[Todd Terry]

[Rick Wise] “sometimes you can tape sheets of 4 x 8 foamcore to the ceiling, or in a corner, and bounce light into them.”

…a similar technique which brings up my favorite grip tool, the Quaker clamp (also known as the duckbill clamp)….

…which make it easy to hold up a 4×4 bounce on a tall C-stand, up to about a 45° angle. This, blasted with a 1200w HMI, is my favorite keylight in medium/largish rooms that have lots of windows.

You can buy them from Matthews for about $80… or you can make your own with about $10 worth of parts from the hardware store (weld a 5/8″ post and a couple of sheet metal jaws onto a pair of ViceGrips). We have some homemade ones as well as the “store bought” variety, and they work equally well.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Curt Coggins] “or am I missing the conceptual boat here?”

Not completely missing it, you’re kinda teetering on the gunwales…

YES you can use the 416 with the XLH1 (I do it all the time) because the H1 puts out 48v phantom. BUT… that is for a hardwired situation, where the mic is cabled right to the back of the camera. You were asking about wireless.

The majority of radio mic transmitters (except some very expensive and high-end ones) do not put out the phantom power needed to power the mic, and in the case of radio mics that is where you need the phantom power… it makes no difference if the camera outputs phantom or not.

I’m not sure if there are any actual “phantom powered” receivers, I’ve never used one that worked that way (you have to remember that while phantom power is high voltage… 48v… its actual amperage is miniscule… so phantom is much higher voltage and much lower amperage that receivers would require).

This part is pretty much a non-issue anyway… virtually all on-camera receivers operate off their own internal batteries. Or those that have additional DC inputs can be powered from the power tap on the A-B bricks. But as I said, I woudn’t bother… just throw the little 9v battery in the receiver like it is intended… I’ve yet to see a receiver that wouldn’t operate for several several hours on its internal battery.

Your remote shotgun (or other type) microphone would need to be self-powered (with an internal battery), or need no power at all. A mic requiring phantom power such as the 416 would not be a good choice, unless you had some other external way to power it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Curt…

I’m not 100% what the power concerns are… almost ALL radio mic receivers designed for on-camera use are self-powered with their own batteries. You CAN power them off camera batteries, but certainly usually don’t have to.

That being said, the Anton-Bauer battery adapter for the XLH1 is a wonderful thing, and I heartily recommend it. It works well, nice balance, and with it a single brick will power the H1 for what seems like an endless amount of time. In addition, the goldmount has the usual A-B “powertap” connector so that you can juice something else (your radio mic receiver, perhaps) as well. We don’t usually go this wild, but in one or two extreme conditions we have used a single brick in the adapter to power the camera, Mini35 converter, teleprompter, and small on-camera obie light.

You can indeed use radio mics for the type of setup that you suggested. You might plug a shotgun mic into your sideline transmitter rather than a lavalier and have a soundperson hold it and follow the action. Or, a mic in a parabolic dish is often used for ballgame sideline action. Be aware that some of the favorite shotgun mics out there (such as my person favorite, the “industry standard” Sennheiser MKH416) do require 48v phantom power to work (usually provided by the camera), so in a wireless situation you will need to choose a mic that requires no power or is self-powered (battery).

For transmitters and receivers, I heartily recommend Lectrosonics.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

We got pretty lucky with our space (although I keep making noise about moving, since we have sort of outgrown it)…

We moved into our current facility (from smaller digs) about seven years ago. It’s a freestanding commercial building that fortunately was new, so there were no previous occupants creating problems that we had to repair.

I looked at lots and lots of properties, but the biggest problem I found was layout… no buildings had a floorplan that was very useful. We finally landed on the building we have (two stories, a modest but very workable 3600 square feet), that for some reason was designed with a fair number of mid-sized offices. These proved to work very well for edit suites.

