Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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I’m sure there are plenty of tales based on the notion that a penny being sold for a quarter is a bad deal, even if it’s marked down to a dime!
I didn’t even know about this forum until today and was pleasantly surprised. I have a new lurk spot! You and Kathlyn are providing a great service to the creative community and I really appreciate it.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
DV is a notorious pain to key. The reason is that DV has very poor color information. To see this, temporarily disable your key and set your composition viewer window to only show the green or blue color channels.
A trick that helps is to separate out the YUV channels and slightly blur the just the color channels, which results in a cleaner edge for your keyer to work with:
1. Convert your RGB footage to YUV using the effect “Channel Combiner”
2. Apply the “Channel blur” effect to the U and V channels, 2-4 pixels of blur
3. Apply “Channel Combiner” again and use it convert the footage back from YUV to RGBAn easier method is to use DVMatte (https://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=dvmatteb), a $99 greenscreen keyer specifically designed for keying DV. It works great and does the same thing I outlined above.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Cool. In my post, I forgot to explicitly mention that once you have two comp windows open using the method I described, you can then select either viewer, double-click a comp in your bin and it will open in the selected viewer window. This is pretty much what you ended up doing, it sounds like.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Speaking of animation and photo-jpeg codecs, does anyone here use the Sheer Video Codec? I have read many good things with regard to high quality and tiny file sizes, and apparently some big studios are using it a lot as a replacement for the Animation codec. But I’ve yet to hear from average users if it’s worth moving to as a day-to-day, operational codec.
Anyone?
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
To add to my original post on this – My studio DOES have an item in our contract that states we retain all master tapes, project files etc and the client is only entitled to the final output of the contracted works. The justification is that things like project files expose our specially developed workflow, custom techniques etc. and are therefore considered proprietary information. They own the copyright/distro rights on the work, but we own the originals as proprietary. A lawyer’s input was obtained in drafting this contract, so the distinctions should be legally sound.
Of course this is not quite the issue as you asked about, but it does highlight the distinction between what ownership you can and cannot preserve as the artist-for-hire.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I would definitely agree with Nick here. I am not sure whether you are selling consumer services (like wedding video) or B2B (such as corporate video) but the approach is always the same. The trick to effective marketing, no matter what service or product you offer, is to AVOID scattershot, random “give it a try” type approaches. This will just spread your budget paper thin, and it defies a major rule of marketing which is to find a good niche and maintain a presence in that niche for a long, long time. People mostly react to marketing messages the 5th or 6th time they see it, and it is unlikely that, after a few hundred dollars in ad buys, your commercials will have been seen enough times by your target audience to have any impact on your sales. While not a rule, TV ads are traditionally more for companies in the branding phase of their business, which usually means they are a mature company with a decent amount of money in the bank, and are ready to go wide-net.
Experienced marketing pros will also tell you the time-tested approach is to identify your target audience first, draft a list of their demographics and interests, business segment etc. and approach them based on those findings. With B2B, a good start might be trade publications, web sites and trade shows, all related to THEIR line of business (not yours). While less glamorous than TV ads, you are putting yourself in front of them while they are thinking about their business and how to improve it, and providing a solution. You wouldn’t put an ad for a giant hamburger in front of someone who just ate thanksgiving dinner, so why put a business related ad in front of someone who is finally home and tired of thinking about work? The same principal applies to wedding video. Putting ads in wedding-related publications, web sites etc. is hitting prospects while they are in the buying mindset, looking for what you offer and is targeted enough to ensure that your marketing dollars are not wasted.
And finally, a good price on a tv ad buy doesn’t make it a good deal if the money is wasted. Unfortunately for a lot of businesses, TV has a strong appeal to the owner because they will get to see their name in lights. But once that “high” is gone (and your budget) the reality sets in – it was a waste of money because it was poorly targeted, poorly timed and it didn’t last long enough to set in with what few prospects might have seen it.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Yes, this is getting more common these days and I find it repulsive to “bait and switch” for free talent. If you don’t want to pay artists, then don’t charge clients.
As a partner in a studio and someone who deals with hiring creatives all the time, I will say this – It cuts both ways and there is a bit of a pricing war going on. Sure there are some studios that want free labor, but the flip side is that there are a lot of artists out there who are still clinging to the old days when anyone who could do computer-based creative work was able to command an extremely high salary. These individuals are completely put off by the notion that pay rates are going down, and act as if the studios are trying to rob everyone blind. But there is downward price pressure from the top down. The investors want the company to trim marketing costs, so the company wants the ad agency to bid lower, who then want the studios to deliver the work for less, who then lower their pay rates. That downward pressure affects us all, especially as new technologies lower the bar of entry and thousands of new artists flood the market each day.
My hope is that the downward movement will stop. It will require the studios/agencies to put their collective foot down and say ENOUGH, because most of this downward pressure comes from large companies with more than enough money, they just want to squeeze everyone dry in the name of a .02% profit increase. They too might need to tell their investors enough is enough.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
This depends entirely on your billing scheme. If your contract with them calls for x number of hours, and there are hours remaining in the contract, you are on the hook to provide services until those hours are exhausted. Generally my studio works this way, providing any changes asked for regardless of reason/intention. We just keep careful track of all hours worked and keep the client notified of their actuals every day or two. Once the original invoice hours are gone, the client goes to hourly.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
This depends on the language in your contract, but generally speaking when you do a work for hire it is assumed that the paying customer owns the rights to the work once she has paid you in full.
If a client paid you to shoot a bunch of lovely footage of, say, the Golden Gate Bridge for a tourism video, and you turned around and used that footage for another project or even sold it as stock, you are dilluting the value of the original work they contracted you to create for them. In a court of law, the judge would probably side with the client UNLESS you have a contract that very clearly indicates you hold onto all copyright and, more importantly, distribution rights of the footage. Problem is, most clients would strongly object to that and rightfully so since they are paying you to create original works for their use only.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
#1. How do you bill for digitizing on an hourly or daily basis vs. your standard editorial rate?
I agree with everyone here that digitizing IS editing. However, we have a smaller edit station (an older Mac) that an assistant editor digitizes on, and we charge a lower fee for this than a primary suite with editor would cost. This way our fancier suites are not being consumed by this activity and the client feels like we are looking out for their budget.
#2. How do you bill for holding vs. working?
Generally we do not charge clients for holding. Of course that can add up if you are working with a less experienced client who doesn’t quite understand the cost implications of their delays – this can cause a job to be weeks behind schedule if you let them get away with it. Because of this, we are starting to push toward blocking out time and letting the client know that this is what they are paying for, late or no. It’s more preventive (punitive) to keep clients and the job in motion, and less about the money.
#3. day rate/weekly rate
We don’t offer a weekly rate, it’s day rate no matter how long it’s booked out. Our rates are very competitive in our market, so we’re comfortable doing this.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com