[Todd Terry]

You really shouldn’t have any worry, and should be able to overcrank and shoot at any framerate.

Incandescent blubs (tungsten, halogen, etc.) really do not flicker, so it shouldn’t be a concern. They are continuous light sources… they work because the filament inside gets hot enough to also emit light (as well as a lot of heat). Even though the AC power phases on and off, the “off position” is not long enough for the filament to cool and the light to even begin to start to diminish… ergo, the light is continuous and no flicker.

It’s the non-continuous light sources that you have to worry about, those that phase along with the AC… such as flos, some LEDs (although usually only those that are AC powered, not battery or DC LEDs), HMIs, etc.

You should be good to go.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Did anything happen during the shoot that let you know there might be a problem later on?

I’ve had clips that were corrupt if the camera happened to be rolling while a battery died. But using the in-camera recovery system always worked fine.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I don’t travel all that much but I had a recent flight for a job in Denver where, as usual, I was concerned about batteries but just did the same thing as the previous few times… all the gear was checked baggage in Pelican cases except for batteries which we carried on.

My carry-on bag contained two small Canon camera batteries (for my C300, I think the same batts your C100 uses), two goldmount bricks (for Astra lights) and a DJI drone battery for the Mavic Pro. Heading to Denver the bag sailed right through without a look. Coming back home the bag was inspected at the Denver airport, they looked at the batteries and did the explosives swab test on them, and sent me on my way with them. I will note that all of my carry-on batteries do adhere to wattage limits (ahem… at least that’s what the labels on the bricks happen to say), but honestly I’ve never had them be given more than a quick look. Now… I don’t fly with them a lot, but have a few times and have not had any trouble.

One thing I do do is put a piece of gaffer tape over the contacts and then put each battery in its own individual plastic bag. I don’t know if that helps or not or is just overkill… but it doesn’t hurt.

I think since you are only traveling with the little C100 batteries they shouldn’t be given a second look… I wouldn’t worry about it.

The last few traveling shoots we’ve been on have been much lighter-gear affairs so we have traveled with the gear. We’re east coast(ish), and a few times we’ve had much bigger-gears shoots on the west coast and we shipped the gear separately from the crew… which although a little expensive was VERY handy and a lot less hassle. Sometimes we’ve shipped right to our hotel or even the shoot location… other times we’ve done hold-for-pickup at the closest FedEx location. I just mention that because if you are really nervous about it you could always ship the batteries separately. Those batteries aren’t big or heavy so even overnighting them to your destination wouldn’t be cost prohibitive.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hey Stephen…

Just curious, who sets the pricing for your footatge?…. do you do that, or is it set by Pond5?

I ask because I’ve always been curious about that, and now doubly so after looking at your page. Some of it is what I’m used to (i.e., I think the Colosseum shot is 55 bucks… makes perfect sense), but some of the other pricing on clips was rather oddly specific (i.e., $43.62, $44.95, etc.). Who comes up with that? And what is it based on?

I’m glad to hear you are having a good experience with Pond5. Honestly in the past we’ve always thought of them (perhaps unfairly) as sort of low-tier I guess mainly because their stuff is so cheap compared to the other guys (and some of their quality was pretty marginal in past years)… our go-to source was generally iStock, followed by Dissolve and Shutterstock… then we’d hit Pond5 if we just needed something cheap (and frankly, if it was some project where quality was trumped by price). Lately though I think Pond5 has become more of a reliable resource… also, more than once I’ve found the perfect clip on one of the other sources, and then checked Pond5 where the same clip was available… at at much lower price. It sounds like they are treating their suppliers much better, too.

Good stuff.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’ll jump in for just a quick good word about the LitePanels…

We started using the Astras last year… I LOVE them, and now they are among our favorite instruments. Lightweight, great true color (bi color), very long lasting on battery, rugged. They are a little on the harsh side bare, and the diffusion panel they sell doesn’t do much… but I rigged up an quick/fast/easy diffusion panel that works great (I should do a DIY post about it), and D-Fuse makes a 1×1 softbox that although is not specifically made for the Astra it fits it perfectly and works like a charm (and it’s only about 30 bucks or so).

I think the only downside to them is the way the yokes are made which hold the power supply, it makes the overall instrument a little bigger than other 1×1 LED heads, a little harder to pack for traveling, etc., but it’s not a big deal.

