[Todd Terry]

[David Roth Weiss] “…without us, Dobie Gillis would never have had a good place to share his inspiration….”

…whereas my personal inspiration has always been Maynard G. Krebs.
Funny how life comes full circle.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Of course David… everything’s a conspiracy, you should now that by now.

I would write more, but I have to go adjust the aluminum foil in my hat. I’m also fairly certain that someone is listening to my conversations through the coffee maker.

That, plus I have a full afternoon of contemplating scheduled…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Congrats, Jason….

I bet you will be happy with it. Our Porta-Jib has been going strong for about ten years.

Except for occassionally tightening some of the little allen bolts (maybe every couple of years) and once having to retap the threaded hole that one of the telescoping handles screws into (don’t worry, this was after many years of constant use) it has worked like a charm with no other maintainence required.

Happy jibbing!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I think the black singles are officially rated at .6 stops and the doubles are 1.2 stops or thereabouts. Thats for Matthews, other brands might be different depending on the particular rags.

Which you would need depends on the usage. On overcast day a single would probably be sufficient, especially if you are shooting film. If you are shooting video though and with a full sunlit background a double is probably in order. It varies.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Scrim fabric… usually stretched in a butterfly frame. Matthews has black scrim fabric both single and double in most standard butterfly frame sizes starting I believe at 6×6 feet and going up all the way to 20×30 feet. Couple hundred bucks for the small one, up to about $1500 for the gigantic ones.

Singles will usually cut about 1/2 stop or a little more… the double scrims a little less than a stop and a half.

B&H Photo usually carries most of their line (plus other brands of rags, too… but Matthews is kinda the “industry standard”)… or you can buy rags and frames (and all kinds of other fun stuff) directly from Matthews at https://www.msegrip.com

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Back to the original question for a sec, which was single- vs. double-articulated arms….

Single-articulated arms are ok, but I would say they are best saved for the higher-end “pro” rigs. I’m not sure I would go for one of the more prosumer rigs with a single arm. My rig is a single arm, but it’s a Steadicam (an older SK model, not in their lineup any more) and it works just dandy.

I’d say the biggest differences in the more consumer level stabilizers and the high-end ones (such as Steadicam, or GPI Pro, etc.) is not just the arm but the way the who thing works, and the ease and reliability of use…

GIMBAL
A high-end rig will have a gimbal that moves absolutely effortlessly, you can easily spin it around the post with virtually no friction.

MONITOR
A high-end rig will have a good daylight-viewable montior. The CloneCams tend to have little TTF LCD screens that are sometimes not very useful outdoors. The highest-end monitors have things like switchable aspect ratios, TV-safe lines, artificial horizon, etc.

POWER
The higher rigs will have a dedicated built-in power system, and will use pro batteries such as A-B goldmounts… where a single (or dual) battery mount will power both the monitor and the camera itself. Lower end units often do not have any power provisions.

ADJUSTIBILITY
With the cheapest rigs you usually have to physically move weights around on the sled to get the system into perfect dynamic balace… which can be a little tricky. Higher-end units accomplish this by adjusting the camera stage, not the sled itself… there are usually little knobs that tweak the fore-and-aft and side-to-side positions of the camera to keep easy and perfect dynamic balance. This is especially important for film shooters where if you have a horizonally-mounted magazine the weight of the film moving from one end of the mag to the other can change the dynamic balance throughout the roll (I have heard that can be an issue, but I shoot with vertical mags so it’s never been a problem that I have noticed much). Ideally, you should be able to make minor tweaks to the balance without even taking the rig off.

SAFETY
Higher-end rigs will have a “rip cord” type system that, if pulled, will allow a rapid “emergency egress” from the rig in less than a second. Of course no one wants to ditch their very expensive camera or stabilizer… but if you found yourself being chased by a lion or falling down three flights of stairs it might be nice to have the option. I personally have never known anyone who had to “emergency release,” but I know it has happened.

