[Bill Davis]

What ever label you put on them, pols, lawyers, agents, candidates, etc, etc.

At the end of things they’re people. Which means you’ll face a RANGE of human behavior when dealing with them.

Personally, I expect EVERYONE to have reasonable ethics – consistent with my personal standards – if I’m going to agree to work with them.

Cause I’ve learned the following in life.

If they’ll lie in a spot – they’ll lie to my face.
Even if they just “mislead” in their copy – you can be sure they’ll be just fine in “misleading” you at the drop of a hat, too.

I’m too old and have worked too hard for too many years to accept associating myself with people I can’t trust.

It’s too damn stressful.

There ARE fine people out there. Some are redish, some are bluish and some are actually grown ups who’ve learned not give a rats behind about anyone’s color (in any sense) – but in their personal qualities as a whole human being.

Those are the people I enjoy spending my time with the most.

Ideologues of ANY stripe are boring – and today, too damn many politicos are ideologues. People who have disengaged their brains in order to feel better about what others tell them they should feel, think and do.

That said, a smart “life fact” is that figuring out who you’re willing to hang with ALWAYS matters.
I can earn more money. I can’t get my self-respect back if my work helps get a married “Mr. Morality” elected and he subsequently gets caught red-handed with a hooker in Vegas.

Like they say – Integrity is acting properly when nobody’s looking.

And it doesn’t matter if nobody ELSE ever discovers my VO helped elect Senator idiot. I KNOW.

Integrity in politicians is important. And uncommon enough that I think its critical for all of us to think about it, value it, and practice it.

So, NO. I don’t and won’t put my talent and efforts behind anything political I don’t feel fits my personal standards and ideals.

Period.

[Bill Davis]

OK, maybe it’s as simple as this.

I’ve never known intermediate or below level work be granted an EMMY. Regional or otherwise.

I’ve known MULTIPLE examples of work that even the PRODUCERS would agree was done earlier in their careers and that makes them CRINGE now – that resulted in yet another TELLY on the shelf.

Now, I’m going to moderate this with saying that all this happened back maybe 10 or 15 years ago, when I briefly thought about entering work in the “contest” – and discussed it with some peers.

Even those holding the awards held the opinion that it was as much pay for play as it was an objective qualitative standards based process.

Maybe it’s different today.

I know a LOT of people who hang here have TELLYS on the shelf.

So what’s YOUR opinion TELLY holders.

Looking back, was the award for objective quality judged against real industry standards. Or did you pay the money, and get the award for OK work as you judge it from your professional standards as they exist today?

Or put simply, does TELLY signify “outstanding, absolutely top-of-the-class award-worthy work when compared to all others” – to you? Cuz that’s what any trophy’s supposed to come for, right?

Truly curious.

[Bill Davis]

Robin,

ALL telephones are primarily designed to be efficient at picking up the frequencies of a human voice at VERY CLOSE RANGE. This make sense when you understand how they’re commonly used.

So there’s no reason to make the microphones particularly sensitive or (and this is most critical in the area of recording ambient sound with them) to build in high-quality low-noise circuitry into them such that they achieve a robust signal to noise ratio in typical recording.

They’re designed to be PHONES. Not field recording devices.

That’s the bottom line.

Sorry.

[Bill Davis]

IIRC, my E&O coverage was just a rider to my general business and comprehensive liability policy.

I think adding it upped my premium by $50 a year or something. Nothing substantial.

Look, ALL insurance is a RISK game. From the insurance company point of view, they’re goal is to take in the largest premiums possible and pay out the least claims possible. That’s how insurance companies work. Pure and simple. So if you come to them with any whiff of a potential claim issue, of course they’re going to quote you the moon.

But if you’re just shopping for general insurance with out the whiff of a specific exposure, the rules then to change. In other words, if it’s just part of your run of the mill insurance profile, it’s a small incremental bump.

If you don’t have general business insurance, shop around. You can probably get a GREAT policy that covers E&O for far less than what they’re quoting for a rider for just that.

That’s how it works in my experience, but I’m not an expert by any means.

Just a guy who pays premiums every month so I can pull a certificate when someone asks – and hopes I’ll never need the insurance I keep buying. (sigh)

YMMV.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

One small thing that’s working here is I ordered bottled water and a cooler for my studio and then in a moment of clarity, placed it not outside the edit bay for clients – but INSIDE the edit bay – directly beside the doorway – not 4 feet from my edit chair – for ME.

