[Todd Terry]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys… I really appreciate the responses.

To play Devil’s Advocate here (might help my brain spark some new ideas)… the challenges I would most readily see with those are:

[Kman44] “Have you considered using stock footage?”

Well yeah that’s usually the first thought with something like this, but as I said, I suspect licensing real game footage would be ungodly expensive and a mountain of red tape.

[Mike_S] “…partnering with a computer game company that has an (NFL) football game…”

Hmmm, hadn’t thought of that (I’m not a gamer). I need to check that out… from what I’ve seen I don’t really think football computer games look realistic. Actually, the players and action DO, but the camera moves really really don’t. I suspect we would might be quickly getting out of our budget range as we would have to use something custom made (can’t license anything NFL), and I doubt any kind of cross-promotion would work as we wouldn’t want anyone to KNOW that it was CGI stuff. That’ worth thinking about some more though.

[Arniepix] ” I think that you can probably stage a game”

Well, yeah I can… it’s just my wallet trying to come up with something better. By the time we rent the facility, get security (you know they’ll require it), insurance for the location, pay at least 22 players and anywhere from 50-100 extras then I’m probably in for at least $10K, maybe more. And that’s almost a tenth of the whole project’s budget for something that is really incidental. I could shoot an existing game for a couple grand, tops (and not have to worry about directing ANY action). There’s the still-nagging question of releasing all the talent, though.

Nothing is easy.

Thanks again for the ideas!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I second Steve’s recommendation.

I’d go with the Canon XLH1. We’ve been shooting with it since right after it came out and I can’t say enough good things about the camera.

The ONLY bad thing I will say about it, is that if you shoot 24f HDV at present you must use a camera to capture footage, there is no deck that will play the tape (but ONLY at 24f and ONLY WHILE shooting HDV. Any other combination, say 24f at SD, or HDV at 60i, work fine in standard decks).

We usually just use the camera body with cine lenses and a P+S Technik converter, but in the few instances that I have used the standard comes-with-it video lens I found it to be good…quite good, in fact.

It’s quite a robust camera, made well, would be suitable for your harsh locations. I would suggest doing what we did: buy the A/B Gold Mount adapter which attaches on the back (three screws, I think), then you can power the camera (and accessories if you need) with the same big AntonBauer brick. Yeah, it adds size and weight (especially when compared to the tiny Canon battery), but a full brick will power this sucker all day and more… I’ve yet to run out of battery.

As for radio mics, look at Lectrosonics.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Back in my youth before I was a wanna-be director (when I was a wanna-be actor) I was doing some play that some tight cues but the stage manager couldn’t see the action on that particular part of the stage from her station.

She ended up putting a wireless video baby-monitor camera up in the catwalk. It was from Wal-Mart (ugh) or Kmart or somesuch… I remember it was pretty good (certainly good enough for what it was being used for) for being dirt cheap (like $100 or less, including the monitor).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Sam…

As luck would (or wouldn’t) have it, we are actually staging a fake game show for a television commercial shoot on Monday.

What kind of shots etc exactly do you need?

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “Pre-Chimera, cameramen used to put their open-faced lights behind a shower curtain to light an interview.”

Very true…. I remember in my early “dirt poor” days making my own butterfly frames out of conduit and my own rags out of white garbage bags. Looking back, it worked pretty well. Ahhh, nostalgia.

The thing I found so interesting about this shower curtain material from the fabric store is that it was six feet wide… and as long as you like (I could have bought a continuous piece 100′ long if I’d needed)…. AND cheap enough to just toss after a shoot if you wanted something temporary.

Shoot on!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi guys thanks for the kind words.

Yeah that’s Don LaFontaine, the “king of the movie trailers” guy. Budgets were tight but he was really our only choice to make the campaign sound really authentic. There was a time when either Don or Hal Douglas voiced virtually every trailer that came along (Don has done literally thousands and thousands of trailers). You don’t hear them quite as much on trailers anymore, partly since the current trend seems to be to use no narrator at all. True I guess it’s a little unusual to hear him on a purely local spot, but most of these guys work pretty much the same way: a gig’s a gig… sweet talk their agent, pay their normal rate, and they will pretty much do whatever you want.

And no Alex I don’t mind you asking — production was on a format we call e35mm, which is basically a 35mm/HD hybrid. This was pretty low-budget project, I think it was around $11,000 and that was for three spots. Because budgets were tight we had to shoot it all in a day and a half (it was pretty frantic… lots of wardrobe changes, 30+ camera setups, think there were about a nine different locations). Edit took a couple of days.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Since we are talking about trailers, thought the group might like to see these, just for grins….

Our tiny company produces local television commercials. One of our main clients is a credit union, and sometimes they just let us go and allow us to have fun (pretty unheard of, with a stuffy client like a bank).

Anywho… we recently produced these three spots for them. Since they were to air ONLY during the really REALLY bad nighttime soaps on the CW network we decided to cut them as if they were movie trailers for a really cheesy film. Take a look, if you wanna…

https://fantasticplastic.com/media/RFCU-1.mpg
https://fantasticplastic.com/media/RFCU-2.mpg
https://fantasticplastic.com/media/RFCU-3.mpg

…and yes, the acting is supposed to be that bad.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I just checked and yup Photoflex does make small light boxes for on-camera use.

Check ’em out at photoflex.com, or more specifically their “Action Dome” in their ENG section at:

https://photoflex.com/Photoflex_Products/ActionDome_Kit_with_Adjustable_Hardware/index.html

It’s pretty darn cheap, too.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

You might look and see if PhotoFlex makes a little Chimera clone for the Ultra (I don’t know if they do, but they might).

I’m a big fan of PhotoFlex boxes, we use bunches of them (from the mid-sized ones to the gigantic). I’ve always found them to be as good or better made than the Chimeras and substantially less expensive.

If budgets aren’t a major issue I would second the suggestion that Lite Panels are worth taking a look at. Lite Panels absoutely ROCK (but unfortunately, they also rock your wallet).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Getting exterior windows to be not too “hot” (and wrong balance) can be a challenge.

The four ways way that most immediately come to my mind are:

1) Gel all of the windows to cut their “output” as well as correct color balance. The gel will be yellow/orangish in color. Roscoe and Lee both make gel available in big rolls just for this purpose. The light coming through the windows will then be dimmer, and balanced more like tungsten.

2) Gel your tungsten lighting instruments toward the blue side. Usually 1/4 to 1/2 blue is enough, full blue is usually too much. The downside to this is of course that the gels cut light output by a great deal, so you need fairly powerful instruments. Also, while you will find that the color balance is now correct, the windows may still be too hot. You might want a neutral-density gel on the windows as well. For that you can use the much cheaper film that is available for patio doors, or even car window film.

3) Shoot with HMIs for the interiors. The color balance will be correct, and the much higher output will eliminate (or lessen) the need to ND the windows.

4 If you don’t need to actually SEE what is going on outside through the windows, shoot at night. Put instruments outside (the brighter the better) to get light streaming through sheer closed curtains, or mostly-closed ventian blinds, etc.

T2

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