Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks David, Mike…
Yep, I sneaked into a few forums under the radar.
Pleasure to be here with you pros…
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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We use the smallest unit from prompterpeople.com.
It is relatively well made, works good, and is quite inexpensive.
We did however end up making four different custom aluminum “sleds” for it so we could instantly swap it out with four different cameras… so we weren’t constantly reconfiguring the rig to fit on different-sized cams.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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What kind of mic are you using? Is this the on-camera mic, or an external microphone. If it is external, is it a hard-wired mic?… or wireless (radio mic)?
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “the iris will then only move when you turn the little manual exposure wheel”
Opps, I wasn’t thinking (actually, I was thinking, but I was thinking about the XL series of cameras that have the exposure wheel).
There is no “exposure wheel” on the HV20. It’s more of a miniature joy-stick style toggle switch that varys exposure. We have one of these cameras, but really just use it as a crashcam or when we need to squeeze into a tiny place, so my brain wasn’t that familiar with the controls.
My bad.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Pyro] “Although 1/48th is a pretty long shutter.”
Acutally, no, 1/48th would be considered a “normal” shutter when shooting 24p… just as 1/60th would be considered “normal” when shooting 30p or 60i. Generally speaking, one-half of the frame rate is what most cameras will default to as “normal.”
If you want to compare that to film, if you were shooting film at 24fps (normal), and you have a 180-degree shutter in your camera (although some are a little more or less, or variable), then the exposure would be 1/48th of a second for each frame of film. 1/48th is basically what I shoot with all the time (when shooting 24p) unless I want a different “non-normal” look (such as using a slower shutter for more motion blur, or a faster shutter for a choppier “Gladiator” look).
If you turn on the “exposure lock” you will not have the problems with the auto iris changing because of car reflections, etc… the iris will then only move when you turn the little manual exposure wheel.
And yeah, all this automation is a pain… but then again, for $900 you are not going to get a “pro” camera that has full manual modes. Still, for the price, the picture this tiny guy puts out is incredible.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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There are ways to “trick” the camera into behaving more-or-less like a manual camera.
The problem is, the HV20 is SO automatic that it can be adjusting up to four different parameters all at once: iris, shutter speed, neutral density filter, and gain (and gain will really get you, as it can go up to +36dB without you even realizing it)…and what’s worse, there are no viewfinder indications or anything that TELL you how the camera is shooting.
There are a few workarounds though. If you shoot in “cine” mode the camera will try its best to lock the shutter speed in at 1/48th. Then you use the “exposure lock” feature that locks in the other parameters at whatever setting it happens to be at. You THEN can adjust the iris manually. The trick is, you have to be in lighting conditions during the “lock in” moment so that you are shooting with no additional gain or ND… that is going to normally translate into a fairly bright lit interior, or a fairly dimmly lit exterior. You will be able to tell if you hit that combo because the exposure setting will show the full adjustible range (I think it is up to +11 and down to -11, if I recall). If those numbers don’t allow the full range of control, then your “lock in” was made during lighting conditions that either had the gain jacked up (because conditions were too dark when you locked-in), or an ND filter in place (because it was too bright), and you’ll need to try again.
There are a couple of on-line tutorials from guys explaining this far better than I just did. You can probably Google and find them.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Yep, I agree…the bride and groom likely “own” the footage itself…
However, if the television production company doesn’t want to take the footage from the bride’s DVD copy, but would like the footage on a professional quality format… well, you’re welcome to charge ’em as much as you’d like for the “dubbing service.” 🙂
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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You didn’t say what kind of camera you are using (or what its power needs are)… so some of this is a wild guess…
But we find the easiest way to power camera accessories is with the camera battery itself. In our case, for example, we primarily shoot with the Canon XLH1, which like many smaller camcorders takes 7.2v of juice. However, we use an Anton-Bauer goldmount adapter which contains the necessary circuitry to cut the 14.4v out of the big A/B brick down to the lower voltage that the camera requires… but still retains the 14.4v out of the “power tap” on the mount, which can be used to power a light, or whatever. Actually, we almost never use the power tap to juice a light (just because I rarely use any on-camera lighting), but do frequently use it to power an on-camera LCD monitor and sometimes a teleprompter.
