[Todd Terry]

Well, there are zillions of kinds/types of makeup out there, and the makeup artist that we usually use has several giant tackle boxes full of stuff….

However when we don’t use him, we carry our own small box with a few different bases, powders, etc., and in both television and theatre you will find that Max Factor pancake makup TAN 2 COOL 5 is pretty much a staple.

It’s easy to apply, and that particular color/shade is often appropriate for a surprisingly wide range/group of talent, especially Caucasian males.

You should probably have someone who really knows their makeup help you put together a small kit… but Tan 2 will definitely be in there.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Trey…

I thought you’d be happy. Nice piece of gear, huh? You’ll like the benefit of the superspeeds, too.

As for the oscillation…

The little wheel controls the speed at which the groundglass oscillates. This is one of the differences in P+S Technik and some of the other units… some of the others don’t have a variable speed, or just “high” and “low,” whereas the Mini35 is continuously variable. In fact, earlier models of the Mini35 I believe only had two speeds, but the current one (the 400 series, which is what I have and I believe is probably the one you rented) does.

Sometimes under some circumstances the grain on the groundglass will become visible. This is due to the particular shutter speed that you are using happening to “sync up” somewhat with the oscillation speed. If you are using HMI or flo lights this can also happen, as the lights sort of get “in phase” with the oscillation speed. You would then use the little thumb wheel to adjust the speed so that the grain disappears.

In all honesty, it’s something you probably won’t have to worry about… I think I’ve had to adjust mine to wipe out the grain maybe once or twice in more than two years of almost daily shooting. I just keep it cranked up to the max (at “8”) and usually don’t have to give it another thought. But if you are shooting under unusual lighting conditions, OR for some reason are shooting with a faster than “normal” shutter (faster than 1/48th if you are shooting 24p), then it might be something you want to look at. If you play with it while shooting a big neutral-colored background (just shoot a bounce card or a white or light-colored wall) and you may be able to see the effects of adjustment a little better.

Just like focusing and backfocusing, this is something you can not depend on the viewfinder to see. You will need the camera hooked up to a good (preferably 1080) monitor to see if there is any visible grain, and if so whether you can “adjust it out.”

And of course you know this, but be sure to connect the little LANC cable, so that the unit will start and stop whenever you pull trigger on the camera. If the unit isn’t running the grain is very definitely visible… so you will want to make sure it is always on during a take. I’ve never heard of it happening with a Mini35, but I know of several users of other brands of DoF converters that simply forgot to turn it on before a take… it’s so easy to forget because it is not something you normally have to remember to do.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Good advice from Don….

I do blieve, however, that ‘Wassup Rockers’ was shot on XL2, not GL2… at least that’s what all the industry press said about it when it came out. Not being familiar with the GL2 I don’t know if it is lacking some of the controls of the XL2. Not sure.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

And on top of all the valid and real reasons that have been mentioned (economies of scale, supply and demand, different quality requirements)… there is to a degree the same reason that a great deal of filmmaking equipment costs so much…

Question: “Why do they charge so much for that?”

Answer: “Because they can.”

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Bob…

You say you can’t afford HMIs yet… and that’s very understandable. But have you checked out Richard’s line of budget HMIs over at CoolLights?

I was a little skeptical but gave it a try and bought one of his 1200w HMIs about a month ago… and I’ve been pretty darn happy with it.

It’s not quite an ArriSun as far as build quality goes… but close. And at a fraction of the price.

My only complaint is that the ballast has a fan in it… but at least it is pretty quiet. In an extremely quiet closed small “live” room it might be noticiable… but it hasn’t posed a problem yet (and I doubt I’d need a 1200 in a small room anyway), and it has the usual 25′ head cable so its relatively easy to put the ballast a reasonable distance from any mics. As for his smaller units, I believe the 575 uses the same ballast, but the little ballasts for his 150’s are fanless.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Tim Ward] “the difference between SLR primes and video/film primes?”

The difference can be very little, or can be a lot.

In fact, many SLR primes are being used as cine primes, especially with depth-of-field converters. Often, the glass itself is more or less the same… and sometimes you see SLR lenses that have a couple of additional things done to them to “turn them into” cine lenses… including gearing, remounting, or rehousing.

With gearing, it’s the simple addition of a focus gear ring to the lens allowing the use of a follow focus rig.

With remounting, the SLR lens is remounted so that it now fits a cine mount… for example, a Nikon mount may be changed to a professional PL cine mount.

Full rehousing is the most drastic of the changes. When a lens is rehoused they pretty much save only the guts of it and the glass, and put everything in a new housing. This new old lens will now have proper gearing, a real cine mount, will be collimated, and now the focus mechanism will now operate like a cine lens…. that is, going from nearest focus to infinity will now take almost a full barrel turn of the focus ring, not just the tiny amount (usually 1/5th barrel turn) that it did when it was an SLR lens.

Manufacturing toleraces are much tighter with production for cine or SLR lenses than they typically are with video lenses. Video lenses must only “resolve” the picture at the resolution of the camera to which it is attached… i.e., 1080 lines for an HD camera, or about half that for an SD camera. Many do resolve greater than that, but they don’t have to, so there’s no guarantee that they will. Cine lenses and SLR lenses, on the other hand, must resolve images at much much higher resolution than video lenses… so their manufacturers must adhere to much tighter tolerances and specs than if they were producing video-only lenses.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

No worries, glad to help….

