Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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The XL cameras (any of the series) are somewhat notorious for overscanning in the viewfinder… but that’s not limited to Canons, lots of viewfinders are unreliable.
It’s particularly pesky for guys who are used to shooting film where you can see in the viewfinder a fair bit of the area outside of the actual film frame, where it is much easier to make sure that mic booms, light stands, etc., do not creep into the shot.
So yes, for critical framing an external monitor is necessary. Look for one that has a feature called “underscan,” which bascially reduces the picture a bit on the monitor screen so you get true edge-to-edge viewing. Any monitor that underscans should be fine (and that is a feature that you will find on most if not all real production monitors). There is usually a button or switch labeled “Underscan” which toggles back and forth between underscanned and full viewing.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Michael Belanger] “Look what happened to the print industry when desktop took over. Basically killed the industry so that everyone could work out of their living room.”
Yes, and no. Desktop publishing didn’t kill the print industry, just changed it. The business became much less hardware-driven and much more talent-driven… which, if you ask me, is how it should be.
The same is happening and has happened in the video/film production business. Just as in print, now there are a lot of people out there who CAN shoot and edit, regardless of whether they SHOULD shoot and edit. Many shouldn’t be doing it.
However, I think talent always rises to the top. There will always be a market for people who really really know what they are doing. Through the years we have had a couple of clients try to save a couple of bucks and go with the “kid working out of his basement” for a project. I secretly sort of like when they do that, because invariably they have always come back to us… vowing “never to do that again.” And these are the clients that we want to keep. The ones that are satisfied with ultra low-end productions are probably not clients that we want anyway… they’re the ones that want everything but pay nothing, and are not giving us jobs that we can make a living off of anyway.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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You will get much much better results if you scale up during telecine, rather than during the edit. I’m not sure how much you can go at that point, but it would be more than 110%. Probably much more, and it still look good (whether or not it would match is a different story). If you want to go that route, the best person to talk to would be the actual colorist who is taking care of your telecine… he or she will know exactly how much they can blow it up and stay within acceptible-looking limits.
The 110% is probably a good guess for blowing up HD that has already been transfereed full frame. More than that and it’s going to start to look ratty, and you are not going to notice a huge size difference with 110% anyway.
Yes, if you get a 2K scan instead of HD you will have a much greater range for potential enlarging.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Step number one is having a great food stylist who really knows what they are doing. If you want to do it yourself, there are several books that will be helpful.
If you plan on doing a lot of this, it might be a good idea to pick up a copy of the book “Food Photography and Styling” by John Carafoli.
It’s full of great tips and tricks.
Also… a good source is Trengove Studios (https://trengovestudios.com)… they have lots of great products… acrylic and glass spashes/pours/drops/drips, bubbles, tons of different kinds of fake ice, ice powder, foam boosters, fake charcoal, steam chips… all that fun stuff. We use them a lot.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hi Diego…
You’re battling pure physics and optics there. The smaller the size of the sensor in a camera, the greater the depth of field will be. Your camera has a very tiny sensor, therefore depth of field is almost infinite. Even if you open up the iris fully (outdoors or indoors) you depth of field is going to be very very deep.
Shooting with as long a focal length as possible (i.e., “zoom in”) will decrease the perceived depth of field a little bit, but of course that dictates your composition and framing.
The only real way to truly get a shallow DoF with a small camera like yours is to use a 35mm lens converter and shoot with cine lenses or 35mm SLR (still camera) lenses.
This has been discussed a great great deal here in recent months in various COW forums (some would say ad nauseum, so much so that it became a little bit of a sore subject for a couple of people). Do a COW search for “depth of field” and you will find a huge number of posts about it.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Ron Gerber] “we no longer use freelances unless they come through an employment agency.”
Wow… that’s interesting.
I’m not sure what makes a freelancer any different from any other vendor. I personally have never ever hired a freelancer through an employment agency, and probably would be reticent to do so. All of the freelancers in our area (at least the ones that I work with) are well-established pros who work on their own without third-party representation.
Personally, I know these guys work hard and I would rather see all of what we pay them wind up in their pockets rather than some pencil pushers taking a cut.
I’m sure size matters… with a tiny company like mine (no such thing as HR, and speak to the “company attorney” maybe once a month) it is much easier.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Dan Brockett] “…doing a shoot in Philly Friday, I just shipped my lighting kit and a plastic tote…”
Works well, doesn’t it Dan? After we started shipping a few years ago I will never again lug gear through an airport unless we abolutely have to.
