Dan Brockett
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Good one! 😉
I must say that in all my years of corporate video, I have never worked staff, always as a freelancer or contractor. I have worked with some good staff producers, but never with a talented editor/camera person/sound mixer who was staff. I am sure that there are some out there but usually, we are brought in because they have nobody on staff who can actually set up a C-stand, light and shoot.
We are in the days of multi-tasking though. I have not edited for about ten years, yet lately I find myself doing quite a bit of editing. And this from a producer/writer/DP already. I am learning everything I can about Motion, re-acquainting myself with Soundtrack Pro and I suppose it would behoove me to learn DVD SP finally instead of just using iDVD. Budgets are shrinking and client’s expectations are growing, not so much in quality, but in the amount of work that one person can do. They take good lighting, sound and graphics as a matter of factly, not expecting to pay much extra for it.
Dan
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Do all of you really have SCSI 160 cards? Unfortunately my G5’s slots are maxed out, I have no room for one. Wish that they made these Firewire 800.
Dan
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“Its a job in DC so I figure $50K at the low end of experience and $75K for someone with more experience. I’d consider applying for it if I wasn’t invested in my own business and had any interest in being in DC.”
See told you there would be no shortage of takers on this…I have only visited DC, can you actually survive there on 50k?
Dan
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The sad part is that there are probably a lot of people out there who would jump at this for $50K per year. This business is too competitive. The only reason that corporations advertise like this is that they probably think that they can get it. And they probably will, although not with someone highly skilled in even half of these disciplines.
We do work in the era of the $2,000.00 regional commercial, the $200.00 day rate for you and your HD camera and the 30 minute corporate video with the $5,000.00 budget. There are a lot of technical schools and film schools that are churning out rich kids that live at home that have some skills and will gladly do lots of work for little money. Fact of life. Not saying that they are good but most of the corporate clients I work with don’t even know or care what “good” is. They run on “adequate” a lot of the time 😉
FWIW, I agree with you totally but budgets aren’t going to increase any time soon in this economy. People will continue to want more for less.
Dan
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I will check those out, they look interesting. I did a little more research and unfortunately it looks as if Ikea has discontinued their little ellipsoidal, at least in the U.S.
Here is a little more about it https://qhib.blogspot.com/2005/08/isbrytare-spotlight-from-ikea.html
Dan
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Jerry:
Thanks for the report from the front lines. I must say that after attending the first LA RED User Group meeting at Kappa Video last month, I am sold on the RED camera itself, but the RED workflow seemed very buggy and glitchy. I know that it is sorting itself out and will be streamlined probably by the end of this year or early next year, but I asked several other producers there, “if you were shooting a narrative television show or indie feature TODAY, would you use this camera and workflow?” All of us agreed that TODAY, we wouldn’t. The editors we spoke with all related tales of potholes in the road with both the RED files and the proxy files, huge rendering times to convert, etc.
I am also a still photographer (semi-pro – I do get paid for some of my photography) and I can tell you, I never shoot RAW because it’s a PITA. I shoot JPEGs as do most of the professional photographers I know. It all depends on the situation. If I were shooting an editorial portrait and knew I was only going to take 20-30 images, RAW is great, but when I am out shooting hundreds of images at a time as I often do, RAW is too time consuming. I would think that it will be similar with the RED workflow, it all depends on your budget, crew, time, etc. For certain projects, it will be a Godsend, but for others, too much of a PITA.
My .02,
Dan
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Chris:
P2 is one of the best workflows I have ever seen. My only suggestion is make sure you have at least two copies of your files as you offload and shoot. Having one set of drives makes me nervous.
I have shot around 2,500 P2 cards worth of material with nary a glitch. The system is as reliable as you are. If you screw up and do something stupid like not transfer your lastclip.txt file or only have one drive it crashes, that’s your fault, not the P2 format’s fault, right?
Dan
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Jeez, too much Testosterone in here? Mellow out guys, it’s all just talk.
If a real Source 4 is too much for you, if you shoot in mostly darkened rooms/stages, Ikea had a tiny little 50 watt ellipsoidal that they sold for quite a while, not sure if they still are. They are great for interviews and I believe they sold a whole kit for $100.00 with colored glass filters, several cutouts, an iris, focusing lenses, the works. I bought two of them about a year ago and I do periodically use them. I did have to go to FilmTools to get a 5/8″ Matthews receiver to put it on a lightstand.
If memory serves, it was called “Isobryte” or something like that, you know their crazy made-up Swedish names there? I thought so much of them, I bought two. So far, they have held up well. It’s just with 50 watts, you can only use them effectively in fairly dark situations, they lack the horsepower for brightly lit environments.
Killer find though.
Dan
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Nate:
Alcohol on a keyboard? Bad editor, bad… If you read all of the Apple literature, they tell you not get any alcohol within a mile of any Apple product, it will eat off paint, finish, numbers and letters off of keyboards, etc.
I agree, don’t get alcohol near anything plastic.
I bought an onion skin keyboard cover for my MBP I am typing this one. Best $10.00 I ever spent. My G5 keyboard, I just wipe it with Apple Polish (available at Apple Stores and Frys) and it keeps fairly clean.
D
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Hi:
Another thing to consider is that muslin BGs are kind of out of style as far as interviews are concerned. Usually these days when I see a muslin BG, I think, “older show” or “low budget corporate”
I have shot thousands of them but honestly, I think that the look is quite passe’ these days.
The main mistake that people make is not enough distance between the muslin and the subject. You need a minimum of 10′ and better yet would be 20′ between the muslin and the talent so that the muslin does not receive the spill from your talent lighting, you must light the muslin separately. I tend to use a lot of uplighting to accentuate the valleys and canyons. Or I rake across at an angle with a larger instrument shot through a celo cucloris to throw some breakup patterns onto it.
As far as “the look”, three C-stands. The ones on the left and right, fasten the muslin and raise it on either end about 8′, Fasten the muslin to the grip head in the center. Leave a lot of slack between the left and right so that when you raise the middle C-stand higher, you will get some nice canyons and valleys vertically. You can enhance these by clipping the pleats with a C-47 or small grip clip where needed to get the pleated drape effect.
Seriously though, no matter how well you light it and set it up, muslins look kind of cheesy these days IMHO. How many do you see on television? Not very many these days.
Best,
Dan
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