[Todd Terry]

999 times out of a thousand you don’t have to worry about logos at all. People seem to get all up in arms about that, but really it’s virtually a non-issue.

If there was a complete avoidance of all logos, it would be almost impossible to make a movie these days, anywhere except on a completely sanitized soundstage. Watch the scenes shot on location the next time you see a movie or TV show. If they were to avoid all logos, you’d never see an actor drive a car, take a drink, make a phone call, pick up a pencil, use a computer, wear clothes, or even walk down the street. Logos can’t be avoided in today’s world… and that’s fine. Yes, some of the logos you see are “cleared” (and many of them are purposeful product placements), but many many are not.

Showing a logo incidentally is a total non-issue (someone wearing a Polo shirt with the horseman logo on it, a character driving a Mercedes with the hood ornament visible, or someone using an iPhone). All that’s fine, you don’t even have to think twice about it. What you can’t do, is use that logo in a disparaging or negative way (i.e., conjecturing that the Polo shirts are poorly made, that Mercedes was the preferred car of the Nazis, or that the iPhones are made in Chinese sweatshops). Well, you can show them in that light, but that risks becoming libelous and much more likely to find you on the business end of a cease-and-desist mandate, or at worst, a lawsuit.

So, mostly you don’t have to worry about it at all. If you want to play it safe, just avoid logos of companies with reputations of being litigious about it (i.e., Disney, etc.), but you don’t have to go crazy about it by any means.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Hi Tiffany…

I don’t want to be one of those “I don’t have an answer but I will chime in anyway” people (don’t you hate those?), but I will… because I don’t want you waiting around for an answer that might never come.

I’d be very surprised if you were to find anyone in this forum who has ever dealt with that combination.

That’s for three reasons… the C500 is not shot very much. While there are tons of C300 shooters (me included), there’s just not many shooting the 500 at all. Secondly, those that do shoot 4K. I don’t believe I’ve ever even talked to a C500 shooter who shot 2K. And lastly, the vast majority of the “C” users (C100, C300, C500) are cutting either with Premiere or FCP (mostly with Premiere, I’m betting)… not many with AVID.

So I think the combination of those three less-than-popular things (C500 x 2K x AVID) is going to make it hard to find someone here who has done exactly that.

Now, I’m sure someone has, it’s just that you might not find them in this forum. So my suggestion is, to ask in the various AVID forums, both COW and otherwise. You’ll at least narrow your pool down to people that you know use that particular editing platform, and might get lucky that way.

Good luck!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well Collin, as for which big-sensor cameras to consider…

Just some guesses, but we don’t know a lot of things about you. Firstly, we don’t know what kind of projects you might be using a camera for… we don’t know your skill level or proficiency (although you say “I am not a pro” in an earlier post), we don’t know what kind of gear (especially lenses, and other support equipment) that you already have that might help choose your next camera, and among the most important things, we don’t know what your budget is.

That being said, I’ll just throw some things out there…

This being the Canon forum, and me personally being a Canon fanboy, everything I’m going to mention is by Canon, and specifically cameras in the “C” line.

If the sky is the limit, you can’t beat the still-to-come C300 MarkII. That might be out of your price range (the body will be $16,000), but I think it’s going to be a fantastic camera (it will be our next one, it’s not available for a few months).

Going one click down the food chain is the C300 (the current version). This is the camera that I shoot every day, and it’s fantastic… I’ve been doing this 30 years and it’s my favorite camera ever. When we started research for our next camera three years ago we considered everything from all the way up to to the Arri Alexa all the way down to the RED Scarlett, and on paper nothing could beat the C300… and we have been MORE than happy with it. Right now it’s a bargain too… when we bought ours the MSRP for the body was $20,000, but now it sells for $7,000. Worth every penny.

Those may be overkill for you though (again, only basing this on you saying “I am not a pro”), as they are very high-end cameras. I do this every day for a living creating broadcast television commercials, so for me these cameras make sense… for someone not doing that, for hobbyists or “weekend warriors” or such, they might not make financial sense or be worth such an investment. So here’s the one I will really recommend…

The C100.

