[Todd Terry]

[Rich Rubasch] “Todd do you do anything unique or fun after the project is delivered?”

YES!… cash the check.

But seriously, no, not really. We work for the same agencies over and over again, and have for years (and often projects overlap so that we are continually working for the same client). You know, after a while it’s just another gig. We make sure they leave happy, usually we just leave with a “See you next week”… or next month or next summer, or however soon we know the next project is coming up.

We do have one big client that we regularly do medium-sized projects with… but a couple or three times a year we do a really big one with them. After those we’ll usually tell our client “Next week we’re taking you to lunch, no business talk,” and we’ve done that a few times. Sometimes they beat us to the punch and make the offer themselves.

But we’ve never really done anything “fun.” Maybe we should. I’m thinking bowling. Or miniature golf is always good.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Scratching my head to wonder why a brand-spanking-new COW member would use their inaugural post to ask a question in a dead four-year-old thread……….

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’m no fanboy of any particular brand (though I’d likely not buy a Panasonic), and have shot just about anything and everything through the years. I presently own two Sony cameras, four Canon cameras, and could probably still scrounge up a couple of film cameras if I cracked enough cases in studio storage.

My camera choice all depends on what in particular I’m going to shoot, and how I want to shoot it. Different cameras for things. Right now I shoot the C300PL as my primary camera, because that’s what usually fits my needs. I mostly shoot broadcast commercials, and usually I’m trying for a cinematic “storyteller” look, and for that the C300 is perfect. Would I ever use it to shoot sports, though? Likely not… for that I’d probably pick one of my Sonys. For an ENG-style run-n-gun setup… probably not either. I’d likely still shoot one of my Canon cameras, but not the C300.

You definitely need to look at your projects (or potential ones) and see what features, form, and look fit the way you do things. Or the way you want to do things. The C300 is a good example of that with us, as it is so light sensitive that it has drastically changed the way I light. I used to travel with a truckload of lighting gear including bigass HMI instruments… but now I light almost exclusively with battery powered LED fixtures (and am so free from never having to run stingers or look for power). The C300 beats the pants off most cameras as far as low-light capability goes, up to 20,000 ISO (and you don’t really get any noise until about 16,000.. and even then it looks very organic, more like film grain than video noise). Our next camera will likely be the C300 MarkII (an unbelievable 100,000 ISO), but I could definitely change my mind before that if our needs change.

I think this thread is in danger over being “over-spec’ed” to death… it’s always a danger when camera conversation evolves predominately into a discussion of “technical specs” rather than “looks.” There are several people that I know on different (non-COW) forums that are the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met when it comes to camera specs… they can discuss all the bits and pieces and particulars all day, from gamma curves to exposure latitudes to sensor bayering and everything in between. I am humbled at their sheer knowledge and they make me feel stupid. But you know what?… look a their work and you’ll quickly see that two of these guys who are the most knowledgeable are (quite sadly) the most incompetent cinematographers you’d ever want to meet. They just have no eye for composition, framing, or even rudimentarily adequate lighting designs. Tech experts, they are… DPs, they are not.

Check and pay attention to all the technical goings-on, certainly. But in the end, when choosing a camera there are only two test instruments that really matter… your eyeballs.

So… while specs are important, its good not to wallow in them. Don’t get bogged down in the science and end up sacrificing the art.

On a completely different note… as an extreme old-time host of this forum I’m really glad to see some lively traffic in here. It had been ghost town slow in the recent past.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I don’t know about a successor to the XF300 exactly, but Canon certainly hasn’t abandoned the traditional video camera market in favor of DSLRs.

The C100, C300, and C500 are fantastic cameras, and function exactly like traditional high-end video cameras, and not at all like DSLRs.

They have all the exact controls, abilities and behaviors of previous Canon video cameras (much more, actually). So far at least the C300 has been just about my favorite camera ever.

