talked with who has actually seen the darn thing first hand, good to know that it works.
[Rick Amundson] “if you have any experience with “steadi-rigs” you will love this.”
Yeah, I think my Steadicamming days are waning. I hit the big 5-0 in about a month and more and more realize the Steadicam is a young man’s toy. Every time I walk by our rig hanging in the studio I think that I’d rather get in an iron maiden than get strapped into that rig again. Emre gave me some good advice about selling it, which I think I’m going to take.
[Rick Amundson] “You won’t put an Alexa on it but it would handle you C300 with ease. “
Well the unit you saw is the M10, which is the only one they have now… and would be just right for the C300. In development is the M5, which will fly up to 5lb of payload, and it will reportedly be half the price at $7500. After they they say the M20 will come next, geared to the Alexa crowd.
[Rick Amundson] “pan and tilt is done easily with some motors and controller from a hobby shop.”
I was under the impression that the pan/tilt servos and controllers were part of the $15K package. Is that something you have to add on? Or rig up yourself? I figured a remote focus unit would be something the users would have to take care of themselves, but I thought the rest was inclusive.
[Rick Amundson] ” I heard that the price of their gyros are coming down “
That’s one of the puzzlers to me… their marketing always calls it a “gyro-stabilized” system, but in all the pics and video I’ve seen of it I can’t spot any actual gyros. Every camera gyro I’ve ever seen was invariably about the same size and shape as a can of frozen orange juice, and I couldn’t spot anything like that in the rig. Are there really gyros? If so, interesting… as gyros typically take a semi-hefty power source by themselves (as well as several several minutes to spin up to working speed).
I believe they are taking $2500 deposits now. I’m eager to see if they deliver what’s promised in a timely fashion, or take the RED and BlackMagic Cinema tact of “You’ll get it when you get it.”
It’s pretty darn interesting….
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Yeah those HID globes that Alzo claims are “HMIs” are really just industrial HID lamps. They practically hemorrhage UV, and the color is just terrible. Chunk them.
I think that Osram globe you’ve found is for a portable DC-powered instrument, hence the 24v.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hi Christian…
This was a couple or more years ago, so I don’t really remember where I bought the parts I used.
The globe was just a regular Osram 150w HMI bulb, should be available anywhere that sells HMI globes for photographic use. I know Richard at CoolLights sells a 150w HMI globe, but they are available many other places as well…
https://www.coollights.biz/cl15060-150w-5400k-quartz-metal-halide-single-bulb-p-74.html
I also had to buy a socket for the globe of course. That takes a G12 ceramic socket. I don’t remember where I bought it, I got it on line somewhere but it was not hard to find.
I’m not really using that instrument anymore, I need to get a new ballast for it. I won’t say the Alzo ballast is a piece of junk, but you know they are dirt cheap and you tend to get what you pay for. Ours crapped out once and had to be returned to Alzo for repair, and the last time we went to use it the socket in the side literally fell out, so we either need to fix it or just chunk it. I’ll probably just chunk it and get a better one. There are lots of 150w ballasts made for grow lights that are likely much better quality.
If you go the DIY route remember these globes put out a lot of UV, so never build a “bare bulb” fixture or you’ll be killing peoples’ eyes and causing sunburns left and right. They need to be at least in an enclosed fixture with a UV shield of some kind. The fixture I built is a fresnel, so the fresnel lens blocks the UV.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
GE has done some absolutely stunningly good warm’n’fuzzy corporate image stuff in the past.
Maybe they felt that approach just wasn’t doing it for them, and decided to try something else.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I had kinda mixed feelings about it when I first saw it on the boob tube a couple of days ago…
From a concept and production standpoint I actually really liked it… it didn’t hit me at all as creepy, I thought it was pretty slick.
From a marketing standpoint though I thought the concept was an extremely odd choice.
I mean, the last Matrix movie was 10 years ago. Much too long ago to still be current/relevant… but not nearly long enough to be “nostalgic.” It’s in that awkward region in the middle that doesn’t seem to have a lot of value for either current parody value nor that nostalgic “remember when” feeling either.
Same reason you don’t see Austin Powers hawking goods on TV.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Um, yeah, that’s weak weak weak.
I’m a fan of Lou Wagner… hate to see him in something so bad. And baffles me why some “Emmy-winning writer” would want to credit himself up front in a project like that, especially one so bad. There’s no limits to vanity, I guess.
On the UPSIDE, if your client is “inspired” by that, it certainly does a nice job of setting the bar incredibly low. Any decent work should knock their socks off.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
It looks pretty cool.
And if the final pricing is fairly in line with the Kickstarter donations, it will be pretty cheap.
That bigass fan on the back of it worries me a bit though, wonder how loud it is…
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