[Trey Gregory] “Is the ‘back focus’ something you need to check once before you start shooting, or do you need to check it any time you change out the lens you are using?”

Once should be enough. I used to check it pretty frequently, only to find that it had never drifted out of backfocus at all, even with zillions of lens changes (and occasionally taking the body off, although not often). After a while I began to realize that the backfocus was never drifting at all, so I became more lax about checking it. Now, I check it maybe once a month. Once I got it right on the money, it has never needed adjustment.

[Trey Gregory] “Is it difficult to set this using the stock canon viewfinder in the field?”

It’s not difficult… but rather darn near impossible. Your stock viewfinder will be more or less useless for backfocus adjustment. Set up a test chart in a good controlled environment, focus precisely via distance and the witness marks on the lens, then adjust the backfocus using (if possible) a 1080 monitor… and preferably with HD-SDI or at minimum component out of the camera. If you don’t have a Seimen’s chart shoot me an email off list and I will send you a file that you can print out and use.

On another note, you will also find the viewfinder to be only slightly more useful for focusing. With medium-to-longer lenses (say 50mm or longer) if you shoot wide open your DoF is going to be super shallow… I’ve had it as shallow as one inch at close distances, so focus is going to be critical. That viewfinder (like most) is so low-res that it is extremely poor for eyeball focusing. The magnification and peaking features help some, but the best focusing is going to come from the old fashioned “Hollywood” way… a tape measure. On the left side (“port side”) of the Mini35 you will see a white line and a silver knob. The white line is the “film plane” (well, it would be that if there were film), and the knob is a hook for the tape measure. Be sure you measure from the subject to the FILM PLANE, not to the front of the lens. When my subject is a human actor (the case most of the time), I measure from the film plane to their eyeballs. If eyes are sharp, then everything else is ok… but if some other parts of a scene are razor sharp yet eyeballs look soft, the whole thing looks soft.

Because tape measures are sometimes clunky to use, I also carry with me a Stanley “Fat Max” laser tape (’bout 100 bucks at Home Depot, Lowes, etc.). I use that for the majority of my focusing… I just hold it at the film plane and hit the subject with it (if the subject is an actor, though, I tell them to close their eyes).

As before, you will thank yourself if you get the weight distribution right… although I’ve never tried to use the P+S with another set of rails, since the Mini35 has standard 15mm/60mm rods built right into it.

I’ve never used that follow focus… as long as it doesn’t have any slop in the gearbox, it should be ok (even widly expensive Arris still have about 1° backlash).

Hope that helps….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey again Trey…

I did think of one “issue” that I’ve had with the Mini35, but it’s so minor (or rather, solved) that I didn’t remember it at first.

In our particular case, because we use a big brick on the back to power the camera, it is very backheavy… even with a big heavy lens, matte box, follow focus, it is just very unbalanced because the tripod mount on the bottom of the Mini35 is so far forward.

We combatted that by fashioning another aluminum plate that goes on the bottom of the unit, with threaded 3/8″ tripod-attachment holes more toward the rear. Now it stays in perfect balance. I also cut a rubber caster in half and screwed it to the rear of the plate to help “lock it in” between the rear rods….

One other little mod I did… is to make a “Y” split in the power cable from the Anton Bauer goldmount… and attached the other end to another Canon camera power connector. This way the single battery powers both the camera and the Mini35. It’s not real pretty, but very convenient and I never have to worry about changing the little batteries. I put velcro on the power adapter and on the back of the goldmount holder, so in the rare instances that I take the body out of the Mini35 to use with the stock lens, I can just stick the “extra” power connector up on it so it doesn’t dangle to get it out of the way.

Hope your shoot goes well,

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Rick McKinney] “You may not think you’ll ever need a spare turtle, but one day (and it will come I promise you….)”

And as you put things together you will discover ways to do things that you haven’t thought of, or ways to use equipment that might not be it’s usual intention…

For example… the opening in a Matthews turtle base (though not all brands) is exactly the same size as a junior receiver. Need to mount a big HMI really low?… don’t put it on a stand at all, just stick it in a turtle base. Conversely, because those two sizes are the same, you can stick a C-stand riser in the top of a junior stand and suddenly you have an extremely tall stand (just use lots of sandbags… and I wouldn’t do that with a lighting instrument, maybe with a flag or small tree branch).

The combinations are almost endless….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, that’s hard to say… just depends on your needs. That’s entirely governed by what you want to hold up and more importantly how high you want to hold it.

We have a bunch with 20″ risers, some with 30″, and a couple with 40″. We probably use the 30″ most which goes up to 8′ tall.

Another thing to remember is that C-stand parts are mix-n-match. We have a lot more risers than we have turtle-base stands. Sometimes we need all the bases we have but rarely need all the risers that we have, so it cuts down on lugging unnecessary equipment. And I don’t know about the other manufacturers, but with Matthews you can buy the parts separately.

T2

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