It’s the baby brother to the C300… it’s a pretty amazing camera, and the body is only $3000 (when they first came out it was more than twice that). And you can get it in an EF lens mount, so a gigantic assortment of Canon EF lenses (some of which are very affordable) are available.

Of course, there are zillions of other cameras out there now, and quite a few big-sensor ones, some of them we’d consider “low end” but still generate incredible images, and some very inexpensively these days. Unfortunately I don’t really know much about those, as I usually shoot higher-end gear (that sounds snobby… but that’s just the way it is… doing fairly high-end pro work for a living we tend to buy higher-end gear, only natural… and I don’t really have the opportunity to get to play with some of the more budget-minded gear, sadly, because some of it is incredibly good). You might ask over in the cinematography forum, give a range of what you are interested in spending, and no doubt will get a lot of good advice from the good people in there.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Everything in our industry is so expensive because… well, because it can be, I guess. This might bear looking elsewhere… at the Halloween industry.

One of my little joys in life is rigging up a bunch of spooky stuff at the house to scare Trick-or-Treaters once a year. I call it the Frightober Spooktacular Scare-a-bration (I really should trademark that).

Anywho, for that I buy a lot of stuff from a company called FrightProps… they make props, motors, actuators, controllers, lighting… etc. Well made stuff that is actually quite cheap.

I know I’ve seen in the past they have things like flicker generators and lighting controllers that might do the trick… there might be something usable there. https://frightprops.com

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Interesting, Alan… never known a Mini35 hoarder..ha.

Mine has been packed away in the studio for more than two years… it’s the XL version with the coupling unit for Canon XL cameras.

It’s heartbreaking how much and how fast stuff depreciates. When we bought the Mini35 and the XLH1, that was about a $24,000 investment. Just a few years later, they are practically worthless. I thought about selling them when we moved to the C300, but used H1’s were only getting about $1500 or so, and the Mini35 even less than that. I couldn’t bear to let them part for so little, so there they sit.

At least lenses (good ones, anyway) don’t depreciate. We used to rent a superspeeds primes set when needed but at $350 a day it got expensive (and you had to plan ahead to book with the cine rental house) so we eventually bought our own. That was painful (a lot more expensive than the cameras themselves), but like most good cine lenses they haven’t lost value, they’ve actually appreciated.

I mostly shoot primes but now and then a zoom is called for… I just wish those were more reasonable. They two zooms that I’d really like are $47,000 and $43,000… ouch. When I need a zoom I use my vintage Russian Foton 37-140mm. It’s slow but very beautiful… and significantly more affordable.

Oops… I’m late for a location shoot… Collin I’ll try to answer your camera question when I get back in.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, a few thoughts…

[collin leslie] “I had one person tell me on another site that I should ditch my 2 Canon XH-A1’s and try a DSLR.”

That’s not surprising advice. The DoF converters were absolutely amazing in their day, but that day has pretty much long-since passed now… the technology kinda falls into the “quaint” territory now. Your camera/converter setup isn’t quite ideal… since you are using a converter that attaches to the front of your camera’s existing lens… the result is a little cumbersome and requires a lot of tweaking to get just right, and then you still have a bit of a Frankenstein-esque rig. When I was doing it with the XLH1, that setup didn’t use the camera lens at all… the Mini35 converter attaches directly to the camera body, so it was really a very self-contained rig that always stayed together and was pretty much just like using any other camera… if it had been more complicated than that, I might not have been such a fan of DoF conversion.

[collin leslie] “What are your thoughts on DSLR’s for video?”

I’m generally not a fan. At all. Tons of people have shot incredible footage with DSLRs and they have plenty of fanboys… but sorry, that’s just not what they were made for. DSLRs are incredible tools… but if you are primarily shooting video, they are a wrench when you need a screwdriver. If you primarily shoot stills and occassionaly need to shoot video, then a DSLR is the way to go. If not, then get a proper video camera.

