Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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I agree that you should be careful with people who honestly don’t know their budget or what is involved. But I will say that I almost always keep my budget (and in some cases, my timeline) private when negotiating with freelancers. The reason is simple. In my experience, as soon as you tell someone they have a week to finish something, they will take a week. If you tell them you have $10,000 budgeted, that is exactly how much they will end up charging you. Planned budget and timeline are meaningless, what IS important is how long it will take the freelancer and at what rate. That is information they should provide, and the hiring entity can then decide if this particular freelancer is the right person for the job.
Remember, freelancers are business entities and you are competing against other “businesses” when you talk to a potential client. The determining factors for the potential client are always going to be speed, price and quality, so it’s only wise for them to hold these details close during negotiation and see what YOU have to say.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I would carefully consider your options on this issue.
– Web site templates are affordable and you should be able to find one that suits your fancy, but they are still just generic templates and may not end up being as easy to update down the road as you might think.
– If you build a web site yourself by learning Dreamweaver, unless you are truly gifted you will probably end up with a sub-par web site that doesn’t exactly scream quality. Many people don’t realize how complex web design is, but suffice it to say that you can’t just throw some beautiful Photoshop comp up on the web and “presto!” you have a site. Also, there are very specific ways of posting video that enable the widest audience to view it that are pretty complicated.
I would suggest that you hire a web designer who knows PHP very well, and ask them to build your site as well as a simple back-end content management system (CMS). They can fairly easily build a system where you can update the text and imagery on your site, add videos to your demo reel page by using a simple form etc.. They could also set up a password protected “client area” where you can post videos for review. All of this is fairly routine for an experienced PHP web developer, and shouldn’t cost that much to execute.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I would like to add that, as a trade group, NAB’s politics and lobbying almost always go directly against my personal beliefs. Of course not everyone will agree with this, and that’s fine, but I am not eager to give them even more money to lobby with when consumers are almost always at the losing end of their pet issues. They’ve spent well over $50M lobbying and paying for trips, etc. over the past five years, mostly to curry favor on issues like media consolidation and protecting the biggest media corporations from their own mistakes. I don’t see how this possibly benefits me, in fact it works AGAINST me as a consumer and media enthusiast, so why should I give them my money?
Sorry to get political but hey – I’m a wacky Californian what can I say.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
“Having all those products and services under one roof is a convenience”
I don’t know how convenient it is to take several days off of work (especially if you’re the owner), fly to Vegas, stay in an overpriced room (even by Vegas standards) and then walk across 1,500 square miles of floor to “see” new products.
I am of the opinion that if you really NEEDED a particular product, you would seek it out through conventional channels. I have never seen anything on the NAB floor that I didn’t know existed and was so crucial to my business model that I was thanking my lucky stars I attended the show. Sure new product debut there, but they are promptly covered at length on the web like every other product so where’s the big advantage?
Maybe I’m wrong, but NAB always seemed more suited towards people who don’t want to spend time researching products (which is supremely penny wise, pound foolish if NAB is your big time-saving alternative) or perhaps are looking for “cool toys” or to see the “hot” new products. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but you can’t fault the people and companies who won’t shell out major bucks to participate in that circus.
As for NAB being THE even of our industry, that is debatable as well. What about SIGGRAPH? Or DV Expo, etc.? Sure they aren’t freakin’ HUGE shows with celebrity keynotes, but from my perspective they are much more finely tuned to our industry. Case in point – will I purchase a $5m broadcast amplifier, video helicopter or cherry picker? Doubtful, and a large chunk of NAB is dedicated to this type of major equipment.
I am firmly in Ron’s camp on this one.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Testify.
Who doesn’t prefer to shop without the pressure of some sales guy breathing down your neck feeding you cherry-picked stats and perfect-world scenarios?
The internet is THE perfect place to research, compare and find out what others think of products before making a decision. It’s also pretty indisputable that better deals can be had online once you ARE ready to buy.
I would only add that we should all start taking it a step further and shop at smaller online retailers (where possible) instead of the tried and true sources like B&H. The increased competition will help to drive prices down across the board.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
There’s about a million things one could say here, but the number one piece of advice has to be – get yourself a contract before doing ANY work for anyone. There are generic work-for-hire contracts all over the internet that you can customize, but working without getting your client to sign one is suicide. At the very least, your contract should cover:
– Total cost of video or hourly/daily/weekly rate , depending on how you work
– What is included for that price; is it a flat bid for a guaranteed finished product, or does the bid only cover x number of hours?
– What you are expected to deliver, and what you will NOT deliver (such as original project files, etc)
– Payment terms. Net 30 or payment on delivery? Either way, get it in writing because this issue can ruin you
– How are disputes handled? My contract stipulates that the client agrees to give us the chance to fix any problems before pursuing legal action, and even then they agree to binding arbitration. It can be disputed as to whether this is legally bulletproof, but I sleep easier at night.
Any other issues you think might become a problem, write them into your contract. Just be careful not to get too heavy and risk scaring clients away. Remember, a good contract protects both you and your client so that both sides walk away satisfied.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
This thread is a little old now, but I wanted to throw my hat in the ring because our spankin’ new Nexis 100 arrived yesterday, and I can confirm that the print quality is bordering on laughable. I pulled in a 300dpi photo to test it out, and the result was barely better than what you might see coming out of a dot matrix printer. Horrid.
The unit is obviously a prefab that resellers buy wholesale and rebrand, as the Nexis 100 is the exact same machine as the DiscMakers offering. Avoid both.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Raylight has four quality settings (good through bad, essentially) that can be selected via a popup when you are in programs like Vegas. I don’t know if this window is available when you are working in After Effects, but honestly I have only used Raylight a few times.
The HVX200 (and HD footage in general) is practically designed around the Mac platform. DVCPRO HD, ProRes 422 and other codecs are Mac only. I know you’re on a PC, but if you are serious about working in HD with your HVX200 you should look into a Mac Pro.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Exactly what I was going to say. You shot in 48fps (?), captured at 60 (aka 30i), then exported to 24p. That is a mess, hopefully there was a compelling reason!
When I look at the screen shot, here’s what I see. Your matte is not tracking to the footage properly (seems out of time by a few frames), and as a result it is revealing the green screen that should otherwise be keyed out. The spill suppression is causing the revealed green screen footage to look brown.
That said, I’m not entirely sure this is purely a fps shoot/capture/export issue, because at worst, within After Effects you’d have some minor edge issues but I doubt it would be as bad as you’re experiencing. You may want to double check to ensure that ALL of your comps and subcomps have the proper framerate, are lined up properly etc. because it looks to me like your matte and footage are misalligned by several frames or more. This isn’t really something that the embedded framerate would cause, to my knowledge.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I purchased the latest Trapcode 3D Stroke just a month or so ago, and the Red Giant site says if you purchased BEFORE August 2007 you need an update. Thing is, it sounds like the problem IS Leopard, as their site also says none of the Red Giant plugins are 10.5 compatible, with no planned date to MAKE them compatible.
Is anyone else on Leopard experiencing problems with their plugins?
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com