[Todd Terry]

The biggest price difference (aside from build, fit, finish, and design) has to do with the hoops that you must jump through to balance the rig. A stabilizer is a very very finely balanced thing. The better stabilizers will have little adjustment knobs on the top camera plate (the part called the “stage”) that moves the plate fore and aft in tiny and very controllable increments. On the cheaper stabilizers, this balancing is done by physically putting on (and taking off) weights on the bottom of the rig (the part called the “sled”).

I hadn’t looked at their products in a while, so I glanced at the Glidecam website. It looks like their very top-of-the-line model now has an adjustable stage… a very good thing. But as you can see in the pictures, their other cheaper models still have stacks of weights on the sled. This can make fine-tune adjustments difficult… and these guys are not something that you set up once and forget… they have to be carefully adjusted before the shoot, and sometimes many times during the shoot. So, the easier it is to do it, the better. The very top-of-the-line Steadicams actually have very tiny motors that make these calculations for you and move the stage automatically!… but those are the pushing-six-figures rigs.

I’d really try to go for a model that has an easily adjustable and fine-tunable stage… it will make a world of difference in ease of use.

Similarly… the position of the pivot on the center column (the “gimbal” and the “post”) must also be as easily adjustable… as well as the tension of the springs in the articulated arms.

[Zvi Twersky] “Can a stabilizer operator also just “get a hang of it” by practicing”

Yep… if he practices a lot and practices the right way. I was self-taught, from using instructional videos a billion years ago. But I also developed some bad habits and learned to do some things the wrong way. It took a bit of work with another (really good) Steadicam op to straighten out some of the things I was doing wrong. And… the bigger the rig, the more difficult they are to master. My mother could probably learn to use a little Steadicam Merlin, but it takes a lot of work to master the big pro rigs.

Incidentally, Garret Brown, the guy who invented the Steadicam a couple of decades ago now, says there are only about a half dozen guys in the world that he considers “really crackerjack Steadicam operators” who can do it absolutely flawlessly (and he’s one of them). There are tons of guys who are quite good, but absolute mastery is pretty hard (watch Guy Norman Bee’s work in countless movies and all the early episodes of “E.R.”…. wow). I definitely didn’t get there… I’m pretty darn good, but not great. Even though I’m an experienced operator with my own rig, if I had a shoot with a lot of precise Steadi work to do I’d probably just hire some whiz-bang operator who is better at it than me (and save my back to boot).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, the Glidecam stabilizers do work… but yes they are one of the lower-end units and you do get what you pay for.

I’m an old Steadicam guy (or at least I was before my back got so ancient), and I try not to be too smug and jaded about the Clone-lizers. Some of them are pretty good.

I liked the Movcam one a lot more, after looking at their website they do seem to be much more of a professional rig. There’s a shot of one of their bigger models flying a MovieCam SuperAmerica… which is a big and heavy high-end professional 35mm camera. You’ll never see one of those on a Glidecam.

I would caution you though, NOT to get a rig that will potentially handle a much bigger camera than you plan to primarily use. If you have a camera that weighs 4 pounds, DON’T get a rig that will handle 30lb just because you might someday need it for that. As a longtime Steadicam operator I can tell you that it’s nowhere near as easy or effortless as the pros make it look. Operating a stabilizer takes work, skill, and a lot of practice… and the big rigs are beasts, they will wear you out after only a short period of time. Our Steadicam rig is an older model (they don’t even make it anymore) which will fly about 25lb worth of camera… which is fine since our usual camera rig weighs in at about 22lb. But the couple of times I did put a small camera on it, I was sure wishing I had a little Merlin after not too long.

