Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
There are definitely motors for the H16. I was curious enough to look to see if any were still around, there’s one on eBay right now for 40 bucks.
I’m not sure if there were ever any crystal motors for the H16… which probably isn’t an issue since that camera was so loud. They aren’t anything that require any conversion or installation, you simply attach them.
You might check the CommieCam users group which I used to be very active in (but not really any more) at konvas.org. It’s mostly people who use the wonderful cold-war era Russian 16mm and 35mm Konvas and Kinor cameras (like I used to) and the fantastic Russian LOMO and Foton lenses, but there are Bolex owners there as well (again, like I used to be).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I’m for vertical video when appropriate… but I just think it all depends on the needed end result.
99% of what I produce winds up on broadcast television… a horizontal format.
Most of the rest is usually for web-based viewing, embedding on clients’ websites, etc.
So for me, horizontal/widescreen (the way human eyes work), is the way to go. We have yet to produce anything that is intended solely or primarily for mobile devices. That day may come, but it’s not here yet at our place.
We get auditions in, cull through them, and send our picks to clients for approval produced all in one video file. Sometimes that reel includes a bunch, five, 10, or maybe even 20 different actors. We are invariably asked by clients why John Doe’s audition isn’t like the rest, but just a skinny strip in the middle of the screen.
We’ve only once been asked to produce specifically a vertical video… for a security scanner that had a vertical screen on the side that demonstrated how to use the device. After coming up with a complicated way to mount/shoot with our camera sideways, only then did the device manufacturer give us tech specs… and the screen resolution of their monitors was soooo low that we could have simply shot with the camera oriented correctly and sliced out a vertical center section and would have been golden.
What’s next? Vertical anamorphic lenses? Maybe I’m behind the times… but then again this is my actual kitchen phone at home (and yes, it works like a charm)….
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Curious as to why a brand-new COW member would respond to a dead two-year-old thread by simply posting nothing but a paragraph copied directly from Mads’ earlier post??
At any rate this issue was long since resolved.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
???… this is a response to a 4+ year old post/complaint.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Ned Miller] “Oh well, I can always hold my professional cameras sideways.”
Pushing 20 years ago a friend who is a professional photographer borrowed one of my video cameras to shoot some behind the scenes footage of a play one of his kids was in… I remember loaning him my then-brand-new Canon XL1, one of my “B” cameras at the time. It was so foolproof I knew that even a novice shooter couldn’t screw things up, so it would be a cakewalk for a professional still photographer.
He came back with the footage, and about every third or forth shot was sideways. He’d shoot a scene or two, and then turn the camera sideways for a “portrait” format shot or two. He was used to doing this constantly with his still cameras when shooting weddings and such, it didn’t occur to him that he couldn’t do that with a video camera. Duhhhhhhh.
We cast lot of actors, and while most of the auditions submitted by talent agencies are shot correctly with more proper cameras, almost all of those submitted directly by actors themselves are recorded with cell phones (which I’m totally fine with). But… probably a good half of them come in vertical, despite my repeated and explicit instructions to “Position your phone horizontally… the same as a TV screen!” They don’t seem to get it.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Fahad Minhaj] ” I will be giving the dealership will be super competitive like $200/car”
Not to further rain on your parade, but I do want you to have things in perspective since you seem dead set on doing this idea… and actually I honestly do want you to succeed, if you try it…
You might think $200 per car is competitive, but a dealer is going to think that is sky high. Huge. Enormous. There is no way a dealer is going to spend an extra 200 bucks to promote an individual car that is on their lot. Trust me, I deal with these guys all the time, everything from Hyundais to Mercedes, from big corporate dealers to local mom-and-pop outfits, and no one I have ever worked with would even consider that.
If you go in with a quote of 200 per car, your meeting is going to end immediately. Not only is that high, but it’s so high that a dealer is not even going to continue the conversation since they know they’re never going to get you to a point that interests them. They know they can probably talk you down by 20 bucks, but they can’t talk you down to a fifth or a tenth of your proposed cost, which is about all I can see a dealer ever willing to spend. Especially since this would be a complete and total out-of-pocket advertising expense for the dealers, would not likely be co-opable at all (and dealers are really only interested in advertising and marketing costs that they can get co-op money for).
Dealers don’t really make money on new cars anymore. Thanks largely to the internet, everyone everywhere now knows what the bottom dollar is for a car, ergo most of the haggling or wiggle room in a car’s price now is gone. On the average new car now, when you go in and buy that new $28,900 car the dealer is actually lucky if they make about $800 in profit. Sometimes less. Sometimes none. Sometimes they even lose money on a sale. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. How do they stay open (some even getting rich)? Well they make their money on other things, largely on financing and service (and sometimes on accessories and upgrades, and often a quite a bit on used vehicles). So selling a new car is never itself a cash cow for a dealer… it’s a conduit for them making money other ways.
I just can’t see a dealer even entertaining the idea of cutting their almost-non-existent profit on a single vehicle by an additional 200 bucks. If you can get it down to a fraction of that (and I mean a true small fraction), they might… but not at that rate.
Good luck, let us know how it goes.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Sounds like your flos are just way too warm, so that even when you tungsten balance for your LEDs it’s still not enough and the flos still have a color temp that is noticeably lower than your now-filtered LEDs.
If you must use the overhead flos (conceding that’s generally going to be a poor idea, results-wise), the easiest/fastest/cheapest thing to do would be to retube that fixture with daylight bulbs… and then use your daylight LEDs unfiltered. You’ll have much more output that way, too, which might be a concern since you said your two LEDs are not enough to light your subject.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
No sweat, that’s the burden of having two first names so I’m used to it (and never tell anyone, especially a couple of COW continuous offenders, how much i actually hate being called by my last name). Thanks for picking up on it!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
This client sounds like a real peach.
I don’t want to be one of those “here’s what you did wrong” guys, but you did basically ask…
Firstly, don’t haggle. Ever. Your rate is your rate. Does this guy try to beat down the prices he is charged by his accountant? Or barber? Or surgeon? If your rate is something that he can beat down, then it’s presumed you are charging too much in the first place… which I’m going to assume you are not. When people complain about our budgets (and they do, I’ll freely admit we are the most expensive guys in town), we’ll politely give them the “you get what your pay for” speech but we’ll also do whatever we can to work with a client’s budget. But they don’t get the same thing for less money. We’ll offer to work with them by simplifying shoots, eliminating extra locations or pricey talent, concepting something that requires a less intensive edit, or whatever, but never by simply lowering our rate. As you know, once you lower your rate, then that new number is now your rate (because that’s what you are willing to work for) and that client will never even consider anything higher than that from you.
I think you went way above and beyond as it is, with your efforts to get them viewable files, especially when it sounds like this was for an edit gig that you were unlikely to ever get anyway.
Me, I’d probably would have just sent them a link to download a free VLC media player (or any other suitable player) that can handle both MXF and AVCHD files.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I guess Bob has some points, but upon revisiting the original post…
I didn’t notice one single time that Stephen complained about having to do the work to do proper backups, whined about the cost of it, moaned about not being able to hire someone to do it right, or claimed to be giving his work away for 800 bucks a pop.
He asked legitimate questions, and deserves a legitimate answer.
I too, frankly, doubt I do backups truly “properly.” And by the way I have no reticence about paying someone for good advice, spending money on hardware needed, or give away my work for nothing. I’m not a rich guy nor live in a McMansion, but when you get right down to it I’m remarkably well paid for doing the work that I love, and I’m not sure when people in our industry developed the reputation of being whining poor-as-churchmice complaining freeloaders.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