Now I can’t head for the refrigerator room without walking past the water cooler.

That change alone has cut my soft drink consumption by 75% – since getting thirsty OR hungry and heading for the refer puts cold, fresh water directly into my line of sight.

We are visual creatures after all.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

Uh,

Prestegious? Well, Uh, if you say so. But I don’t think any of the “for profit” awards where the award fee is a profit generator for the company hosting said awards has much of anything to do with production quality.

Research any of these “pay to play” awards. None of them have any real objective standards posted as to what constitutes quality or why one submission is chosen over another (presuming that some submitters actually “lose” to others for reasons other than a subjective single judges “whim.” Also troubling is that in the years when I looked into them, they never seemed to have published panels of who was doing said “judging” – you know, recognizable names with verifiable industry expertise, perhaps? That would be nice, don’t you think?

I see them largely as “purchased” awards. Nothing more.

In fact, tell you what. Go online and find a really spiffy trophy or plaque. Have it engraved with something really laudatory about your production efforts. Send it to me with an extra $100 and I’ll return it to you as a certified “Billy” award! You’ll probably save money and get a much more impressive award!

Just my opinion, and as such, worth precisely what you paid for it.

[Bill Davis]

Be VERY careful here.

Multiple cameras tend to EXPONENTIALLY increase the complexity of any gig.

Given a 2 hour game – and 3 cameras, you’ll generate 6 hours of linear footage time.

The most efficient way to do this would be to switch it live. But that means running lines to a central switching position from all cameras and also means you should run a full com system since it’s frustrating to get back to the shop to discover that 50% of the time ALL your camera ops decided to give you a tight shot of the QB.

You could cut ingestion time down by using solid state recording media – but then you’re a static discharge away from losing a whole camera angle.

For safety you should probably do this traditionally and shoot iso tapes in the cameras, then bring them back to your place and do a “pesudo live switch” in post on your NLE.

But that means ingesting 3 two hour tapes or 6 hours minimum of edit prep. Then 3-4 hours of cutting the game – then 1-2 hours generating the master – then another 1-2 hours encoding and burning the first disc. So that’s a MINIMUM of 13-14 hours per game.

In truth, you WILL NOT get it done in that amount of time. You’ll spend ALL of Saturday and ALL of Sunday – 20-30 hours on this. Trust me, that’s just how it works.

IN fact, I’d guess that even with 3 modest cameras – and buddies who will work for near nothing – you’re looking at equip depreciation, hard costs, and overhead on a bare bones project like this of $400-500 bucks just to get the images on tape. Then you’ve got to make something for the editing.

SO hopefully you priced this so that you don’t end up making $5 an hour for your efforts ($3.50 after paying your camera ops!)

Still, if you love making video it’s good experience. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that this kind of project seldom makes actual sustainable business money – not if you look at it through a lens of real business accounting.

Still, if you’re doing what you love – that’s its own compensation.

[Bill Davis]

Tim,

“Spotty?” Me thinks tho dost – praise- too much. My kingdom for iPhone’s ability to operate/organize like I think – but with COVERAGE akin to Phoenix/Scottsdale’s omnipresent VERIZON signal. That would surely be bliss.

BTW, I think that (now deleted) phone number is likely circa your time with the estimable Boris? So yeah, a while back. ; )

I’ll drop you an email after the clients leave this PM.

[Bill Davis]

Assuming that the Comtek generates it’s audio through a traditional analog gain stage, most of them are optimized for output settings about 75-80% of the way to the maximum setting.

Think of all the faders you’ve ever seen on mixing consoles. The unity gain marking is about 80% of the way up the slider travel throw – below that you’re attenuating the signal, above that it’s being boosted. At the -0- point, it’s passing the signal exactly as it’s seeing it.

So I’d start there with your Comtek setting – and if you hear significant amplifier hiss – then back it off to where it sounds cleanest.

By the way, with the heavy companding done on most wireless/IFB systems, you may find hiss inevitable.

YMMV – and good luck.

[Bill Davis]

(sarcastically) Oh THANKS Tim.

(returns to struggling with the conundrum of deciding whether I’m now morally compelled to remove the “Tim Wilson” phone number harvested while sharing lunch with him and Michael Horton at some industry event back in the early 2000s from my iPhone in order not to anger either Tim or all the Technology Gods in general…)

Why does life have to be so damn COMPLICATED!

BTW Excellent screed!