Also, don’t go into stabilizing with false expectations. They are great, yes… but a novice can’t take one right out of the case and be shooting like Garrett Brown right off the bat. They take work to learn and learn well. The Steadicam schools are good… but expensive. A better way might be to learn from another operator… that is, if they are doing it right. The guy in the video you linked to, for example, is making a lot of physical mistakes. AND, his cameras are terribly out of “dynamic balance,” as Steadicam calls it. You should never balance a camera so you can freely spin it around like it did, and it continue for almost infinite resolutions. If you shoot like that, there’s virtually no way to avoid the “rolling horizon” look that is the dead giveaway of a Steadicam shot.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ha… David, there’s that wry wit we love 🙂

Yep, we’re doing nothing here but reading magazines and watching our “stories” on daytime TV.

Actually, I multi-task and ruminate when doing other things. Fortunately, we’re pretty darn busy… lucky enough to be the proverbial one-armed paperhangers. Today I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We’ve just produced a big multi-spot commercial campaign for a large client which will be the first local commercials in our market to air in HD, starting Monday. That might not be a big deal to most of you guys, but here in the sticks it is. The local stations have only been passing on the networks’ HD signals until now, with no local HD production… until we forced their hands. I’ve been running around testing files at TV stations to make sure they play flawlessly. A zillion test files later, and it looks like it will work. Someday this will be like bragging about color TV or stereo audio, but here at our place today it’s something to talk about…. ha.

But you’re right… been bitterly cold here. Thank God’s it has warmed up a bit.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “There’s no substantive negative from changing subject lines.”

For those of us who get 99% of our COW info from email, there is.

[Bob Cole] “Visually, the way the COW lays out threads makes it quite easy to tell which thread a given post belongs to.”

Which again, requires us to log into the site to see that… especially if I’m out and about on the go, I can’t do that except a couple of times a day.

It’s not a big deal, just a minor annoyance. It seems to me that just amending or adding to the existing subject line rather than changing it to something completely (especially something that blindly sounds completely unrelated to the previous topic) would make everyone happy.

But that’s just me.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, THAT makes sense, Tim…. it’s the random changes that are frustrating.

Such as, I’ll get an email with the subject “[Cow] Try this, it works like a charm!” and then the message might say “You’re right, I’ve been struggling with that problem for months, but just de-select the second check box on that page and, voilà!… problem solved!”

It makes me silently scream “What the hell are they talking about???”… inside my head of course. Outwardly I’m the picture of patience and decorum.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

While John’s advice is spot-on, as it unwaveringly always it…. it is also advice that can be a little hard on the wallet.

I’m a huge fan of Kinos and use them often… however KinoFlos are quite darn expensive, and the hardware-store variety of shop-light flos can be had for about $15.

If budgets aren’t an issue, YES, go for the Kinos. But you say you’re working for a not-for-profit, and I know they rarely have deep pockets.

I will admit (shhhh!) that I have used Home Depot fixtures in the past, especially for wall-washing… and I think there’s one or two on the other side of our building on our stage right now. A few years ago we bought a few for a particular zero-budget project… and put Kino tubes in them and re-ballasted them so they were silent and flicker free (and dimmable). We even painted the outsides black so they didn’t look completely like $15 shop lights. Yeah… they still look cheap and flimsy (which they are), but for an inexpensive permanent install I have to begrudgingly admit they work fine.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ummm…no… your boss’s setup is not what you want to do. Unless he has some expertise in lighting design (which, judging from your animation, I’m assuming he doesn’t)… then he needs to (as we jokingly say around here) “Stick to his own pay grade.”

You want to light your key surfaces completely independently of any talent that is being photographed.

In the setup your boss has concocted, that’s impossible. Any talent will be in a downwash of the light that he seems to think is needed on the floor.

Not only does that make lighting the talent independently impossible, but it puts talent in just about the most unflattering light you can imagine. The same reason you don’t shoot exterior available-light portraits at high noon on a sunny day.

One question would be… just how often will the floor be needed for keying? If and when it is, light it then. I’ve not done tons of greenscreen work (mostly because I hate it), but like everyone in our biz I have done my fair share. I don’t recall ever specially lighting the floor, even in a full-length shot.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Daniel Schultz] “Todd, just viewed your ad spot, and I love the look you got. That was with natural and HMIs, right?”

