[Bob Cole]

[tony salgado] “have not obtained the rights to use other material such as the prints.”

The reason I ask is, of course, for my own sake, not MTV’s. Your first point makes sense about paid/unpaid product placements, and is of no concern to me. Coke hasn’t approached me lately about appearing in my doc’s.

But your second point scares me a bit. If I have to start blurring every tiny detail in any image for which I don’t have specific legal authority — what a pain. I wonder whether this sort of thing applies to MTV, and less so to smaller targets like me.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[dbmata] “I really needed the advice too.”

This is what I love about students — it’s easy to compete for clients with people who missed Etiquette 101. You were miffed that nobody had volunteered their time to reply for, what, two days? It has now been almost three days since two knowledgeable replies, and no thanks from you. “We get the message.”

[Bob Cole]

[Ty Ford] “We did testimonials in an operating dry cleaning establishment once. Talk about noise.”

Forget about the noise. What made your whites really really white?

[Bob Cole]

[Ty Ford] “I’d use a long handled omni for the back and forth”

Ty — Omni? Would you be seeing that on camera?

I thought you’d recommend the Schoeps hyper cardiod with the bass roll-off and forgiveness for off-axis.

— Your student, Bob C

[Bob Cole]

I had to do something like this a year ago, and it was not hard.

I used Premiere Pro 1.5, which provided three free encodes from Surcode. After that you have to buy a license.

It was no problem to take the resulting file into Encore.

Here is part of a thread on the PP forum on this: https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=3&postid=855025

[Bob Cole]

Just to remind everybody that this is not a private conversation. I believe that search engines survey these pages. Deliberate violation of copyrights, performance rights, etc., may get you in hotter water than inadvertent violations. (I think I learned on the COW that certain tv networks do not generally show halftime performances at basketball and football games, in large part because of licensing concerns. When music is played in an arena during a timeout, and can’t be avoided in the background, I think there is some reasonable exception made. I recall something about six seconds of music “clean” being okay. But I’m way beyond my depth here and could be wrong. Basically, you can ALWAYS be sued — it’s just a matter of minimizing the plaintiff’s likelihood of (1) noticing you and (2) having a good case.)

If it were my doing, and the graduation involved any large number of people, I’d be careful — get releases, ascertain whether the music and arrangement are public domain, and edit the piece to minimize or eliminate any potential problem. At some point, if you have significant assets, and you decide that you need to do more research than the project is worth, I think you have to tell the client to go get another producer.

And as a proud Baltimorean who took several school field trips to brave little Fort McHenry, may I remind you that the Star Spangled Banner is a splendid song. If you think it’s a little too martial, you should check out Maryland’s state song, which basically refights the Civil War from the side of the Confederacy. And if you think it’s unsingable… get a better artist.

[Bob Cole]

touchscreen?

[Bob Cole]

Thanks for this thread — it raises important questions.

The most important thing to recognize about clients who require a fixed price is that money is often not the main issue for them. Their main goal is CONTROL. Making movies is a scary business, with thousands of details. Directors can order 20 takes for a scene; editors can “tweak” for just about ever.

If you want business from clients who require fixed pricing:

1. Respect their POV.
2. Provide consistent, clear communication on the ongoing charges for the project. (Law firms provide a good model for how to avoid disputes. They provide estimates of the final bill, and then give the client timely updates (as often as daily) on the hours and other charges that are incurred.)

If you do that, in my experience, many clients who start by requiring fixed pricing will wind up authorizing additional charges, because you will be respecting their need to feel in control.

[Bob Cole]

For the right project (limited footage set, long-term), would it work to have two copies of FCP, and send a project file back and forth? If so, you could just send a hard drive with all the footage, once, and the client could see the edit as it evolves.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Joe Vibral] “I suppose it’s only appropriate to add music and flare”

This strikes me as a big no-no. I think the coaches just want to go through the mound of DVDs they get as quickly as they can, and don’t appreciate any hype. Plus, it makes it look as if you’re doing a hard sell on the kid.

But my info may be out of date, Joe. You might try calling a coach of an out-of-season sport and asking him or her.