Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Here’s my 2 cents.
On an importance scale of 1 to 10 everything about producing video for sale rates a 2 or less except FINDING CLIENTS WHO WILL PAY YOU MONEY – which rates a 15.
Selling “edutainment” is no different than selling anything else.
The hard part is bringing in customers. Period.
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God I HATE PAR cans.
Really. next to halogen shop lights, the’re probably the WORST video lights in common use today.
They’re fine for people watching a life performance, but for cameras they’re miserably, totally, awful.
They produce HARSH shadows. People regularly use party gel colors with them that suck up most of the illumination and cause cameras to strain to expose properly. The red ones tend to vomit out light at precisely the part of the red spectrum that causes many video formats severe chroma bleed.
I’d rather shoot under ANYTHING other than par cans.
Sadly, they’re also pretty cheap – so there are a LOT of them out there.
If you MUST have them on the stage – at least set up some honest focusable video lights (preferably fresnels) with barn doors and set them to fill the FACES of the band members from a gentle angle like 20-30 degrees off axis NEVER directly paralell to the camera angle which gives you drivers license lighting.
And if any of the band members are older than 30 – use some judicious front fill from a footlight angle so that the bags under their eyes and their wrinkles fill in a bit.
Go rent any Eagles video produced in the last 7 years and notice all the fill light from up, down, and both sides? Notice how smooth their faces look even tho they’re all past 50 now? No accident. Notice how when you see colored lights they’re in the BACKGROUND and not on the faces?
If you’ve GOT to use PAR cans – use them to light things – like walls and amps and plants – NEVER people.
Did I mention I HATE PAR cans?
Sorry for the rant.
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The harp, like the piano is a kinda complicated thing to record.
I’d stay away from lavs or any kind of contact mics.
The traditional technique is a stand mounted condensor mic placed at least as far away from the instrument as the instrument is tall.
The space around the harp is also important. A quiet sound field and a space large enough to let the instrument sounds intermix prior to getting to the mic will get you the best results.
Do a web search under “micing a harp” and you should find some manufacturers recommendations.
I think the traditional mics are either large diaphram condensers like the AKG-414 or small diaphram condensors like those from Schoeps or Audio Technica.
Just bring a way to monitor what you’re recording (decent headphones!) and use the best gear you can get your hands on without going too nuts.
Really, there are proabably a couple hundred microphones from many manufacturers and models that can do a workmanlike job of recording this. And if you can’t get anything but a Shure SM-57 don’t let that stop you. Just move it around until the lower end and upper end are sorta in balance and toss a heavy blanket over the refrigerator or anything else making noise in the background and do the best you can.
Good luck.
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For my 2 cents it comes down to a single word.
JUDGEMENT.
No matter how naturally talented you are when you’re young, your judgement isn’t fully formed. Because judgement is formed by trial and error.
Now sometimes you don’t need a lot of judgement. If you’re hired to videotape spring break for a company run by a 25 year old – hours of ill-lit T&A might make your client giddy with delight.
OTOH, if you’re hired to videotape a corporate CEO talking about this quarter’s mediocre company performance, not having powder on set to deal with her perspiration might well be video malpractice.
JUDGEMENT.
The pro looks at what is, assesses what’s needed, figures out whether what’s needed can be afforded, and understands that even tho the professional ballplayer has been on video a hundred times – THIS time he’s pissed that his agent called with bad news and that even tho you busted your ASS getting the jib down to the field and rigged so you could do some nice camera moves – it’s time to LOCK OFF the damn shot and get it done in the next five minutes because he’s gonna melt down in 10.
JUDGEMENT.
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The bottom line for me is that if the interviewee has something to say – it really doesn’t matter much which of the “save the jump cut” things you do – just pick one the feels right and stick to it.
In the end, you’ll quickly train the audience that that particular transition just covers two adjacent scenes.
Same with leaving in the jump cut. If the audience, topic or tonality of the piece supports a very modern look – then the audience – weaned on MTV will accept almost anything.
The problem comes when the content is weak and the audience is subconsciously looking for a reason to disengage with the content (think 80% of corporate training videos (some of which I’ve been forced to make by clients with healthy checking accounts but an underdeveloped ability to listen) in that circumstance a jump cut or a glowing 3D cube spin or whatever is a sure way to send their brains off to never-never land.
Unfortunately when it comes to strictly informational programming – you have to do a BETTER job of editing crap than you do editing interesting content.
