[Todd Terry]

It really depends on the type of projects that you are shooting.

With something very long form (a feature film, for example), HD is probably going to be quite the winner, cost-wise.

With shorter project, the savings aren’t going to be so great.

For example, we shoot tons of 35mm commercials, at prices that are often little more than our equivelant HD productions. We own our own 35mm camera and lenses, which helps, but there are plenty of other money saving tricks. One trick of course is to be very judicious with your film use (sometimes I call “action” even before pulling trigger on the camera). Rehearse a lot, and limit takes. Another is really getting filmstock bargains by utilizing short-ends and re-cans (about a year ago, for example, we bought all the re-canned stock from and HBO series whose season had ended… more than 50,000 feet and we got it for less than a nickle a foot). I never buy stock straight from Kodak unless it’s an emergency. Find affordable labs (such as MPL) who are friendly and helpful.

Then again, HD looks so good and is so easy compared to film (easier to setup, don’t have to wait a day for lab, no audio synching) that here it often wins out over 35mm just because of convenience. And if you use a depth-of-field converter (we use the one from P+S Technik) and real cinema lenses, HD footage can be so good that you can literally intercut it with 35mm (we’ve done that several times.)

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

To answer just part of your questions… yes, if you shoot 60i you can slow-mo it down to 40%. It should cut fairly well with NON slow-mo 24P footage.

One VERY IMPORTANT additional thing… for the shots you intend to slow-mo to look “right,” you MUST also increase your shutter speed. Say, to 160th or 180th of a second or so. That way, your video footage will then resemble the look of “real” slow-mo’ed film, where the camera was actually overcranked. If you do NOT increase the shutter speed, then each individual frame will have way too much motion blur in it, and when viewed at 40% it just won’t look right (it will look blurry).

Just remember to always change your shutter speed back to 1/48th when you go back to shooting 24P for the NON slow-mo shots, or the video will look stuttery.

Oh, BTW, you can go slower than 40% too, if you want, by using frame interpolation software, such as Twixtor.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I might be wrong, but I THINK the original poster was just looking for an affordable telecine house. At least that’s the way I interpreted his “film transfer” needs. He may indeed have been looking for sources for a film-out, or DI, but I didn’t read it that way…

Anywho…

For transfers (telecine) we always use MPL Inc. (formerly Motion Picture Laboratories) in Nashville, TN. They are GREAT people, do a very affordable job, and their cheif colorist John can play the daVinci Renaissance like a piano. They do all the projects that we shoot on 35mm (and have done some 16mm for us as well).

On the web at mplmedia.com. Ask for Di or Anita to book processing or telecine transfer time in one of their Rank suites. I live within driving distance so I’ve always been able to go babysit my footage, but I’ve had several buddies around the country just ship their neg to them and have been very happy with the results.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] “consider adding a clause that holds you harmless for legal probs and puts the onus on them to get any legal clearances taken care of for things like music rights”

Just FYI… a clause like that might indeed show a “good faith effort” on the part of the producer to do things on the up-and-up and throw the legal burden elsewhere… but it won’t stand up in court.

Lets say you are producing a bunch of copies of a DVD you made… the client supplied the music. You thought it was, but still weren’t TOTALY sure the music was clear, so you have the client sign some kind of waiver releasing you of any liability for use of the music. Nope. Won’t work. You as a producer are still just a liable for misuse of the music (or images or whatever).

Think about it this way: you are borrowing your friend’s car. Your friend says, “Don’t worry, the tag is up to date and I have insurance. I’ll even write you a note that says so, and that says I’m to blame if proven otherwise.” If a cop stops you, he doesn’t care about your friend’s note. YOU still get the ticket for driving with an expired tag and no insurance.

Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack this post with another subject (I hate when that happens to me), but I didn’t wanna let this go because it is very important.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ummmm yeah… what’s a paper filter?

Softboxes are the way to go for nice soft “indirect look” lighting. If you are on a budget, the boxes made by Photoflex are a more affordable alternative to Chimeras.

Even cheaper (and faster setup and strike, too), are umbrellas. There’s way more spill and aren’t as controllable as softboxes… but they still give a nice soft look and you can pop ’em up and down in five seconds, which gives them a bit of an advantage over softboxes in “run n gun” type situations.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Sounds like you probably did lowball it… but we don’t know enough details to know. We also don’t know how “high end” a project this was, and what your technological and aesthetic capabilities are. If the project was a single shot of a talking head for the duration, that’s one thing. It’s another thing entirely if there are 30 cuts a minute, 10 locations, 20 actors… you get the drill.

