[Todd Terry]

[Rick Amundson] “I think it might be worth your time to try and negotiate a lower price with a rental house”

I will second what Rick said, and add that if you need it for a week, as you said, you are probably not looking at 7x$250. A lot of rental houses work on a “three day week”… i.e., you pay for three days, keep it a week. And, do you have to do your shooting on weekdays?… if you rent on Friday and return on Monday many places count that as one day.

At any rate, though, you’ll need some time to play with the thing, thoroughly test ALL your lenses, make sure the backfocus is set right (use a monitor not the viewfinder and a test chart)…

And I would NOT suggest focusing by eyeball… your viewfinder’s resolution is way too low for that considering the shallow depth of field. Best focusing is done the old-fashioned “Hollywood” way … with a tape measure. The P+S has a tape measure hook on the side of it right at the “film” plane. We also use a Stanley “Fat Max” laser tape measure which is extremely accurate (Home Depot or Lowes, ’bout a hundred bucks).

I believe you said you were looking for PL mount so I’m guessing you have real cine lenses that you plan to use. If so, that’s a good thing… most of their focus scales are accurate. Many people use still camera SLR lenses though, and often their focus scales are very inaccurate, even with expensive lenses. Infinity and the nearest mark are usually right, but the numbers in the middle can be a crapshoot. Superspeeds are recommended… most of the converters suck up a fair bit of light (a stop or more).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Joe…

I have a fair bit of experience with adapaters (I have shot with the P+S Technik at least three or four times a week for the last two years) and while I can’t tell you where to get a different adapter, I did want to speak to an issue or two…

A couple of things concern me a little….

[Joe Kaczorowski] “I am shooting a short film next week”

and…

[Joe Kaczorowski] “it’s been a long time since i’ve shot anything”

and…

[Joe Kaczorowski] “want it to look amazing”

All that is doable, but just please know that shooting with a 35mm converter is not as simple and screwing it on your camera and pulling trigger. They take a fair bit of practice and some real cinematography skill to use and use well. Now, you may indeed be a top-notch DP, but the fact that you say you haven’t shot anything in a long time leads me to believe that is not your chief area of expertise. The guys who adapt fastest to the lens converters are cinematographers who have had some decent experience shooting 35mm film… for them, using a converter comes fairly naturally. Guys who have limited experience or are just used to shooting video will find the learning curve a tad steeper.

You need to know how to light for film, not video… you need to know how to make filmic camera moves… and perhaps most importantly you need to know how to very very accurately pull focus. Your video camera has an almost infinite depth of field… but now you are going to find yourself having to pull focus and track moving objects within a depth of field that can literally be only a couple of inches deep. It’s not easy. And a very good follow focus unit (not one of the cheap plastic “Fisher Price” units… they have too much slop) is almost a must-have.

I am not trying to discourage you… I hope you make your movie and it turns out great. I just want you to be well prepared going in. I speak from experience… I shot 35mm film for years and years, but when we started using our lens converter it still probably took me two or three weeks to get top-notch proficient at using it. It’s just a different animal… and you really have to know how to use it to get those “amazing” results.

Now, all that being said, which converter to use? The P+S Technik is indeed the Rolls Royce of the converters, and it is worth every penny. It is expensive though and I can understand that it might not be in your budget (remember you’re talking about a $10K+ piece of hardware, so the $250/day is reasonable). The MovieTube is also a good unit, but it is up there approaching the P+S in cost (and I don’t think it will work with the Canon). However, some other converters do a good job as well (the M2 from Redrock is a decent unit… a bit more difficult to use and not all the bells and whistles of the P+S, but is a tenth the price and does a good job). The low-end units (the Letus35, the Brevis, etc.), get wildly varying reviews. Some people love them, some people think they are junk. I’ve seen some great footage from them, but you can’t go 100 percent by that… after all, most people don’t demo their bad footage. I’m not sure if you can find the lower-end units in rental houses, though… the P+S Technik is fairly readily available for rental (expecially with the Canon adapter fittings), but the other units…not so much.

At bare minimum I would suggest you get a unit (rent, buy, beg, or borrow) and play with it as much as you can to get as comfortable with it as possible before you pull trigger on a real project.

Hope I didn’t rain on your parade, I just want you to go in prepared.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Steve…

Mine is NOT a rigid frame…. thank gawd. Royal Enfield claims (who knows if it’s true) to have invented the swing arm a zillion years ago, and some of even their very early bikes had them.