Although I wish we had a bit more room in it, we got a bit lucky for studio space in that one entire end of the building was constructed as a garage. It has a smooth concrete floor and high ceilings. We turned this into a soundstage by soundproofing, white epoxy floor, and hanging a black cyc around two walls (a big “L”) and making our own pipe grid for lighting. The stage very conveniently has a large roll up door that opens out on to a loading dock, and there’s also a ramp if you wish to a drive a vehicle straight in. Within the studio space is our audio booth for voiceover work.

All total our “roomage” includes the stage, lobby, GM’s office, kitchen, three edit suites, conference room, makeup/wardrobe/greenroom, and a couple of bathrooms. Like in just about every building I’ve seen there is never enough storage space… we have to rent storage space near by off site (one of those store-it-yourself places) where mostly zillions of props and bigger set pieces live.

I did spend a fair bit of work running cables through walls, ceilings, and floors. The building already had all the proper phone and networking wiring, but I did have to run audio and video cables from the stage into the three edit suites. Fortunately most of the cable runs were fairly short… my own suite is adjacent to the stage, and although the two other suites are upstairs they are pretty much directly over mine so I was able to keep things fairly close. About half the building (most of the ground floor) has a typical “suspended ceiling” so that made things easier in places, but we did have to make a lot of cable cuts in walls and floors, especially upstairs. Believe it or not most of the cabling in our building is hidden and fairly invisible (I HATE seeing cables… boy am I in the wrong business).

The only real layout problem is that the stage is accessible ONLY through our lobby… to go from any other part of the building into the studio you must first walk though the lobby. I COULD cut another door for it, but the door would open directly into my personal edit suite… sometimes that would be an advantage, but mostly not.

Adjacent building are a lawyer’s office and the March of Dimes… we are all in indentical buildings and share the same common parking lot.

Like in all real estate, the three important words are LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. We needed a place convenient for clients, and also for TV stations to do pickups since we churn out bunches of television commercials (that’s most of what we do). So a central location was the only option for us, which is why we landed smack downtown. Unfortunately with convenience comes price, so our location is probably a LOT more expensive than if we picked something outside of the main business disctict… but in our case it makes sense. The biggest location problem that we DO have is that railroad tracks run within half a mile of our place… even with soundproofing you can hear the whistles blowing in the studio. Fortunately they only come by four or five times a day… but have been known to bust shoots.

Ah… the other problem is neighbors. Out our back door is a small restaurant, catering to the Junior League and blue-haired “ladys who lunch” crowd… and they don’t have nearly enough parking. Their customers are forever parking at our loading dock, once even right up on the ramp blocking the stage door. “No Parking” signs and threats to tow them have helped some, but not compltely.

Anywho, that’s what we do… far from perfect, but it’s workable enough for us.

Hope this helps,

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Now, now, Steve… I’m surprised at you, as someone who knows how to build stuff.

Honestly, it really really truly is painfully easy. The first one I made took only about half an hour, and that includes the time spent figuring out how to do it. Another hour later and I had a whole bucket full of the things.

I’ve made a bunch of budget film equipment, most of it back in leaner days… and I must stay these connectors are among the very easiest things I’ve ever churned out.

I looked at those wheels from Willys… nice, but pretty expensive (and then you have to fabricate how to mount them). If you want a decent skateboard dolly on a budget you can’t beat the units from Glideshot. VERY well make, super sturdy trucks, nice wheels, smooth-as-silk action. You can get a set of four (with four wheels each) in the $200 neighborhood.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Actually… it’s painfully easy…

You can easily make connectors out of PVC… this is the way I’ve done it (although there are several steps to it).

1) Buy a piece of the NEXT smaller pipe than your track.

2) Cut about 6″-8″ lengths of it, however many connectors you need

3) Split the connectors lengthwise, so they will “open up”… there are a variety of ways to make this split, but I use a Dremel tool with a little cutting wheel.

4) Drive a wooden dowel through one of the connectors to enlarge its diameter. You’ll have to pick a dowel the right size to make the connector just a little bit bigger than will fit into the pipe that you use for track.

