Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Jeffrey…
Thanks for the nice words…
[Jeffrey Gould] “how did you mic him since I didn’t see a lav”
I almost never use lavs, they just sound so sterile to me so I almost always use boom mics to get a more open sound. That was all miked with a Sennheiser MKH-416. It is one of my favorite-sounding mics, very warm and natural. A couple of the exterior lines were looped to combat an uncontrollably-noisy location.
[Jeffrey Gould] “the white background, was that green screen”
I’m not a fan of greenscreening unless I just have to, so that was a practical white limbo set on our stage. Lit with lots of soft light. A 1200w HMI shooting into a 4×4 high central bounce card was the key light, a few Kinos filled in and added a little modeling to the talent, and used a ring light around the lens for a little bit of punch to his face. It still wasn’t as perfectly white as we would have liked so we had to garbage matte out one or two areas that needed it and rotoscoped out some of the shadows around his feet.
[Jeffrey Gould] “was that the natural lighting in the room?”
None of the locations had enough good available light so there was a fair bit of lighting in each scene… even the one exterior (the gas station) had a couple of HMIs in it (a 1200w and a 575w) because it was a really dull gray day. In the conference room, the key on the talent was a 1K tungsten in a medium-sized Chimera, one 300w fresnel Pepper for a back/hair light, a couple of 650w in high white umbrellas to give the room some general ambience, and a couple of little 100w Pepper fresnels were used here and there to break things up.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[John Davidson] “It’s not even that expensive to license a song for use in a small private event.”
Hmmm… maybe it depends on the song, I dunno.
Last year a corporate client wanted us to pursue licensing in a similar situation for a private event… they wanted a specific track of an almost 20-year-old (and not all that popular) C+C Music factory song. It was for a one-time usage for a private event. We told them it would be expensive, but they wanted to pursue it anyway. By the time we found all the right hoops to jump through, the rights were going to be something in the neighborhood of $35,000.
My other horror story involves country music star John Anderson. Several years ago we produced a television commercial for a line of barbecue sauce he was selling. Using his own known music was proving impossible (the track he wanted to use, he wrote with a now-deceased partner, they jointly owned the publishing rights, but Sony owned the recording, and it was getting very complicated). In the end John composed and performed a similar-sounding track just for the spot, because at that point the red tape was getting to be about waist-deep and growing.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, I can’t say it’s my favorite (and I hate to tout one of my own videos with the way the question was pharased)….
But last year we produced a corporate web video where there client let us concept a litte bit more than the usual CEO talking head. The client was the Avocent corporation, and they primarily make things like KVM switches and other computer products like that. One of their small divisions though makes these HD video distribution systems and asked us to create a marketing video for it…
You can see it here, in the biggest upper left box…
https://www.connectivity.avocent.com/tv/
It is not super polished as it was created quickly on a very shoestring budget, but I liked the fact that they let us try to craft a little story about their product, rather than just some dry list of features and specs.
I was also pretty pleased with the casting. They wanted the video’s open and close to have the feel of the “I’m a Mac” commercials, and the actor we cast could easily be Justin Long’s brother. And he’s not even a “real” actor and had never done anything like this before… he’s just a guy my business partner knew from his church and was only the fourth person to audition. But he’s one of those guys who is just very naturally comfortable and smooth and likeable on camera.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Seems this discussion diverged into two different questions and schools of thought…
1) Will I get caught or is there any way to absolve my liability?
The answer to this question is fuzzy. There are ways around it, and if done right, no one may be the wiser and you won’t get busted for it.
And…
2) Is this an ethical practice?
Easier answer. No.
Not to get all “holier than thou,” but I find the “It’s only wrong if you get caught” attitude a bit unsettling. All of us in here have produced video which we own and retain exclusive rights to. How would you feel if you discovered after-the-fact that the footage that you owned, restricted, and made your living from cropped up somewhere in some yahoo’s project that you’ve never even heard of and without your permission to use it? Not good, I bet. I sure wouldn’t.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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If it’s COMPLETELY internal, then yeah, you’ll get away with it. But EVERY single corporate video we’ve ever produced ended with the client saying, “Oh, now give us a version we can put on the web.” Every single time. THAT’s where you’ll run into trouble.
But internal? Will you get caught? No. But the question wasn’t “Could I…?” or “Should I…? Rather the original question was asking whether there is something you can get them to sign to take all the responsibility.
The answer to that question is still “No.”
If you are an employee of the company, there are few worries. But if you are a legit outside production company contracted to do the gig, your responsibility and liability is much greater than that of just a “button pusher.”
And by the way, the “chances of getting caught at it” is a completely separate issue from the legality of it, or whether it’s “right.”
Which it isn’t.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[James Disch] “Is there anything I can do or have him sign that will protect me and my company?”
Nope. Not by a long shot.
If you borrow someone’s car, but get stopped for speeding, you can’t hand the cop a note from the car’s owner that says he gives you permission to drive as fast as you like and that he will take responsibility.
Don’t do it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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24p is inherently not as smooth as 60i.
Are you saying that your look is more “stroby” than, say, a typical “Hollywood” movie that you’d watch via a DVD on your home TV? Or in a theatre? The next time you go to see a movie, if you really closely look at fast action, you’ll notice that is is actually quite juddery indeed. Slightly-too-fast pans are expecially noticable… that’s why there are “speed charts” in the ASC manual that list “do not exceed” pan speeds (expressed in degrees per second) for various frame rates combined with various focal lengths. But cinematographers still do it all the time.
Again, 24p is never going to be nearly as smooth as 60i… but 24fps is the way motion pictures have been shot for about a century now and it’s what we’re used to seeing.
But if you think that your 24f shooting looks substantially less smooth that normal telecined 24fps motion picture footage, then you may have some other issues going on.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Any flavor of 24p (be it Canon’s 24f or whatever), is going to be more stuttery than 60i… that’s just the nature of it.
If your video looks too “stroby” you may be shooting with too high a shutter speed, so that each frame has little or no motion blur to fool the eye. When shooting 24fps the “normal” shutter speed should be 1/48th.
You say you “want to get smooth video even if the subject is moving about the frame”… in that case 24p may not be the best choice, maybe you would be better off shooting 60i.
60i is going to give you the very smoothest motion… combined with a sort of “reality TV” very videoy look. 24p is going to give a more dramatic filmic look, but the motion will not be as smooth.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Wow THAT’s pretty freaky… somehow it’s causing my eyes to have to focus differently depending on whether it’s a foreground or background subject in the same frame. I have no idea how that works… but it does seem to.
I will say though, that one of the characteristics that it exploits is obviously a very deep almost nearly-infinite depth of field… which is quite the opposite of what many people these days are trying to do, getting DoFs shallower and shallower.
Gotta do some research on this. Not a tool I think I would ever use (more usefuly for reality-type shooting than dramatic/narrative), but curiosity has gotten the best of me…
T2
ADDENDUM: A bit of net research shows this thing works somehow by having a spinng and moving iris inside it… which somehow gives multiple planes in focus in the same frame. Some users noted that it is best for cameras that are constantly moving, such as Steadicam shots. When the camera isn’t moving, apparently the image seems to “wobble.” Interesting, indeed.
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Trey Gregory] “You have to capture it using the camera or another canon 24f capable hdv camera.(like the H1)”
…or a Sony M35 deck.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com