[Todd Terry]

Well you can do it several ways, but I personally think the best/easiest and most controllable way is to use a duckbill or quaker clamp….

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/139521-REG/Matthews_429042_Quaker_Clamp.html

We’ve bought a couple… but we’ve also made a couple ourselves (welding a 5/8″ stud and a couple of sheetmetal “jaws” onto regular old pair of ViceGrips).

They will sturdily hold a 4×4 bounce and make it easy to adjust in any position.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Good advice from Rick….

Semi on topic, just a trick/tip that I do that works pretty well…

We use 4×4 (foamcore) bounces a lot, but for some lean-and-mean shoots when we don’t take a truck it can be a little unweidly to pack 16 square feet of foamcore…

So… sometimes I will take the foamcore and using an Xacto knife I will score it right down the middle, so that it can be folded in half to a more managable 2×4 size.

If you pop it into a duckbill bounce clamp (“Quaker Clamp,” the kind that’s just a pair of ViceGrips with a welded-on 5/8″ stud and sheet-metal jaws), the jaws hold it open and perfect flat… works just as if it were un-cut.

Usually I can use one for quite a few shoots before it is bent up or banged up and I have to replace it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Mike….

I can’t address the HD deliverability question for spots, because we have not had to deal with that yet (although I know it is coming any day now, so I will look forward to other answers you get)….

However, I can tell you what we do as far as charging for standard-def dubs…

About 95% of our work is broadcast commercials, with delivery on BetacamSP. Typically, we will make a commercial spot and the order will include a few dubs, something in the neighborhood of 5-15 dubs. We charge a flat rate of $25 a pop for these. We do not charge suite time for making them, because the actual dubbing time for a :30 is pretty inconsequential.

Here is another bit of legalize that we do: Clients’ invoices list this charge as Dubbing Service, not as actual dubs, and all of our tape labels include a tiny fine-print line that says “This videotape remains the property of Fantastic Plastic and must be returned upon request.” Of course we never ask for them back… yet about once a year we do receive a big box of tapes from an out-of-state television station full of our old spots. We finally called them and told them that they can just recycle them or dispose of them.

We do this for the obvious reason: so we don’t have to charge sales tax on the dub. We are not selling them the tape, we are selling the service of production. One of my colleagues in my city who does charge sales tax on dubs warned us that we would be bit for doing it this way, that it would not be deemed legal, and that we would end up having to charge sales tax… and perhaps pay back taxes on uncollected sales tax from years past. However, we did go through city, county, and state audits a couple of years ago… and in each case the auditor agreed with our system, that we were not required to charge sales tax unless we were actually selling the tape, and they agreeded that we were not (they did, however, stick us for a fair little bit of back taxes on a few zillion bucks worth of equipment bought from out of state vendors through the years…. damn you B&H Photo!).

Keep in mind that the tax laws in your city/county/state may vary… we did it this way under the advice of our CPA.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Duh… they are actually two middle names (insert eyeroll here).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Just curious, Samuel….

How exactly does that dolly boom since it says it has “no hydraulic system, no electrical system, no pumping required and no counterweights” yet still “gives smooth up and down camera movement.”

Can’t quite figure that out.

As for the weight (or lack thereof being a problem), no matter what type of dolly we use (from a skateboard rig up to a big crab dolly) I find it helpful to throw as much spare weight on it as I can. I read years ago that David Lynch likes to load dollys down with as many sandbags as they will hold… so that it takes two or three dolly grips just to start the move, and the guys have to start trying to stop the thing as soon as they start. He claims that gives him the exact perfectly smooth arc of movement and speed. That might be extreme, but more weight does indeed help.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Steve…

Glad to hear someone has seen them with their own eyeballs.

I’m a little surprised that someone is using them outdoors, I wouldn’t normally think a little 150w would be all that useful but maybe they’re punchy enough to actually do some good.

For the money, though, I was thinking they might be worth trying just for incidental use for interiors.

Thanks!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Some meetings are often critical, but many of course are not…

If a client wants a meeting but you really don’t want to go because their history proves that they are pointless or not the best use of your time, you might casually say something like, “I’d be happy to come in… but let me check what we’ve done so far and how much we budgeted for meetings. I sure don’t want to go over budget on your project.” This might help them realize that your time is valuable and that they are using up the resources that they are paying for, not in the best way.

You could also say that you’d be happy to come in for a meeting, and that it would be helpful if they could go ahead and email you an agenda in avance. When faced with the prospect of having to write out what the meeting needs to cover, they might wise up and realize there is no real reason for it at all. I doubt they would call you in if they are pressed for a real agenda and it is #1: Chitchat, #2: adjourn.

Then again, I’ve known clients to do crazier things.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

For smaller clients, yes we bill, for bigger clients… usually not.

We are a tiny company, so if me or my partner (our GM) is out at a meeting, chances are we are not being able to bill for much “real” work during that time…. so with smaller clients we do charge, and we have an hourly rate for meetings. It’s not nearly as much as our rate for shooting, editing, or some other stuff… but it’s better than nothing.

Conversely, we have a couple of really big clients, and they get differernt treatment. If a client’s annual billing is high, say, in the six-figure range or near that, we will gladly go to their place and dance in a grass skirt if that’s what they need… free. Not pretty.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[eric pautsch] “Why are you outputting an MPEG 2 I Frame @25mb/s?”

Well, we weren’t originally, after trying just about every possible output option and setting combination, the MPEG 2 I Frame files seemed to look by far the best after DVD burning. Not sure why, but they do.

[eric pautsch] “You should just output a 10bit uncompressed AVI and bring that into Encore.”

Yeah, that’s what I was doing for a long time, before finally realizing that the DVDs just didn’t look quite as good as we thought they should. That led to the experimentation with the various outputs, where we finally landed on the MPEG 2 I Frame files. That’s probably not technically the correct choice (I’m definitely no authoring expert), but to the naked eyeball it gives us a noticably better picture than a 10bit uncompressed AVI, which looks a tad artifacty in comparison.

[eric pautsch] “playing correctly sometimes and not others is very strange indeed…”

I agree… it’s giving me a headache. Thanks much for the input.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks for the input, Mike…

[Mike Cohen] “I always export MPEG-2 out of Premiere, and import the MPEG-2 files with separate audio into Encore.”

I have tried that per somone else’s suggestion, and it seems to have solved the problem some of the time, but not all of the time.

[Mike Cohen] “Could your 24p to 29.97 be an issue? If you are editing in DV, then probably not.”

No, that’s not the issue… problem is still there even if it was a native 60i project.

[Mike Cohen] “Cheaper DVD players tend to do weird things,”

Actually, strangely enough the ultro cheapo DVD players are the ones that seem to work best. Our discs will play great on generic 40-buck NoNameCo players from Wal-Mart or Target… but it’s the higher end players that seem to more often display the problems.

[Mike Cohen] “Another tip we find useful is to make an ISO from Encore and burn using Nero”

Yes, a great tip for anyone burning DVDs… we almost always use Encore to create files rather than burn to disc, and then make the DVDs with Nero or whatever. I rarely use Encore to burn a DVD directly, but even if I do the results are the same.

This is a puzzler…..

Thanks…

T2

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