If you find yourself doing a lot of this you can come up with a system/routine that works well for you. Our shipping cases are sort of like Anvil cases, but not quite as heavy. To make things even easier we put recessed mounts in the bottom of the big ones for three-inch rubber casters. When we pick up the cases at FedEx, the first thing we do is crack ’em open, remove the wheels stored inside, and attach them. Bingo… rolling cases, and stack the smaller ones on top (I am too lazy to lift anything I don’t have to).
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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You might consider one of the smaller kits from LTM Pepper. They are very well made (usually fresnels but they have other types of instruments as well). I actually like them better than Arri… they are as well or better made and significantly less expensive (most Arris have formed sheet-metal bodies, the Peppers have cast-metal bodies). You can put together your own setup, or they have ready-to-go kits in several sizes with several different instruments.
The thing I’m impressed with about them is that their kits are VERY complete… heads, Matthews stands, barn doors, scrims (singles and doubles in fulls and halves), lamps, power adapters, even leather gloves. Kits have different cases, but the one we have came in a hard-shell rolling-wheel case with a pop-out handle. We’ve had one of their kits for almost 10 years, and while it is not our primary any more it is still used quite a bit and still going strong.
And I will echo two things that Dan said:
Firstly, Lowel instruments are very flimsy… I’m not sure exactly how they got the “high end” reputation that they have. I’ve never seen anyone’s Lowels that didn’t look like they have been run over by a truck and straightened back out again, parts kinda loose and rattly. They also burn VERY hot and aren’t heat-shielded very well at all. At least, yes, they pack up small.
And secondly, yes, consider shipping your gear, especially the heavy stuff. We don’t travel all that much but when we do we have semi-large shipping cases (usually 5 or 6, depending on what all we are taking, whether it’s film or video, etc.), and we just FedEx everything. If we plan our schedules carefully so that it doesn’t interfere with shoots at home we can ship 3-day to our location and the gear is waiting for us when we arrive. We just find a FedEx location nearest our shoot location and ship “Hold for Pickup” and it’s there waiting for us. It usually costs us about $1800 to ship everything we need cross country and back (that’s loads of gear going 3-day air, ground shipping or a lighter shoot would be less). I have never had one piece of gear lost, broken, or delayed that way… and I can not say that about checking gear so that it travels on the same plane with me.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hi Jason…
No, I don’t have a Losmandy spider dolly or flex track. I will probably get one someday, I just have just not really had the specific need for one yet…. or quite enough to justify the purchase.
There is an eBayer that also sells sort of a Canadian clone of the Losmandy dolly and flex track. His equipment looks good and the prices are much lower than Losmandy… but he kills you on shipping.
We usually use a skatewheel-type dolly (16 wheels) with PVC pipe for smaller stuff… for bigger heavy duty things we have a McAlister crab dolly (like a Fisher) that we often mount the jib on. It has studio wheels or track wheels but frankly it is usually overkill… and we normally just use it on stage as it is too heavy to easily take on location.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, when those clients “swing,” we tend to just let ’em. Not too much to be done about it.
We have a couple of agency clients where we pretty much handle all of their higher-end stuff, but for easy/fast/cheap things they go elsewhere. And that’s pretty much fine with us, we don’t really want their low-end gigs.
And we have a couple of agency clients that started out using us and other production companies… kinda spreading the love around. Gradually they have come to the point where we are doing almost all of it, but they will go elsewhere if they need something that our schedules just simply can’t accommodate (although we usually try). They always come back though.
Last year one of our very biggest clients (that we usually do fairly high-end commercial spots for) confessed to us that they had taken a low-end project (a shareholders’ annual report video) to another company. They told us it was because they feared we “wouldn’t have time” because we were working on another big campaign for them at the moment…. but I’m sure it was primarily about money. They made the confession while bemoaning what a huge mistake it was and that they would never do that again.
I’d say don’t sweat the “swingers” too much… people like to test the waters, and actually I encourage that. One of our big clients was recently complaining about production costs, and decided to go get two other estimates from other production companies in two different cities. When they leaned the lowest of those outside bids was at least $20K higher than our highest guess, our rates suddenly didn’t seem quite so bad any more.
As long as you have fair rates and your work is of substantially higher quality than their alternative…. the swingers will keep swinging back. At least the ones that you want to swing back do.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com