[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hi,

Compressing in DV-PAL anamorphic has done it – now displays in the proper aspect ratio.

Not sure what the pixel resolution would be if I did want to use ProRes though…

Thanks anyway!

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hi Craig,

ProRes422, DV-PAL, 8bit uncompressed or 10 bit uncompressed are all acceptable. I’ve tried ProRes so far and used QT7 to view the output.

[Dylan Hargreaves]

That was my starting point, thanks Todd. I dunno whether it’s cos I’m on a mac or what, but none of the arrow keys on my keyboard affect the number of sides on a polygon. Scrolling with mouse wheel simply scales up/down the viewer.

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hey Steve,

Thanks very much for your offer. I’ll take a look at your set up and no doubt have a bunch of questions to bug you with!

To everyone else: yes, it is a sizeable financial step we’re taking, and unfortunately, it’s our own money! What’s going in our favour is that we don’t need to rent the studio out. Like I said, the premises are in a cheap unfashionable part of town so the rent is manageable without the need for extra income. It would be nice if we could get it to pay for itself, and that could be done on as little as 40 hires per year.

What it does do is enable us to expand our capacity and start churning out more work. And if I ever want to retire, that’s the direction we’ve got to take!

Cheers!

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hey Mark,

Any reason it has to be Chicago? We do this sort of thing regularly for loads of clients – in fact, it’s become one of our specialties – including the voiceover part. We’re over in London, but I hear there’s this internet thing now…

[Dylan Hargreaves]

It’s all been going crazy over here in the UK these past few days – our cities are burning! Apologies for not checking back sooner.

Thanks all for your suggestions. I think setting the scene up with no foreground elements is definitely the way forward. Now just need to find a way to stop members of the public wandering into shot. We could be there a while…

[Dylan Hargreaves]

[David Johnson] “By the way, from your own initial description of the situation, you seem to be upset with the guy for telling you the truth instead of lying to you, which seems a little odd. That’s not to say that cancelling on you at the last minute was right … just that, by the way you described the situation, it sounds like you would have no issue with it if he had just told you a blatant lie instead.”

You’re right, I would’ve preferred a lie! Just turning round a week before the shoot and saying, ‘oh by the way, it’s off. This other company are gonna do it instead’ is the behaviour of a colossal ass. At least tell me you’ve got a cashflow crisis or something!

But the more I think about it, the more I’m actually angry with the other company. They clearly went to some effort jump on in there which in my book is pretty unethical. Maybe they’re struggling a bit with the downturn and are desperate for the work. Sucks to be them, then.

Anyway, it looks like there’s pretty much universal agreement that calling in the lawyers in this instance is probably not the best idea, so like I say, he can have a crappy weekend worrying about it and find out on Monday I’m walking away. Might just give him pause for thought about how to do business next time.

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the reply, (and Patrick too). I admit, threatening legal action does seem a bit disproportionate.

Just a few days ago, I had another, much bigger, job, via a PR agency cancel for no other reason than their client got cold feet on the idea and I’m not doing anything about that. Sure, it’s disappointing but I know that these things happen.

What I’m pissed about in this instance is the quite disrespectful way this particular client has gone about it. He even told me on the phone that the other company initially quoted him higher than my quote, only to match mine when he told them what I was charging. So me threatening legal action is kind of an FU to them as well.

My main consideration is knock-on effects. Could I get a bad rep? Yes, it’s a possibility. Would that be worth it? Probably not.

But I’m interested to get some ideas about what other people would do in my situation. So far, I’ve got 2 people telling they’d likely just leave it, so that’s definitely something to think about.

Maybe just giving the guy a few sleepless nights will be revenge enough…

[Dylan Hargreaves]

Hi Nick,

Thanks so much -that’s really useful!

We enjoy a good relationship with most of our clients and it’s mostly been pretty successful in the 4 years we’ve been going. However, I have had to educate one or two recently about how changing their minds and adding things to the production once work has commenced doesn’t mean said things are done for free.

A nice bit of fine print on the quote to refer them to should help avoid any… unpleasantness. 😉

Thanks again!

[Dylan Hargreaves]

You need to sit down and have a conversation with them. Adult to adult.

I’m detecting a certain amount of fear and reluctance from you to take the issue by the horns. This shouldn’t be the case. You’re not a recent graduate, you’re a professional with 10 years experience. You also understand the system which gives you a certain amount of power as I suspect it’s not that easy for them to find and slot in a replacement if they gave you the boot. Especially not with the workflow they’ve got.

So yeah, tell the boss you need to chat. Set out the situation and tell him it urgently needs addressing or else the integrity of his operation is seriously compromised.

Tell him that fixing it won’t be free, or necessarily that cheap, but you can make it cost effective. And if he gives you the old ‘eff it, just fix it’, be prepared to walk.

Sometimes, no amount of money is worth the hassle.