Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Doug Milton] “Todd talked about having tweaked setting to get specific film stock looks. I would not presume to ask for them.”
You would be perfectly welcome to ask, Doug… it’s just that the answer wouldn’t do you any good. We use a lens converter and all the tweaking and presets that we did to emulate different filmstocks were based on the very specific lenses that we use. In fact we have three sets of presets for each stock… one for our usual Leitz-Panavision primes, one for a 200mm Russian LOMO I have, and one for a 37-140 Russian Foton zoom. These lenses are all somewhat different from each other in color and contrast… and they are all very very different from the stock Canon zoom. I hardly ever use the stock zoom, so I have just not made any filmstock presets for it. If I had, you would be welcome to them.
Barring better information which might be forthcoming, I would just set up the camera and a good known-to-be-accurate monitor and go in and play with the different parameters (I think there are 22 or 23 of them) until you get something that you like. Fortuantely, it’s not math… there are no right and wrong answers… so just find something that looks good to you and save a couple of the combinations as presets.
And for the project that you are considering, it depends on the look that you are going for but if it were me I would definitely shoot 24f. It will capture and import into your project as 60i anyway (but with the 24fps “look”) so there shouldn’t be any synchro problems.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hmmm… you didn’t give us a lot of details about the particualar project, or budget, or how big an area or what exactly you need to light, what kind of scene it is, etc., but sounds like you are looking for very soft even lighting.
You could approach that in a number of ways. The easiest would be a couple of medium-to-large softboxes (Chimera, PhotoFlex, etc.)…. either on stands, or hanging. I don’t know if money is a factor but if it is a couple of open-face instruments shooting through white umbrellas might also do the job (although the output will not be nearly as controllable).
At any rate, epecially if you are shooting talent (i.e., people) don’t forget about backlighting… which should be a hard instrument, not soft (fresnels work well). Some people skimp on the backlight (also known as a rim light or hair light) but often it is the very best way to cut talent out of the background…. and even occassionaly(depending on the setup) it can actually be the brightest single instrument in play. Watch talent standing on stage in a wide shot on a well-lit talk show sometime (Letterman, Leno, etc.). Look at the floor, and you’ll see that their main shadow is actually in front of them… just shows how much backlighting they use.
If you can tell us a little more about your needs we can probably narrow down the particulars some….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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My pleasure, Doug… every now and then someone actually asks a question which I can answer.
I did neglect to mention one thing though, which is the only real downside to using Anton-Bauer or other off-board batteries (aside from the added weight, which I actually like… I like a beefy camera)…
That one thing is that when you take off the little proprietary Canon camera battery and go with outside power, you DO LOSE the little battery-level “fuel gage” in the viewfinder. You’ll be a little bit flying blind with respect to how much juice you have left, but the bricks last sooo long that it’s usually not an issue. Just don’t get complacent (“Well, this batt had plenty of juice yesterday, it’s probably fine for today”) or you could regret it in a hurry.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hi Dennis… thanks for the kind words…
The ME66 is a good solid mic, and would probably serve you well. Two things going for it are the fact that it is 1) about half the price of the MKH416, and 2) you CAN power it off an internal battery, so that if you ever find yourself wanting to use it with another camera that does not output 48v phantom you can still use it just fine.
If that is still overkill you might look at the line of Audio-Technica mics….
…which generally on average are quite a bit less expensive than the Sennheisers, but they are still solid mics. I don’t like them quite has well as the Sennheisers, but they still do a pretty nice job… we have one or two older-model A-T shotguns that we sometimes use with cameras that don’t output phantom, and they work quite well.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I should add that I thought the compositing was pretty darn good.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Rick Dolishny] “It’s an infomercial. :30, :60, very common.”
Yeah, :60s and longer are usually seen for “infomercially” type stuff.
I’m taking a wild guess here since we have never really counted, but I’m betting that in my little company’s tenure we have probably produced something in the range of 10,000 television commercials. Exactly two of them were :60. TWO.
Strangely enough though, for radio here :60 is more common than :30, because at least in our market radio spots are sold by “units” rather than by time, and at many stations a :60 costs no more than a :30. Weird.
We have, on the other hand, produced a lot of TV spots that were shorter than :30. We recently talked to a client who wanted all this stuff in his spot, and then found out that he only wanted a :15. Its also amazing how many national spots you see on network TV that are just :10.
Sorry to get the post sidetracked….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hi Doug…
I can describe the setup that we use. It might not be the best for everyone, but it works well for us…
[Doug Milton] “Todd has referred to ?the brick?, but I?m not sure which battery that is.”
I was just using the generic term “brick” to refer to any of the large Anton-Bauer batteries… such as the ProPac14, Hytron 140, etc.
If you want to go that route…the first thing you will need is the A-B “goldmount” adapter…
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/488776-REG/Anton_Bauer_QRXLH_QR_XLH_Gold_Mount_for.html
…which screws right to the back of your camera. It is made specifically for your camera, there are already little holes in the camera body that it mates with.