Mine’s a 500cc Bullet… the exact same bike that was re-badged as the 1955 Indian “Woodsman” (some people, even bikers, are surprised to learn that good ol’ all-American Indians were actually re-labled Britbikes from 1955-60).

Yes, I saved the horn… I didn’t actually see it fall off, just looked down and saw it dangling. My buddy (my partner in this film equipment venture) is a metalworker as well as a fellow biker… he has promised to make me a new bracket better than one I could buy as NOS, but he is also a terrible procrastinator. If he takes too long I might hit you up, man.

The Enfields are interesting, real headturners, and have a lot of personality. They do, however, live up to their unofficial motto: Royal Enfield. Making mechanics out of ordinary men. That’s why there’s also a Yamaha in my garage (sorry, know you are a Harley guy).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Steve Wargo] “Todd, have you checked into CineGear”

No, Steve, I haven’t… thanks for the tip, I’m willing to bet that’s much more my target audience as well. Not really familiar with them, I’ll check it out.

I’ve been reading a lot of the NAB rules and regs… and man oh man, is Jimmy Hoffa alive and running the thing? I’ve never seen such a strictly unionized affair, and I’ve been in plenty of union shops and am an AFTRA/SAG member myself but this thing is to the extreme. I particularly laughed at the reg that vendors can load-in their own exhibits as long as the pieces are hand-carried (absolutely no dollys or carts of any kind) and must be carried by one person only. Sheesh. The regs didn’t suggest how much bribe money to keep on hand, but I imagine it is substantial.

On another matter, Steve, maybe you could use your expertise toward improved bracket design for vintage Brit bikes… I broke my third Royal Enfield horn bracket today… cruising along and the horn literally just fell off (right about time that my left kidney did the same… they’re not called “thumpers” just for the fun of it).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks, Ron…

That was very helpful, always good to see some actual potential numbers tossed around.

I’d say we have a couple of advantages… firstly, while we definitely do not have infinitely deep pockets, we are not a startup company from scratch… rather, this is being developed within our existing company (been around for 11 years now) so we do have a tiny bit of resources that we can throw behind it.

Secondly, because of the “already-owned” resources of myself and my partner, our projects are going to take virtually no “R&D funds” to develop… really just our time (although that part will be substantial). In the end I would be very surprised if the two devices we have in mind will take more than $10-15K of actual cash to get past the prototyping and beta testing stage (even including legal and marketing development). Obviously the less we spend on the font end, the more we can spend on the back end for advertising and marketing.

So, lots of thinking to do here. There is the impossible-to-predict “what if” factor hanging out there. If we were to spend, say $75K for a small but visible presence at the show…. well, that’s a lot of money. But if we knew it would lead to say 10-12 relatively soon sales, then it would be a no-brainer… I’d write the check today. On the other hand, of course, it could be money thrown away. Oh where did I put my Magic 8-Ball®?

Thanks to all of this group for its collective wisdom….. there are no better resources anywhere.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks for the input, Ron, and I’m listening…..

So……

[Ron Lindeboom] “It is not until you get into the main traffic flows that you will see any real benefit from NAB — and that will cost you a LOT of money.”

….okies, so what is a LOT of money? That is, how much would one expect to have to fork out (an actual dollar guess, not “quite a bit,” or “a pretty penny) for a small booth but with the all important real estate “location location location” factor?

I’m all ears, education is never a waste…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey gang…

Thanks, guys, for all the suggestions. We will try to take them to heart.

Firstly, I’m very glad to hear that based on what Ron and others had to say that showing at NAB as a vendor may turn out to be not quite as expensive as I had thought (I had feared the worst)… good news indeed. Maybe we will see some of you there next year.

Beta testing is of course a great suggestion, and one that we have planned on. I have solicited a lot of info from several of my DP friends around the country… ranging from one-man-band freelancers up to ASC cinematographers… and they have been a great source of input and suggestions. We will be putting several of their ideas into prototypes. Three or four of them will also be beta testing our first units in the trenches to see if we are on the right track. I hate to be so cryptic about these products, but here in an open forum on the world wide intertubes is probably not the best place to talk about it yet, intellectual property-wise.