[collin leslie] ”
I might end up just selling everything and going for a whole new set of camera and lenses”

If you are going to ditch the gear you have, I’d go with a big-sensor video camera… there are plenty in the lower-price range now.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Can’t say for sure what your problem is, but could make some observations… I haven’t shot with your particular camera/converter/lens combo, but until moving to a big-sensor camera about three years ago I shot tons of 35mm DoF-converted footage and when done right the results could be pretty amazing.

But first of all…

[collin leslie] “I know things like shutter speed need to be low when using a 35mm adapter.”

No, not at all. Your shutter speed shouldn’t be any different than when shooting without your adapter. Unless you are trying for a particular effect (such as the choppy “narrow shutter” look) you should try to shoot in the “normal” shutter speed range… “normal” being the equivalent of a 180° shutter in a film camera, which is “one over twice the frame rate.” Therefore if you are shooting 24fps, a normal shutter speed would be 1/48th. If you are shooting 30fps, it’s 1/60th, etc. That’s going to give you the proper motion blur your brain needs to interpret motion as smooth, no matter whether you are using a DoF converter or not.

Now that that’s out of the way…

You said your footage looks “grainy and crappy.” Grainy footage can pretty much be one of only two possible things, the converter’s groundglass, or the camera gain.

I’ve never used the Letus, I’m assuming it has a moving groundglass (either spinning or oscilating?). If the glass isn’t moving (either the thing isn’t turned on, isn’t getting power, or due to a malfunction) that’s big trouble. I used the P+S Technik Mini35 converter (with the Canon XLH1), and although it automatically starts the glass oscillation when you trigger the camera, there was a time or two that didn’t work properly and that definitely creates grain issue.

More likely though is you are shooting with your camera gain set too high… what are your settings? It should be set at zero if at all possible… and if not, still as low as you can get. And certainly never on “auto.”

I think one of your issues could be your lens… it’s really slow at 1:3.5-5.6 so combined with a light-eating DoF converter unless you are shoot sunny exteriors or very brightly-lit interiors no doubt you are having to jack up gain for proper exposures. I only shot with superspeed primes which are really fast (f.1.3) and even then I needed quite a high lighting level for interiors, which makes me really think you have a gain issue. When I was DoF converting I never even tried to use a zoom, the one I have is just too slow… sadly really fast real cine zooms are roughly the price of a new BMW… literally.

You didn’t mention it, but are you getting depths of field that are shallow enough for your taste? If not, that’s due to that lens as well. Firstly, it’s quite wide… the longer the lens the shallower the DoF will potentially be, and 18-55mm is pretty darn wide. You’ll really only see really shallow DoFs at, oh, around 50mm+ and you don’t have much in that range. Plus with the lens being pretty slow, with it at f3.5 at 18mm and jumping all the way up to f/5.6 at 55mm, your depths of field are going to be quite deep.

So… my two pieces of advice would be to 1) check the gain to make sure it is not jacked up, and 2) try a better/faster/longer lens.

I’m kinda glad to hear someone still using lens converters… they were super cool technology in their day. Unfortunately both DSLRs and today’s big-sensor cameras have pretty much killed them off. My Mini35 converter cost me $13,000 when it was new, if I were to try to sell it now I’d probably just cry, I doubt I could get $500 for it… on a good day.

Let us know how it comes out….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Aaron Cadieux] “Having both spots run during the 10PM run is a great idea!”

Yep, Nick is on to something there, I should have thought of that option myself. Definitely see if they will let you do that, you’ll be much better off.

One of the big things that makes television advertising effective is frequency… the more often you see something, the better, even if it is not for as long a period of time in the long run.

You probably think you see McDonalds commercials all the time, right? Sure seems that way… but you don’t really. McDonalds (usually) only advertises in alternate months… in the months they do advertise, that allows them to cram tons of spots in, very high frequency, and gives you the impression that McD’s is on the air constantly. They sacrifice alternate months in order to increase their frequency 2x during the months that they do advertise… for the same yearly budget.

