[Todd Terry]

And oh… meant to mention… if they are willing to pay (especially if willing to pay scale), they need to submit a casting call to Breakdown Services/Breakdown Express. We’ve started using them directly instead of casting agents for commercial projects. I’ll put out a casting call, they take care of sending the breakdowns to all appropriate talent agents within your part of the country (or beyond), and you get in headshots/resumes/reels. You can then request custom auditions for whomever you like.

Best thing about it (besides being free) is that it is fast. When I put out casting calls myself through the usual channels, it usually takes several days for auditionees to filter in. If I send a casting call to Breakdown Express, I’ll usually have anywhere from 100 to 200 submissions within an hour or two. They jump right on distributing the breakdown, and since most agencies use them and are constantly checking them (or being alerted), the agents typically immediately make their appropriate submissions. Works great.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Jason Roberts] “…and they want to shoot in sequence…”

Which is technically crazy, but from an actor’s standpoint isn’t a bad idea. Being his first movie, John Hughes shot The Breakfast Club in sequence because, unbelievably, he didn’t know you didn’t have to do that. Which did make for a crazy shoot for the crew, but allowed for perfect character growth for the actors… so in this case it might not be a bad idea.

And yes, I think Hopkins is our finest living actor. I would gladly give a year’s salary just to sharpen his pencils for a week. His ability stuns me.

[Jason Roberts] “as a younger man I really wanted to play The Dentist.”

Yep, as I said, most fun I ever had. It’s really the perfect supporting role, because it can totally steal the show yet you’re really only working about 15 minutes, and napping in the dressing room the rest of the time. I got to ride a motorcycle on stage (which always cranked, thank God), sing (I’m really more of a “vocal stylist”), dance (much like the singing), wear lots of leather, slap Audrey around, rough up my best friend who happened to be Seymour, die a great death night after night, and be eaten by Audrey II. Oh, and sometimes made kids in the front rows cry. What actor could ask for more??

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’d be as much (or more) worried about talent on this project… something that weighs so heavy on just two actors constantly on screen is going to require Anthony-Hopkinsesque acting ability to pull it off… or you are going to wind up with something 10x more boring than “My Dinner with Andre.”

And Mark… interesting observation about Little Shop of Horrors. You said “original”…meaning the 1960 Roger Corman version? Worth watching, but I certainly wouldn’t hold that up as any example of fine filmmaking. Now, the ’86 Frank Oz version is fantastic.

And this forces me down memory lane… way back in my wannabe-actor days my very first role (1988) was in a stage production of LSOH, and was one of the most fun things I ever did in my entire life (and I “borrowed” the engineer boots from wardrobe… still have ’em)….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well I won’t comment on most of this, although I do have opinions about them (which range from “Good for him!” to “Oh, my…” to quietly shaking my head)….

But I will comment on two things….

Primes. Definitely primes. They will look better, be much faster (allowing for easier/faster lighting with much lower levels), and in a setup/situation like this I can think of no compelling reasons at all to shoot zooms.

And lastly…

[Jason Roberts] “I’d recommend he rent each one for a weekend with a kit and see which he likes better, but the closest rental house is four hours away.”

Good advice, but the distance shouldn’t matter. Virtually every pro camera rental house is used to shipping gear all the time, to anywhere and everywhere. I’ve rented camera bodies, lenses, support gear… all shipped. In fact before we bought our own PL lenses we use to regularly rent a superspeed primes set from a camera house about two hours away. They’d put them on a Greyhound bus and we’d pick ’em up (the bus station is only two blocks from our studio, so convenient). The first couple of times I though it was pretty nerve wracking… they fact that they were willing to put a set of glass worth about $100K (in a conveniently-stealable small case, with a handle on it) on a bus (which doesn’t typically attract upscale travelers)… but they do it all the time.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well… firstly I hate the term “B roll” for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is just not applicable to the way things are done today and hw editing works. Secondly, it sort of has a “of lesser importance” feel to it, which is certainly not the case.

So to answer “What is “B Roll” we have to look back at history a little bit…

Firstly in the days of physical editing of film stock, after a rough cut was done on an answer print, the real negative was then match cut frame by frame following the edited version as an exact guide. The negative was cut into two reels, the “A roll” and the “B roll.” This was done because if only one reel was used, the splice marks would show up on the print… but by editing onto two rolls (with black leader in between) the the splice marks would not show. So, shots alternated back and forth between the two. the A Roll and B Roll had no difference as to content or importance… just sequence. Shots 1, 3, 5, etc were on the A Roll, and shots 2, 4, 6 were on the B Roll.

