Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Jerry…
Im not sure which exact mic setup you are referring to, but to bastardize someone else’s marketing campaign, “With a name like Sennheiser, it has to be good.” Sennheiser makes great mics and accessories.
I’m sure whichever one you are looking at is probably superior to the stock mic (its degree of superiority dependant on which mic you are talking about, and how unhappy you are with the stock mic)… and will no doubt work with your H1. We use the Sennheiser MKH416 all the time. Another great thing about the H1… many higher-end mics (such as the MKH416) require 48v phantom power to work. Most products in the “small camera” line do not output phantom, but the XLH1 does (you’ll find the little switches to turn on the phantom power on the rear of the camera, just beneath the LINE/MIC switches).
I’m guessing that there is some kind of on-camera shock mount that you are looking at. Again, I don’t know it specifically, but if it is a Sennheiser accesory I’m sure that it is well made. Just keep in mind that almost always attaching a mic directly to the camera is often the worst place to put a mic for good sound recording. Also, you are probably swapping the stock stero mic for a mono one, if that makes any difference to you. For just “home movie” style shooting, the stock stero mic is probably more than sufficient.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
There’s an easier way to do this (that might work, depending on your situation) that does not involve flying the kid at all.
What you would do is shoot straight down from a high camera position toward the floor… so you have a greenscreen (or bluescreen) floor, rather than a wall.
Instead of standing, the actor is on his or her back. Rather than laying flat on the floor, their body is supported by a small bench, stool, or whatever… which is also shrouded in chroma material (if needed). That way they can have some free-floating movement of their arms and legs. This trick has been used in countless space movies for shots of floating astronauts.
Like this….
The only real downside is if there is anything “gravitational” that gives away the fact that you are shooting vertically rather than horizontal… such as long hair, flowing costume, etc. Another consideration is that since the talent is relatively close to the chroma screen, it can be difficult to light the talent and the screen independently… which might be difficult if you want very “sculpted” lighting on the talent… but it is doable.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
This has been discussed several times in this and other forums, such as the HDV forum. I’d suggest doing a search using the terms “depth of field” or “DoF.”
Unfortunately you are asking more of your camera that it was designed for. The tiny 1/3″ chips in a small DV camera just make it fairly impossible to get very shallow depths of field… it just prinicpals of physics and optics.
The DoF will get shallower the more you zoom in, so you may be able to get the effect you want with longer/tighter shots.
Barring that, you would need to use a depth-of-field lens converter. That would do exactly what you want… but be forwarned: you say you have a very “low end” DV camera… that being the case a good DoF converter can cost several several times as much as the camera itself. I’m not sure I would make that kind of investment unless you could get your hands on a higher-end camera.
Good luck!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[filmapprentice] “at this point in time, stick with the tube CRTs?”
Well, I can only speak for me… but yes in our shop all of the actual production monitors are CRTs. I hate the fact that they are big and klunky and take up so much real estate… but they look good.
You might track down one of the more techie-heads in some of the other forums (Bob Zelin comes to mind, a cranky old guy, but there’s nothing technical that he doesn’t know) and get a more technical recommendation rather than my fairly aesthetic one. You can find those guys haunting the High-End HD, HDV, and RED Camera forums and the like.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Timothy J. Allen] “Getting a CD of the session from the client is no different than getting your video footage from the client, rather than shooting it. You can probably force it to work, but it immediately paints you into a corner.”
Oh god yes… when I said “get a CD from the client” I never meant to suggest not being in on the voice-over session, hope it wasn’t taken that way. I’ve had clients provide voice tracks, i.e., take care of booking the talent they wanted, hiring an audio studio if it was elsewhere, etc., then delivering on CD (in the olden days, when the network was FedEx)… but I always tried to be able to direct the VO session, even if I had to do it by phone.
I think the only voice sessions I’ve used that I didn’t personally direct have come from either Charlie van Dyke or Don laFontaine. And you know that whatever you get from those guys is gonna be gold, plus they are not very directable anyway..ha (actually, not true… Don actually does take direction well… he just usually doesn’t need much).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Howdy…
Yes, “corporate video” typically includes things like training films, marketing videos, trade show videos, and the like. It does not typically include broadcast commercials.
Again, yes, some corporate video is done in house. You will find companies that outsource everything… and some that do everything in house… and some that tackle smaller things in house but outsource the more ambitious stuff that they can’t handle internally. Typically an “in house” production department is only going to be a small handful of people at best (sometimes just one guy), because most corporations don’t have production needs that warrant a bigger department than that. Not always though… in the past here in our city one big Fortune 100 company that is headquartered here had a production department that probably employed 25 people… and probably had a $20 million dollar facility. Then a few years ago the company decided it was a huge unnecessary expense and shut the thing down, firing everyone and selling off the equipment for pennies on the dollar. What was their very nice soundstage is now the biggest nicest silently-climate-controlled soundproof floor-isolated warehouse you ever saw. They now outsource everything (and are one of our clients).
As for budgets, the sky can be the limit. Typically budgets probably range from a few thousand bucks on to way up from that. I think the biggest budget we ever had on a single corporate project (a marketing DVD, actually for the company I already mentioned) was around $60,000. I would imagine that the bulk of corporate work is smaller projects that are much less than that…. but I bet some people here have worked on much much bigger corporate project than that as well.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[filmapprentice] “I always thought tube CRTs were better at color representation”
Good assumption…
I will steer clear of commenting on any specific makes and models of either (since there are way-smarter-than-me techie gurus on the COW who are much better suited for that than me)… but up until relatively recently if you wanted a production monitor that you could accurately calibrate you had to go with a CRT.