All that being said, I’m not knocking the little CloneCams. I’ve seen some pretty darn good work coming out of them. IF one wanted a stabilizer for just very occassional use, then they might be the way to go. However if one wanted to do a LOT of stabilization work on a very regular basis, then I would recommend one of the upper units.

And yes, go to Steadi-school if you can… and if you can’t then learn as much about the principals and techniques as you can (books, DVDs, etc), or find an experienced SteadiOp who is willing to teach you…. and practice practice practice. Oh, and practice.

And use a spotter if you are moving backwards or through dangerous territory.

Just a few things I thought were worth mentioning….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

My wild guess would be, yes, that’s battery. I think you are probably talking about the “battery not installed” warning icon. I’m not talking about the main camera battery, but the little button “watch type” battery that keeps the time/date etc. set.

Maybe you could tell us what this symbol looks like, that would be helpful. What is its size?…shape?… what does it look like?… where is it located in the viewfinder?

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Yep… that’s actually done all the time, and not just for cell phones but for land lines too.

Look in the phone book, almost every sizable city in the country has a listing for a florist called “Madison Florist” or “Charleston Florist” or whatever your city happens to be. There’s a local number printed, but no address. Call the number and they simply answer “Flower Shop, can I help you?”

You are really calling somewhere else (I think it’s New York, but I can’t remember), where they take your order and then call a local florist in your city and book a delivery.

Just last week I called an appliance repairman to fix a washing machine that decided to misbehave…. he had a local number (even the same prefix as my home number), but after some questioning I learned he was actually almost 100 miles away.

I’m not sure what they do is all that ethical, because in the case of that florist they still position themselves as local, even if asked about it. But to answer the original question… yes, you can get a number.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Timothy J. Allen] “Also, make sure you send your invoice to the correct person”

I’ll echo that…

And sometimes the correct person isn’t the most obvious one….

They are not government, but we do a bit of work for a gigantic corporate client here in town… usually dealing with one of three different people there. TWO of them are GREAT, and steamroll our invoices through in no time flat. The other person sits on them, misplaces them, loses them completely, sends them to the wrong people, etc etc. The last time he for some unkown reason decided to have their office in IRELAND pay us… causing delays. And it’s not that he is not trying to pay, he’s just very scattered and not a “money guy,” he has already mentally moved on to the next project. So we try to deal with the other two people whenever possible.

Also, it helps to educate yourself a bit to see what kinds of invoices scoot through and what kinds hit roadblocks. Again, with this same company… we usually do a project for them every week or two and have learned that with their particular beancounters anything UNDER $10,000 is practically rubberstamped… but anything OVER $10,000 leads to all kinds of red tape and everyone including the custodian’s mother-in-law has to sign off on it. SO… we bill them for shooting and posting separately, so each part of the invoice gets under the $10K wire and it slides right through. Or bill them for preprod/shoot/edit/duplication or whatever separately, whatever it takes to break the total bill up into <$10K chunks. We're not tryng to pull a fast one... their comptroller actually suggested we do it that way. T2 __________________________________ Todd Terry Creative Director Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc. fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I hear ya, Nick…

Fortunately we do very few car dealers, and the problems are generally few and far between (thankfully most of them realize the advertising benefits moreso than that one example)…

We do plenty of B2B and corporate stuff as well… but it just ain’t my thang and I can’t seem to make myself like it. I’m glad that a few of our big corp clients are marketing-savvy enough to let us be pretty creative and sometimes do some wacky fun stuff (unblieveably we had a military gig once where they actually let us do it like a 50’s era Army training film… a bad one)… but many of them are so stiff and buttoned-down that they just can’t seem to hold my creative attention much (and I pawn them off on my other guys here… sometimes it’s good to be the boss…hehe).

I much prefer living in my short-form world and make my little :30 movies, and quickly move on to the next one.

I will say the benefit is that you get paid faster too if you’re doing a commercial gig with a day or two of shooting and a day or two of post…as opposed to the corporate jobs that tend to drag on. The corporate money is much much better… but honestly I’d rather do 10 $10K commercials than one $100K corp gig. But yep, I know plenty of people that feel exactly the opposite. Different strokes…

T2

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