Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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It all makes at least a degree of sense to me (although not a great deal). Yes, I know I paid a buck and a half for this little .mp3 player, and if produced in batches of many thousands or many tens of thousands it probably doesn’t have more than $1.50 in costs.
But I still can’t wrap my head around the shipping, which was free. The problem with this particular item, I can’t tell exactly how much the postage was….
…but… that’s not true of everything I’ve bought that was shipped from China or Hong Kong… sometimes I can see the cost of the shipping (and wish I had saved some of the envelopes). There have been numerous occasions that I have bought a little item for a dollar or two (with free shipping), and it arrives in an envelope with at least three bucks worth of postage on it, sometimes more.
Maybe it’s a business model a little like the old (very well done) SNL filmed piece for “First Citywide Change Bank,” a bank that does absolutely nothing but make change…
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/first-citywide-change-bank/n9701
How do they make money when they are losing cash on each sale? Volume.
No, wait… that doesn’t work…….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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What Mark said…
Personally, I’d also add a backlight, too, if practical.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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John’s advice is almost always exactly right, and yes an ETC Source Four is precisely what you need, it was made just for that.
BUT… I honestly think you just need a Source Four, that you probably don’t need the Joker Bug adapter (what that does is let you use the Source Four housing and lenses with a daylight-balanced Joker Bug HMI instrument).
Here’s why you might want to skip that…
For one, a Source Four is a very affordable instrument… you can buy one for a couple of hundred bucks on eBay, if you want to go that route. Adding the Joker Bug to it is going to add to the cost. A LOT. I’m talking thousands (I haven’t looked in ages but I think a 800w Joker is about six grand).
Secondly, you probably don’t actually need for it to be daylight balanced. Well, you do if you are photographing or shooting video of this whole thing, but I got the impression that this was just for a live audience’s benefit. If that’s the case, don’t bother with daylight balancing. Unlike film or camera sensors, people’s eyeballs adapt easily and mix light temperatures with no problem. In your living room at home right now is probably a television set (daylight) in a room full of tungsten lighting. You never think “Wow the TV is so blue” or look at your spouse and think “Wow they are so orange,” because in a live situation like that your brain instantly adapts. If the difference is just too stark, add some CTB gel to the source four (you might only need a little to make it pleasant looking, say 1/4), and save yourself enough money to buy a fairly nice motorcycle.
Thirdly, you said you need “dimmability,” but you won’t be able to appreciably dim the Joker, what you get is (mostly) what you get. With a tungsten Source Four you can put it on a dimmer and dial in exactly how much you need, even low levels.
But yep, a Source Four is what you need. Since you said you needed low light levels, even a Source Four Mini might be more than enough. Tiny and cheap.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I don’t think there is a term for that, other than “dancing with changing backgrounds.” At least in my 30+ years in the biz, I’ve never heard of one.
If, by some rare chance, there is a name for that, it’s going to be such an unknown and obscure term that when you use it you will have to follow it with “You know, dancing with changing backgrounds.”
Kinda like the “Vertigo” shot, which is technically called a “trombone.” 95% of the time if you mention a “trombone” shot you’ll get a quizzical look, and then have to say “You know when you dolly in and zoom out at the same time, you know, a ‘Vertigo’ shot”… people are just not familiar with the term.
I think this is the same case… except I don’t think there actually is a name for that.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Even though they use the same space, Cobert’s set is a fair bit more “inimate” than Letterman’s was, and I’m sure that creates some issues with the lighting plot. And, as Mark said, there are all the video walls (which I don’t really care for) that come into play and I’m sure that affects things, too.
I find the video walls distracting, and also make the backgrounds look very flat and compressed… Colbert looks like he is sitting right in front of them two feet away, when I’m sure there is actually much greater distance. They should consider blurring the sources in them. Letterman, on the other hand, with his NYC model background, looked very deep, even though it wasn’t (the design of the background portion of that set was really brilliant, with a lot of phony perspectives that really gave the illusion of depth).
With Colbert I have noticed a couple of times that talent slipped out of the lights. Obviously they are still trying to figure out what all space might be used. Letterman’s set was very broadly lit, as you never knew what he might do. In fact, an operator with a handheld camera was always on stage, just in case David decided to walk backstage or out the side door onto 53rd street. They would sometimes go days or weeks without taking this camera, but it was always ready.
