Had to share…

[Mark Suszko]

Been there
Done that
Got the t-shirt

I shoot as well as edit, so when shooting I really try and do things that will make me happy in the edit later. Rule number one is at least six slowly counted seconds of pre and post-roll on shots and moves, which at times is torture to wait for. it really should be even longer, but six is what I default to as manageble for ENG type shooting. For more languid EFP type work, it should be more.

[Mike Velte]

Editing a wedding reception and notice that the camera man is wooping things up pretty loudly but the guests seem to be having a ball, then notice about 20 minutes of recorded black at the end of the reception tape during which I can hear the camera man talking to a friend while driving home…”Man I am waisted..smoked way too much weed between ceremony and reception…bla bla bla.
Reviewed the edited reception with the client and she asked “Can you take the camera man’s screaming off the video?

[Tim Kolb]

Those are funny, funny stories…heart-breaking in the post room…but funny.

I had a client (who decided to stop paying us and buy their own camcorder) once come in with some footage of a big machine…it was tall…not wide…so they shot it…”portrait”.

Then they were mad at use because the options of scaling the picture down to fit the screen when it was right-side up or crop it to go full screen weren’t their first choice…then they commented that “…this was why (they didn’t) hire us anymore…we should be advanced enough to “handle” this sort of footage…”

What’re ya gonna do?…just laugh I guess…unfortunatley in spite of myself…I did.

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Del Holford]

Oh the memories 🙂
About 14 years ago I edited a documentary that included the slave embarkation point in Sierra Leone in West Africa. Beautiful ocean, good shots of slave holding pens, none of which lasted for more than 2 seconds. If it lasted longer it was panning and you could hear the cameraman talking and the natz were wasted. The producer was shooting also on a Sony Hi8 and he got better shots by accident than the “professional” cameraman on a BetaSP camera. I’ve done 14 documentaries with that producer and he now knows to tell the cameraman to lock it down, roll tape, walk away for a full minute and keep his mouth closed. Experience helps.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television

[Chris Bové]

[Del Holford] “Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television”

Del – you work on Fire and Smoke systems at Charlotte Public Television? How many Big Bird tote bags and Charlie Rose mugs had to be pledged off to pay for THAT setup?!?!?

______
/-o-o-\
\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
`(___)

A picture says 1000 words. Editors give them meaning.

[Del Holford]

We’re funded by the county and do a tremendous amount of local programming, both from our studio and from the edit suites. I will probably do 4 documentaries this year and a couple informational programs plus finishing 20 half hour studio shows for a series in HD. I work in fire – mainly in HD. In smoke the other editor has done one documentary so far and a lot of the promotional and interstitial work.

We purchased these systems because we had a mandate to go HD back in 2000. We went from analog to digital at that time. The only HD editing system back then (selling at NAB) was fire. Avid and Quantel weren’t there and FCP wasn’t heard of yet. We bought Discreet edit for offline. smoke does SD (and by fiber network occasionally does some HD work to help me out) and fire does HD and occasionally SD. I do a lot of pre-production elements (like opens, funders, roll-ins) for the studio programs as well. Our studio has 4 GVG LDK-6000 Mk II cameras through a Philips DD-35 Seraph switcher (now know as the GVG Kalypso or X-TenDD). We use a Sony HDW-700A in the field.

Now we are seriously looking for capital funding to keep all of our systems up to date. Software versions are not a problem but storage solutions and hardware going end of life present their challenges.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television

[Greg Ball]

Here’s 2 stories for ya.

1. I was working in a large corp, as the manager of video production (one man band) A client in a field office shot their footage for me to edit. They were outside on a windy day.
Every 5-6 seconds there would be something passing in front of the lens. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, until I froze the image, and the word Sony appeared on screen. The same Sony emblem that happened to be on their lens cap, which was tied to the camera in the wind.

2. Another internal client shot their own spokesperson outside their restaurant, which was next to the road. They only used the on-camera mike. Apparently at an equal distance between the camera and the spokesperson was a puddle in the road. Every time a car passed as you would hear the splash of tires going through the puddle. Yet the spokesperson continued talking. The client asked me to remove the splash sounds. Wondered why I couln’t do it in our new $1.5 Million studio.

[Marisu Fronc]

Why does this remind me of the client who manufactured those tacky clear vinyl slipcovers for sofas (this was back in the 70’s) they wanted to shoot their “before & after” spot themselves – “look at the stain this grape juice makes on the white couch, if they had only had our wonderful couch covers it would still lok like this” and voila the couch is unstained – unfortunately they didn’t understand that they needed to shoot the couch with the cover & no stain FIRST (you could see the stain through the slipcovers after all). VERY unfortunately (for them at least) it took them 8 tries (on 8 separate occasions with 8 different couches) before they finally wised up and “got it”.

slainte,
marisu

[Mark Suszko]

Story I heard. Client comes in with picture of gramps working on his tractor. The camera shot from the near side of the tractor, gramps is on the opposite side, the tractor obscuring 90 percent of his body.

Client wants the tractor painted out so he can see the rest of grampa.

photoshop can do that, right?:-)

[Erik Hermesman]

LOL, thats a good one.