Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
Sure…
There are three factors there determining depth of field… focal length of the lens, the aperture (f-stop), and the size of the sensor.
The wider the lens, the easier it is to get the deep focus (and that’s a quite wide lens).
The higher the f-stop, the deeper the focus.
The smaller the sensor, the deeper the focus.
Since that is a very wide lens and shooting in direct sunlight like that you can use a very high (small) f-stop), it should not be difficult at all to achieve a very deep DoF.
If you don’t have one already, hit iTunes or GooglePlay and download a depth of field calculator… there are several to choose from… or use an on-line one….
https://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
Just one quick example using that one… if my subject was five feet away, shooting 35mm format with an 18mm lens stopped down to f/16, then my depth of field would be from only about a foot and a half, all the way to infinity… very very deep indeed… with virtually everything in the frame in focus (unless it happened to be closer than 18 inches to the lens).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Ned Miller] “For me the slider wouldn’t be worth it if I could glide in as a tourist.”
I hear ya… but actually this client LOVES our slider (and it’s a special curved slider that we designed)… it’s pretty much why they keep hiring us, and was specifically mentioned by them for this shoot. And it is, sadly, not something that we can rent on location.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Jessica Zimmerman] “So you think its probably a camera malfunction as opposed to a problem with the shop exposing or disrupting the film during development?”
Sounds like it. If it is a proper professional lab, it’s unlikely they would have done anything to it that caused the problems you described.
So… the bad/non-existent footage is dark/black? I got that impression. If that is the case it is definitely NOT a lab overexposure or anything like that. Since Super8 is reversal film (not negative stock), overexposure would result in pure white/clear film, not dark.
Sounds like a camera issue… though what the issue is might be a puzzler to track down.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Yep, very deep focus…. iris waaaay down. Considering Tonino Delli Colli was shooting in broad blasting daylight, that wasn’t a hard exposure for him to hit.
As for lens, hard to say exactly… my widest prime (well, widest non-fisheye) is 18mm, and I think it would be about that field of view (with S35mm format).
Even though you don’t have the camera/lens combo yet, there are phone apps that you can dial in the film format and focal length of your lens and it will show you the field of view…. sort of a poor-man’s Fries viewfinder.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Ah… well your original post said sales tax, which did make me wonder “Just how much stuff is he buying??”
Income tax is of course a wildly different thing.
Fortunately we are (mostly) homebodies and have never had to be concerned about anything like that. Work that we do out of state no one really even knows about, except us.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Nick Griffin] “Pay the damn tax. Move on and make money.”
I think that’s generally good advice.
It probably all depends on how you work and the projects you are doing. I can’t really conceive of what all it might involve, but sounds to me like Rich is paying boatloads of sales tax on different things… I can’t imagine what that would be, but for him it might be a big difference.
As I said, for me, I’ve never had our GM add it up (maybe I should), but here I would think that sales tax would be a fraction of one percent of any given project’s budget… for some projects, it’s probably actually zero. For me, I don’t know that it has ever fallen outside the “Ehh don’t worry about that” realm. It may vary for others.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Well hopefully the original poster solved the problem a couple of months ago.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Mark Suszko] “As to making your entire set green, without trackers on it, how do you expect to match the shots to the geometry?”
She might correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think she’s talking about an entire green space… I think that was just an unfortunate color choice when building the reference picture.
I could be wrong about that (always a first), but if so they’re looking at loads of post production and planar motion tracking there… a heckuva lot more than one little window (which is why I assumed the main set wasn’t greenscreen).
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Rich Rubasch] “This seems completely ludicrous given the fact that we are told to travel to those states, not choosing to go there”
I’m not sure you’re looking at that part of it the right way, nor is the fact that you are being told to make such a trip a factor in all this voodoo.
No one is making you do anything, yes you are choosing to go there… i.e., you are indeed choosing to go there in order to get a particular job. You could always refuse and say no. So, I don’t think that part of it is an argument either way.
As for the rest, yes, that is very complicated. That would fall into the category of stuff that we would hand to our CPA and say “Figure this out, it’s what we pay you for.”
Pretty complicated.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Well yes, but as far as sales taxes go… if you live in Florida like Greg does and travel up across the state line to my home state of Alabama on a shoot, and choose to buy something here for your shoot (doesn’t matter if it is a light bulb or roll of gaffer tape or what), you’re going to pay sales tax here. Not much way around that. You’re definitely going to pay state sales tax, plus there will usually be a county sales tax, and then a municipal sales tax, depending on whether the store you visited was in an incorporated city limit. If you were visiting here in my city of Huntsville, that would be 8% total (split between state, county, and city).
You can’t say “I don’t live here, I’m not going to pay any sales taxes here” if you are visiting a retailer here. Just doesn’t work that way. Just like I can’t travel a few miles where there is a Lowe’s that is technically in one city and the Home Depot across the street is technically in another… I can’t choose (or refuse) to pay taxes based on the fact that I don’t technically live in the city where the store is.
The only thing that really sorta works for is automobiles. We live only about an hour south of the Tennessee state line, and many people drive up to Nashville to buy a new car because they don’t have to pay sales tax. True, they don’t have to pay Tennessee sales tax, but they get exactly the same tax hit two weeks later when they register the vehicle in Alabama. They are going to get you either way.
You can avoid the sale tax if you have a sales tax deferment ID number because you are purchasing raw materials to be used in creating a product that you will be selling as a taxable item in Alabama… but of course we don’t do that so we pay sales tax on anything we buy.
Of course for years we, like many people, did not pay sales tax on items bought from out of state (say, if we bought a camera from B&H)… but the auditors have cracked down on that… and now we do have to pay some sales tax on items purchased elsewhere.
The only other way I can think of to avoid it is if you are working in a state that provides tax credits for film production (some do, some don’t), and you want to jump through those hoops.
Sales tax here is a miniscule portion of any given project’s budget, so it’s nothing we have ever even looked at.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