We always use them by battery power (goldmounts)… in fact we’ve gone to almost all battery powered LED lighting now, especially on location (sometimes still use AC instruments on stage). One of the best things about them is never having to look for power. We still have to plug in the occasional HMI, but other than those we’re never having to look for juice, or lug heavy stingers.

I can’t say enough good things about the Astras. They are among the higher-priced 1×1 LEDs (they might even be the highest, I’m not sure), but they are worth every penny.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I did find one posting for a B-3, I think a 1958 or so for $18K, and it looked looked museum-quality showroom new. That didn’t surprise me.

The low end did surprise me, I found more than one decent-enough looking B-3 (with Leslie!) in the $2500 neighborhood.

Shocking. Wish I had room for one. And could play it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

These days it’s really not a Final Cut vs Premiere issue at all… it’s a machine vs. machine issue.

The faster and more powerful the computer, the faster editing and rendering will be… irrespective of the editing platform. Current versions of both of those software suites are comparable in speed, I’d say.

At my place our two primary edit suites are pushing three years old (yes, an eternity it the computer world). Without getting into too many technical specs, at the time they were built we basically said “We want the fastest and most powerful boxes you can put together” (well, within reason and budget… but they were pretty high up there on the power scale). These machines worked quite well and were able to handle most anything we threw at them… usually realtime with no or minimal rendering required, unless we stacked up a bunch of HD tracks or used a lot of power-hungry effects or filters (for example, Magic Bullet effects still require rendering). Also, both machines have Matrox MX02 guts so the hardware acceleration and such helps.

Flash forward a couple of years though, and we start shooting more and more 4K video. Our systems weren’t too happy about that and tended to choke on 4K, scrubbing through video was a pain and fairly heavy rendering was always needed. We obviously needed more power. Instead of starting from scratch, knowing that a lot of things had changed in the computer world we took one of the machines back to the builder and said “Jack it up as much as possible.” They did quite a few things to it, I believe a new/bigger solid state system drive, crammed in more RAM, an additional and more powerful processor… we wanted anything they could think of. Now, that suite handles 4K just fine.

But… it’s all about the power of the system, not so much to do with the editing platform (which here is Premiere, by the way).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Oh I will completely defer and concede to my more experienced and much older colleague Rick (hey, I hit 54 in a week so it’s harder and hard to find older colleagues now… so I have to take ’em where I can get ’em).

He might be completely right about that, exposure wise. I’ve put a few hundred thousand feet through the gate but I bet he’s put a few million, so I’d listen to him unquestionably. I’m just going by what the colorists that I have used have told me… and I frankly put more stock in Rick’s opinion than theirs.

I’d say this, though… the latitude of stocks these days is so wide, and telecine has gotten so good, that you can really afford to slip a little bit on either side of the argument and be just fine. Now that I really think about it, if I had a scene with a lot of dark areas where I was trying to bring out detail in the shadows, I’d probably cheat toward overexposing a tad. Conversely, if I had a scene with a bunch of super hot areas where I want to preserve details, it would probably be smarter to cheat toward underexposing a little.

But of course, as Rick said, option one should be just getting the exposures right… if you can.

I never had a decent incident meter (always wish I did… that’s the way to go). I always used a Pentax 1° spot meter and a gray card (I kept a little one attached to the meter’s strap).

Then again, don’t listen to me… I sadly haven’t shot real film in years now, and no doubt never will again. I think I still have lonely cans of 5203 sitting in the fridge taking up space, though….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Use your light meter.

In 25 years of DP work, with the rare exception of full-sun daylight exteriors (where exposures are fairly uniform), I’ve never ever heard of anyone willingly “eyeballing it” as their go-to method of determining exposure. Ever.

Well, maybe in the case of some emergency… but it’s certainly not good policy. And apparently you have a light meter. Use it.

Guessing at an exposure would be especially ill-advised with a stock that you have never used before, and one that is many stops slower than the stocks you are used to.

And if you do have to do any guessing… definitely always err on the side of underexposure… never overexposure.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] “Argent was playing an old Hammond B3…”

Which is one of the greatest instruments ever made, organ or otherwise.

And got me thinking, “What’s a B-3 going for these day?” and thanks to the Googling machine I found my (very surprising) answer. Seems that you can readily find a great condition B3 in the $5K neighborhood these days, even a late 50s model. Some a bit more, but even some a fair bit less… half of that or so.

I was really surprised… I was expecting a few multiples of that number. I guess they made so many of the darn things that plenty are still around.

T2

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