If you need an inexpensive and reliable charger, I recommend the TITAN 70….
…as it is very small and lightweight, and you can even snap it into the goldmount to to power the camera directly by AC without using the funky little Canon power adapter.
As for how long these batteries last, that is going to depend on what all you use it to juice, of course. I can’t really say how long they last in our particular setup, because we have never really exhausted a battery on a single shoot.
We have powered up to four things simultaniously with our setup… the camera, a P+S Technik lens converter, an external on-board monitor, and a teleprompter. A single battery probably wouldn’t juice all of these things for a long long time, but it always had enough power for as long as we needed. We typically only use the camera and lens converter for all-day use. The lens converter really uses very little power, and the TTF screens on the external monitor and prompter aren’t very power hungry either. We do sometimes have radio mic receivers on the camera, but we just use the little 9v batteries that the Lectrosonics normally take rather than wire them in… in the case of those, for us it is just a lot easier to use the native batteries rather than wire them in and made adjustments so that they get the proper voltage.
[Doug Milton] “Also, does the battery have multiple power taps”
The power tap will be on the goldmount, not on the battery itself. There is one two-pin power tap connection on the mount. If you wish to use it to power an external device, you can use a cable like this…
…and use the power tap to connect to any device that takes 14.4v DC with a standard 4-pin XLR power connector.
If you need multiple power sources, you can use one of these…
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/204182-REG/Anton_Bauer_PTM_PowerTap_Multi.html
…which will turn your single power tap into four taps.
Or you can just buy an “open end” pigtail like this….
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/69226-REG/Anton_Bauer_PTOE_PowerTap_Open_End_Cable.html
….and wire it directly to whatever you want. If you do that, make SURE you have the positive and negative sides wired correctly. If you need more assistance determining which is which I can help you when the time comes.
Keep in mind that the goldmount is putting out 7.2v to the camera, but putting out 14.4v to the power tap. Anything powered off the tap needs that voltage, or you will have to wire in appropriate circuitry to cut the voltage. In our partcular case the lens converter uses 7.2v just like the camera, so we hacked into the wiring in the goldmount to take advantage of the voltage-reducing circuitry that is built into the mount.
In any case, you say that you are going to be doing LONG periods of REMOTE shooting, so make sure you take plenty of batteries. One battery might power everything for as long as you need, but don’t put your eggs all into one basket and depend on that one battery without having a couple of spares with you.
Hope this helps….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I would take a look at Sennheiser’s line of directional mics, I can’t recommend a particular model but any of their lower-priced shotguns should fit the bill nicely.
Personally we use one of the “mid-range” (and mid-priced) Sennheisers, the MKH416. That would serve you great, although it might be more than you want to spend depending on what your definition of “medium priced” is (it’s about a grand). One good thing about your particular camera is that many mid- and higher-end mics require phantom power, and your XL-H1 does indeed put out the 48v phantom that is needed.
If the MKH416 is overkill, I don’t think you would be unhappy with anything a bit further down the price chain in the Sennheiser line… they make great stuff.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I can’t be 100% sure as I am not at all familiar with the little ZR800 and don’t have that particular camera to reference…. but based on my other Canon cameras, your description sounds like that is the indicator telling you the camera’s battery is either dead or not intalled.
I’m not talking about the “main” camera battery… but a little auxilliary button-type “watch battery”… which keeps the camera’s time/date and all that good jazz set when the main camera battery is disconnected. If so, there is probably a tiny compartment somewhere on your camera (probably almost hidden) that contains this little battery (or lack thereof). The higher-end Canon cameras have a little battery like this, and the warning icon for those looks a lot like your description. Hopefully that’s all it is.
If that’s it, you do NOT have to install the little battery for the camera to function pefectly normally. However you DO have to install it to get rid of the annoying warning icon… or for the camera to remember time/date.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Nick Griffin] “Most agency people are like most normal people in business — they too often want to (and need to) see something very similar to what they want to do”
VERY true. Fortunately we rarely lose the jobs we are up for, but we just lost one to an outside unknown production company even though the agency almost always hires us. We lost it because the other production company had a spot on their reel of exactly the same genre as the ad agency’s client. In the end though it bit them in the rear… the other production company chaged them more than TEN times our rate for a one-day Varicam shoot (and had things on the budget like a huge crane, Fisher dolly, blimped genny… all things that weren’t even used) and the footage was so bad that the agency was ashamed to show it to the client. They apologized profuesly for not hiring us, and I bit my lip to keep the “I told you so” from flying out of my mouth.
[Nick Griffin] “put together a custom reel”
Also good advice, as Nick’s almost always is. In addition to our “regular” commercial reel, we have several other reels laying around with industry specific spots on them. We have a reel for retail, one for automotive, real estate, plastic surgery, pharmacutical, banking…etc. And we have quickly thrown together custom reels on a number of occasions. It is well worth an hour’s suite time to assemble a custom reel especially if a potential client is almost “on the hook” anyway.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com