The “pyramid” idea is probably the ideal type of marketing, but I’m not sure it fits in our world that well. I’m not trying to slight the marketing efforts or just “make a fast buck,” but we might not have the best resources (mostly time) to attack it that way. In short, this is just a little “side project” for both me an my partner. My buddy is a full-time physics professor, is working on his PhD disertation, and running yet another business at the same time. I’m a full-time director and DP at my little company, with employees and clients depending on me to be here doing my thang. So, while we can invest some time in this venture, we are not in positions to spend tons and tons of time on the road hitting various shows, etc., on what at this point is still very speculative. That’s why I thought NAB might be the best “bang for the buck.” If we can get by with spending, say, $50K there for a “small booth presence” (just pulling that number out of my ear, but it sounds reasonable to me) and hit the eyeballs of the highest number of prospective buyers all in one week, rather than spending the same amount (or more) to hit the same number (or fewer) eyeballs while dragging ourselves all over the country to various shows for days on end… well, that sounds like the way to go to me. However, if as Ron warned we were stuck in an unseen booth in the back corner of the south 40 with just the crickets chirping, then yes it could be wasted time and money.

The “pairing up” with an established company is certainly an idea worth considering. I’m not sure exactly what that company would be, but I will give it some thought.

Of course definitely web and maybe some print advertising in the trade rags could be in order, but our particular products definitely fall into the “hands on” category… I think we would greatly benefit from venues where cinematographers can get their hands on our toys and really play with them. There is definitely an in-person “wow” factor that I’m not sure will translate into other types of advertising quite as well.

This is all very early in the development process here, but it has given me plenty to chew on.

Thanks to all for the input!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Ryan Mast] “is there any way to document that so that I’m not liable in that situation, and that the client is solely responsible and liable for securing permission from copyright holders?”

Doesn’t matter. Just because a client might tell you “It’s ok, I will take the heat” or even “I’ve taken care of the licenses, don’t worry about it” doesn’t remove you from responsbility if they have not taken proper legal means to protect both themselves and you.

In an extreme analogy, if your buddy needs money and asks you to rob a bank (“I’ll drive the getaway car, but you’re so much better with people”) and tells you not to worry about it that if you get caught he will take the blame… well… I’m sure you can imagine how that would end up.

Extreme example, I’ll admit… but just having a client tell you it’s ok to do something illegal doesn’t make it any less so.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I didn’t get a chance to look at the links yet… but I’m assuming that the elusive very shallow depth of field is what you are after…

[Sean Winn] “I’m under the impression that attaching SLR type lenses to my camera will provide that kind of depth of field.”

Well…. yes, and no. Attaching 35mm lenses to your camera will provide shallow depths of field. But unfortunately attaching those lenses directly to your camera will not.

The long and short of it is that you need a depth-of-field lens converter, a gadget which goes between the lens and your camera body and restores the 35mm DoF characteristics. They range from pretty simple to quite complicated, and from pretty cheap (less than a grand) to pretty expensive (more than $10,000). It does indeed work very very well, I use a P+S Technik Mini35 converter with my Canon XLH1 almost every day.

I could go into this in great detail, but it has been covered in various COW forums bunches of times. I’d suggest doing a forum search for “depth of field” and you will find several threads with lots of info. You can also dig through the COW Magazine archives (I think the PDFs are here on the COW somewhere), in last Summer’s issue I wrote an article about DoF conversion using 35mm cine lenses and our Canon camera which might give you some details.

Give those a read, and if you have any more questions give a shout, will be happy to help…..

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

As an employer, I’m about in the same boat as Joey, size wise (we’re a tiny company, five employees including myself)…

We are not sticklers at all for time (vacation or sick), although we probably should be…

It’s been so long since we’ve had a “new hire” that I don’t really even know if there is a set-in-stone policy, but I believe hires in the past have started out with two weeks of vacation the first year, and then move to three weeks the subsequent year.

Our sick-leave policy is even looser, it’s pretty much “If you’re sick, go home and be sick there.” We have never counted sick days… we have never had anyone even remotely abuse the privilege. Of course, that may come back to bite us in the butt someday.

All vacation time and sick time is paid… I just think that’s the right thing to do. Then again, that is based on the fact that all of our employees are salaried, if they were paid hourly I might think differently about that.

Being the principal owner of the company, technically I myself can take as much vacation as I want. That being said, I think I’ve had about five days off in the last three years. My general manager (who also owns a small portion of the company) takes greater advantage of that… he’s probably off three or four weeks out of the year.

Actually I’m glad for the original post… it has me thinking. We might need to get some rules and regs down a bit more concrete.

T2

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