Now… flash forward to the news business (when newsgathering still happened on film)… Interviews were cut together on one reel, and any cover video was played off a second reel to avoid interrupting/damaging the magnetic stripe that was the soundtrack on the first reel. This cover video was the B Roll.

Flash forward again to the electronic newsgathering age, and the term still stuck… and that’s what a couple of generations have called cover video, without even knowing why they were calling it “B Roll.”

So you can consider the term B-roll in one of two ways… you can either consider it to be any images which are used to cover part of an on-camera interview. OR, you can take that a little farther and use it to refer to any footage that is not a talking-head-on-camera person.

Or… you can just not use that term at all. You do still hear it, largely by old news people who just still say it, or don’t know any better. To me it is akin to say someone is going out to “film” something, when they have never touched actual film in their life. Today that is being replaced a bit by people staying “I was videotaping something…” when there is actually no tape involved at all.

The bottom line is that is really doesn’t matter. It’s a bit of an antiquated term, and in the strictest sense doesn’t really apply to the way we do things.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, this is not going to be a lot of help to you….but… the clip plays perfectly for me.

I first tried it in the VLC Media Player, which is my go-to player for .mov files (we so rarely use .mov files that I only have an ancient version of the Quicktime Player installed, so I didn’t even try that). I then imported it into editing and put it on a matched-settings timeline in Adobe Premiere CS6. Again, it played perfectly. All the frames were there and played smoothly… there was no jerk, judder, missing, or repeated frames.

Have you tried putting it on a timeline and then from there exporting a new file (.mov, .avi, whatever) of that shot, and then checked that new clip? I’m thinking that could be a workaround… if your system is actually using all the frames but for some reason just not displaying all the frames, then rendering a new clip might give you something usable. This is different from using some kind of conversion tool to create a new clip, if you do it by rendering out a new one in Premiere or FCP it should give you a new frame-for-frame clip that works well. Be sure that your timeline settings and output settings are exactly the same as the clips.

Good luck….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Rich Rubasch] “…make sure it is Waaaaayyyyyy shorter than Mark’s reply.”

Well that’s just good advice all ’round… for almost anything.

🙂

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well all Jokers are hot re-strike (please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m 99% sure that’s the case), so you shouldn’t have to wait at all.

Except for really big ones, you don’t see too many non-hot re-strike HMI instruments any more, of any brand or flavor. I do, sadly, own one though, and it’s a royal pain in the rear… it’s usually a good 15-20 minute cool down before it will re-strike. Those become very long minutes when the production clock is ticking. I don’t use it very much.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Wow I have that exact same CoolLights HMI… it was actually the first HMI instrument we ever bought.

I didn’t think anyone else had it, because Richard only sold the 1200w ones in fresnel for about five seconds before they switched to PAR fixtures for their bigger HMIs.

The original ballast for it crapped out and it went back to CoolLights for repair. It sat there unrepaired and we hounded them about it for around six months before they finally sent us a “loaner”… which we have been using with that instrument for, oh, about three years now I guess. I’m sure the original has long since been forgotten there.

It’s a decent instrument though, as far as the bargain basement HMIs go. We use it all the time.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Rich Rubasch] “use the speed tools to speed it up….works at slo mo and works sped up with total flexibility.”

Yes, of course you can always speed up slow-mo footage to normal speed, and I’ve had people ask me “Why shouldn’t I just overcrank everything, so that if I want to slow-mo something later I have that option.” Well you certainly can do that, but when you “normalize” the speed you risk very choppy staccato video if you have much action in your frame, obviously because as the frame rate increases the shutter speed goes up, too. It’s exactly the same combo if you are shooting 24fps but with a narrow shutter. Great for “Saving Private Ryan,” but for other things… not so much.

So Rich is absolutely right in that he only shoots 23.976 for normal speed shots. Overcranking should really be reserved for when you pretty much know the shot will be slow-mo’d. You can use overcranked footage at normal speed, but I’d definitely save that for the emergency no-other-options situations and be prepared for that narrow-shutter action-movie look.

T2

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