[Eric Ransdell]

Aaron, basically anyone who’s worth their salt in a position like yours thinks they’re underpaid. And maybe the guys in the next room playing video games are jerks or maybe they’re the ones who struggled to build the business, took the financial risk, mortgaged the house or whatever to get to a position to where they could afford to pay someone like you 35K a year. And that monthly nut may grow harder to meet as the economy continues its free fall.

So why not try this, take Walter’s advice and learn something new, except see if you can get your employers to pay for it. Tell them you’re aware times are seriously tough but you feel that you’re not getting enough cash out of the time/effort you’re putting in. You realize another raise is out of the question, but what if they were to invest in some training for you? Particularly in a field where your shop is weak – color correction, AE, Shake, etc. It will keep you busy during the slack times and they’ll have something new they can offer clients to try and stir up more business. They’ll feel like they’re investing in the growth of their company and you pick up a new skill, which – once the economy stirs back to life and if you still feel they’re jerks – makes you even more marketable when you walk out of there and into a new job.

FLY Films
Shanghai, China
http://www.flyfilms.com.cn

[Eric Ransdell]

Thanks to all for the responses. It is indeed a sticky one. I’m not really worried about them setting themselves up here as competitors. The almost certain exit scenario for all of them is to return to the US and work there. But, Mike Smith is right. They will definitely watch to see how the first one who brings in work gets treated. Which is why we’re trying to figure this out because that client has already asked us for a bid and it looks like it’s a go. And if it is, he has every right to ask what he can expect. And if it’s a one-off or he’s going to be cut in on every bit of business that client generates over the next couple years.

Also a question for Mike Smith, the London production company you mentioned that offered their people 5 or 10 percent on “turnover”? Are you referring to profit, the production fee, entire budget (i hope not) or something else entirely?

FLY Films
Shanghai, China
http://www.flyfilms.com.cn

[Eric Ransdell]

Here’s the link: https://flyfilms.com.cn/city_style_examples.php

One was screen-grabbed at third res, but otherwise they should give you a pretty good idea of the city we’re trying to light.

[Eric Ransdell]

Not only is it weird, but it’s driving me nuts. I’m shooting on the same camera later this week and I’ll check again (no choice, all the other HD rigs in town are up at the Olympics). I’ll post back if I find anything out of whack in the settings, but last time it all seemed fine.

[Eric Ransdell]

Thanks to everyone for their advice. The source files are coming from Maya Renders output as .psd animation sequences or hand-drawn .psd still city backgrounds. I’ve been using AE for almost a year and don’t have a huge amount of experience with setting mattes. Tried John and Patrick’s suggestions using fractal noise/luma matte and it works, although the lights seem pretty dim even when AE’s glow or Trapcode’s starglow are applied. But I’m interested in figuring out how to pull a matte from the background itself and then fill the windows in with light. It’s the middle of the night here in China, so if you guys wouldn’t mind checking back tomorrow I’ll post again with links to a couple of our backgrounds and you can see what you think.

[Eric Ransdell]

It’s a documentary, so we’re using the camera’s flip out display or an SD monitor when we put it on a remote head 10-meter crane. Neither ideal, I know. But it’s not the monitor. When we take it back to the studio and examine it on an Apple 23″ Cinema Display, it’s the same. And I realize the Apple isn’t giving us an accurate representation of our HD footage, but when we compared it on the same monitors with footage shot under similar conditions on a Sony 900 and a P2, it’s still incredibly yellow or blue in cast. I checked the internal menu settings and they were all at factory default. And we’ve tried shooting on other scene files instead of CineGamma D, but we’re getting the same result with this camera. Oh, and the lens is a Fujinon HD.

[Eric Ransdell]

Thanks to everyone for the help. I’ve been on a shoot the last three days and haven’t been able to post. I dropped RAM Cache down to 60 percent and disabled disk cache and both of those seemed to help. And I’m not running a RAID, the new MacPro has 4 1TB drives. Maybe a stupid question, but should all of my non-video media (i.e. photos, .ai artwork, etc.) be running off a second drive as well?

[Eric Ransdell]

No, we did a clean install of everything, including AE from the discs. Any other thoughts on what this might be?

[Eric Ransdell]

Thanks for the advice Mark. And yeah, it’s difficult here, to say the least. We’re getting close to western rates, but because we’re expensive (relative to the rest of the market) everyone thinks they have carte blanche to hit us with as many revisions as they want. We’re going to try and work a single revision clause into our next contract, but it remains to be seen if the client will go for it. We might also try the storage fee, which is a great idea.

One question: How do you deal with deadlines that the client pushes back? We’ve just had another huge client tell us today that a job we’re in the middle of both shooting and editing is going to be delayed past the original November deadline. Which means another delay in getting our final 50 percent. What do you do when this happens?

[Eric Ransdell]

It’s an SDI deck (https://www.globalmediapro.com/video/products/Sony_J30_SDI_Compact_Universal_Player–1162.html). The video output I have it connected to is the Composite (Super) output. It has Component Outputs Y, R-Y and B-Y. But I didn’t think I could use those unless I had the corresponding inputs on my Decklink.