[Todd Terry]

I don’t mind sharing the way we do things billing-wise, as I think it is maybe a little bit different than some others bill. Not to say that it is better or worse, but it works for us.

[David Roth Weiss] “#1. How do you bill for digitizing on an hourly or daily basis vs. your standard editorial rate?”

Our rates for digitizing and editoral are the same, and the same for all clients. Quite a while back we decided that it was just much easier to have one universal hourly rate for everything that is done in house. After all, if a client is just sitting and digitizing, he’s still tying up a suite just as if he was editing. He could book a suite to simply sit and read a magazine if he wanted I suppose, but it’s still the same rate. Our hourly rates are super competetive, so no one has ever had a problem with doing it that way.

[David Roth Weiss] “#2. How do you bill for holding vs. working?”

Might not be smart, but we generally don’t bill for holding at all, unless a client really really abuses the privilege (and none really have). Most of our clients are the same dozen or so ad agencies, and for most of them we are their only production house…. and some of them have been with us for ten years. So, if they have delays or whatever, we generally let ’em slide.

[David Roth Weiss] “#3. If you start a job on a daily rate… would you consider adjusting to a weekly rate if the job stretches….?”

Not really, an hour’s an hour here. Calculating a weekly rate is easy here… hourly x 40.

In days past we had a bunch of different rates for different things… different suites had different rates, and within each suite there were different rates depending on what was being done… but it became a logistic and accounting nightmare. Finally we settled on these “flat rates” in an effort to simplify things… so now we have one rate for in-house stuff whether it uses a little or a lot of a suite’s resources. Similarly, unless a client is shooting Gone with the Wind we generally have a flat hourly rate for shooting. The same rate includes all the toys, or none of them (I’ll amend that, sometimes we charge a little more if a scene needs Steadicam or teleprompter, but everything else is usually flat).

Our method is extremely contrary to the only other high-end production house in town. You get a bill from them that is as long as your arm… everything is itemized to death (do you really need to know that a shoot used 59 inches of gaffer tape?). Our flat rate eliminates most of that, and clients are ok with it because our bills are much lower than the comptetition’s, anyway.

We can get away with the flat rate business because our company is very small, and our shoots are usually small and uncomplicated. It’s almost always the exact same truckload of gear, and the exact same 3 or 4 crew members. Of course when specific shoots grow more complicated (i.e., extra crew is needed, something needs to be constructed, a specific makeup artist is needed, etc.), then of course we charge for that accordingly.

Our way is probably not best for everyone by any means, but it works well for us.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

That’s a very decent kit, and the price is pretty good.

I generally prefer to put my softboxes on open-faced instruments though, rather than the bare-bulb type setups like this which are made specificially for softboxes.

I find that the light result is about the same, and if for some reason I dont NEED to use the softbox (if I want a harder light), I can always yank off the box and throw on some barn doors and I have a conventional hardlight… rather than being “stuck” with having to use the softbox because of having to use the instrument inside.

But yes, if you KNOW you want it soft, and size/weight/traveling is a consideration, it sure might be the way to go.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Actually… yes, Richard at Cool Lights is a really great guy and he builds good products. He’s one of a couple out there who are making what are basically “Kino Clones,” but I have to say that from what I’ve seen his are the best made of the clones… and happen to be by far the cheapest, to boot. No, I’m not on his payroll… just like his products.

What is even more exciting is that he is also working on a line of affordable HMIs… I’ve traded quite a few emails with him lately about those… they are not quite ready for unveiling yet, but when they get here they should be pretty nice… and nice on the wallet.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ahhh… thought this was a night scene (hence the car lights worry). Yes, I’m sure the sky, if it is in the shot, is a little nicer at 8:30.

I imagine your shots are moving, but if not… we did exteriors of the local Porshe dealer that were massively composited… sky was from one time of day, the building itself from a little while later, the signage from later than that, and the showroom after it got really dark and you could see inside well. I didn’t have any headlights to combat, but they wouldn’t have been tough in that scenario. Moving shots would have been possible, but it would have taken some tedius tracking and matting that wasn’t in the budget.

