[Todd Terry]

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I just wanted to reiterate that you are faced with not really one question… but really with two….

1. Do you WANT to give the client the files

2. CAN you give the client the files.

Question 1 depends on how charitable you want to be… whether super cooperative, or hard-nosed about it. I personally tend to be hard-nosed about such issues, and then weaken and turn charitable…ha. If you are Mr. Nice Guy, you might be inclined to turn over the files.

BUT…

Question 2 involves the bought-and-paid-for rights to such files… which very likely may be non-re-sellable, non-transferrable, non-assignable, and all that jazz. Depending on your licensing agreements, the stock companies may have sold the usage rights to you and to you alone (and possibly only for this one and only specific project).

Question 2 trumps Question 1. No matter how much of a super-nice-guy you choose (or don’t choose) to be, even if you decide you’d prefer to hand them over a wheelbarrow full of assets, they might not be yours to give away.

And if you don’t want to be Mr. Nice Guy, that gives you an easy out. “I’d love to give you all this stuff, I really would, but…..”

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Have to admit I was wondering the same thing…. wasn’t sure of a source though, was going to check FilmTools if I was in that boat.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

You’ll have to look through the licensing agreements that you have for the stock footage and music… but I suspect that when you purchased them, those rights went to you and are likely non-transferrable or re-sellable. That would be the norm. You’ll have to read the agreements, though.

I’ve never had this exactly happen, but my better half Kim who is a graphic artist has had it happen frequently. She’ll do some big graphics project for a company, maybe a logo development, or create a brochure or something, and will give the finished project (and maybe rarely the project files) to the client. She’s then had numerous times a client reach out to her at some later date and say something like “We’re making a little flyer….” or “We need to make a banner for…” followed by the dreaded “…but we’re just gonna do it in-house.” Followed then by the same exact question every time: “Can you email me the fonts you used?”

She has had to repeatedly explain that fonts are a product that are bought and sold, and that while there are scads of free fonts floating around, many of the ones that real graphic designers use are ones they purchased, and some are quite expensive. You can’t just give them away, it’s a bit akin to pirating music.

What she does do is send them a link, kindly pointing them to the source where they can purchase the font themselves.

I think that’s what I’d do in this case… point this now-former-client to your sources where they can purchase the same music and stock footage rights themselves… then everyone would be in the clear.

I definitely wouldn’t give it to them.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Heya Dan…

Didn’t mean to ignore your previous two posts… I just didn’t see them or know they were there. Must have missed the notifications on them.

Congrats!… looks like you got a setup that seems to work like a charm… definitely seems to be getting exactly the shot and angle that you were working toward.

Nothing is as easy as it seems like it should be, huh? Post a shot of the finished rig some time when you get a chance.

Great work!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Craig…

Those batteries should work, but you’ll have to do a bit of DIY…

You’ll need to be able to wire two of those batteries together (wired in a series, not parallel). Firstly, you’ll need two V-mount receivers. I’d hit eBay for those, they’d be much cheaper there (look at eBay item 131876132240). Then, you’d need to wire them together in a series.

Then you’ll need a way to attach them to something. I personally like to attach batteries directly to instruments, if possible (just to keep everything together and avoid cables). You probably could screw those right to the back of the Kino… BUT that’s a very lightweight instrument and by attaching several pounds of batteries to the back of it that’s kinda defeating the purpose of keeping things lightweight. Instead, I’d probably get a backing plate of some kind, I’d personally probably just cut a quarter-inch piece of Masonite the appropriate size and shape and use that to make a backing plate. You could mount the two batteries side by side, or back to back, or however works best. There’s probably several hardware options you could come up with to attach such a plate to your Mafer clamp so that you could clamp it to a light stand riser.

As for cabling the thing together, again that will require a bit of DIY, just finding the right bits and pieces and soldering it together… I’m not sure what fitttings/connectors that Kino uses so I can’t give too much advice there.

You asked “Any better options?”… if that is asking about batteries for the Kino that you already have, not really, those would probably work as well as anything. If you were talking about the actual instrument (you don’t have the Kino yet), then I’d look at LitePanels Astra heads instead. We started using them a few months ago and they are total awesomeness. I think they are going to provide more output than that Kino (not sure about that, but I think so), bi-color, rugged, and you can power them with one battery that just snaps right on the yoke. They are probably the best instruments I’ve used in a long long time. Not dirt cheap, but not wickedly expensive, either… I think I the $1300-1400 range these days. You’d need a battery connector kit (either V-mount or Goldmount, I use Goldmount) which is a couple hundred… although I made my own for free since I had some Goldmount plates already laying around.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well…. I’m not too big on rampant regulation, myself.

I DO feel for this customer, feel bad for the lady and hope she does eventually get her daughter’s wedding video.

