Tim Pipher

Great info guys -- thank you!

Hi everybody.

Many of you have given me advice through the years as I built a studio with a 3D virtual studio system in Florida. I thought that some of you might be interested to know that we've just re-located to Los Angeles (Burbank to be exact).

LACastleStudios.com

If any of you would like a tour of the new studio and/or a demo, just let me know (818-861-7317).

Thanks to all for their advice through the years!

Tim Pipher

It's like asking which one is "better", green or yellow? Better has nothing to do with it.

Thanks Mitch. But I don't understand your analogy. I asked for "opinions" of which looked better. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of situations where an opinion of which would look better -- green or yellow -- would be useful.

Sorry Tim, but watching on a Progressive display, as 99.99% of computer users are these days, makes it impossible to see the difference between 60i and 30p. As far as the DoF difference goes, it's hardly noticeable. They both look fine.

Thanks very much Stuart!

Tim

Here are two low budget spots, identical except:

1. The first is shot 60i with a deep DOF

2. The second is shot 30p with a shallower DOF

Any opinions of which looks better would be appreciated.

I thought you might enjoy this video of my new studio. It doesn't show off the outside (which we think is beautiful), or our dressing rooms, control rooms, and offices, but it still gives a nice recap of what we do.

Sorry -- I was just winging the script -- no teleprompter -- no makeup. Also, we've added a fifth teleprompter since we shot this. It's on the crane camera.

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Thanks!

I get this feeling every time I pick up the phone to make my first sales call of the day. I worry that maybe I'm bugging the prospect too much.

Then I remember that I've got nothing to lose. Maybe there's a 1% chance that the prospect is going to get ticked off and decide that he won't do business with a guy that's trying so hard. But if I don't call, I'm not going to get the sale anyway, so I might as well call.

Besides, it's just as likely he'll actually want to do business with a guy who hustles.

It's the same thing with your situation. If you don't approach him, you're not going to get a job with him anyway, so you may as well go after him. He might even be impressed with your go-get-him attitude -- he's probably been in your shoes.

And even if you turn him off, he's not going to remember that the next time you cross paths.

Hi Tim,

 

Can the client create their own background environment ( Roll Your Own ). If so what file formats can the system recognize?

Hi James.

You can definitely create your own virtual environments. This is a language I barely speak, so some of what I say may not make sense. Your sets need to be in a VRML format from 3DSMax, Maya, Softimage XSI etc.

I may be wrong about this, but I get the impression that 3DSMax is recommended.

I have a PDF with all the details I can e-mail if you want.

One great thing about making sets yourself is that you don't have to pay for them. But it's also good because you can use them over and over. There's a producer/director who plans on making a feature here in July. It will be a sequel to one of his science fiction movies. He'll be making his own virtual sets. The great thing for him is that he'll do that once, then have his sets ready to go for subsequent sequels.

Now that is very interesting. At the risk of asking a stupid question, does "Live Multi-camera Green Screen Compositing" mean you are also doing the match moving in addition to the keying and compositing? I also noticed that there were no visible tracking markers, so I am assuming that information is being derived some other way.

Hi James.

It's much simpler than that. Everything is keyed and composited live. There's absolutely zero post production in these clips. Nothing is real except the people, any tables and chairs you see, and the square piece of grey carpet you see in a few of the shots.

People ask me if that big set in the exercise video includes a big circular real carpet with the client's logo in the middle. It's not real -- just a green floor there. All the sets were easily customized in a matter of minutes with client logos and videos in various places.

There are no tracking markers. Tracking is done mechanically with the encoded jib and with sensors on the tripod heads and from the lenses, combined with little infra-red cameras in the lighting grid interacting with these little domes on the cameras -- it's very sophisticated and way beyond me.

However, all that complicated technical stuff during the system installation makes the actual productions extraordinarily easy. You just shoot and switch as you would with any real production, and the system does the work.

This saves a fortune in set construction and studio rental days, and allows small productions to have major league sets. In fact, we rent the whole studio at a very reasonable rate, and we're headache free because we have almost everything most productions need in-house. The network that used our studio for a pilot didn't bring in a single thing.

Hiya!

Thanks for posting this I found it intresting. the keying seems very obvious on some of the shots but on the ones where they are giving the talk on "earn big money" it seems a lot more subtle. Is there a reason this might be so? I actually think it looks fine either way, people are fairly used to obvious keying from tv news here but I liked the more subtle look.

