[Todd Terry]

Best COW reply ever.

{respectful bowing}

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Craig…

I’m a victim of my own ignorance with a dash of misinformation (which isn’t a new feeling for me).

So, I guess I’ll just stick with the single webcam. I don’t have multiple iPhones at my disposal (or even one iPhone, I’m an Android guy), and the app looks to be for iOS only.

Fortunately this isn’t a big deal by any stretch… it would have just been gravy to have multiple cameras, so I’m not sweating it.

Thanks for your help!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Casting/talent services such as Breakdown Services will allow you to post breakdowns for low-paying or non-paying roles, and while you won’t get any talent agents to respond to your casting call you still might get some actors to submit for consideration directly to you, via Actors Access. These will mostly be people looking to do it for the experience, to help build their resumes and reels, so you’re not likely to get people with much or any experience… but you might get enthusiasm.

I have been casting projects for 25 years, and can say without much hesitation that actors are pretty much the most unreliable group of people around… especially if they are not paid (and long ago I was a working actor myself, so I think I’m free to say that). The stories are legion about actors who were talented and super enthusiastic about working on a low-budget or no-budget project… but then either don’t show up, or even worse, stop showing up after you have already worked with them. To get decent reliability, you pretty much have to pay talent…even if it is not much, at least that way you “own” them for the day (at least to a degree). We get actors all the time begging to work on our projects “just for the experience,” wanting to be a part of a “real” production. We never ever take them up on that, though… we always pay actors and pay them pretty darn well. That lesson was learned a very long time ago.

Of course, you can find free actors that work out well. I will say though that is definitely the exception, not the norm.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Craig…

Thanks for the info… I knew you’d be one who would know, if you saw my post.

That’s disappointing, but at least now I can stop wasting my time trying to get it to work. Apparently I was very misinformed about what would work and wouldn’t…. I was told that not only could I use IP cameras, but that IP cameras were the preferred and best way to get video into Wirecast Play. Maybe my info source thought that I was using one of the higher versions of Wirecast, although I was pretty specific about what I had and what I was trying to do.

I think all versions of Wirecast use pretty much the same interface, and while I can see the options that are available only on Pro and Studio versions, at least they are grayed out in the GUI so I know they are not applicable. It’s a bit annoying that although apparently IP cameras don’t work, that the interface still allows me to attempt to add an IP camera and enter its IP address…. countless times…. grrrr. I would have been a lot better off if that hadn’t been an option under “New Wirecast Cam,” and if there hadn’t been an active dialog box to add the IP address. Again… grrr.

I guess I’ll just stick with my previous single camera for this year’s event… maybe I’ll put it on a little motorized pan/tilt head. I know there are tons of ways to do what I was attempting, but they are all at least a little more complicated and a lot more expensive… and this is waaaaaay down on the “importance” list for this event.

Appreciate the wisdom…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Joe Clark] “I still have a couple of questions left over”

Well, then ask them.

I have to say you are a mysterious poster, Joe. Since joining the COW a couple of months ago you’ve made a couple of dozen posts… they are all relatively vague and on a number of specific but vastly different disparate subjects. You’ve been given advice on occasion, but as far as I know you have never once replied to anyone…. never a “here’s more info,” or “but what about,” or even so much as a “Thank you.” Nothing but your original post.

And you have absolutely no “About” info in your profile. Zip, zilch.

I hate to question a poster’s legitimacy, but………

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Nick Griffin] ” I don’t understand is why the B&H Photo algorithm keeps promoting things to me after I’ve already recently purchased them… from B&H.”

Oh yeah that happens to me ALL the time.

Also similar to Nick’s story, when I worked in broadcast TV back when the dinosaurs roamed, one of the assistant station managers was selected to be a Nielsen family. Everyone in the station was jumping for joy, but I couldn’t help thinking “Ummm… isn’t that cheating? Like, a lot?”