The advantages of the big A/B bricks are that they are very powerful, long lasting, easy to charge… and since the goldmounts are very much an “industry standard” it’s easy to swap and mix and match batteries among all sorts of video equipment. One battery could easily power both your camera and a frezzi light very reliably for quite a while.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I too think Media Batch sounds interesting, and I will certainly give it a look.
It might indeed prove to be a product that I don’t know how I ever lived without… however so far (for what little I know about it) in our shop I’m thinking that it might fall into that familiar “solution in need of a problem” category. We have never had any struggles or problems with getting files to clients for approvals or whatever.
Part of that might have to do with the way that we work: Probably 90% or better of what our company produces are broadcast commercials… so approval files are never that huge. Plus in the majority of the time we are the producers as well as just the production company…. that is, we are responsible for everything from concept to creative on down… so the “vision” that we are trying to realize is our own to start with, ergo there is not that much need to seek approval from ourselves… usually the first cut that a client sees here is the final cut, and we are lucky enough that most of the time (I’d say 9 times out of 10) clients don’t have any changes and we are good to go.
Some of our clients (maybe a third of them) actually like to sit in on editing sessions. I manage to subtley discourage that in my own personal suite (my client chairs are purposely uncomfortable…hehe), but our senior editor is not as lucky as his suite has a big comfy sectional sofa (he still curses me for that).
Probably another third of our clients drop in right as editing is complete to approve/review/change or whatever.
The remaining third are generally out-of-towners. Usually we just make some kind of media file (.wmv, .mpg, .mov… whatever their choice is), throw it on the server here, and email them a download link. I don’t think we’ve really ever had a client struggle with viewing, downloading, or saving a file… and some of them are quite technically UNsavvy.
As I said… maybe Media Batch will fill a need that I didn’t even realize we had. I’m openminded… will give it a look.
Ok, Mike asked for client-approval horror stories, so here is mine:
Last year we did a big-screen presentation film for the international convention of a big fortune 500 company. The person we were dealing with at this company has NO ability to visualize ANYTHING whatsoever (yet somehow is in charge of the company’s marketing… Peter Principal, anyone?). She insisted on seeing storyboards for virtually every frame of this presentation. I personally hate storyboards, never use them unless I have to… but even after explaining that we would have to charge her $3K more just to draw the boards, she said “Fine,” she had to see them. Well, one section of this presentation had a sales trainer speaking to a group of employees… she wanted a “motivational speaker” type of setup, very “Tony Robbins.” So our setting was a big auditorium with a stage for the actor protraying the sales trainer… there were bunches of extras brought in as the audience… gigantic banners… lights, follow spots, IntelliBeams, smoke machines, the works…all very slick. I didn’t quite get it, but this was THEIR idea, not mine… and the storyboards depicted all of this exactly, so we weren’t worried when the client couldn’t attend the shoot due to a scheduling conflict (although her ad agency rep was there). Later, when showing what we hoped would be the final cut, the marketing lady hated it. HATED it. She said something like, “Oh, we would never do anything like that, I’d rather just see the trainer talking to people in, oh, a classroom setting. Can you do that?” When explaining to her that we had produced exactly what she asked for, and exactly what the storyboards she approved showed, she said something like “Well, yes… but I have to see an idea finished on screen before I have any idea what it’s going to look like.”
So, our answer to her basically was, “Sure sister… we can do your classroom scene. I suspect it will be quite an expensive little classroom scene though”… although we phrased it nicer than that. They didn’t care, they paid for it, didn’t seem to mind the huge extra expense, and loved the finished product….although I would rather have NOT taken their money to stage an elaborate scene that never saw the light of day.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well, I can’t speak to the HVR-Z1U, as I have never used it (although I am a big Sony fan, and as they say, “No one ever got fired for buying Sony”)…
But… I am a HUGE fan of the XLH1… I use it everyday. In fact, I am writing on a break from location shooting all morning with it, and am heading back out in moments to shoot more.
I love almost everything about this camera… in two decades in the business this has been my very favorite camera purchase (of any and all brands and formats). I can’t say enough good things about it. Stunning picture, great ergonomics, and incredible ease of use. And to us, the removable lens is very important (I hardly ever shoot with the stock lens… in fact, if I wanted to, I would have to go look for it).
We bought one of the very first ones right when they came out, and it has been a real trooper… hasn’t let me down once.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com