[Todd Terry]

Do what virtually everyone else in the industry does (definitely every casting director)… use Breakdown Services / Breakdown Express for your casting.

It doesn’t matter that you are in Saskatchewan, there is talent everywhere.

Any time we post a casting call at Breakdown Express we get on average anywhere from 100 to 1500 actor submissions for each role (depending on talent specs needed, shoot days/locations, dayrate, etc.). You can look at headshots, see their resumes, watch their reels, request auditions of your script.

Post your breakdown, and talent agents will submit their talent through Breakdown Express, and actors will also submit directly via Actors Access. This is the service that literally every talent agent in the free world uses. We will typically get submissions from three or four dozen talent agencies, and hundreds of direct submissions from actors.

You’ll typically get the majority of your submissions within an hour or two of posting. You’ll get them all within 24 hours.

And it’s free. Free to sign up, free to use.

https://breakdownexpress.com

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thank you Mark… I’m gonna use that first one as a template for my next work.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] ” Zooms are not something you want to use a lot, because they call attention to themselves….. visually it’s not changing the parallax relationships between objects in the visual field. “

Mark said this precisely correctly… and I’ll reinforce it with the way that I usually try to explain it to people…

Zooms call attention to themselves… they look unnatural, because they are unnatural.

This is because, in the simplest of terms, a zoom is the only camera move that the human eye cannot reproduce. Your eye (and head and body) can tilt, pan, dolly, truck, arc, crane, dutch, and do just about anything else a camera/lens can do except zoom (unless you are original Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin).

And they make you look like you are stuck in 1979.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I think you have two options, A and B…

Option A–

Since you say money is not an issue, this option would be:
Ditch the SLR lenses. Yes, many filmmakers have successfully used SLR lenses, but that’s not what they were made for. SLR lenses are great tools but they are not the right tool… in your case you need a wrench when you are needing a screwdriver. SLR lenses have inherent issues that you have to deal with… such as short-turn focus ring travel that make precision follow-focusing an absolute beast, no gear teeth, “clicking” aperture settings, breathing, and the list goes on.
1) Buy or rent (much smarter to rent) real cine lenses, or at least still lenses that have been re-barreled so that they perform as cine lenses.
2) Buy or rent (much smarter to rent) a real remote follow focus unit
3) Hire a camera assistant who is a proficient focus puller (and the real pros can eyeball measurements within an inch)
4) Be done with it.

Or…

Option B–

Continue talking this to death absolutely ad nauseam.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Blaise… that is my new favorite reply to this guy.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, that’s a little bit apples-and-oranges. From what I’ve heard the Aputures are good instruments, but keep in mind those 120D heads are open-faced instruments, and are not fresnel heads, like the Boltzens are. Personally I’d rarely (if ever) use an open-faced instrument for a job that called for a fresnel, and vice versa.

I think Aputure might have an add-on fresnel accessory attachment among the various light modifiers they sell… but in its out-of-the-box state the 120D is not a fresnel.

The Came-TV lights are indeed cheap, and you tend to get what you pay for. However so far these have performed great, and seem to be built very very well. And yes, the fan is absolutely silent… so much so that I actually forgot they had fans in them until I’d had them a couple of months and suddenly remembered someone mentioning it. I knew you would not be able to hear them on location, but even on stage in a perfectly silent environment you still can’t hear them.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I have some of them, we’ve been using them for a few months.

They’re good lights, very solid, fairly controllable light for an LED fresnel. Although… even though they call them that they are not true fresnels… they don’t have a fresnel lens but some sort of more honeycomb-like lens. They work well, focus well.

They are a bit power hungry at full blast and will eat through an NP battery relatively quickly (maybe 35-45 minutes). For longer run times we power them with AB brick batteries, they come with a power cord that has a powertap connection on it so that’s easy.

Other thing to note, there are 35 and 55 designations of these lights. Some people have recommended the 35 since it does not have a fan, and so it is quieter than the 55. Well, ignore that, go for the more powerful 55. You absolutely CANNOT hear the fan… maybe if you pressed your ear to the housing you could hear it hum, but otherwise they are totally silent even though they contain fans.

