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Termyn8or -> RE: Seeking help, willing to do regretable favors... (3/20/2007 10:57:55 PM)
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Well, first of all that low budget is at least in the thousands, might even be five figures just to get a polished product. And that might be an underestimate. It just depends on how far you can hone your skills and how good of equipment you can afford.
Clue number one, you probably know, TV shows set in a house were not done in a house. You cannot shoot a decent piece in a 15X18 livingroom. To get the effect you want, and some smoothness you need to get the camera away. That is whay you so rarely see certain types of shots in a sitcom or whatever. They built the rooms with three walls in a big area. They can get the lighting right, and no ceilings, they used to use boom mikes to pick up the sound. Do not even think of using the built in mike on a camcorder, it will be very poor no matter what you do.
You also need more than one camera unless you want it to take a month to shoot one episode, and we have not even thought about the editing equipment. Nowadays you might be able to do editing with a PC, but at that point we are not talking about a $299 loss leader at Best Buy.
You need at least three cameras, this is to allow the camramen to get into position as you need a face shot or whatever. The planning is complex. After you have the footage you must edit it and splice it, and remember to keep the audio in sync.
Modern production facilities and major TV stations that do produce some shows have equipment that makes the task alo easier, but then planning must still be solid. If you want the set outside, you need to get outside city limits and be in a quiet area, and if there is any wind you need special mikes. And if you want stereo sound that requires planning as well.
If you have a skit in mind, here is a basic way to get an idea. Take a piece of paper and draw squares on it, with room between each one for comment and dialog. The drawings do not have to be detailed, but the planned major furnishings should be depicted at least. The characters don't have to be drawn with alot of detail, in fact they could be stick figures.
But the basic situation needs to be shown, your concept. At this point you need not worry about penmanship or critical art talent, this set with the frames you drew is simply a reminder to you. It allows you to express the story to yourself quickly, so you have the overview and a reference to the overview.
Then you write the script. Get your vocabulary out and grease up the fingers, because then you have to describe, in detail, every action and movement of every character.
Actually you might get away with not going that far if this is one of those projects with a bunch of friends and ½ of it is ad lib. But if you get anyone in there not familiar with the whole thing, they are going to need explicit instructions to be able to act, ad libs allowed or not.
If you intend your work to be impromptu, you can slack off on the planning a bit, but you still should have a good outline.
My cohorts and I have thought about this many times. There are times when we all agree that our Saturday night bash should've been recorded. In fact I did record a few, and when I get old and blue I'll probably watch them. However, just done with a camcorder in the corner, they are not acceptable.Nontheless, some of the footage would be amusing and worth ripping to a file to spread around on the internet. Now that I have the capability on the other PC to do that, I have some old beta tapes. WOW, I have the best parts of a movie called Prime Time. Very hard to get.
Prime Time is about a day without censors, they do some very out of taste things. Like the old Lincoln Mark whatever commercials, well instead of cutting a diamond in the backseat, they did open heart surgery. As the commercial ends the doc says "And he's not even fibrillating".
There is more off the wall stuff like that. I have Putney Swope, which is about an adverytising agency who's music director, played by Arnold Jackson, get's voted in as CEO with the old CEO still laying dead on the table. One of the guys grabs up his watch. Well, the company makes TV commercials and well, this is also worth having. They got this one where a rather large Woman gets into a new subcompact ecomony vehicle, for which this is a commercial, well, she tips it over. The owner of the car company is sitting there with Putney and says "Whatever you do, don't run it", Putney says "What's wrong with it" Oh you thought it was done ? No, the car company owner says "Too much tailpipe".
People consider me pretty innovative, are they right ? Lessee.
Now, so far we got planning and a few cameras that can take full motion video. Everything else is up to the creator. If you can do
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and draw some stick figures you should be able to do it. The quality depends on other things. You can shoot this in a 12X15 room with a fisheye lens. It'll never look right. Look, they used to have radio shows a long time ago, if your work's strong point is the dialogue, it might be better without video than with very poor video. What I am saying is that if you can't do better than a listener's visualization, it is a waste of time, and actually counterproductive. But there is hope.
Remember about the three walled rooms they use for things like this ? There is a poorman's way to do it. Windows. I don't mean the OS, I mean the windows in the house where to want to do it. You can build a scaffold at any window, wire up mikes inside for the sound, surely you don't want to try to pick up the sound off the camera.