So yep, if they will give you both spots in the same show, I think that’s the way to go. Personally I’d also see if they’d give you both of them in the second half hour…. not in the same break, of course, but in adjacent breaks would be fine. Actually, even in the same break would be ok if they will let you “bookend” them (the first and last spot of the break).

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

It’s hard to say.

To be honest, I’ve never heard of Destination America so I don’t know what the reach there is. But, on the surface it seems that $2K could be fairly cheap for :60 of time on any kind of national cable channel, even a low-tier one.

Remember, you are not just paying for time, you are paying for eyeballs, so what is important is not only how many potential households the channel reaches, but how many people actually watch it. They might be on every cable system in the country, but if they are Channel 938 and literally no one even knows they are there, that’s a different story. Or they might be wildly popular, I just don’t know (I watch broadcast television at home and don’t even have cable… which I realize is quite hypocritical for someone who produces it for a living).

They can tell you that popularity though… what you are looking for is GRP (gross ratings points) of the channel and you’ll be able to determine how many viewers are actually being reached, and how much each set of eyeballs is costing you. This might be the time to use a media buyer, if you can find one that will help you. A buyer will instantly be able to read through their propaganda and marketing mumbo jumbo and let you know if this is a decent deal. On the upside, it shouldn’t cost you anything to go that route, as a buyer will get an agency rate (lower than the one you were quoted) yet charge you the full rate, and they pocket the difference for their time. On the downside, it might be hard to find one that is all that interested in making a buy just for two :30 spots. If you have any friendly connections in any advertising agencies in your area, maybe their buyer would help you out just as a favor (or at minimum, give you some advice).

Now, of course they can’t tell you ratings points for your actual film, because it hasn’t aired yet… obviously. But they can make an educated guess based on the channel’s overall numbers and past performance of similar productions.

If they give you any say as to when your spot airs, I would request placement as deep into the show as possible (definitely in the second half hour). If it hits in the first commercial break, it might be lost on people who aren’t really committed to or invested in the movie, they might simply have not changed channels yet. One that is deep in the show is more likely to be watched by people who are sticking with it, engaged in the film and want to see more. Whatever break you get though, obviously the first spot in the commercial break is the most desirable one, but they might not go as far as letting you pick that exact position.

On the “unsolicited advice” front though, one question I’d have is whether the commercial you’ve produced will be effective. I don’t know your film or what it looks/sounds like, but in the commercial after the first :02 after the talent says “If you’ve enjoyed what you’re watching here tonight” there is absolutely nothing that connects the two separate films… the air version and the director’s cut… that could be wildly problematic since the titles are different. If the titles are very similar or associated (if they are calling it “Bridgewater: A Triangle of Doom”) and are using very similar graphics and logotypography, then you might have a good association. If however, they are calling it something completely unrelated (i.e., “Mysterious Worlds,” or whatever), and their marketing efforts look and feel completely different from yours, then my big concern would be whether any viewers actually associate the two together, much less realize that it’s actually the same project. Just something to think about.

It probably frustrates you that they changed the title, but I understand it. The “Bridgewater Triangle” is no doubt well known in that area, but most of the rest of us elsewhere in the country have never heard of it… and you wound up with a long seven-syllable title that doesn’t mean anything to people unfamiliar with it, to them it’s just clunky words. I’m always reminded of The Hudsucker Proxy, which was an absolutely fantastic movie that was totally killed by a clunky hard-on-the-ear title, that just sounded like a movie no one would want to see. Which is a shame, because it’s fantastic.

Hopefully the two projects will be closely associated with each other enough that you’ll get great benefit from the airing.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ahh… I didn’t know that the C100 did not have all the frame rates available, I was hoping it did… pity.

LOTS of commercial footage (for 24p productions) is shot at 30, 32, and/or 36fps… a lot of “slice of life” MOS footage you’ll see is shot at those frame rates. It slows things down just enough to make things look pretty and dreamy, but without being an obvious slow-mo.

T2

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