It’s good to have some very rough guidlines to keep in mind for whenever you get that inevitable “How much does an infomercial cost?” phone call. I always start with my “How long is a road?” analogy… it depends on where you want to go and what kind of scenery you want along the way. But to get clients started, I will give them a range…. in my case at our company I tell them they are probably looking at something in the neighborhood of $1500 to $3500 per finished minute. We are a full service but tiny company… your rates might be higher if you are a big company with infinite capabilities… or maybe a little lower if you are a one-man band.

Anyway, those are just guidlines that I give clients… then we learn what their exact needs and expectations are. I then give them an entire project extimate based on my best guesses as to how many shoot and edit hours will be required, plus anything extra such as travel, talent, voice talent, music rights. etc.

Know ALL the details of your project before you give a bid, because project costs can vary wildly. We’ve done lots of little infomercials in the 5-10 minute range… the cheapest one (super easy) was only a few hundred bucks, while the most expensive one was about $45,000. Quite a wide range, and you don’t want to cheat yourself.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[debe] “There are many proficient Powerpoint Artists and Operators out there.”

I bet there are.

I’ve sure never met one, though. They are undoubtedly working somewhere else.

When we inevitably get the “I need to…uh.. get my powerpoint presentation put on video” call, we have found an effective way to deal with that. Simply say, “Just a moment,” put the caller on hold, and wait until the little red blinking light on the phone goes dark (this step may take several minutes — be patient). Problem solved.

Seriously, I WISH that we would handle them that way, although we don’t. After tons of videos that had client-supplied Powerpoint images in them, I cannot think of even one instance where we were able to use a slide “as is,” in almost every case we had to rebuild it from scratch. Somtimes it was for technical reasons, such as a font too small for video use, or items running way out of title safe areas. But 9 times out of 10 it was simply because the design was sooooo baaaaaaaaaaaad.

Not to say that good PP artists don’t exist, I’ve just never met one (much like the elusive Yeti).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Oh, you haven’t bought the Flyer yet? Then YES, for SURE… go with the A/B mount. The A/B goldmount is absolutely universal in the video business. The others are very camera and/or brand specific. The A/B goldmount has been around forever, ain’t going anywhere… you can’t go wrong with it.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, first of all… make sure you know what is public and what is private.

You said “a public place like a Starbucks.” A Starbucks is very definitely NOT a public place, it is a private place. A “public place” is going to be a street, a city park, whatever… but anything like a coffee shop is going to be private property.

So the answer is YES, you must have permission not only from the persons being photographed, but from the property owner as well. If you wish to have your film distrubuted, a distributor may require you to provide signed releases… not only talent releases for the people appearing in it, but also PROPERTY releases signed by the owners or controlers of any private property you shoot on.

And yes, there are issues with blurring someone face if you can still hear and recognize their voice.

I’d suggest contacting an entertainment attorney for all the particularities and legalities. Not just any old lawyer… needs to be an entertainment attorney.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

For fresnels, I really love LTM Peppers. They have several kits well within that price range. I find them to be really well made, and comparable to high-end fresnels costing much more. Pepper kits (with three instruments or more) range from about $1500 to about $3000, and the kits are VERY complete… with extras you wouldn’t expect as standard such as complete scrim sets, lamps, three-prong to two-prong adapters… even leather gloves (and, depending on the kit, a darn nice wheeled road case).

For diffusion, I’d recommend the softboxes from Photoflex (although put your own instruments in them, the Photoflex instruments themselves are a bit pricey for what you get). Photoflex boxes are fairly comparable to Chimeras, but priced quite a bit less.

On a lark I recently bought some Norman instruments. I think Norman only makes one model of continuous light, as they are usually a strobe company. Anyway, these instruments are quite well made, and have a very cool dual-bulb feature. They have two bulbs, so you switch one on and get 350w… switch the other one and you get 650w… and switch them both on and you have a 1K. You can get snoots and barn doors and the usual for them. The best part of these instruments is the price… they are unbelievably cheap although extremely well-made. The worst part… each instrument head has a tiny fan in it for cooling. So you have to be very careful if you are using them for dialog scenes to make sure the fan sound is not picked up by the mics. Some of their kits include softboxes, some include umbrellas. You can get a 3-head 3K kit for something in the thousand buck neighborhood. A couple of them are even less.

T2

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