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Huge Project-Looking for advice
I’m bidding on a project that will end up with about 4,000 1 to 2-minute edited clips. We would do the shooting but we would need to bring on multiple editors with their own gear to edit the videos. The goal is to edit each clip with different chromakey backgrounds and also add the dialog as subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Based on my estimation I think an editor can edit about four 1-2 minute clips a day. I think that given the client’s timeframes, I would need at least 10 or more FCP editors.
Does anybody here know of a good resource anywhere in the country that can provide me with the editors I need? I don’t wish to use Guru or Elance or any other place like that. My preference would be to have one place that can handle this for me and they must be reputable. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
Thanks so much.
replied 13 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
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3 Replies
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Hey Greg,
Sounds exciting.
Getting 10 editors should not be a problem for you. There are plenty of agencies around. At the throughput that you want to achieve, my advice would be for you to negotiate a price on each video, rather than a day-rate.
However, your bigger issue will be data management for recording, delivery to editor and master to client. Not to forget Quality Control either, as in every editor has their own benchmark, so you need to stipulate yours.
All the Best
Mads@madsvid, London, UK
Check out my other hangouts:
Twitter: @madsvid
https://mads-thinkingoutloud.blogspot.co.uk -
Hi Mads,
Thanks for the encouragement. I agree that the big issue is data management for recording, delivery to editor and master to client. Any suggestions on those fronts?
The issue is we’d be shooting all day in two studios and we’d need to transfer the footage off of our SXS cards onto drives for the editors. Then deliver them on separate hard drives I would expect that we would ramp up the number of editors each day as we had more footage available But how would be divide up the footage for each editor? In other words, how would we manage data on set to make sure that each editor has what they need?
Also for rates, that’s an interesting idea to pay by the video instead of using day rates. How would that work? What would you think would be reasonable for a 1 minute or two minute video segment with Chroma Key and a separate one with subtitles added? Obviously the subtitled video would just be a copy of the first with captions added to the lower third. Thanks so much.
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Hey Greg,
Difficult questions to answer as in that I would normally charge a client good money for that kind of consultancy. However, as we’re all learning and helping one another, let me give you a few opinions as to how I would approach the job 🙂
4,000 clips is a lot of masters to deal with. And if they’re all one take with no cuts, then you might be better off not going to FCP at all.
Start at point of the shoot: SXS cards is just not a viable option – expensive and slow, as a result useless to mange. Instead capture straight to a raid protected system, with a real-time “back-up” to a portable drive to go every night to Post.
Alternatively, consider doing a dual record at studio, one with clean blue screen and the other with the keyed on background. An Autocue (tele-prompter) might save you a day or many in the edit. And if you can do the key on location, you might save a lot of FCP render time.
This is all depending on how much editing is required. But a cluster of Avid’s or Quantel’s or Smoke’s desktop off-lines. With one real-time on-line system in the middle, all working of the same SAN, could save you time and money. 1 on-line editor is likely to be cheaper than 10 of them with their own home system to pay for.
You could offer the freelancer $150 a finished edit (= $75/hour = 4 edits/day = $600/day depending on how good and fast the editor is). Don’t forget your own mark-up + insurance + hiring in additional help to cope with potential “slackers”.
Do consider the cost of physically distributing the rushes with associated content and getting the masters return – you might be better off hiring a “factory” in Mumbai or similar to out-source all your post to.
Subtitles can always be added. A specialized agency might be faster and cheaper for this job.
Hope this helps?
All the Best
Mads@madsvid, London, UK
Check out my other hangouts:
Twitter: @madsvid
https://mads-thinkingoutloud.blogspot.co.uk
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