Tim Wilson
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Rajan,
Can you explain more of what you mean? Also, can you provide a screenshot? That might help us understand, and hopefully help!
Thanks,
Tim -
-
Hi Stacey,
Thanks for joining!
You know what, you’re right, we need an FAQ. We’ve also had a request to create an Introduce Yourself kind of forum, and I think that that’s a good idea too.
Until then, I’m certainly happy to answer any questions here!
We do not have a direct message function. We’d experimented it early on, but found that some of our more visible members were being inundated by people asking them questions that should have been asked on the forums, and, let’s just say “more”. ? It’s possible that we may try something like this again, but for now, our most active members asked us to turn this off, and we understand why. With around a million people a month passing through the COW, and many millions over the course of a year, we’re going to have to do some more thinking about how to keep direct messaging from getting out of control again.
Please let me know if there’s anything else I can tell you! And thanks again for being part of the COW!
Regards,
Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
Blackmagic has just announced that the beta version of Resolve 17.1 has been posted, with the headline feature being support for macOS Big Sur. What took them so long? ?
-
Blackmagic has just announced that the beta version of Resolve 17.1 has been posted, with the headline feature being support for macOS Big Sur. What took them so long? ?
-
Am I wrong that Apple appears to be dropping the X? There’s certainly Big Sur as number 11, but most of the language I’m seeing refers to Final Cut Pro. Even the few links remaining to FCPX all redirect to URLs that eschew the X (exchew?), for pages that just say Final Cut Pro.
I don’t remember this always being the case, but I can’t say that I’ve been watching too closely. Is this new or nay?
-
Hi Todd,
We’ve seen this too, and am sorry for the inconvenience. It’s part of the specific ad, not your browser or our site in general. I’m taking it up with the agency who provided it, and hope to have a fix soon.
You may have figured out the workaround for now, which is to scroll far enough down the page that the ad is up above the menu bar, so to speak. There is a literal window above the ad though, so that if your click is in the ad’s “airspace”, then it registers a click. This is not intended, and not cool. Hence us working on it with them.
In the meantime, scrolling your page down, so that the ad’s airspace is off the top of your screen, so to speak, will definitely do the trick.
I’ll try to have a better solution in the next day or two.
My apologies again,
Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
We used to make a bunch of money in real estate video in the 90s, but saw it start to crater by the end of the decade with DV. I can’t even imagine trying to make REAL money in it these days competing with phones. Yeah, drone expertise can add a little, but I’m even seeing realtors with pocket drones doing some pretty good stuff on their own. Not as good as we’d make it, but for them, it doesn’t need to be. We used to have a TV show for this stuff. Now, it just needs to be good enough to be better than the average at Zillow.
There are folks in the COW who’ve made a living with memorial videos, and I think you’re right that interest might be higher now. My uncle died early in the pandemic, nothing related to Covid, but his family wasn’t allowed in the hospital, and there was no funeral because public gatherings weren’t allowed. I’d love to have seen a memorial video in this context, and I know the rest of the family would too. It’s been months, and it still doesn’t feel quite resolved.
The question I’d have is, how do you pitch it? I’m not sure where you could draw a crowd to tell them about it. Facebook? Maybe NextDoor if you’re trying to make it local.
The biggest single transition for reinvention that I’ve seen is developing expertise in Zoom production. That includes things like building mini flypacks so that subjects have the right lights and backdrops in hand, and coaching them through setup. The Emmys sent out over 130 of these, and the medical education company that my wife works for just sent 8 of them to the faculty for their newly virtualized fall training session for chief residents in family practice.
The former live events producers helping them put this together then managed the live streams, ran the breakout rooms, and a variety of AV functions not entirely unlike what they did before, using the same kinds of switchers, graphics, etc., but with the inputs coming in from multiple locations over IP, rather than cabling in a single room.
It turns out that now is a good time to be pitching this, because people have found the limits of running their own Zoom meetings, and are looking for help raising their game.
But we’ve even found for things like commercial production that the director can be offsite, managing it remotely. It feels like the more expertise you can develop, the more ways you can apply it.
The guys I’ve seen be really successful at it are taking time off to seriously train themselves. People on the receiving ends of pitches are able to tell pretty quickly who knows what they’re talking about, again, because unlike a lot of other production scenarios, they’ve tried some stuff and know what DOESN’T work. You just need to show them what DOES work.
The challenge is always going to be for making pitches outside your current contacts. The knocking on doors scenario is gone forever, I think.
But especially for helping your current customers with remote production, I think you have some opportunities if you can give them even the barest idea of how much better you can make their lives by relieving them of this burden.
This is of course the issue with real estate video right now, where your primary competition is realtors who are actually enjoying doing this work themselves, above and beyond the guys who are willing to do for $100 dollars what we used to charge $1500-2000 a pop for as our MINIMUM price in the early 90s.
This is a great topic, though! I’d love to hear more about how people are having to reposition themselves, new skills you’re picking up, etc.
-
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
-
All correct. You can also see the posts of people you follow, as well as forums you’ve subscribed to, and later, topics or keywords you choose to follow, all in your Profile Feed. That is, the Feed on your own Profile page. You’ll see everything that the people you follow have posted, whereas other people looking at your profile will only see what you’ve posted.
The slightly longer answer is, pretty much like any other website with a feed (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc etc etc), your feed will look different from anybody else’s because of the specific people and forums you follow. The more people you follow, the more your feed has in it.
There’s no “point” beyond that, except to help shape the experience of the COW the way you’d like to shape it. We’re building in much, much customization in the days and weeks ahead, all of which you are free to ignore of course! Feel free to read it all, any way you’d like!
And certainly, many people come to the COW because it’s NOT a feed, where everything flies at you more or less unsorted (although we’re proud adherents to chronology!). But forum views give you the chance to see things organized by topic, with time as very much a secondary dimension.
The point is, any way you want to experience the COW, we’re enabling, with even more options to come!
Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW