Speaker 1: Oh, and we're back with another question. I've been on set before where a DP and a producer were arguing about how to do something, basically time to fix it now, let's fix it in post, and the DP side was, I would rather fix it now instead of spending time and money in post. And so who would be correct in that discussion?

Speaker 2: It really depends on the situation. It comes down to dollars and cents and time. If you're looking at an entire crew and the overtime of an entire crew, depending on the size of that crew, the producer might be right. It might be a better call to cross your fingers and fix it in post because it might be less expensive rather than paying 30 people to be standing around for the next hour, right? And remember, you've got an AD watching the clocks, you may have people going into overtime, whatever it may be, or children that have to be released because you can only shoot for so many hours. So the producer could be right. At the same time, the DP may have had an experience and honestly know that this is not something that's easily fixable in post because DPs know their craft and they may say, look, I've been here before, similar situation, didn't work so well in post. Is it easy to rotoscope this out? Maybe, maybe not. So a lot of times that's when you'll get the phone call when you're on the freeway in traffic from set or on the other side of the world and they're on set and they're trying to explain to you, hey, I've got this problem. And you sort of off the top of your head have to say, well, if I were there, what would I do? Or do I really want to get this in three days and have to figure it out? Some producers, depending on their level of experience, they can make a pretty good call on whether they think it can be fixed or not. And then sometimes you kind of shake your head because when you get it, it would have been a lot less expensive to reshoot it.

Speaker 1: Right. And so, I mean, I've heard the myth of the $30,000 C-stand of where someone would say would fix it in post and it just one C-stand in the middle of the shot. And how often is it really that expensive to get something out of a frame?

Speaker 2: It depends on what's involved, like, you know, is there a beautiful flower arrangement? Are there people walking in front and behind the C-stand? You know, if it's in the middle of a party, it may not be that easy to get rid of or the middle of a pan shot. You may have to go in and roto frames, individual frames. There's a lot of really fabulous software now that can track that C-stand and remove it, you know, or most of it. So, you're going back and touching up rather than having to paint each individual pixel, each individual, you know, little bit. It's certainly easier now than it was in the film days.

Speaker 1: So, basically, I was going to ask that.

Speaker 2: And I have removed things like C-stands or a scratch, you know, a camera scratch in film.

Speaker 1: Same sort of problem. Is it? Okay. And so, now with digital, so basically digital is making it easier to remove things. Now...

Speaker 2: It's still not ideal. Okay.

Speaker 1: It's still not ideal. It's still not a good idea. And this is just me kind of going off tangent here. I had times where I have a producer, a director walking through and say, we'll fix it in post. We'll fix it in post. And I always get the image of the editor sitting on the sideline with a clicker going $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. Is that how editors or post people think?

Speaker 2: Well, not...

Speaker 1: As in, if they're on set, I mean.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Not so much editors. But, yeah, I mean, you're looking at something and you're estimating how many hours and how many people and what equipment. And so, in your head, you're kind of running a tally or you're on a piece of paper. You're running a tally of approximately what you think it will cost. I find more so than the DP's problems, the sound problems can be extremely expensive. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Also another question I had, it comes down to when a DP wants to do a special effects shot, whether it be over cranking, under cranking, or using green screen, how often do you find that the director of photography calls the post... If they know what post house they're going to be using or what post production company they're going to be using for advice or for tips on how to attack that.

Speaker 2: How to do it? I think it's awesome when you get your post house involved early on, maybe even weeks before you're shooting to discuss...

Speaker 1: Even before a whole shoot.

Speaker 2: Before a whole shoot to discuss, should we just shoot it at a standard frame rate? Should we shoot it at 60 frames? What's going to give us our best options for what we want to do? And then you have this number, and this number gets built into the budget then so that everybody knows we have this really expensive shot or multiple expensive shots that we're going to take care of. And we already have the game plan, so the DP's on board, the post house is on board, everybody's on board. And it's just perfect. Right?

Speaker 1: Right. Thank you for all your answers, and we'll see if I have any more questions in a minute.