Black plastic rather than some kind of real grif might be doable… but MAN I need to get ahold of your bucket guy if you can do all of that and keep your additional expense under a grand. The guy we use (a local tree service) is $800 a pop, even if I only need him for 15 minutes…can’t imagine what his after-hours rate would be. I will say though that his truck is smooth as silk, it’s the only industrial truck like that I’ve seen that is smooth enough to actually use for crane shots and has a nice 80′ fiberglas boom.

Good luck!… let us know the results.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hate to use this phrase, but can you “fix it in post”? Depending on how it was shot (and how much the shots move), it might be something that some heavy duty matting or rotoscoping could eliminate.

Seems to me this is a classic example of someone wanting more (sometimes a LOT more) than they pay for.

You might could try some polarizing, but at night with very harsh reflections filters might dampen it down but it would be doubtful they would completely eliminate the problem.

You could shoot in the absolute middle of the night (say 3am) when traffic would be minimized or eliminated.

You said this was a low-budget shoot. The client should have reasonable expectations of what he can get for his low-budget pricetag. I know I’m probably preaching to the choir and you most certainly know this already.

Lets see, if you had an endless budget there are a number of ways to fix this: You could pay off the retailer across the street enough to get them to turn off all their lights. You might be able to get the right permits and police coordination to stop traffic long enough to get your shot. You could hire a glass company to come in and temporarily remove the offending windows. Or you could try to block the reflections as you suggested. But all of those things are going to take fair amount of money, some of them quite a bit.

Seems to me that if the area is as big as it sounds, that a grif that size (200’x30′) would be wildly expensive, hard to manage, and impossbile to find. I’ve never heard of one anywhere near that large. Plus the cost of the bucket trucks (and I think you’d need more than two). Plus the cost of the extra crew that would be needed to manhandle such a beast. I’m not sure what your scale is, but sounds like you are way out of the “low budget” realm to me.

I think moving the shoot to a time when everyone else is sleeping might be the easiest/cheapest/fastest option. Even if your overnight rate is 3x the day rate, that’s probably the cheapest way to go.

Clients… sometimes things would be easier with out them. Poorer, but easier.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

To get a large practical mural like that of such a specific shot you are likely going to have to have it custom made.

The first step would be to get the source image… with either an existing photograph that you know of that you purchase the rights to, or have a custom photograph taken, or have a photorealistic illustration created by an artist.

Then you’ll need to get it printed on either a solid surface (for front lighting), or a translucent surface such as Duratrans if you want to backlight it. You probably have a local sign company that can help you with this.

One thing to remember, a very sharp background (you see this on cityscapes behind local newscasters all the time) can flatten the shot unplesantly. Two ways to deal with this are 1) actually have your background printed that is a bit blurry, a bit “out of focus.” That will simulate a shallower depth of field and make the set look deeper. Or you can hang a very thin translucent scrim in front of it (see Conan O’Brien’s set for this trick).

I don’t know if you are on any kind of budget, but keep in mind that these are not inexpensive solutions (I just didn’t want you to get sticker shock later)… the last similar background I did for a set we designed came in at several thousand dollars, and that one was significantly smaller than the FOX/NFL background. But I don’t know a less expensive solution for a real practical background when you need such a very specific look/image.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Unfortunately as has been discussed many times on this and other forums like cinematography… it is very VERY difficult (often nearing impossible) to get shallow depths of field with most any camcorder. Even with a larger 2/3″ sensor camcorder DoF is going to be very deep, and with the small 1/3″ sensors on your XLH1 it is going to be even tougher.

It’s just principals of physics and optics which really can’t be bent. The smaller the “target area” of the image (the sensor), the deeper DoF will naturally be. And 1/3″ is very small. It’s exactly the same reason that 16mm film has much deeper DoF compared to 35mm film, given similar focal lengths and f-stops.