BUT… I do have a little bit of “buyer beware” vibe going on…

I checked out Brian Kelly’s website, which is just gawd awful… it looks like a canned template site that he has shoehorned pieces into (and not in a good way). And it has virtually nothing resembling anything like a portfolio section or any samples of his work at all. What so-called media company would do that? The only embedded video seems to be a self-promotion animated piece, which is obviously either a canned piece or a purchased After Effects template that was customized with a graphic layer.

He does have a YouTube channel… but I stopped watching after scanning three of the videos because they were so painfully bad.

So, as I said, I’m sorry for the lady… but why did she hire this joker in the first place? I think it behooves a customer to do at least the most basic bit of research when hiring an expensive service (although his rate was pretty cheap).

Still, I hope she gets her video. I’m not sure how our industry could be regulated, though. What would we have, the cinematographic equivalent of “passing the bar”? Plus, looking good on paper doesn’t correspond to actually doing good work. In two decades in the biz I have made many internet friends, acquaintances, and colleagues… and I do check out their work. Although it is fortunately not the rule, I have to admit that I’m met a number of people on line through the years that seemed sharp as a tack, super knowledgeable, first-class experts in our industry. Then I’ll watch their reels. Sad to say, some of them are just laughably bad. Conversely, I’m sometimes surprised by people who don’t seem like they are the sharpest knife in the drawer by a long shot… but do really beautiful work.

I guess the Brian Kellys of the world talk a good enough game to get some people to part with their money… without checking the work. Sad.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Much much better.

As for lighting the background… well, what is your goal? What do you want it to look like? Are you wanting a solid pure white limbo background? Neutral gray? Something smooth and even? Or something with shadows and texture? To know how to light it we need to know what you want to see. If you want just a plain even neutral gray background, you might be fine just as-is.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

It’s ok to be new, don’t apologize for that… we were all new at one point (and sadly that point was painfully long ago for me)…

It’s tough to do with that stand… you really have the wrong stand for the job. The center part (the telescoping part) is called the “riser,” and the risers come in different lengths. That looks to be the longest of the three common lengths… whereas you could get away with the shortest.

If you have it, you could add a grip head and grip arm to the stop of that stand so that you could lower your mounting point… here is a very quick (and very very bad) drawing…

…but you might not have that hardware laying around, and it’s sort of Frankenstein-esque overkill for one Diva (although I’ve personally rigged much much worse).

Best bet would be to see if you can beg, borrow, rent, or steal a shorter stand… C-stand or otherwise. Well, don’t steal it, but find one somewhere.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Just a very quick observation to give you a couple of thing to tweak on…

You key light there is very high. I don’t mean a little high, it’s sky high, almost pointing down onto the top of the doll’s head. Try lowering your stand a great deal. I personally like to put keys about at eye level, or maybe a little bit above. Sometimes with talent who wear eye glasses I’ll raise an instrument up a bit just to get rid of the reflection… but just a bit.

Secondly, I’d try to put more space between your subject and the background. Sometimes we can’t because we’ll end up on location in a small room, but generally I’ll try to put a fair bit of distance in there. I can work with five or six feet… 10 feet makes me very happy. If you don’t have that separation, even with a plain solid background, it makes lighting very hard and your subjects always end up looking like they’re lined up against a wall down at the police department getting a mug shot taken.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Listen to what John says, he’s a sharp guy.

ALTHOUGH… I think I’m more of a Diva fan for interviews than he is. Then again, John is not only an expert DP but due to the kinds of projects he does he has resources and access to just about any and every kind of lighting instrument there is out there (and yes, the rest of us are jealous of that). Most of us don’t though, and I think a Diva is a good choice in “make do with what you have” situations where we might be limited in the instruments available.

Then again, you might consider me all talk, as I don’t use Divas at all presently. Any time where I might have used Divas in the past I now use LightPanels Astra instruments… which I love. I actually haven’t used a Diva in a long time, personally… but was just speaking to the instruments that you have available.

As for “Would you use the egg crates to control spill on the background along with the diffusion on top of that?”… well, you can use both, but you got that backwards. You’d want to use egg crate on top of diffusion, not diffusion on top of egg crate. If you do it that way (diffusion on top), the egg crate is not going to do much of anything.

As for the Hensel for a backlight, I’m guessing you’re talking about using that just for the still photography… as that is a strobe and not a continuous light. I’m pretty clueless there… not that I shoot stills that much, but when I do I never ever use strobes, I always use continuous lighting. I just don’t know anything about strobes… I come from the film and video world and really only know continuous lighting, so that’s what I use. Fortunately 99% of our work (or more) is motion, so I really don’t have to worry about knowing anything about flash lighting.

T2

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