Actually, I always thought the whole ratings-based thing was cheating. Back when I was an on-air news guy for too-many years, and then later when I was a promotions guy, all of the energy was forced into the “books,” the four sweeps months, and never-ending discussion of trying to “spike” the books with some salacious news series or such. I always thought that if we were attempting to “spike” the book, then weren’t we trying to dishonestly inflate the ratings above that which they truly were on a day-to-day basis, and thus inflate the rates that were being charged to advertisers and the claims made to those advertisers bragging about the number of eyeballs seeing their commercials? It all seemed sleazily dishonest to me (and I’m not even particularly overly Boy Scoutish).

I guess though when everyone else is doing exactly the same thing, it all evens out. In a smarmy kind of way.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

People are always confusing shutter speed with frame rate (which is an easy mistake to make), but you seem to have a handle on that fortunately…

There has been tons of discussion here about shutter speeds in the past… if you do a search you’ll probably find lots of useful threads, but I’ll try to quickly explain it.

Traditionally, a “normal” shutter speed is considered “One over twice the frame rate.” That is, if you are shooting 24fps, a “normal” shutter speed is 1/48th of a second. Shooting at 25fps, as you are, would be almost the same… 1/50th of a second.

Ok, so what is “normal,” and why is it “normal”? Well, going by that equation (1/2xFPS), that emulates the same shutter speed as a film camera shooting with a 180° shutter. If you have a still or slow-moving subject, images are pretty darn crisp. If you have a fast-moving subject, then individual frames have motion blur in them… the more (and faster) the motion, the more the blur. Some people might think “Why don’t I just shoot with a faster shutter speed, so images are really sharp and crisp? Isn’t that better?” Well, no. The thing is, your brain needs that motion blur in order to perceive the action as smooth. Crank up the speed and you get the “narrow shutter look,” where the action looks very staccato and choppy. Sometimes that is desirable and done for effect. See “Saving Private Ryan” for that effect used very well. See almost every action movie out today to see that effect overdone. It has become a staple effect these days for action sequences, car chases, and fight scenes. And yes it does make action scenes look more “action-y.” But for everyday shooting and common action, that’s usually not the effect you’ll be wanting.

So… yes, you can shoot with higher shutter speeds, as you suggested. But the higher you go, and the farther away from something in the “normal” range, the more your action will get that “narrow shutter look,” and become choppy.

There is one advantage to higher-than-normal shutter speeds with greenscreen work… it can make compositing cleaner when there is lots of movement, because your keyer will be dealing with sharper images and cleaner edges (since there is less motion blur) that make eliminating green fringing around the edges easier. So sometimes, that can be beneficial, but you’ll likely want to add some motion blur back in post after your compositing in order to help make the motion look smooth.

That’s a rudimentary explanation, but hope it helps…..

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I would never do that, and have never heard of anyone doing that.

I would always… ALWAYS color balance my camera for the temperature of the light I was using on my talent.

Maybe your friend just doesn’t have a very good keyer, or is not super proficient at compositing, and has found that particular shade of green works best for him. I have no other explanation for it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Oh, we’ve also used tobacco smoke… cigar smoke especially is thick and white. We’ve run tubes to the places we need smoke to appear, and gently blow the cigar smoke through.

It’s wacky, but it works. And gives the stage the smell of a poker room.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Couldn’t say for sure…

The standard (or at least most common) Phantom mount is the PL mount, so that would require PL mount cine lenses.

I know there is the option of the EOS mount on the Phantom for use with Canon lenses… but I’m not sure if DSLR lenses would work or if those are just for Canon’s real cine lenses. At any rate you’d want as-fast-as-possible glass of course… with such a high frame rate (and thus, shutter speed), you’d want at least superspeeds just to gather enough light. The double-edged sword is that such high shutter speeds require boatloads of light… but many of the otherwise-desirable high-intensity lights (like HMIs) aren’t suitable as they will show flickering at high frame rates. The best option for REALLY high frame rates is probably the sun.

As for the mount, that’d be a question the rental house could readily answer. And of course they would have lenses, too.

T2

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