[Chase]

There are no good sub $1000 cameras as many have stated. You can pick up a DVX-100 for $2000 on craigslist. semi risky of course. You’ll likely only be showing people whatever it is you decide to do on a DVD or the web so DV is all you need.

Now to help you with what you really want help with, getting work as an editor. I’ve been cutting for 10+ years now and I rarely am asked for a reel here in LA. I might be dodging bullets but for the most part most people know someone who knows someone who worked on the same thing as me and thats the extent of the background check. Thats followed by the ‘we only need someone for a week or two but it might be longer’ which is the way they deliver the ‘this is a test’ message. The gig always ends up being 3 months.

Knowing what I know I would not bother to buy a camera and shoot something. you’d need lights and sound and time. IMO you’d be better off looking for an assistant editor gig and then at night doing your own cuts of their show for your reel. Usually you can cut some teases and stuff that might air too, all good for your reel.

I have found that in the past 4 or 5 years editors are hired based on temperament, awareness of the post process, editing skill, editing speed, and technical knowledge. All in that order. 4 of those 5 are things which cannot be represented in a reel.

I got my first editing job by showing up to a cattle call at ESPN for editors. The week before I had taken some movies from the 80s and some rock songs from the 90s and recut the movies so the song told the story of the movie and visa versa. I got hired on for a killer $10 an hour but I built a reel and I still get hired to this day because of that particular credit.

Buying a camera and shooting my own stuff would have done nothing to get me that gig. The only benefit I can see is you’d be more familiar with the ingest process for the particular camera you’d buy. And of course creatively it would be fun.

Oh, and if you can, learn Avid. FCP is great but LA is flooded with valley college students floating their editor resumes because they took a weekend class or cut a student film. Those things are good experience but they don’t give your employer a check in a box next to the 5 things I listed above when they see your resume. Knowing Avid indicates you MIGHT have spent some time on something that wasn’t a student project.

Looking for an assist gig would be my most heartfelt suggestion though.

[Chase]

can the AJA VTR app do the 32ms offset or does that need to be done in the file output from protools?

[Chase]

So upon further reading of posts it looks like we need to either use a HVR-1500 for its HD-SDI and 422a deck control, or we need aja’s HD-SDI converter or an HDMI to HD-SDI converter and an ilink to 422a adapter for deck control.

[Chase]

We’re on a fairly robust machine, which I guess I should have mentioned. MacPro 8-core with Kona 3 cards, so we have a pretty wide range of options.

I’ve always heard that the cinema displays are pretty terribly inaccurate for color just because, if nothing else, the level of tech in the hardware isn’t capable of displaying even 8-bit color.

All recommendations at any price I think are welcome though!

[Chase]

Great! Thanks for the tip. Always fun to learn some other buried secret. Well, at least it was buried for me!

McG

[Chase]

I’ve worked on a few season of the bachelor and this is the system we used.

TB0723B05-6

TB = The Bachelor
0723 = the day it was shot
B = camera
05 = the load
6 = the season

This numbering is a HUGE help because it allows anyone to look at the tape and know EXACTLY when the tape was shot without having look at any cross references. I highly recommend it for that reason alone. In addition the load number probably gives you a rough idea of when during the day the tape was shot and thus a hint to the type of b-roll it might have. A camera load of 01 probably isn’t going to have sunsets on it. Always using time of day timecode will assist in this as well.

We make a VHS dub of the camera masters and we have in house loggers log every single tape from the field into a searchable filemaker pro database. They are asked to include things beyond just the names of cast members. Things like, blue dress, rocking boat, verizon building, are all the types of things that go in there. Of course these logs are only as good as the people hired to create them, but its better to have a $900 a week logger spend a little extra time on it than it is to have a $3000 a week editor sifting through the material.

I’ve seen the upfront expense of a great production and post process make some line producers and execs in charge get a little throw up in their mouth, but I’ve never once heard a complaint about the above system that wasn’t due to sloppy manpower. It has always worked for us but requires everyone from the camera assist labeling the tapes all the way to the loggers and avid assists to understand why consistency is important.

McG

[Chase]

How has performance been on that machine? I’m currently working on the same workstation but I’m building a woodcrest system from scratch which obviously should be leaps and bounds ahead.

McG

[Chase]

yeah, thats exactly what i want to do. I’ve already delivered the episodes in question so its moot now. But i WOULD like to know how to do it, if its possible.

[Chase]

We have serveral Huge Systems arrays. We’ve had a few individul drives in them die on us but the support has been good and we’ve been able to repair the raid and recover the potentially lost data. That said I personally think they’re horribly overpriced.

But to answer your question. . .

We’ve been using 300g Maxtor drives the past six months with no problems. You still get the small system lag that comes from using firewire drives but for most people its undetectable. I notice it all the time. For me the bottom line on these types of drives is the length of the manufacturer warrenty. If its 5 years then I assume they’ve built it to last half that long. Most drives now are only a year or sometimes 2 years.

If external is what you need but not portabililty then I would get a 4 or 8 port SATA raid card and just attach an external sata enclosure. Its less portable but its more space and better performance, and probably less expensive.

McG

[Chase]

OK thanks for the advice. Luckily these shows are only half hour shows and are more or less live to tape. Its a 4 camera shoot and there are only 4 source tapes for each episode. Naturally my concern then falls to the time code, but I’m sure its going to be ok on 95% of the tapes for the season.

In your experience is the time it takes to batch digitize and complete the online very different than doing the same on a Symphony?

McG