No subsitute for doing it yourself! OT Rant!

James Green wrote on 1/2/2005, 4:44 PM
I wish people would get it through their heads around here that you trust your equipment, not just your eyes when you are on a shoot!
I've been working on a grant film for the University of Texas Health Science Center and one of the sequences involved our narrator and host standing in front of a green wall here in the studio so I could key in a special background and do some CG. Because of scheduling, I had to edit and allocate a spot in this 30 minute video for this sequence but had the shoot waaaay later. I couldn't be there for the shoot but the person heading up this project insisted on using another shooter who, to her credit shot some very nice stuff outdoors but has never lit or shot against a green screen.
So I meet the shooter, map out the lighting...I go into the studio, adjust the light grid, mark with tape on the floor and number where our other lights (kickers, fill, back and key) are supposed to go, then set the talents marks and the marks where even the tripod legs must for the three setups.
I gave a checklist of things to do (cuz you don't leave anything to chance right?) from white balancing to slate to the camera height...
It was a packaged shoot...just connect the dots!
I'll be damned if the shooter did everything right except:
The camera we are using is the AG-DVC80. When I saw the footage composition was perfect, just like the plans but everything was way dark! Unusable and you can forget about keying! What the hell happened? Turns out that the shooter set the filter to 5600k ND....everything looked washed out on the camera's flip out LCD but putting the filter on fixed everything she said! Fixed is right! Now I'm being screamed at to deliver this video that I had to re-edit and they want me to figure out how to fill that 30 seconds shat they screwed up plus the 30 seconds on either side of where the sequence was supposed to go because we had 30 seconds of lead in and lead out for this critical part! I couldn't just fut it completely because it would have affected the continuity of the video and narration! THIS SUCKS!

The moral? With almost an $8k payday on the line, insist on waiting to shoot until you are available....would have saved me.

Feels a little bit better...sorry bout ranting here. If I do it the the people responsible here, it might take me out of the running for a well paying series that is developing out of this project. Sorry.

Thanks for listening...er....reading...
James Green

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/2/2005, 4:59 PM
That definitely sucks. When its my payday on the line, Ill never trust anyone else to do it the way I want. All the shooter should have done was power up the camera and click record. Send her back to film school.
rmack350 wrote on 1/2/2005, 5:26 PM
It's very bad when you hire someone who can't do the job and, yeah, it's good to do the job yourself. But you also need to be able to replace yourself when circumstances require it. This means you need to charge enough to be able to afford to hire a professional to replace you. It also means that you need to hire people at times when you can be at the shoot so that you can see if they're good.

You've got to have a pool of people you trust because if you get busy you can't always be there.

Rob Mack
farss wrote on 1/2/2005, 6:53 PM
Not that any of this helps but this is a big problem for any business. In my past life I was forever chasing down goo sheet metal workers, not ones for making basic stuff like ac ducts but ones that could make something complex and have all the bits fit together.
So I'd find a good guy, the we'd flood him with work and he'd hire more staff and then the quality would go out the window. In the end I went back to a guy I'd used years before, I only told those I worked with on a strictly need to know basis so they wouldn;t flood him with work and I kept him just for doing the prototypes, that way we had a model to give check our drawings against etc.
But you're right, trust no one, even those with more experience than yourself, after all when things go pear shaped it's your name and money on the line.

BTW, speaking about CK, there's some excellent tips in the DV Enlightenment DVD about setting up a green screen, a trick or two that I'd never thought of.
Bob.
rmack350 wrote on 1/2/2005, 8:21 PM
I think you could find someone you'd trust enough to get the exposure right. At the very least she could have looked at zebras.

But, yeah, there's a limit to how much you can trust someone. That limit varies. It's good to find people you can trust a lot. Gives you a little more freedom.

Rob Mack
James Green wrote on 1/2/2005, 8:26 PM
Yeah, I hear you all, problem is, I didn't have a lot of say in hiring this replacement. She was hired at the insistence of the woman heading up this project. Honestly, it was a political decision. The project is a womens health video and all while I was shooting this, she woman with the grant kept saying that this project should have a woman working on it too. She could have scheduled when I was available but was too worried about kissing up to some local "bigwigs" and wanted to show that her commitment to "women" extended beyond just making this video.
Not busting on the fairer sex or anything but that's a BS reason to hire anyone. The thing that mainly pissed me off was the attempt to drop the failure of this shoot in my lap when i didn't have any say in the decision anyway. It took me forever to explain to her that it couldn't "just" make it work. She still wants it in the show so I will just charge her for another day of shooting. She's the one who's gonna look bad and the talent is gonna know what's going on when they have to do the same routine over again but with a different shooter.

James Green
rmack350 wrote on 1/2/2005, 8:51 PM
Usually this sort of thing gets blamed on equipment. Just not yours.

Politically, a women's health video should have women working on it, if possible. Besides, there's a very different atmosphere to a crew that has men and women instead of just men. Everyone behaves a little better.

At least you can charge for the overage. Try to be a good sport and save face for everyone. Make your client look good to her client.

Rob Mack
James Green wrote on 1/2/2005, 9:25 PM
There are women working on this shoot...the producer and director.

"Make your client look good to her client."

By doing my job well, she will look good for her client, and I'm always diplomatic (kinda why i'm ranting here, not to her and definately not in front of the guys from UT). Trust me, she's at every shoot and even the layperson can tell she's out of her element in video production.

JG
apit34356 wrote on 1/2/2005, 9:41 PM
James, have you tried using masks on the darken material? Since you can not chromakey it, just use masks, alot more work, but then you can brighten the image up. Since its a science project, maybe you can make the darken image appear to be a Holograph or a old tv broadcast image in front of the special effects they wanted you to add..
James Green wrote on 1/2/2005, 10:01 PM
I can't mask it. The talent is walking moving around. Plus the whole image is dark...the greenscreen, the talent...playing around with the gain, gamma, color correction, brightness/contrast won't fix it. trying to pass the image off as something else will look exactly like that...like i took a screwed up shot and tried to pass it off like i did it on purpose...trying to turn it into some sort of motif shot will only make it look out of place with the rest of the video.

James Green
MUTTLEY wrote on 1/2/2005, 10:15 PM
Next time ya need a hand in Texas gimme a shout, I'm always looking for a gig !

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
apit34356 wrote on 1/2/2005, 10:16 PM
have you tried to put a len flare effect,low int, on the individual, just to brighten the face?