5) Heat the connector (still on the dowel) with a heat gun for a couple of minutes. You don’t want it to melt, just get soft.

That’s it. When the PVC cools, it will be permanently enlarged into the new shape…. and now you have a connector that will squeeze together and fit into the pipes. We’ve made a whole bunch of these that we carry in a grip bag. If we travel to a distant location, we just take the connectors, buy the cheap pipe wherever we are, and ditch it when we are done.

This actually will give a smooth-as-silk dolly… if your skateboard dolly has 16 wheels. If it has 8, not so much.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Wow… very interesting article. I didn’t know that was a Genesis movie. Interesting that it was cropped to 1920×800 and still looked great.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks, Mike…

Appreciate your insight.

I think this one is going to be a bit different from the average trade show we are used to seeing.

Firstly, it’s pretty focused… we are told that only hospital advertising/marketing people will be attending. No doctors, no nurses, dentists, or administrators. I think that will help us focus our message.

Secondly, it’s going to be small. Very. Probably less than a couple hundred attendees… I haven’t seen the venue, but I’m envisioning a smallish hotel ballroom, not a big convention center exhibit floor. Ergo, I’m thinking (could be wrong) that this may be a quieter affair than the noisy hubbub we usually see at trade shows. That’s the one and only reason I made the call to produce a booth video with a narration track… we produce a lot of trade show videos for other people and I always tell them their video needs to be just as effective with the sound down, as people may likely not even be able to hear it. I’m not taking my own advice this time, but I think it’s the right call in this specific case.

We have pretty much saturated our market with the medical work available here and know more doctors and medical types than we care to count (and those we don’t know seem to know us)… but we are unknown out of our immediate market. We’re taking chance on broadening that a bit. Our real goal is not necessarily to get more work… we are very blessed in that we are pretty much always booked up a fair bit in advanced… but my goal is really to get different work… i.e., clients with deeper pockets than might be available in our immediate medium-sized market.

Thanks for your thoughts…. I’m afraid I never read blogs, but I’ll try to check yours out when we get some breathing room.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] ” Is there something unique about the LTM Pepper 200 (with 200w bulbs) that makes the life of bulbs in this fixture relatively brief?”

Hmmmm… no, not at all. We have several of the Pepper 100/200 heads (with 200w lamps) and I honestly can’t remember the last time we had to replace a lamp. The seem to last quite a long time, and under relatively heavy use.

We don’t always buy the same lamps… we usually buy them here in town from Theatrical Lighting Service and they don’t always have the same thing, but I think we normally get Osram.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I haven’t seen 21 yet, but these kinds of shots are getting more and more commonplace… so much so that they lose a bit of the punch that they once had.

They are usually done in one of three ways:

1) Completely Practical. They find some way to actually fly a camera in and do the real shot. There is a great shot like this in “Less Than Zero” where the camera flys across the empty plains to land in a closeup of the three main characters sitting in a car. This one was completely practical. The giveaway was all the wind and kicked-up dust produced by the chopper as the shot got close to the end (in an otherwise very calm and still scene).

2) Multiple Practical. In this way, it’s all practical, but it’s actually multiple shots, not just one. There may be a helicopter shot, followed by a crane shot, followed by a dolly shot. In editing some pretty darn good compositers manage to stitch the shots teogether seemlessly. The 2004 movie “Secret Window” has a scene in it like it, all made out of practical sub-elements.

3) CGI + Practical. This is the most common way this is done today. The first part of the scene (the big fly-in) doesn’t exist at all, it’s entirely CGI… composited together with practical footage where a real camera dollys in to complete the scene.

I’ll try to check out 21 soon, as I wanted to see that but didn’t catch it in the theatre. Just from the description I’m willing to bet it was method #3, or number 2 and 3 combined. There may be a director’s commentary track on the DVD that gives some clues as to how it was done.

T2

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