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I have to admit…I understand the Flip Video dilemma…
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[Richard Herd] “Value proposition, does it work from both ends?”
You offer your customers some unique benefits through your products and services in exchange for money. They don’t necessarily offer you any unique value back — that’s what the money is for.
[Richard Herd] “ME: here’s the video but the audio file I received is poor.
CLIENT: here’s the new audio
ME: here’s the 2nd video.
CLIENT: My bad, I gave you the wrong information.
ME: I can fix that but it’ll cost X I’ll do it for half.
CLIENT: Complain complain complain.Please help me here with regard to the value proposition. My price is already a bit low.”
The way I read that exchange, it seems that you are telling your client that you are both flexible and low-cost. That’s not necessarily a bad business model, but it’s certainly inviting for grinders, and it’s easy to get flooded with projects with low price tags and high expectations. If you don’t want to be known as the flexible, low-cost provider, how would you like to be known? Does that idea match up with your clients’ and prospects’ needs? Do your words and actions reinforce or undermine that idea?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
In the end…these are all just tools. I’m not a fan of the DSLR craze, mainly because of the numerous workflow issues involved that in my opinion add a tremendous amount of time and cost into using them…not to mention so-so audio and numerous hacks needed to use other professional tools with them.
But that doesn’t mean the DSLRs don’t have a use…for many they do. Same with the Flip. I’ve seen people use it and the video they get looks just like what your Uncle Zeb would shoot with his crappy little $300 DV camera. But I’ve also seen stuff shot with them that looks pretty darn good. The audio always sucks because there’s no way to control levels or add a good quality mic (at least not to my knowlege). Now why anyone with access to quality gear would use the Flip INSTEAD of that gear is a HUGE mystery to me. There doesn’t seem to be any value in that. But as an extra camera or as a camera that can get into places others can get….sure…it’s a decent option. But just like the DSLR, there are a dozen hoops you have to jump through to insure that you can use your other professional gear with it (if necessary), not to mention other workflow issues to use the video in an editing environment. Don’t forget it uses VERY high compression right off the bat and a codec meant for final delivery, not raw footage that’s going to be edited and likely compressed several more times.
I think part of the “craze” you’re seeing with corporate people using it is they think getting video of the client up on YouTube or Facebook trumps projecting a good image with high quality and meaningful content. I disagree. I think seeing poorly shot video with no lighting and hollow, auto-gain sound can make an otherwise impressive company look ridiculously amateurish and abashedly cheap.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
[Chris Blair] “In the end…these are all just tools”
Chris has succinctly summarized countless discussions about technology.
Be familiar with technology so you can advise your clients when they bring up the subject…it is your expertise in media that makes them your clients in the first place.
Mike Cohen
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Perfect example of the adage: “the artist is not his tools”…
https://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=5625279
(Golfer wins championship with used $39 putter.)
A genius with a flip can beat a newbie with a RED.
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This is also why all footage of UFO sightings is of such poor quality.
Because until recently, your average person, if they walked around with a camera at all, used something small and easy to carry around in a pocket, glovebox, purse. This used to mean a 110 camera, point and shoot 35mm or APS camera with a short zoom, a Disc camera (anyone remember those?), a Polaroid (no zoom) or perhaps an SLR with a stock 28mm lens. As for video, pocket-sized video cameras have only recently become affordable, but that does not mean people will carry one around.
Nowadays, most cell phones still have poor quality cameras. As mroe people get smart phones with HD resolution, and pocket sized still cams with long zooms and high pixel count, we may finally get some decent UFO images.
However they know about our recent advances in technology, and will likely continue their landings in remote cornfields away from large populations of people operating advanced technology. They are pretty smart after all.
If Flip wants to really get on the map, they will send a free camera to every farmer in the world, or at least do a viral campaign to this effect.
Mike
PS – I am sure UFO cloaking devices interfere with HD video imaging circuitry.
That was fun!
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You’re weird, Mike.
I like that.
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Mark, you are in the plains of Illinois. Ever see anything weird in the night sky?
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A few years back, for one night during an active solar flare cycle, the Northern Lights got strong enough to be seen in central Illinois, I’d never seen them in real life before that, only films, and those don’t really communicate the same. They were still pretty faint, and I had to drive Waaaayyy out into the corn fields to park away from sky glow to enjoy them. Eventually a cop on patrol passed me and stopped to check me out: I think he thought he had a real DUI case or something, until I got him to look up and see what I was hanging around, laying on the hood of my car, looking up at.
Once, I thought I’d seen a UFO as a kid, for about 60 seconds, but it turned out to be the bottom of the wing of a Cessna with an animated light display, scrolling animated light messages on a night flight. The text was inverted and heading away from me at the angle at which I caught it, and the plane itself wasn’t very visible in outline in the dark, so it took a few seconds to pattern-match. Back then, there was still a spot along Irving Park Road or Mannheim Road, by O’hare field, where you could pull off the road onto a wide grassy apron, right under the approaching jets, and feel like you could touch each one’s belly as they came in, lights blazing, about one every 90 seconds. That spot was also a sort of “lover’s lane” then, but families also went out there to plane-watch. Unfortunately, too many people would pull out into traffic and cause car crashes, so the city put a stop to parking there long since.
In junior high, I used to make fake UFO pictures with a polaroid camera and the “leave the shutter open to trace airplane lights and your flashlight” trick. I fooled a couple of the more gullible students a little. We also hung chemical lightsticks from plastic delta wing kites at night and had lots of fun pranking some neighbors for a time.
These days the light pollution from cities or the cloud cover that invariably pops up on key nights, make observing meteor showers and comets a bit of a chore. Even during what everyone says are peak shower periods, I get to see barely one fireball an hour. I envy the folks in the Rockies and the U.P. who have clear dark skies and good “seeing”.
I have seen satellites and the shuttle and space station chasing each other in orbit, but have never seen an Iridium flare. I’d like to.
But other than that cessna, no, all the things I have seen in the sky, I can pretty much identify. Even when you know where to look for it and when, watching Venus rise or set while you’re driving *can* look pretty non-natural to the uninitiated.
To get back on topic, none of the things I saw would read very well on a flip camera.
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[Chris Blair] “I think part of the “craze” you’re seeing with corporate people using it is they think getting video of the client up on YouTube or Facebook trumps projecting a good image with high quality and meaningful content.”
That’s because they are seeing really popular Youtube videos that have been shot with Flip-type cameras. They are forgetting that with good/funny content, people will forgive the shaky video and tinny sound and that there’s a million other videos just like that on YT that no-one is watching.
Content is king.
If your content isn’t that compelling (because it’s an advertisement) anything that distracts (shaky, tinny) from the key message will dilute that message even further.
My local AV supplier videoed me with a Flip camera for their website. I told them they’re idiots because they have a studio with $10 000 Sony cameras. They wanted to be hip. And they sell Flips, too.
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