One thing that is bugging me a little with Colbert is camera blocking. When he’s center stage in the hero monologue spot, they have the main camera above his eyeline (significantly above it). Letterman’s man camera was slightly below eyeline, which I believe is a much better look in that situation… it’s definitely stronger. The above-the-eyeline shot makes Colbert look weaker, the set look smaller, and makes vertical lines in the set unpleasantly converge.
Many years ago I was lucky enough to attend a taping of the show… Johnny Carson. Almost unbelievably, it was a night when Johnny, Ed, and Doc were all there, which seemed rare in later years. Most people were surprised at how smallish that stage actually was, which seemed so massive on TV. They always framed shots so you never saw both sides of the rainbow curtain… either the left edge or the right edge but never both, and the illusion really worked.
Personally, some people think it would be sacrilegious, but I think they should rename Studio 50 from the Ed Sullivan Theatre to the David Letterman Theatre… or at least the Sullivan-Letterman Theatre. It’s not like the place was being “honored” before… it was a falling-down rat hole before Letterman moved in. And as far as “legacy” goes, Letterman’s show was in the theatre for significantly longer than Sullivan’s was.
As far as late night programming goes… if you haven’t watched Craig Ferguson’s replacement, James Corden following Colbert on CBS, give him a try. He’s pretty talented, self effacing, shameless, and quite quite entertaining.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I understand, but the point is that if they decide to make trouble about it (to any degree), the cost to you to fight them (even if it is just the cost of aggravation) will far outweigh the benefits from being able to sell the footage.
I understand that you are mad at this client and feel the need to “win” this battle. But as long as they are keeping you bunched up and hassling over this, they are the ones who are winning.
I’d wash my hands of them, move on, and consider myself the winner for putting a bad client behind me, and forget about them.
But that’s just me….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I think Armando is likely completely in the right here.
Although, at least here in the US anyone can sue anyone for anything.
My question would be, what would be the benefit of fighting the company? I don’t know that much about stock footage (I buy plenty of it, but I’ve never sold any), but from what I hear from the people that do, it’s not exactly a cash cow, and I’ve only heard of a couple of people ever who made any significant cash from selling footage. I would ask whether you are actually making so much money off this particular eyeglass footage that it is worth fighting the company to keep it available? I would sure doubt it.
If that were the unlikely case, then take the footage down… buy your own eyeglasses, and shoot new footage to sell.
I just find it hard to believe that there would be such a rush with the public clamoring enough to buy this footage at top dollar to make it worth fighting with the company for more than about five seconds.
I do think he is probably right… but I also think the fight is oh-so-not worth it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I seriously doubt it. The C300 is so power-hungry anyway it would be a very tall order to ask the little 7.5 volt camera battery to power the camera and an external monitor. Even if you could figure out a way, that would sure sap the battery in a hurry.
There are some rigs out there (mostly for handheld configurations, etc.), that include a goldmount or V-mount battery plate on them, so that you can power the camera from a brick for a more robust power source. If you got one of those you could use the power-tap jack that is on the side of the goldmount plate to power an additional device, such as the monitor. Those batteries would be enough to power both the camera and the battery (and they have the electronics inside to convert the 14v brick juice down to what the camera needs.
We too use an external monitor with our C300, but I power it separately. I bought a 12v monitor and wired a goldmount plate onto the back of it, so it is powered by its own battery. Works great.
BTW, those EXT1 and EXT2 jacks on the camera are not only not LEMO connectors, they are not three-pin, either. They are so small I haven’t bothered counting them, but there’s about 20 pins in one of them, and about 20 holes in the other (if you haven’t noticed, one jack is male and the other is female, it is impossible to cross-connect and put the wrong cable in the wrong jack, even though they are numbered).
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I’m going to give that a groan… but also with a mild slow clap.
Not bad.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I wasn’t familiar with this show, but I went online and watched a couple of trailers.
I’m betting some quick Googling would find production notes that would tell you exactly how they did it… if I wasn’t heading home in three minutes I’d look myself
BUT… my guess (and the way I would do it) is that is it a combination of contact lenses and post production.
The robots (at least the ones I saw) all have very iridescent green eyes, very large pupils, and dark rings around the irises. Those are easy enough to do with contacts, there are a couple of places online where you can readily buy FX hand-painted contacts in all kinds of creepy variations (I’ve been wanting to buy a pair of the all-black ones for Halloween for a couple of years, but I think they were about $400 and I didn’t want them that bad).
Those combined with a little bit of “intensification” in post would certainly do the trick. Eye reflections showed frequent tall/narrow lighting sources as well.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
