Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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My main critique would be that the video is invisible or non-existent.
🙂
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hey Bob…
It really just depends on how well your greenscreen shots are keying already… but normally I’d say 1/8 is plenty in most circumstances.
If you are getting a little bit of fringing on the edges, try some 1/8 and see if that helps. I used to use that much in distant years past. Honestly I haven’t used any at all in a long time. For the last few years we’ve switched to Ultra Key (usually in Premiere, although sometimes in After Effects), and it does a perfectly clean job with edges so we’ve had no need for any magenta. Ultra will also key through smoke, key through glass and preserve reflections, retain shadows on objects, all that jazz.
I would think that if you need any more than 1/8, then you probably have other keying issues that need addressing instead… and if you go more than 1/8 then although you might have cleaner edges you will also more likely have a magenta cast to your talent that you’ll have to deal with separately.
Long-winded answer there, just to say “Try 1/8.”
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Ah ok, sorry for the confusion. When you referred to the project’s “owners” (plural) I thought you were referring to an outside client that had hired your company to create the production. Now I know you just mean you and your partners, the company. That actually just solidifies the position in my mind… the buck stops with the company, and the company gets to make those decisions… not a paid employee.
I understand that you treat your employees well… we do, too. We also treat our employees completely and totally like family. But in that family, at the end of the day Dad is boss… and has the final word.
And he gets the big piece of chicken.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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This seems fairly cut and dried, unless I’m missing something. They are your employee, they are bound to do what you ask. They have the right to disagree, of course… just as you have the right to insist that they seek employment elsewhere.
These three words concern me… “The employee refuses…” Why is an employee refusing? Or more accurately, why are they still your employee if they are refusing to do what the boss asks/requires of them? This is the part I don’t understand.
Apparently (since you refer to an “owner”) your company doesn’t own this project, but an outside client does. In that case, that owner is about as high up on the producer ladder as one can get, and they of course could insist on certain crediting that you’d be smart to abide by… but I don’t see how a junior-level employee has the clout to dictate any of that.
And by the way, saying “A” and “Film”, as in “A John Doe Film” is verbiage that is traditionally reserved for and only for the director of a film. I don’t know of any instances when any other positions (producer, editor, whatever) that have been given the “A … Film” designation. That’s exact verbiage is a directorial credit only. Executive producers sometimes get a “production” credit “A … Production.” Those credits are typically before main title (with the director usually getting an additional “Directed by…” credit as the last credit of the opening titles. Producers, associate producers, editors, anyone else… they simply get title/position credits after the main title.
Of course, many productions (especially these days) buck the conventions of this exact lineup, but that’s the traditional “Hollywood” way of doing it.
But that all begs the question of why you are allowing an employee to refuse your request.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I’m a little confused about the size issue.
Not to second guess and play Monday-morning armchair quarterback here, but if you only had such a small amount of footage/data (2GB), why didn’t you just send it on a five-buck throwaway thumb drive?
In this case, I’d probably just write it off….
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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These kinds of things can be accomplished in lots of ways… chroma key, various types of compositing, motion control cameras, etc…
This was was quite easy though… the trucking shot past the back of the body double’s head masks the composition. If you notice the background scene (wall with the telephone, etc) don’t even match from one side of the double’s head to other (it look like there might have been a lens change as well).
So how do you do the compositing? Several ways… shoot both scenes separately without the back-of-the-head body double, and then composite that layer in on top to mask the edit between the two shots. Or, shoot the first scene with the body double in place, but put some green masking material just on the RIGHT side in front of the body double and composite the second scene in there. Or use rotoscoping or even just a soft-edged motion matte to replace the right side with the new footage.
There’s probably several other ways as well, but this was not a super-hard compositing job.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Yes, Bob owes at least a new pair of shoes…
BUT….
And let me preface this by saying, I am sincerely not trying to be snarky or mean-spirited… just trying to make a sincere observation…
Bob prides himself with being the COW’s resident curmudgeon, and while on his ever-present soapbox he rallies against things (often entertainingly) that frequently include the younger generation (with their darn rock-n-roll music and hula hoops), the I-want-it-cheap-fast-n-free attitude of so many, the the-neighbor-kid-can-do-it-for-ten bucks mentality, and a new wave of clients who don’t see the value of hiring a professional, like Bob, to do a complicated and important job when some youngster out there is able to limp through it for a tenth the price.
That’s all well and good, and I agree with virtually all of it.
But is it worth nothing that the very same guy apparently eschews hiring a professional graphic/web designer for his business, but instead relies on his wife whom he admits knows nothing about our business to put together (and I’m assume is satisfied with) what he calls “a little cheap ass Google website”…..?
I know the next time I have some complicated networking job, or have a colleague with the same needs who really should be hiring a high-level pro…. I know exactly who I’m going to recommend….
Bob’s wife.
Just sayin’ 🙂
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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What Mark said… he gave you good advice… take it to heart.
I for one am pretty dumbfounded that someone could spend only $1000 for production on a DVD and then manage to sell multiple copies of it for five grand each.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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That bears some testing, but very good keyers (such at the “Ultra Key” that is in Premiere) will do a decent job of keying through clear or semi clear objects and still leaving details. I’ve never used it for exactly that, but Ultra Key will still leave reflections in windows, etc., so it should work for that. As I said, bears testing.
In that case you’d just shoot with a solid greenscreen background, as normal. I’ve never heard of the putting-the-black behind something. I’m not even sure how that would work.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Hmm… that’s odd. You should really never have to worry about flickering with a continuous light source, like tungsten instruments.
BUT…
When dealing with non-continuous sources, keep in mind that flickering might occur not necessarily because a frame rate is too high, but just that it is wrong for the particular light source. It just depends on how your shutter is syncing with the phasing of the power source. So, if you get flickering at one particular frame rate, you might eliminate it by going a bit slower… but you also might have just as good (or better luck) with increasing the frame rate a bit. So it’s not necessarily that the flickering starts at a particular speed and everything above that flickers… there are probably various rates along the way that you’ll run into trouble, but things are fine on either side of that.
And also… we’ve been purely talking about frame rates… just as important (or maybe even more so) is shutter speed, which is of course a completely different thing from frame rate. If I ever experience flickering, it’s shutter speed that I adjust, not frame rate. I’m not really familiar with your camera, but if it has a “clear scan” mode where you can adjust shutter speed by hertz rather than by fractions of a second or shutter angle, then you can use that to help eliminate flicker (especially at more “normal” fps).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