 

I'm also curious how you went about making your virtual sets? They made me wonder how they were created.

 

What is the problem with multi-camera green screen setups? Presumably the screen will be lit fairly flat so it shouldn't matter too much about the different cameras? No?

 

love

 

Freya

Hi Freya.

I thought the fact that there are three cameras in these clips might be significant to some people for several reasons:

1. Everything shown was done live using a super-computer virtual system with absolutely no post production. Systems like mine are often demonstrated at trade shows like NAB so people here have probably seen them in action, but all the demos I've seen have been single camera.

2. You'll notice that the cameras are moving all over the place, zooming in, pulling back, on a jib, focus going in and out simulating depth of field, reflections of the virtual elements on the virtual floor, virtual monitors from different angles etc. Using traditional green screen compositing methods, this would be a huge amount of work with one camera -- with three, it would be even more

3. Three cameras require a bigger green screen or cyc than one camera, with a bigger area needing to be tracked. I thought it might be interesting to some that this whole big area is tracked.

Although you may be right, I haven't noticed the keying differences on some sets vs. others. Everything is keyed with an Ultimatte HD/SD (hardware). The best looking stuff so far (we're very new) was for a pilot for a broadcast television network, but I can't show that to you.

All the virtual sets were created by and licensed from Ronen Lasry of Los Angeles based FullMentalJacket.com. He creates them for NBC and many others.

Thanks Freya!

Here are clips from my studio showing live green screen compositing with three moving HD cameras (Panasonic HPX3000 cameras and Canon HJ Series zoom lenses).

Saves not only $50,000 to $500,000 on set construction vs. building a real set, but also studio rental days for set construction and tear down.

Live Compositing Demo

Im prepping a job in Florida, to be shot about 2 hours outside of Miami. I was wondering if anyone has had good experiences with any Miami rental houses, and if anyone could recommend anything. Im looking at an EX3/ PS technik setup, or a RED.

thanks.

Let me know if my studio can help. Southeastern Studios is located exactly two hours north of downtown Miami in Vero Beach.

Website is www.SoutheasternStudios.com

After three years, Southeastern Studios in Vero Beach, Florida, has finally opened, just in time for the economic slowdown.

Pictures of Studio

However, thanks to constant hustle from my sales team (my wife and me), a huge special that is saving producers a ton of money, and lots of prayer, I'm pleased to say that we're off to a good start.

Several large infomercial companies and advertising agencies are either using the studio for regular productions or are about to start, and a broadcast television network has produced a pilot from the studio and is gearing up for production (they've asked me not to say anything more than that).

What do these producers like?

First, we offer live multi-camera high definition green screen compositing with moving cameras and virtual sets. This results in producers getting gorgeous sets and saving not only the $100,000 to $500,000 or more that these sets would cost to construct in the real world, but also saving the costs of the days of studio rental that they would otherwise be spending first to build the sets, and then the rental days to tear them down.

Raw Footage of our Live Compositing

Second, we have just about everything the producers need in-house. This includes our beautiful studio building with plenty of parking, the virtual set system from Orad, an infrared camera tracking system, three Panasonic HPX3000 cameras with Canon HJ series zoom lenses, a Panasonic HPM110 recording deck with six 32 gig P2 cards, two tripods with encoded Vinten 250E heads, a fully encoded Cammate jib encoded by General Lift, an HD Ultimatte, a large pre-lit cyclorama, all the lighting producers are likely to need with all the lights connected to a dimming system, a massive array of excellent quality audio and communications gear and mixing console, HD switcher, lots of monitors, two on-camera teleprompters and two presidential style teleprompters, and two luxurious on-site motor homes. In fact, for the network production, they didn't bring in a single thing -- we had everything they needed right here.

Third, we're giving producers an outstanding deal. They're getting everything listed above, including the 3D HD virtual studio system that saves them so much on set construction and studio rental days -- and even the motorhomes -- for $7,500 per day. This includes a full crew including two camera operators, a jib operator, Orad operator, technical director, sound person, teleprompter operator, and a nice spread of craft services. Some productions bring in their own crews. However we charge the same amount. Outside producers and crews enjoy a special deal with a local oceanfront hotel for only $65 per night -- Vero Beach is a lovely place to visit, and is about half way between Orlando and Miami.