Of course the “C” line has a fairly unusual body shape that is ergonomically different from past Canon video cameras, but they are not at all like DSLR bodies either. They are ergonomically really more like cine cameras, more like the size/shape/weight and balance as a 35mm motion picture camera body, which I’m sure is not by accident. Any of these can be rigged into handheld configurations that work and balances just fine, as you are used to.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

That is exactly, precisely our situation. We work for a number of advertising agencies, they do all of their print (and sometimes web) in-house, and then farm their TV production work out to us. One or two of them do have some production capabilities in house, and they take care of lower-end stuff themselves (which is fine by me), and then have us do their higher-end stuff.

Our marketing to these companies has been purely word of mouth. Most of the time they have sought us out from finding out who did other work they they were aware of.

I don’t think we’ve ever gone “knocking on doors” to solicit an ad agency, but I sure wouldn’t be opposed to it and that’s the best way (I would think) to reach ad agencies, rather that some other form of marketing.

The thing is (and this will not be true in, say, Chicago or New York), unless you live in a larger-than-medium-sized city there will be a finite number of agencies that are potential clients… ergo it is not outside the possibility of just making a list of all the potential ones, calling up and asking if you can drop by and briefly meet the creative director.

When you get an advertising agency client, work your butt off to do the best work you can for them… because in many cases an agency will choose a production company to do all their work for all their clients. Now and then you’ll find one that likes to use multiple companies depending on the project (we have one like that) and that’s more common in very big agencies… but by and large if advertising agencies have someone they like, they tend to stick with them for the majority of their work. We have one agency client that we work for occasionally, because they do have a couple of other companies (in other cities, they are a mutli-city agency) they like to use as well… but for the most part our agencies use us for all of their clients’ work. So try to keep them very happy. Of course it’s important to make an individual mom-n-pop client happy, but agencies much more so.

Also, join your local AdFed chapter and go to their monthly meetings (usually a lunch) and meet-n-greet and network.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[James McVee] “Should I just bring them into Premiere and then color correct and adjust it in there and then just export ProRes HQ clips.”

That’s pretty much exactly what I’d do.

I’d definitely just import the native files into Premiere. Here, all our suites run Matrox machines (Matrox MX02, currently with CS6), so in our case my personal choice would be to export Matrox uncompressed AVI files for the very best quality we can do… but those are only useful to someone who has Matrox boards in their computers. So in this case since you are handing off the footage I’d ask the client what their preferred format is (which might indeed be ProRes) and give them the best quality possible in the desired format.

But yes, you workflow assumptions are correct…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Rob Gutermuth] “I guess I’ve been of the mindset that the cameras are still separate in my head”

I completely agree, I’m definitely not a DSLR fanboy for cine work. We’ve used our T2i and 6D on rare occasions for “emergency” motion footage work, but I hate it hate it hate it. Don’t get me wrong, a DSLR is a fantastic tool, but for cine work I still think it’s a wrench when you need a screwdriver.

[Rob Gutermuth] “good glass is good glass, and my guess is that 20 years from now, these lenses will be a fortune to buy new”

Very very true. Newer is definitely not better when it comes to glass. My most-used lenses are from the 80s (Panavision re-barreled Leitz/Leica f/1.3 primes) and it would be almost impossible to find “new” lenses today that are comparable, without spending roughly the equivalent of a new decent-sized house (literally). I know a couple of big-time DPs who prefer not to shoot with anything made after 1965. The Cooke Speed Panchros from the 1960s are especially in huge demand by feature-film DPs, and if you can find them they cost several times what they did when new.

[Rob Gutermuth] “how well does the C300 work in something like iAF”

Couldn’t say, I manual-focus only, my lenses are all PL mount (as is my camera body), so obviously there is no auto-anything. I focus the old-school Hollywood way… with my bare hand like an animal (well, with a follow-focus rig). It is my understanding that the upcoming C300 MarkII has some fairly advanced autofocusing (in the EF mount version only, obviously), but couldn’t say how well it works.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Rob Gutermuth] “So your upgrade path was to the C300 – sure, but it’s $15K with lenses, correct?….”