Actually if you do it at a real house, and get good at it, you might even have a BETTER quality video than is normally produced. More realism, more immersion by the viewer.
You have to use an artistic viewpoint, in the rarest sense. Painting a picture, sometimes the artist will limit his color selection. How much detail he puts into the work is also another dimension of this.
We ( my little band of ex-sociopaths and who knows what else ) have considered recording audio and just going with that. I am telling you, there are times when there are six of us literally rolling on the floor laughing. Then none of us can remember the joke, maybe the original joke but what got said afterwrds. Not just me wants a tape or something of those times, we all do.
So, if your idea includes alot of things that need to be seen, actions, like walking to other rooms, possibly eating or something like that, or even facial expressions, you might want video. I would agree.
I warned you people that I was an evil genius, now something else has ocurred to me. Just audio. You do what you want but I might do this. Cheaper and easier to edit, audio. Not narration, but I might just give this a whirl.
Picture this.
We got it going on, the mike is live, it is Saturday night and we are downing a few (hundred) beers. You hear a crash.
Guy comes out of the bathroom (you hear a door open and then the kawoosh of a flushing) and says "What was that, I heard a crash". Somebody else "Fucker just stood on his head, but he got dizzy or something and totally crashed my bigscreen TV". "It doesn't look broken". "Yeah ? remember all the shit on top of it, the DSL MODEM, the router, the phone, MY DINNER !". "Oh".
"So what are you going to do ?".
"Well the internet and the tunes are still working so I'll just deal with it tomorrow".
"What about the food ?".
"I'll just order more".
"How are you going to do that without the phone ?".
"SHIT !".
It has never happened this way, but it would not be a surprise. It would be considered almost typical here years ago. No, we weren't quite that stupid, but things did get interesting at times. We were a wild bunch, I mean I was put in jail for a loud stereo, and as wierd as it may sound, I had a great time. I knew I was real short time, and they were so overcrowded that we didn't get "processed". Everybody still had their keys, their money, their drugs, and I saw a beer can in the wastebasket. Somebody had a deck of cards and we played a bit of poker, not for matches or cigarettes, for real money. If I had footage of that day it wouold be pricless.
Like when you have a friendly poker game some people set time limits, well the game ends when the screws come, lol. Also it was 97 degrees and humid and they cranked the AC, it was about 65 in there. Dude was bitching is was too cold I said git up. Sat in his seat, I said "You're sitting right over the AC vent, that's why you're cold". He went sat somewhere else and it was great. It musta been down to 60 in that spot.
We've all had those good nights, if we can remember them they are fresh ideas. The trick is to reenact them properly.
We actully did try some shit, "Ron Villa". This was around the time Bob Villa was getting sued. We started it out, this part of the educational series is to illustrate how to do it wrong, what we are saying is do not do this.
Then he puches the flue pipe off of a space heater. He then repairs it with red cloth tape, like cheap duct tape that you would use on the armrest of a beater car. You don't use cloth tape on a flue pipe unless it is 95% efficiency, and I think alot of codes are againxt it anyway. Use the metal stuff or nothing.
In fact my buddy, the "star" of that little skit is after me for a tape of it. Not the attic again.
That is the past, on VHS. I can tell you this much, you might as well just consign yourself to a top notch, state of the art computer. You might even want a MAC.
Doing this with videotapes or DVDs is a big PITA. Now, here is the catch, the computer has to be VERY VERY GOOD. You do not walk into Bestbuy. You are going to need a good enough computer to watch multiple files at once, and a hell of alot of RAM, unless you want a clipped import to the output file to take days to integrate.
And, the software is going to be something that very few people will be able to help you with. You will have to learn to use it. This will take time.
That's why I am not even ripping my old stuff. I got footage of where I almost got ran over by a car taping a front yard concert from out in the street.
Anyway, except for the other thigns I threw in, I tried to address the main point. You want to film something, WHAT do you want to film. I know not filming it, but recording it. Think about the content of your future work first, and what is required to convey the idea.
But accordingly, two cameras or three ? Seperate audio mixing board or not ? How many mikes and what kind ?
I can see it being done for a couple thousand, but to do it you'll need to research the whole thing, and when you go to buy the equipment you'll need to get lucky. Hint: At that time, you are alot more likely to get lucky if you know what you are doing. Research equipment, prices, all that.
Forget the two cents, now that I found out I am not effectiveley maiking a dollar a day it does not matter.
T
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