I hope you'll consider us for a future production!

Hello Richard.

In Dov S-S Simens' book "From Reel to Deal", he discourages trying to self-distribute into theaters because he believes that theater owners are crooks who won't pay and you'll spend all your time in court trying to collect.

Simens says that theater owners will pay distributors because if they don't, they won't get the distributor's next movies, but self-distributors don't have that leverage, so they won't get paid.

Did you have that experience, or did the theaters pay you your percentage without trouble?

Thanks!

I'd like to invite everyone here to check out Southeastern Studios in the beautiful coastal city of Vero Beach the next time you're in Florida. We're an easy drive from Orlando, West Palm Beach and Miami.

Photo Link

We're fully up and running for top-quality greenscreen production from our 80 ft. (40 ft. across the back, and 20 ft. up each side wall) 180 degree pre-lit cyc using your equipment or ours (three Panasonic HPX3000 cameras with Canon HJ series zoom lenses, extensive lighting and dimming system, tripods with remote controls, top-shelf audio gear, monitors, P2 Mobile recording deck, switcher, Ultimatte HD, CamMate jib encoded by General Lift, and two luxurious motorhomes on site).

Creative possibilities really open up, though, when our high definition 3D live compositing virtual studio system arrives in five or six weeks. Manufactured by the Israeli firm Orad, our three cameras will be fully tracked into photo-realistic virtual environments (including from the encoded jib), allowing for fabulous creative possibilities and huge production savings (versus building actual sets or moving an entire cast and crew from on-location site to on-location site), and big post-production time and money savings due to the streamlined compositing.

If you use our facility, you'll be able to record the composited scenes to the P2 Mobile deck using the AVC-Intra 100 codec (or DVCPRO-HD if you prefer). However, you might find it advantageous to record three streams of 10 bit uncompressed to our very large and extensive 4Gbit SAN system. Stream 1 will consist of the live actors and real props, Stream 2 will consist of the tracked virtual set, and Stream 3 will consist of the two streams composited together. The advantage of this is that streams 1 & 2 can be color corrected separately, so the lighting and color of the real scene can match up perfectly with the virtual scene.

For your editing needs, we can do it for you, or you can do it yourself using our two Intel based dual-quad Final Cut Studio editing systems each with 16 gigs of RAM plus an identical dual-quad Final Cut Server system (providing up to 24 processor cores at your disposal).

You're welcome to use our facility and equipment entirely independent from our staff, our we can offer turn-key commercials, infomercials, music videos and talk shows (with huge Entertainment Tonight or ESPN Sportscenter-style sets to boot).

We'll be producing movies for ourselves, and we invite you to use our facility for that purpose too.

I hope you'll check out and then use and enjoy our new studio. We'll do anything and everything to make sure that you're satisfied, and will make every effort to meet your budget needs too.

Website Link

Good question Dave and I think I know why you asked it (great working with you last week, by the way).

From Michael's answer, I think the conclusion is what I had in mind -- don't dim the fluorescents that light my green screen cyclorama, but dim away as necessary on the lighting for the talent.

I'm not sure if we did it on our recent shoot, but a good way to do things is to turn off the cyc lights while lighting the talent to make sure we're lighting both the talent and the cyc optimally.

I'd love to have you guys meet at my new studio in Vero Beach sometime.

Here are some photos:

Studio Photos

Equipment is rolling in. In the next couple of months, our HD Orad machine will be installed, offering live greenscreen compositing with full camera movement (3 cameras -- Panny HPX3000s with Canon HJ series zoom lenses).

You might enjoy coming down on a Monday evening. After we open, every Monday evening we'll be opening the studio for "Movie Maker Mondays", where we bring in actors and crew and actually produce a scene from a movie we're working on or produce a short right on the spot. You guys could be our guest cinematographers!

Hi Tim,

 

You might want to show your Panny salesman this cut/paste from the latest National Geographic "NGC US and NGCI Approved List of HD Primary Cameras" You'll note that the 2000 is in the same boat as the 500.....it can be used, but the footage "would be considered part of the 10% non-HD allowance."

Thanks Brian. Actually, I found a new salesman -- Jonathan Eppner from AbelCineTech in New York (referred by Mitch Gross through this forum) -- and went with the HPX3000.

