Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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I dunno… one of my good friends is a copyright and intellectual property attorney. He seems to have zero fun at work. Money, but no fun.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Aaron, I think you can boil it down to this…
The rights to the “image” might be in the public domain… but what you are paying the institution for is the right to access the image, and the rights to their copy of it. Ergo, they have the freedom and right to exercise control over what they give you, if they choose.
Now, if you were to procure rights to an image from, say, a private museum that gave fairly strict limitations to it’s useage, you’d be bound by that. Then, say later on, you come across a different source (let’s say the estate of the original now-expired rights-holder hands you their own copy to use free and clear with no restrictions), well then you’d be in the clear to do with it as you like… as LONG as the actual image you are using actually came from the unrestricted source. Even if pixel-for-pixel you can’t tell on screen which is which, one of them is clear and the other is restricted.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, this is not what you want to hear (and I’ll admit not what you asked)… but my main question would be, unless you folks are planning to do lots and lots of videos now and in the future, why the heck is the Federal Department of Probation trying to get into the video production business?
Honestly, I’m not trying to be condescending, but you admit you are not sure of “what you need or where to begin” and that you have some editing experience.
It seems to me the much better route would be simply to hire a professional production company to do produce these for you. You won’t have to worry about buying (or renting) a bunch of expensive equipment, learning from scratch how to use it, will get a much better end result, and probably come out a whole heckuvalot cheaper.
I’m reminded of a defense contractor who came to use to do a marketing video. They had first tried to do it themselves with a home handycam and two $80 VCRs from WalMart. You can imagine the results. Yet they tried it themselves first, even though they were trying to sell pieces of equipment that are well over a million dollars each. Finally they realized they should hire pros.
The “learning to do it” part is the hard part. It’s not only buying the right equipment, but learning from scratch how to be a director, cinematographer, acting coach, sound operator, electrician, video/audio engineer, and going from having some editing experience into becoming a proficient editor. It just seems slightly akin to saying “I’ve got a dent in my fender, I only know a little bit about it but I need to put together a complete auto body shop and paint booth.”
Again, I’m not trying to be concescending, honestly. And if the probation department is trying to get full-blown into the video production business now and into the future, that’s a different story. But if you just have a few videos to produce, seems the smart thing to do is just hire them out to pros.
You’ll defintely get better results… just because they are for in-house viewing only doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be good.
And will likely be cheaper… a better use of taxpayer dollars… incuding mine. 🙂
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Bob Cole] “How important is having that one-to-one pixel relationship in a field monitor?”
Ehhh… maybe not all that important. Just depends on what you want to do with it. I’d say full pixel-to-pixel HD is only really critical if you are using the field monitor for eyeball focusing. Even moreso if you shoot very shallow depths of field (i.e., if you are shooting with a 35mm-sized sensor, or with a smaller-sensored camera with cine primes and a DoF converter).
Sadly (and if you ask me, surprisingly), finding a true 1080 field monitor is a lot harder than it ought to be. My personal fav in the 17″ flavor is the Panasonic BT-LH1700W. It specs out at 800 lines, not 1080… but is an excellent larger field monitor. I think they come in at about $2300-$2400 these days. Porta-Brace also makes a really good custom case for it… flip-out hood and build-in stand, etc., and it’s not very expensive.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Just a personal observation about how I typically work…
Light meters were of course a necessity when shooting film, and back when we were cranking out countless feet of 35mm every week I was never without a light meter.
We primarily shoot HD now, and our film cameras rarely see much use anymore.
However, I still never ever travel without two light meters. I’ll also add that I never ever even take them out of their cases. I literally can’t even remember the last time I used one of them, just don’t seem to need them… but I’m still glad to have them around (force of habit, I guess).
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Wendy Bancroft] “Why would you want to use a card to capture analogue footage?”
For instances when you need to capture analog footage…. i.e., say you have BetaCam footage and need to capture it via analog component (or S-video, or composite, or whatever).
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[David Ghast] “Theres no plug n play solutions around that are camera agnostic?”
Plug-n-play? Probably not, I think at best you’ll have to do some wiring and some figuring out what goes where.
I’m not sure if you can use a RED finder or not. I inquired about that from some RED folks a while back because I wanted to use a RED finder on another camera. I wanted it, because the RED finder is basically an AccuScene viewfinder (which is just about the best most badass finder going, and the finder that is used on the Panavision Genesis)… except that the RED version is a whole heckuvalot cheaper, a fraction of the price of the off-the-shelf AccuScene. The AccuScene is a killer 720-line finder, but unfortunately it is roughly the price of a good low-mileage late-model used Buick. I was basically told “no way, no how,” that the RED finder had been converted into such a proprietary thing that it could not be made to work with any camera body other than a RED, and that it could not be turned back into a works-with-anything AccuScene.
Now, whether that’s actually true….. I dunno….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Nick Griffin] “Not necessarily un-true but a rather severe take on business.”
I have to agree with Nick. I started my present company about 12 years ago.
Prior to that, when working for other people… I was always stressed, tense, and generally unhappy.
Since becoming my own boss, I’d say it’s pretty much 180°. I’m generally pretty relaxed (some might say too much so), happy, and always glad to come to work every day. I’ve had some tense, unrelaxed moments, sure… but relatively few and far between. I never go home and say “Wow, that was a bad day.” Maybe a bad hour here or there… but never a day.
I fully realize that we are very blessed, especially in that we have never really had to go look for business or clients. But even if we did, it sure would beat being a cog in someone else’s machine.
It’s all what you make of it for yourself.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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The “why” for you is to protect yourself when someone much-after-the-fact suddenly decides that they don’t want to be in your movie.
That, and the fact that no distributor would touch it with a ten-foot pole unless you have talent (and possibly location) releases on hand.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Ummm, yes… illegal.
Wildly so.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com