Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
People have fought these domain battles before… and almost always lost. I’ve heard several stories of people registering company names (with non-.com suffixes) and either attempting to cash in on the cache of the name, or sell the domain to the big daddy company for big bucks.
These have gone to court, and the established well-known company has always prevailed.
In our own industry, I believe I recall that happened to Panavision.
People can get very possessive about their domain names, and rightly so. In the early days of my company, Fantastic Plastic, we wanted to register fantasticplastic.com… but alas, it was already taken (by a used record shop in Seattle) so we settled for the much-clunkier hyphenated fantastic-plastic.com. Later though we realized the value of the “better” domain and coughed up enough cash to convince the other company to sell us the domain name. It wasn’t cheap.
Interestingly enough, there is also a British record label (mostly indie bands) named Fantastic Plastic. Their domain is identical to ours except they have the .co.uk suffix. We used to get quite a few misaddressed emails intended for them.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I’m with the other guys… even with a re-viewing and the additional explanation I really don’t see what you are talking about.
At :54 there looks just to be some exposure washout due to the light filtering through the smoke/haze reulting in a bright image with low contrast.
At 1:32 I could see no effect whatsoever.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hey Grinner….
Sad to say, but if you think you’ve buffed the lens as much as is safely possible… you might need professional help.
Maybe it’s just a coating issue, hopefully the front element itself isn’t damaged.
I’d highly recommend lens ubergenius Paul Duclos of Duclos Lenses in L.A. He’s really great, higly respected, know tons of people who use him, and is really affordable.
Paul saved my bacon one time when my very favorite prime (50mm Leitz-Panavision f1.3 superspeed) accidently took a nosedive onto a concrete location floor thanks to an inept crew member (yes, it was me). I was sure the lens was a goner, but Paul fixed it for about $500 if I recall. The lens was still usable (barely), so he even timed it so I could FedEx the lens for arrival to him on the day he had time to fix it and FedEx it right back so it wasn’t out of service for more than a couple days. Saved me quite a few thousands of bucks had the lens been lost.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
…and what are you trying to rent?
35mm? 16mm? DV? HD? RED? Genesis? Knowing that can make a big dif, too.
I don’t have any specific recommendations in that part of the country, but so close to Dallas I’m betting it would be super easy to find a really good vendor, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the shipping hassles and wasted time from places we would recommend elsewhere. Heck there’s even a Panavision office in Dallas.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Where are you? Knowing that would help.
Rental houses will often ship anywhere, but starting someplace close to home is usually easier and cheaper.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
These guys are right, as they almost always are.
Move on.
Maybe there is something unfinished or something that you have that they still need that you can hold until you are paid. But maybe not.
Chalk it up to a hard lesson. I think you’ve learned what to do next time.
And don’t so much as lift a finger for this client again until they have both paid in full, and paid in advance for any additional work they want out of you.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I worked at one particular NBC affiliate (and considered a very good one) for 12 years…. six on-air as a new guy and then six more as the Creative Services manager. Because of the funky way our building was laid out I had the opportunity to walk through master control a few zillion times, seeing countless spots being entered into the systems.
Never, not even once did I see a control op even look at the bars and tone at the front of a spot. They were always always always just blindly zipped right past until the spot started.
Now in more modern times I’m suspecting the digital equivalent of that is still happening pretty often.
And yes, it’s always the lowerst-paid lackeys that are charged with this work.
We have another station that we serve a lot (also actually considered a very good one) where we’ve seen tons of quality issues… and furthermore they can’t even take our SD stuff on BetaSP anymore. They actually require us to send them spots on MiniDV. Yes, MiniDV. Why? Because their last Beta machine finally bit the dust and they refuse to buy a new one since it’s “dead technology.” Never mind the fact that they still get scads of Betas in every day that they have to deal with. One of their engineers told me “You can’t even buy those machines anymore.” (I politely pointed him to the B&H website which had several models of new ones for sale.)
That particular station has several engineers on staff, that all seem knowlegable. And if you need one, they are easy to find. Not in their offices, of course… you just drive over to the station where they are all lounging out back of the stage door smoking and yammering on their cell phones. They’ve even brought out folding chairs.
I’m with Mark, it’s a wonder anything ever airs.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
We have struggled with this same problem for years and years… commercial spots leaving our facility looking pristine… yet look like absolute crap on the air.
We’ve begged. Bargained. Pleaded. Yelled. Met with engineers at television stations and cable outlets. All no no avail. Zero.
UNTIL… we learned the secret.
DON’T complain about how the spots look. Have your client do it (their advertiser). You’ll be surprised in the different reaction, when it’s the one paying for those spots who is doing the complaining.
It might help… it might not. But I’ve found those stations much more receptive to even admitting there’s a problem on their end when the money is doing the talking, rather than “that production company that complains all the time.”
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Yeah, I completely follow what you and Grinner were suggesting. That’s more or less exactly what I was suggesting in my original post… I probably didn’t explain it clearly. I was hoping for something a little more special, the “background reveal” seems just a little tired to me.
I, too, am a big fan of the “two-and-a-half D” look… that might be what we end of going with. I would definitely favor that over PIP or multi-shot or multi-boxes… as clean and classy as possible is my goal, and 2.5D certainly is that. There are just so many national commercials now that do that (and do it very well) that I didn’t want to jump into something that’s becoming overused.
Or we could jump back to the 1970s and just super lighting bolts around people. Isn’t the universal symbol of pain? haaa…
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
My very favorite one of these (and the first one I ever saw) was the very brilliant literal version of he A-ha song “Take on Me”… which I doubly enjoyed since the original with all the way-cool rotoscoping was and remains one of my all-time favorite music videos….
https://www.dustfilms.com/literal
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com