Now, that is changing. Now if you want to go with a non-CRT (LCD or whatever) it is possible to find some of the very high-end ones that can be calibrated.
As for….
[filmapprentice] “we would also like to know what the actual home viewer would see”
…well, that’s a crapshoot. You can never know what the actual home viewer would see, you can only strive for what the actual home viewer should see… because your average home viewer’s TV from Wal-Mart is not calibrated, and God only knows how it is set up. Look at the wall of TV sets in Best Buy or Circuit City sometime… they’re all showing the same thing, but every one of them looks different. Sadly, that’s the same with home viewers. Best you can do is give them a picture delivered to their set that looks as good as humanly possible… and hope for the best!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hi Jerry…
Adopt me. Please.
All I can say is WOW!… the XLH1 is quite a “toy” for Gramps’ home movies. Your wife is either very wonderful, understanding…or gullable. Maybe a little of all three 🙂
Most people would probably be inclined to tell you that the XLH1 is waaaay overkill for the home-movie crowd… it’s a great camera, but definitely much bigger and heavier (and needless to say, much more expensive) than most of that group would care to wag around. But hey, enjoy it, man… it will certainly give you great service.
I could probably list 20-grand worth of accessories you could put on the thing… but to be perfectly and painfully honest if you are really just wanting to take home footage of the grandtyke (even really great home footage) you don’t really need any of it. That camera is going to give you great performance right out of the box, totally stock.
That Chrosziel matte box is a quite a good one… they make great stuff. But then again, it’s probably way overkill unless you plan to do a lot of experimentation and filtration, it’s really a completely professional tool. And, it’s $1300+. If you really think you need a matte box, there are several vendors that cater to the “indie” crowd that have products as low as in the $200 range. And that’s IF you really need a matte box… if you are just worried about lens flares, the stock sunshade that comes on your lens does quite a decent job.
That is similar to what you saw on the front of my camera, but not exactly. Those boxes (both that particular Chrosziel model, and the cheaper ones I mentioned) are known as “clamp on” matte boxes because they are very lightweight and attach directly right to the front of your lens with the appropriate rings. The one on my camera is a bit of a heavier box, and it is not attached to or supported by the camera lens… rather it is held up by a 15mm/60mm support rods system. I’d say for sure you don’t need anything that complex.
Happy shooting!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Sounds to me like scenario #1 is medium-major… not a two-click fix, but not recutting Gone with the Wind, either.
Scenario #2, could be relatively minor, to slightly more.
Hopefully you didn’t give the client a “flat rate” for the entire project. If you did, he might have you over the proverbial barrel and you will more or less be stuck with making the fix gratis.
Part of what you should take into consideration is whether they are an established long-term client of yours, who has paid you lots of money through the years and hopefully will continue to do so? (i.e., go the extra mile to keep them happy)…. or are they a one-timer with a tiny job that was barely worth the trouble in the first place?
It’s always better to work by the hour… and a job takes however long it takes, “fixes” or changes billed like any other hour of work, because after all that’s what it is. Work.
We try to never give clients absolute set-in-stone fixed prices for projects, because you never know what will happen (and I think you will hear most everyone else here give this same advice, too). Rather, I try to give them a good honest estimate of how long I think a project will take… and we carefully spell out in their contracts what that will include: i.e., up to 10 hours of preproduction time, or up to 8 hours of shoot time, or editing or graphics production or art direction… or however else you normally divide up billing. The contracts spell out that any work performed above those stipulations will be billed at our normal rates.
Incidentally, your contract should also spell out payment terms (i.e., 25% of estimate due on booking, balance billed at net 30 upon completion, or whatever). It’s also a good idea to add verbage stating that “Overdue balances are subject to finance charges up to the maximum allowable amount under state law.” In many states, if you do NOT include that provision in ADVANCE in a contract you cannot recover any finance fees if a client suddenly decides that you should be his bank for a few months.
Back to “fixes”… for good well-established clients of ours doing big projects… we will generally throw in a hour or so’s worth of production gratis for fixes or minor changes. It’s not worth rocking the boat to keep their business, especially if they are old-timers with us and the “fix” cost is a tiny percentage of the whole project.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I would think that you own the copyright to the music video itself, but your friend (if he wrote the music and lyrics) owns the publishing rights to the song (unless he has sold or assigned him to someone else).
Yes, there is potentially big money in music video production. The film lab/transfer house that I use is a couple of hours away in Nashville, and I see a LOT of very high-dollar music video projects go through their doors.
However, the “big music video money” doesn’t come from any percentage of music video “sales,” because in practicality there isn’t any really. Artists and record companies of course don’t make any money off of the videos… rather they lose money on them. They are merely advertising for the corporate suits…. a marketing tool. They help them make money indirectly thought by raising awareness of a specific artist or performance or song, leading to sales.
I’ve never really heard of a video producer getting any kind of “percentage,” usually they are really merely just hired guns retained to produce what is actuality simply “advertising.” I can’t say that it has never happened, but I’ve never heard of such.
In your particular case, since you have little investment and it is for a friend, I would settle for a warm handshake, a pat on the back, and maybe a pizza and brew. If he makes it big, maybe he will hire you to produce a big-budget video (or insist that his label or producer hires you). In THAT case… yes, get a contract, with all the details written in stone. And use a real entertainment attorney, not your regular lawyer.
Congrats on a project you are happy with. Post it online somewhere so we can all enjoy it…
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com