If you mean just the classroom scene… that was mostly HMI. We turned off all the overhead flos and darkened all the windows (they had good light-blocking blinds) except one at the rear of the talent that was left partially open to give a bit of spill onto the back wall. Talent was lit with a single 1200w daylight HMI shot into a white 4×4 bounce card. A little 150w watt HMI was used as fill and to give the non-principal children a bit of backlighting.

As for the other scnenes, it was a mix. In order of scenes they were:

1) Glass hallway… mostly available sunlight, a little bit of HMI
2) Nurse… tungsten
3) Premature baby… tungsten
4) Orthopaedist… tungsten
5) Exterior kite.. available sunlight and reflected
6) Surgeon… tungsten
7) Classroom… HMIs and a bit of available light
8) Radiologist… tungsten
9) Grandparents… HMIs for key and backlight, available light, one tungsten special
10) Stairwell… HMIs and a bit of available light
11) Hospital room… HMIs, a couple of tungsten specials, and available light

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I have to agree with Dennis, my long-winded treatse about HMIs notwithstanding… in my defense I had not read the thread, was just responding to the “tell me about HMIs” question…

Upon reading it all now, I do think this sounds like a relatively easy gig that you are working very hard at to try to make difficult. It’s probably not.

I get the feeling this doesn’t exactly have to look like a feature film that Roger Deakins might have shot… it just has to look good, and that shouldn’t be too hard. Get a classroom with good windows facing the right direction, and this could be a pretty darn easy shoot with just available light (or nearly so).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Yes, an HMI will have a ballast… either a magnetic ballast, or a more modern electronic ballast. They are easy to differentiate… the magnetic ballast will create a cracking sound from your spine when you pick it up, and the subsequent hernia pain. The electronic ballasts are much lighter. They can still be a big and fairly heavy piece of equipment though.

The exception to the rule are the Joker-Bugs. For some reason the Jokers, even the 800, still have pretty lightweight and easily managable ballasts.

The couple of things of note with HMIs, they put out daylight-balanced light (although some instruments do have tungsten balanced globes, but they are the exception). Secondly they put out a lot more light per watt compared to tungsten… anywhere from three to five times as much, depending on the instrument. Also a plus, they tend to run a bit cooler than same-wattage tungsten instruments.

Some HMIs aren’t “hot restrike,” which means once you shut them off there is a cooling down period before you can restrike them. Most modern instruments are hot restrike, and can be re-ignited immediately… though I do have one that isn’t… and unfortunately seem to keep forgetting that.

As for comparing it to other lighting instruments… a light is a light is a light… it’s pretty much like any other, just a lot more of it and of perhaps a different color temperature. You can do anything with it that you would any other instrument… use it directly, flag it with barn doors, bounce it, shoot it through a silk or scrim, etc.

Most HMIs will be either fresnels or PARs. The frensel is made and works like any tungsten fresnel. The PAR has a parabolic reflector, it’s focused by a mechanism that slides the globe in and out of the reflector a bit.

My favorite workhouses are our 1200w fresnel HMIs. They are big, but not too big, have good output… and they are about the biggest HMI that you can relatively confidently power by ordinary home or office electrical outlets without tripping breakers (although you still will, if much is already on the circuit).

My most frequent use of an HMI is as a key light, shooting it into a white 4×4 bounce card. That gives really beautiful soft, natural looking light.

That’s what I’d probably do in a classroom, too. If fact, we just did that. If you pop over to the business forum, just today I posted a little thing about some video storyboards that we did, and there is a sample video that has a classroom scene (https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/868835). That scene was lit with a single 1200w HMI and a white 4×4 bounce. Incidentally, the other HMI scenes in that piece are the opening glass-hallway scene, the stairwell scene, the “grandparents” scene, and the end hospital room scene. Pretty much any scene that would otherwise have bright blown-out windows.

HMIs aren’t scary, they’re pretty great. I couldn’t live without them.

T2

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