Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Greg…
I didn’t know, I’ve never had any need for any of the units I have to loop… at the office we just use them to show spots in conference room etc… and at home I use it as a DVR so I’ve never had any need to do any looping.
I did check it though, the Iview unit I have at home doesn’t seem to have any looping ability. I thought though that if the drive only had one file, it would repeat it, but I tested it and it won’t. However, if there are multiple files on the drive, once the device plays one it will automatically move on to the next one. So, theoretically you could just put multiple copies of the file on your drive over and over again. A big enough drive and you could put dozens if not hundreds of hours of video on it, so you could fake loop it as long as needed. I have a little 100GB drive on the unit I use as a DVR at home.
I don’t know if the Phillips and Western Digital media players we have at work will loop… they might… as I said I’ve never had need to do that.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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After I posted I decided to look it up… this is the exact media player that I use on my main TV at home…
https://www.iviewus.com/index.php/iview-3500stbii.html
…although I bought it online elsewhere (not straight from the company), and only paid about $35 for it. Google the model number and I’m sure you’ll find it lots of places.
I actually use it as a non-subscription DVR (it has a tuner, programming guide, scheduled recording, all that jazz), and it works like a charm. But it will also work as just a media player, playing files from anything connected to the USB port. It has all kinds of outputs, including HDMI. Nice full-featured remote.
If you want to pump the same video to multiple screens, that little box and an HDMI splitter/distribution amp should be all that you need.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Does this client also use Sarah the operator to call you?
Seriously, though, you can get a little media player (several different brands… I have one by Phillips, one by Western Digital, and a couple of other various ones I think). Some are in the $100 neighborhood and some are as cheap as 35-40 bucks and work like a charm, will pump 1080 video out via HDMI, have a remote control, all that jazz. All will play files off of thumb drives (or external USB drives), and some have SD card slots.
For easiest/fastest/cheapest, hit WalMart (although I hate them with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns) and look for their little digital-to-analog converter boxes. Strangely enough, most of them have USB ports that feed straight through HDMI and work as media players. Less than 50 bucks.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Rotating the light is the easy part.
It’s the timing that’s the hard part.
Remember, the light is not just rotating around the subjects at random, it is timed with the dolly move so that the rotation of the light is at the same point for each corresponding point of the dolly position. There was probably some motion-control coordination of both the lighting instrument and the camera position. This was also probably shot at 4K to give the compositor flexibility in positioning and cutting to make sure all the subjects were at the appropriate size and frame positions when the transitions happened.
Even though we see some “natural” environment (i.e., grass) in the wider beginning shots as the spotlight passes through, I strongly suspect this was shot on stage… not a location exterior. It would just be much easier that way.
Also… although the rotating instrument is definitely the key light, it is not the only light. With the last three actors the shot is finally close enough that you can see the reflections in their eyes, which shows that there was at least one fill light. If done practically it might have been dimmed up and down in time with the rotating light… or it might have been controlled in post.
As Mark said, this is a bit of a throwback technique… but I’ve never seen it used to transition between subjects like that, or done so well.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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VERY cool effect… I so seriously wish I’d thought of that.
Obviously a moving light… a spotlight-type instrument (Maybe a Source Four or something like that) that is continuously arcing around the subject from above.
How exactly that is physically accomplished, we can’t be sure. It could be as complicated as some kind of track in the grid that drives the lighting instrument around in a circle… or as simple as an instrument mounted on a counterweighted pole that is suspended from above from the balance point and allowed to spin around the subject. That’s probably the way I would try to do it.
Again, the results there are just flawless (there was probably a good bit of clean-up work in post) and the effect is really really cool.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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The Digital Bolex does look pretty fun… I’ve yet to figure out how useful it might be, but definitely fun.
As Rick and I have exchanged before, Philip Bloom did a really good hands-on review of it a while back…
His takeaway seemed to be two-fold, “This is a really really neat little camera” quickly followed by “I have no idea what I’d ever use it for, any scenario I can think of there would be a better camera choice.” It seems like he really really WANTS to like it, but just can’t really justify a reason for its existence. I think he’s more impressed with their marketing, design, and packaging than with the actual product. It seems pretty cool, though.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Oh hey David… cool.
Does Bob wander the halls there talking at the top of his lungs? (I worked with Bob for way too many years… it’s a wonder Phyllis hasn’t killed him by now). Does Juan still work there?
Yeah, see if you can dig up a link, that would help.
No, I wouldn’t recommend shooting film if you haven’t before. We don’t anymore, sadly I haven’t shot film in a long time… I sold all the 16mm gear a few years ago and then sold the 35mm gear last year I think. I just didn’t need it anymore although still have a bunch of 35mm stock in the fridge. I don’t think the only decent camera rental house in this area (ACInc in Nashville) is still in biz… or at least they don’t have a website anymore. So… stick with video.
Contact me privately if you like.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Probably 97% of the look you describe is going to be attributable to post… plus lighting and lens selection… and will not be all that reliant on the specific choice of camera body.
Is there by chance something existing that has exactly the look you are going for, and can post a clip or a link?
I could be wrong (frequent and entirely possible), but I not aware of an existing rental market for the Digital Bolex yet.
Have you considered just shooting film? People think it’s so expensive, but it doesn’t have to be if you do it right. I’ve shot zillions of 35mm commercial spots for even very modest-budget clients.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Thanks, Mark… I thought it was passable.
Purely a matter of what was convenient. Honestly, I called it a “plasma” monitor just by default, now that I think about it that might be an LED monitor. Or LCD. Or OLED. I’d have to go upstairs and look and I’m lazy. Now that I think about it I don’t think it’s a plasma because it’s not that heavy. We just grabbed the one from our conference room because it’s the only large screen in the building that’s “loose” (not mounted on a wall or hung from a ceiling). Pure convenience.
Actually a bigger one would have worked better (I think that’s a 42″) because we had to put it up RIGHT outside the car in order for it to cover all of the window area on screen. So I produced several versions of the insert clip with different levels of blurriness so we could pick one that looked at least semi-realistic.
The fact that it is only a two-second shot also helps.
Giving away my cheapskate secrets here, that scene was lit using only a couple of three-buck LED puck lights from Harbor Freight.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I certainly think it has its place…
A little while back we did the poor man’s version using footage displayed in a plasma television screen outside a car window. We were doing some automotive stuff, and it was easier/faster/cheaper to do it that way than shoot practically on location at night…
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news032.html
I just bought a couple of video projectors for another project, so I might try some more of this in the future.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