My experience, anyway.
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God in heaven NO.
All your effort, judgement and focus is supposed to be in turing out work of increasing quality.
You simply can’t do that if you can’t accurately monitor what you’re doing. Period.
Not insisting on owning the primary device that will allow you to see the images you’re recording accurately is INSANE.
How can you learn to fix problems in field acquisition if you can’t even see those problems?
On second thought go right ahead. Take your portable home TV, or LCD computer monitor or laptop and go forth and shoot. Someday, when you’ve busted your gut to do work you’re really proud of, and you believe you’re about to ascend to the next level of your craft – and somebody slaps it on a REAL monitor and you suddenly realize that all the fluorescent lights in the store behind your subject are actually a billious green rather than the acceptable tones that your LCD rendered them in – then remember this post.
Field production without accurate ways to monitor sound and judge picture is the hallmark of the newbie.
Sorry to be harsh, but that’s the simple truth.
You can’t fix stuff you can’t see or hear.
End of story.
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Personal opinion here.
I *HATE* selling time. Let me repeat that. I *HATE* selling time. Hours or minutes or days or whatever.
First and foremost, your irrecoverable inventory is constantly disappearing. That sucks for a start.
Plus time billing puts NO premium on talent, judgement or experience.
Two editors. A is OK and takes 10 hours to produce a pedestrian cut of a project – for which he charges you $1k via $100 an hour.
Editor B is experienced and creative. She has an inspired idea. She turns out an OUTSTANDING program but takes only 2 hours to accomplish it do to her focus and efficiency. So even if her “rate” is $250 an hour she’s supposed to take home HALF what the hack billed?
When you bill for time, you’re essentially accepting the idea that the person who’s talented and experienced and therefore efficient – is worth LESS than the person who’s a mediocre plodder.
Bad idea, in my opinion.
FWIW
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No, you’re not acting crazy at all.
I think it’s amazing that FCP has done what it’s done. It’s become essentially an “equal standing” competitor at EVERY level of video content editing – from monster budget network TV to micro budget indy filmmaking.
For my 2 cents, it’s VERY hard for someone wedded to one software approach to fairly judge another.
We’re all creatures of habit. Chris Heuer was annoyed about not yet having found a way to replace a clip without messing up the transition – but in point of fact, FCP has more than one way to do exactly that. (Chris – check the manual for “Paste Attributes – Content” which replaces only the content and leaves EVERYTHING else about a clip – including transitions, filters, audio levels, whatever – intact – and you can assign an F-key or any other keyboard command you like to invoke it.)
I happen to be an FCP guy and have been since version 1. But there’s not a month goes by when I don’t find other ways (hopefully, more efficient ways) to do many routine editing tasks even now, after nearly a decade of constant FCP editing! I suspect that the Avid folks, the Vegas folks, and the Premier folks can say EXACTLY the same thing.
These are systems you GROW with. Constantly. So all I can tell you is that FCP is a VERY safe choice today given the fact that there are more than a MILLION paid, registered seats out there using it. (and maybe a couple million more unpaid copies in circulation for all we know.)
Your company may not care about the 16k verses 22k cost difference. If so they’re idiots. Any accountant will tell you that spending nearly a third more for something is only reasonable if you get something tangible for that difference.
Maybe they ARE getting something for the extra money like Newscutter integration or access to some kind of special Avid support. But that something won’t have anything to do with basic to advanced video editing capabilities – cuz none of the programs I’ve mentioned in this post have any problems with state of the art video editing. Period.
Good luck.
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Watch out for cheap directors chairs.
They tend to develop “motion squeaks” and a restless interviewee can create a symphony of annoying noises during an interview.
The best solution I’ve found is a fixed, padded backless barstool. It requires the interviewee to sit up straight. Make sure it doesn’t swivel – another motion inducer that you don’t need during an interview.
If you really do want the look of a directors chair – the ones from Hollywood Chairs(.com) are outstanding.
They are NOT cheap, but they’re amazingly comfortable and in my experience – virtually silent no matter how much someone squirms around in them.
Good luck.
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I’m Mac based – but I’ve got to say that OmniGraffle ROCKS for any kind of diagramming.
Actually, about 90% of my non-text on-screen graphics for my videos are now totally or partly generated by this graphics package.
Great for simple “around the studio” stuff too – like the aforementioned wiring diagrams.