I give them a very positive review.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ha!… we’ll Blaise if you want to go on the lookout for these, here’s an eBay trick…

I learned this because I used to search often for Oconnor gear…

The real name of the company is “Oconnor.” But years ago (back when these sticks were made) they spelled it “O’connor,” with the apostrophe that they later dropped. Additionally, some people just completely misspell it altogether, substituting an “e” for the last “o.”

Ergo, I’ve seen eBay listings for Oconnor, O’connor, Oconner, and O’conner. I’ve often done four separate eBay searches with sometimes wildly different results for each spelling. That’s how I got my backup sticks for only 800 bucks, as I recall the name was misspelled so the listing hadn’t gotten many views.

The aluminum tripods (which are the ones I have) are the 35A sticks, the carbon fiber ones were the 35L.

Mine work like new but they look like they’ve been dragged behind a train, a few decades’ worth of shoots now. I once thought of disassembling them and repainting the parts or having them powder coated… but quickly learned the removable-nuts-and-bolts-to-rivets ratio was very low…. they were put together with scads of rivets that would have to be drilled out and then replaced. So…um, no. I’ll live with the beat-up look.

I love Oconnor stuff. A lot of their gear tends to be super expensive, but worth every penny.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Blaise Douros] “Probably best suited to studio, though, right?”

Hey Blaise, actually no… these are my primary location sticks. It just looks like a big rig in that little video because it’s on a fairly robust spider dolly that we use only on stage (big camera on it, too). The sticks themselves are very maneuverable and lightweight… you could pick them up with one finger. Well, you can pick the sticks up like that… unfortunately weight-wise I’m pretty partial to my vintage Oconnor 50D heads, which are pretty heavy (and are overkill for my cameras these days, but I love them). But the sticks themselves are lightweight.

Oconnor made two models, 35A and 35L… similar, except one was aluminum and one was carbon fiber. I have two sets of the aluminum ones. You can adjust all three legs at once, as shown… but you don’t have to. You can adjust individual legs from the top, too, each has a little release lever… so they are fine for even extraordinarily un-level surfaces, stairs, etc. The sticks have a built-in cable spreader which is a bit of an over-engineered science project… but it’s really pretty clever and cool. You can release it and the legs will spread all the way out bringing the head all the way down to the ground level… I can actually get lower-than-highhat shots with it.

These sticks still crop up on eBay now and then…. I actually bought one of my sets for only about 800 bucks. If you ever see either 35A or 35L sticks available for less than $2K, snag them. Or even a fair bit more than that.

I still can’t for the life of me can’t figure out why any other manufacturers (or Oconnor) don’t do this all-legs-at-once feature anymore. I rely on it sooo much. On the rare occasions that I have to use other sticks (which is usually only if we are on remote locations and rent gear), I spend half the day instinctively trying to do the all-at-once adjustment… and the other half of the day cursing the fact that I can’t. It’s easy to get spoiled being able to do that.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

A lot of times people struggle with setting tripod height and it would go a lot easier if they would just take the camera off the tripod first. So, if you are adjusting while the camera is mounted, remove it and things will go a lot easier.

You might also consider changing tripods… some adjust height a lot easier than others.

I still use very old Oconnor sticks, because as far as I know only two tripods ever (Oconnor 35A and 35L sticks) allow you to easily adjust all three legs at once, quickly and with just one lock/unlock motion, just turning a ring a little bit with one thumb…. Here’s me with one of our trusty ancient Oconnors…..

Unfortunately I know of no “modern” sticks that do this that easily. I don’t know why manufacturers/designers don’t do this great unlock-all feature anymore, because it’s just the greatest thing since sliced cheese. The brand-new Sachtler legs will almost do it, as you can unlock/lock all three legs from the top… but you still have to do them individually, not like the Oconnor.

T2

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