Well, we got the C300 when they first came out. The body was, if I recall, $20,000 then. Major price drop though, you can buy it for $6500 now. That should make me go “Grrrr!’ (and does a little bit), but I really don’t begrudge it as the C300 has been worth every penny. Canon has slashed the current C300 prices because the C300 MarkII will be out later this year ($16,000 for the body).

As for “with lenses,” it just depends on the glass you want. I shoot superspeed primes that are worth several times as much as the camera body… but on the rare occasions that I use a zoom I use a dirt-cheap vintage Russian Foton zoom that you could probably buy for a grand or less. I’ve used the same lenses with multiple cameras through the years (the C300, the H1, and 35mm film cameras).

That part is wildly variable… you can get a Canon SLR EF mount zoom (admittedly pretty crappy) for $200… or you can get a set of matched Cooke PL mount primes for $100,000+.

Canon presently has two lenses that are on my wish list… but I don’t have them (yet… maybe someday) because they both clock in at just under $40K each.

The good thing about glass though is that it holds its value. Just about every piece of gear we own starts depreciating like crazy the second you drive it off the lot (especially anything computer or electronic-camera related), but lenses do not. In some cases lenses even appreciate…. we paid more for our primes than the previous owner did, and if I were to sell them today I could get substantially more for them than I paid myself. I always beg people to not skimp on lenses… they are definitely the top of importance in the food chain, and your images will never be any better than your worst piece of glass.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I can’t comment about the “vs” situation, but I’ll gladly chime in about the H1.

The H1 was, and remains, one of my favorite cameras of all time. I used it daily for about 5 years before retiring it a couple of years ago (although we didn’t use it “stock,” we used it with a P+S Technik 35mm lens adapter and cine primes). It’s just an awesome awesome camera.

And you hit the nail on the head about control. One of the things I loved about the H1 (and same with the C300 that I shoot now), is that there are tons of actual real physical buttons/switches on the camera… if you want to dial in a slightly different color temperature, or almost any other change, you can do that on the fly and never have to stop and dig into a menu (hate menus). That and its picture performance is just incredible. With our lens converter we were able to intercut it with real 35mm film on a number of occasions and it was absolutely seamless.

When we retired it, I thought about selling it, but it broke my heart to think that I could only get about $1500 for what was a $10,000 camera, so we kept it (same for the lens converter, which was $13,000 new, and I’d be lucky to get $500 now). So we are definitely keeping it as a backup rig. I will say that we have had to replace the “guts” of the camera (tape transport mechanism, heads, etc.) twice, but considering that was over several years and very heavy use, I’m not complaining about that. It also has four dead pixels but they really don’t show up unless we crank the gain way up in dark situations, so that’s not too much of a factor.

I’ve considered buying a recorder to use with it, but like yours ours is an early-model H1 before the audio signal was embedded in the HD-SDI (I still don’t know why Canon did that) so it limits our recorder choice, but as was pointed out it still can be done.

In your case I definitely wouldn’t ditch the H1.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Thanks for the confirmation, Greg… when first hearing the project I was thinking something in the $1200-1500 range myself, so your numbers are right in line there.

Going by the “suggested guidelines” on one of the voice sites we use, based on average per-minute rates this track would be pushing $4K and I know our client wouldn’t entertain that rate.

Fortunately we don’t have to do any translation, the script is being provided (or will be, the client has decided to handle that). And fortunately we don’t have to worry about any dubbing, producing, marrying, or syncing at all… the gig is simply to get a script recorded and hand the audio track to the client, so it doesn’t have to “fit” any existing English production.

The last time I put out a casting call for Spanish voice work I had great response, probably 100+ auditions and we hired three great voices who did a terrific job. No doubt I can easily find good people to choose from again, but I just wanted to offer a rate that was both fair to talent and didn’t break the bank. It’s really a super-easy and brainless job on our part, I just didn’t know what numbers to budget.

I’m always amazed at how the internet has changed voiceover work… when we used to get tapes in from the few big VO agents in NY or LA. For that last Spanish gig when it came time to pay the talent, one of them was in LA (no surprise there), but the other two were in Ecuador and Colombia. Small world getting smaller.

T2

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