I wonder if I've been too caught up in trying to achieve a shallow depth of field. Everybody seems to be looking for it these days. Postings all over the forums are full of statements like "Great Shot -- Love the shallow depth of field". Others say they'll never buy any camera that doesn't have a 35mm sensor because they want the shallow depth of field.

But maybe a shallow depth of field is unnecessary. After all, from what I understand, great directors like Orson Welles -- most notably in one of cinema's great masterpieces, Citizen Kane -- went out of his way to achieve deep depth of field, and the pursuit of deep depth continued throughout the 40's and 50's.

I know many filmmakers want complete control of the audience so they'll look where the director wants them to look, but when I'm at the movies, if I find the car in the background more interesting than the scene up front, I like having the freedom to look where I want. I'm not sure that viewers are particularly enamored with shallow depth of field.

Is it possible that 35mm shallow depth of field is over-rated and the deeper 2/3 inch depth of field might be a more pleasing compromise?

The P2 Gear cannot playback AVC-i encoded cards, however it can transfer the files to a harddrive and then show the thumbnails for verification. That's 99% of what you use the thing for so most people have no issue with this. If you'd really like to be able to play the cards as well, it's big brother the P2 Mobile will do it all. Abel sells and rents both.

Actually, I own the HPM110 (bought from you guys). I assume that's what you mean by the P2 Mobile? We're acquiring equipment for our new studio and haven't really put it together yet. Is it correct that the HPM110 serves this function (backing up the P2 card directly to a hard drive -- or two if using a mini Raid)? If it does, that's a nice bonus I hadn't anticipated.

The P2 Gear is a different device, available for about a year now. It does not contain a hard drive so there is no max to it's recording capability. One connects a hard drive to the back of the unit and the P2 Gear downloads directly to it, renaming the file headers so that you do not have to. Firewire or USB2.0 can be used, just like hooking a hard drive to the camera itself. Using USB2.0, the P2 Gear can read back thumbnails off the hard drive to verify the download. Small buss-powered drives can be powered by the P2 Gear, which runs on small camcorder batteries and is only a bit bigger than the old P2 Store. The P2 Gear has an LCD monitor so one can play back shots and navigate a menu. It eliminates the laptop from field operation.

 

I also recommend the use of small RAID enclosures, such as the G-Safe from G-Tech. This is seen by the P2 Gear (or a computer) as a single drive, but mirrors the data between the drives so that two identical copies are made at the same time. Pop one drive out of the enclosure for safe keeping and send the other off to post.

Is it safe to assume the P2 Gear will work with 1080p AVC-Intra 100?

How long would it take to back up a 32 gig card to hard drive?

Thanks!

I had a long, heated, and perplexing conversation with a recently hired in-house cinematographer today. It was over an issue that I thought was as obvious as 1 + 1 = 2, and he was just as confident that I was out to lunch.

Since I'm relying on him to be our cinematographer, I'm assuming (and hoping) that I'm wrong.

The dispute is over whether we should be acquiring in 24p or 30p. We're shooting AVC-Intra 100 with our Panasonic HPX3000. If we're shooting a narrative movie or television show, I always believed we'd want to be acquiring in 24p with the desired result of the dreamy look that viewers are used to in a feature film.

My cinematographer says that's not necessarily true -- that there's very little difference in the look of 24p and 30p, and unless the project is going to film-out, 30p offers so many advantages that we'd be better off at 30p.

I argued that 30p is great for reality, sports, news -- anything we want to look "real" -- but for narrative work where we want to look like a movie, 24p is the obvious choice, whether we're filming out or not. He again emphasized that there is little difference in the look of 24p vs. 30p, and that the film look will be attained through lighting and camera techniques.

He reminded me that he's worked with some of the most talented people in the business and at the highest-end and most prestigious studio facilities in the world, but that I'm the boss and he'd do things my way whether I'm right or not.

Finally, he said maybe the 24p vs. 30p argument is subjective based on the cinematographer's personal preferences, and maybe some -- perhaps even up to 50 out of 100 accomplished DP's, would choose to shoot 24p for narrative work. I countered that I believed that 99 or 100 out of 100 would choose 24p for narrative projects.

He's the expert -- I'm not. But is he correct?

a producers forum would probably be a better place.

I've been searching for a forum aimed at producers -- any suggestions?

What spec did they change?

Elimination of 1080 HD-SDI output.