There are a couple of things that you can try:

1) Use as long a focal length as your shot will allow (i.e., get as far away from your subject as possible and zoom in as much as you can.

2) Make sure you are shooting “wide open” with the largest f-stop possible. And make sure you are shooting with 0dB gain (or -3dB if the lighting will allow), and open up the iris manually as much as possible. If you are overexposing, use the lens’ built-in ND filters to cut it, or for a little more finesse use external front-of-lens neutral density filters. Resist the urge to tweak exposure by varying shutter speed… if you have to, you can adjust it a little, but when shooting 24f you should keep at as close to 1/48th as possible if you want “normal” appearing action (go slower and images will smear, go faster and action will begin to look choppy, like film shot with a narrow-degree shutter).

If you do those two things, you will minimize the depth of field as much as the XLH1 (or any similar camera) will allow. Deep background and extreme foreground objects may have some softness, it might be enough for your particular application.

To get true shallow DoF with the XLH1, the best results come from ditching the stock lens and putting on a 35mm depth-of-field converter, and use cine prime lenses (or still camera lenses will also work, although they are more difficult to use). There are a half dozen or so different DoF converters… ranging from the cheapest which is probably the Letus35 at a few hundred bucks… up to the “Rolls Royce” of converters with is the P+S Technik Mini35 coming in more in the 10 grand neighborhood. They all work pretty much in the same way, but you tend to get what you pay for.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well this kind of “want sumthin’ for nuthin'” crap has been going on since the beginning of the production business, and probably since the beginning of time. And probably always will.

It’s definitely not the way I like to work. I pay my senior editior probably $15,000 or so more a year than I have to. But I do it for a variety of reasons. It keeps him happy. It keeps him from looking for another job (and creating a headache for me). But mostly because he simply deserves it.

But you know what? I don’t really mind it where I hear of the “other guys” soliciting “free labor.” Because I know they get what they pay for, and it’s just one of the reasons that our work looks so much better than theirs… that we stay booked up months in advance while their place is a ghost town. When you get right down to it the amount that we pay our editor for an hour of his time is a small fraction of what we charge a client for that same hour… so it really would be false economy to hire someone “young and hungry” who would work for peanuts.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, yup, powder is gonna be the “industry standard”… that’s what it is made for.

If you don’t want to use the same pad over and over again, you can go to a beauty supply store and buy a big bag of them.

If you need more than powder on some folks, the sort of easy traditional way to go is Max Factor pancake makeup. You’ll find tons of that in most makeup guy/gals cases in lots of different shades, but the one that is most often immediately grabbed (especially for men) is Max Factor Tan 2. Again, buy a bag of sponges to apply it.

If you have a particularly sweaty subject, and they are willing, you can use hairspray while they are still cool (before the sweating starts). Just have them close their eyes and hit them in the face with a bit of laquer-based hairspray (like AquaNet, or White Rain, the old-fashioned beauty parlor stuff). This is an old theatrical trick that really works… BUT keep in mind it is terrible for the skin so it needs to be washed off as soon as possible, and make sure the actor knows what you are about to do (and agrees) and is not allergic to it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

No, sadly they are not real. You’ll find lots of ratings of those guys on the “consumer reports” type websites that give them the lowest possible ratings. Chiefly what those kinds of sellers will do is strongarm you and upsell you something much more expensive… or take your order but you will find that the item is pretty much permanently “on backorder” and you will never ever get it… because they never intended to sell it to anyone at that price in the first place. It was merely the “bait” in their bait-and-switch game.

Sorry, wish they were real. Chiefly, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I’ve bought probably a few hundred thousand dollars worth of gear over the last decade… always from a reputible seller like B&H Photo or their colleages. Not always the very best price, but you know who you are dealing with, great service and return policies, no runaround.

T2

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