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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The Gentleman's Underwater Bubble Blower Thread

Mark van Coller said:
Are there any initial thoughts from those who have tried the Underwater OLPF yet.
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Didn't get the chance to take her underwater.
Leaving for the High Arctic tomorrow till the end of the Month. Will do many dives there with H2O.
I'll get back to the group in June with my findings.
 
Stock RED footage underwater and above - Who to go with?

Stock RED footage underwater and above - Who to go with?

Hey everyone.

I have just got back from a self funded expedition to a very remote reef system off eastern Australia, Middleton and Elizabeth reefs. Pretty amazing place, lots of sharks, lots of wind and lots of shipwrecks! I will put some photos up soon!

I shot a heap of underwater and above water on my Epic, all 4K HFR 50fps, we will be editing together a picture heavy, narrator driven natural history style 4K doc from the 5TB or so of vision we have (RED, SONY Z100, Timelapses and 4K Gopro).

During this process I will be getting my assistant editor to upload clips as stock footage, currently I have used POND5 and sold some specific clip requests through Nature Footage. The question I ask is who is everyone else using as agents for their stock footage???

I have been approached by a few companies to do exclusive distribution etc but still not got many sales however the per sec prices are much higher. So I am much less precious about it now and feel that seeing as I have such a mountain of stock vision (12TB of HD and 16TB or more R3D) I will get it up on a few stock websites and get it making money for me right away!

So who do you use, Web (Pond5, Getty etc) or distributer (DCD Rights, ZODIAC)
And what do you charge? normal 4K? and HFR 4K? also a higher price for anything super special.

I am thinking I will be uploading a graded Prores 4K, Prores HD as well as the R3D original.

Feel free to PM me if you don't want the whole world to know your Per sec prices :ihih:

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Dean
croppycam@bigpond.com
 
Dean,

i think, in this game, it depends entirely on developing a solid set of clients, making yourself the 'go-to' guy for their requirements., Johnny said that to me some years ago, I haven't found anything contrary to the essential truth of that wisdom since. Stock footage is somethng you get the occasional financial bump from, but only if your stuff is very unique, and only if the buyer cannot find it anywhere else for cheaper. We are getting our asses kicked by the Go-Pro crowd, at least for anything web oriented.

Many of the independent Red UW shooters I know are very accomplished professionals, but they are poverty stricken by the intense gear upgrade requirements, if you don't have the latest gear and the required housings to put it in, you won't get hired for the high paying gigs, few and far between.

The exception to this rule, of course, are guys like Howard Hall, Bob Cranston, and Hugh Miller. They operate in the stratosphere, no doubt they sold their first-born to achieve that, deals with the devil and all that :-) Huge respect to them.

The advice given to the Wright Brothers so many years ago, don't sell the bike shop just yet.

But it keep at it mate, the eventual rewards are many and huge.
 
the big ocean footage go to is Dan Barron at Ocean Footage / Nature Footage. Dan sells a lot of U/W out there. But he also has to be competitive, so you may not be able to dictate your onw rates. That said, he does sell more Ocean Footage than anyone else i know of and is a GO TO agency for the big production companies.

Another company i quite like to put up your footage on their site and sell based on THEIR per clip rates is NIMIA. They also offer you space on their site to host your footage and sell it on your own - I use this function with them and it's great. They offer you legal & follow up on sales for a 10% commission.

But where you really make $$ is when you have a bit of a reputation and clients come to YOU for footage. YOu need to be smart and have a good contract setup and know your rates AND the market. Things have changed a LOT in the past few years with free tv no longer being the only sales to think about. Now we have VOD or OTT (over the top)....basically there are different markets now---especially when it comes to 4k sales....example---if you are selling footage for X dollars per second for a television doc with world wide in perpetuity rights...you need to also consider rights beyond "free tv" such as VOD or 4k delivery subscription or even if they then put it on Netflix---falling under "OTT".....so for me i have rates that begin with "Free TV", then the add ons are VOD, OTT, then theatrical and Giant Screen....each has a checkbox with an ADD ON per second rate or a per clip price usually with theatrical/giant screen. Then you have advertising---television AND Web....so the web is cast and it's much wider than say ten years ago...BE CAREFUL as you will likey be sent a contract for a documentary at a per second rate and in THEIR contract they specify that they have every right under the sun---you do NOT want this and you should push back. Personally i don't give at all on these rights....I might give on per second rate for a big sale, but not on the add-ons....these are all secondary markets for the productions and we deserve to be compensated as such for each market.

So, that said, it took me ten years to figure all this out with help from guys that know a hell of a lot more about it and were very willing to share their information with me. Remember it's a business and if you don't make adequate return, you'll be out of it very quickly. Stock i think takes a long time to work and pay off...you need to first work as a cameraman and make friends with producers--help them out when they need you; do them favors when they are in need of footage to put a deal together.....just be the "reliable" cameraman. After a bunch of years, they will then call on you for stock footage if you have what they need.


Build an online platform of good looking, well framed (not too long) footage. You must do color work and editing on your own and learn this to make your footage stand out and show that your work is something you take serious...that will make a statement. The master of this is Howard Hall. You may be great underwater and shoot nice images, but you then need to learn how to have an eye for editing and coloring to show potential buyers. This is a craft i think that comes over time....

good luck.
 
Full Dome under water

Full Dome under water

Dear Bubble Blowers,


We plan to shoot a full dome film under water. Is there a housing for the Epic that could accommodate a fisheye lens, for example the Sunex 185° fisheye?


Hannes
 
Hannes Vartiainen said:
Dear Bubble Blowers,


We plan to shoot a full dome film under water. Is there a housing for the Epic that could accommodate a fisheye lens, for example the Sunex 185° fisheye?


Hannes
Click to expand...

I'm sure most all of the housing manfs can accommodate fisheye lenses & do. That said, you might look at using the Nikor 13mm fisheye with some of the sharpest looking edge to edge performance i have seen. It's not a lens you put behind a port, but instead it was designed for u/w use.
 
Not interested in starting something again with our buddy Pawel but the technical information on his sales page is VERY inaccurate.... He shows a quantum efficiency graph of the RED which is actually just a screen shot from RCX and not a QE graph of the RED at all ( RCX doesn't do QE graphs ) and hence the claim that he is making is factually incorrect. The unfiltered spectrum from our cameras looks very different than whatever he is showing there.

Of course you can add additional filters for underwater to improve things underwater... people have done that with great results forever and we even make one. I am not saying people won't be happy with Pawel's filter, it might indeed make things look good or things more blue or red or whatever he is trying to do, but I just wanted to make sure that people don't take the "scientific" information on his advertisement as actual technical fact, because it is, well, total bullshit :)
 
Here's a spectrum shot on a Dragon, STH OLPF. Notice how it demonstrates that blue is blue not purple.

Graeme

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Just when you thought there was nothing to talk about in the Bubble Blowers. On a lighter note, i thought it worth mentioning that NHNZ (natural history new zealand) is shooting a big doc (or is it 3 part) entitled "Big Pacific" and most of the cameras used are RED EPIC cameras. Shot for free tv delivery and later as 4k delivery. That is a BIG deal in the doc world and for a doc with several millions worth in budget for this giant event. There are even a few users in this group working for them. Congrats gents. And congrats to RED for being the camera of choice for the job.
 
RED at Beach

RED at Beach

Hard at work in Sonora for the Grunion Run. But, it never happened this week. Did i mention we get to work in our underwear from time to time?
 

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