jlames
Well-known member
As most of you know, we were on an unscheduled shoot yesterday a=nd Rush asked how it went in another post. I had to answer this in a new post so here goes.
OK so here's the deal. We were fighting two things last night; sound and luminance. Woe be me for abandoning my old, trustworthy Trinitron and abandoning the girl I brought to the dance but we used a new WEGA 32" LCD yesterday as the main monitor instead of our standard, trusty, box Trinitron. Three camera shoot as you know and all were balanced to the monitor. Now here's where it gets weird. When we balanced the cameras, they ball looked great but on the playback in studio last night, the tape in Cam 2 was dark by 75%! Now, for some specific reasons, we switched tapes from Cam 2 to Cam 3 and back to Cam 2 on the shoot and the tape goes from dark to good to dark again. Yes the irises were corrected on all cameras. Yes the viewfinder on Cam 2 looked good. Yes all three cams looked good on the monitor and yes, a test of the camera in-studio or should I say out side the bungalo after the discovery resulted in perfect images. There's NO REASON I can think of, especially I'm looking right at the monitor on set-up and shooting and what was supposed to be going to tape looked fine but didn't. Has ANYONE got an idea what happened. The only thing we can think of is that the monitor somehow has an automatic brightness changer thingie I like to say in my technical jargon that senses a dark signal from a source and automatically adjusts the picture to a pre-determined good level so we couldn't judge the actual picture from the cams component outs What are your thoughts people. My turn to say Help.
As to the sound issue, never use HSR if you want a quiet stage. It's right under the 5 Freeway so while I was in our motorcoach the evening before (no it's not a camper; it's a half million dollar luxury home on wheels with great soundproofing and insulation!), all I heard all night was commerce in all its thunderous finery up and down the busiest freeway in the nation all night long...trucks up and down the freeway at 75 all night. On stage we're in the middle of takes, IN THE MIDDLE OF TAKES!!! and some guys traipsing through clanging "C" stands. Then the fax goes off interrupting again so I ask him if there's anyway to be quiet and he tells me, no kidding, with a stagefull of witnesses, "Well that fax is worth $1200 to me" so I say, "Well what about me. I'm paying $650 a day for this place!" So far we've got about 3 hours into sound post to remove all the bleed ambient sound in th place. So some of you might say, "Why didn't you just wrap and do it somewhere else?" Remember, we were on an unscheduled emergency shoot. The network moved the due date back a full week on us to today which was the basis for Rush's post question that this answers. SO we're going to tally the cost of the sound posting up, stop payment on the credit card charge and send a check for the balance or a sorry Charlie note explaining the problem. Yes the attorney was called last night (he's family) and he noted "right of expectation" as grounds for the charge. We have a right\, when we rent something, to expect that it will work...just like a car for example or a tractor or a ditch witch or whatever from a rental yard. If it doesn't work, you take it back and they don't charge you for it. Anyway word to the wise: HSR in Burbank; great people, lousy soundstage!
OK so here's the deal. We were fighting two things last night; sound and luminance. Woe be me for abandoning my old, trustworthy Trinitron and abandoning the girl I brought to the dance but we used a new WEGA 32" LCD yesterday as the main monitor instead of our standard, trusty, box Trinitron. Three camera shoot as you know and all were balanced to the monitor. Now here's where it gets weird. When we balanced the cameras, they ball looked great but on the playback in studio last night, the tape in Cam 2 was dark by 75%! Now, for some specific reasons, we switched tapes from Cam 2 to Cam 3 and back to Cam 2 on the shoot and the tape goes from dark to good to dark again. Yes the irises were corrected on all cameras. Yes the viewfinder on Cam 2 looked good. Yes all three cams looked good on the monitor and yes, a test of the camera in-studio or should I say out side the bungalo after the discovery resulted in perfect images. There's NO REASON I can think of, especially I'm looking right at the monitor on set-up and shooting and what was supposed to be going to tape looked fine but didn't. Has ANYONE got an idea what happened. The only thing we can think of is that the monitor somehow has an automatic brightness changer thingie I like to say in my technical jargon that senses a dark signal from a source and automatically adjusts the picture to a pre-determined good level so we couldn't judge the actual picture from the cams component outs What are your thoughts people. My turn to say Help.
As to the sound issue, never use HSR if you want a quiet stage. It's right under the 5 Freeway so while I was in our motorcoach the evening before (no it's not a camper; it's a half million dollar luxury home on wheels with great soundproofing and insulation!), all I heard all night was commerce in all its thunderous finery up and down the busiest freeway in the nation all night long...trucks up and down the freeway at 75 all night. On stage we're in the middle of takes, IN THE MIDDLE OF TAKES!!! and some guys traipsing through clanging "C" stands. Then the fax goes off interrupting again so I ask him if there's anyway to be quiet and he tells me, no kidding, with a stagefull of witnesses, "Well that fax is worth $1200 to me" so I say, "Well what about me. I'm paying $650 a day for this place!" So far we've got about 3 hours into sound post to remove all the bleed ambient sound in th place. So some of you might say, "Why didn't you just wrap and do it somewhere else?" Remember, we were on an unscheduled emergency shoot. The network moved the due date back a full week on us to today which was the basis for Rush's post question that this answers. SO we're going to tally the cost of the sound posting up, stop payment on the credit card charge and send a check for the balance or a sorry Charlie note explaining the problem. Yes the attorney was called last night (he's family) and he noted "right of expectation" as grounds for the charge. We have a right\, when we rent something, to expect that it will work...just like a car for example or a tractor or a ditch witch or whatever from a rental yard. If it doesn't work, you take it back and they don't charge you for it. Anyway word to the wise: HSR in Burbank; great people, lousy soundstage!
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