[Grinner Hester]

As long as you approch it as what you can do for them (not what they can do for you), they will listen.
Working from home now and having a low overhead, I now sometimes market myself to other post houses as a back up suite. I sell it in by telling therm not to turn anyone away and that if they havn’t the man power, drive psace or time for a certain project, to consider me their overflow branch office. I bill it out low enough they can mark it up 50 percent for doing nothing and the biggest thing… not taking the risk of turning a clinet away… which can easily turn into a permanant thing.
Now, they are ALL apprehensive about sending their clients to my suite. They just send tapes and I do these projects unsupervised. I take no credit but bill hours I otherwise would not have billed.
It truely is a win/win.
This use to just never be done. It was looked at as canibalization. Times have changed.
Again, as long as you approach it with what you can do for them, the’ll hear you out.

[Grinner Hester]

Jumping in over your head is the best way to learn how to swim and because this gig is unsupervised, it’s ideal. Take it on and learn a lot.
The audio is your biggest challenge as I assume there is music under the old vo. I’d prolly redo all of this from scratch (but I dunno how much tlakin’ head you’re dealing with).
The grafiz ant no thang but a chicken wing. If your comfy producing graphics, this can be an opportunity to add to your reel.
As far as time, man you cant even guess that yet. Quite em a flat fee and take a bit on the chin of you have to. Again, this is an opportunity. Dont pass due to intimidation.

If it helps, I was once hired by a national network over the phone after telling them I knew the Night Suite, the NLE they were using at the time.
I then ran out, found the only Night Suite in town and learned it.
Ironicly, I then trained the staff on it when I got to Nashville.
lol
moral of the story is it’s very healthy to get in over your head. Just dont ever do it in front of anybody.

[Grinner Hester]

post up if you run into snags along the way, man. Again, I look at AE as part of Avid so this aint off tpoic in any way.
Post your reults too and explain how ya did it to help others.
To me, it’s creative and fun.

[Grinner Hester]

to this day, I take it for granted that every Avid editor uses AE as the DVE.
We all had to nback in the day and Avid’s DVE just hasn’t evolved enough for that to change, imo.
AE is open in every session I do and I don’t consider it by choice.

[Grinner Hester]

lol
you coo too, man.
Yes, I am getting nibbles this week as a result of last weeks trip to the LATV festival.
Nobody is throwing out big numbers and they probably wont until I agree and they see some ratings.
This means I’ll take a deal with somone I dig and trust and grow it into something bigger. I don’t have time to play the waiting game unfortunatly. I’d lose. 😉
I’ll do what I have to do to get it on the air then stick my chest out later on.
for those who missed it, heres my trip on video:
https://ModdinArt.com/hollywood.wmv

thanks again for the back up. It won’t be long now…

[Grinner Hester]

I use bins to separate my stuff.

Hard to see here but I keep a bin for sequnces, a bin for talkin heads, a bin for b-roll (sometimes per topic) and a bin for grafix and audio. Each project is different but it’s really all the same, organization-wise.
I too capture entire tapes because I do reality and I just cant spend the time logging shots I may wanna use. I need it all to tell the story and I use shots that were not shots at all all the time.
I use locators on these clips to mark certain goings on. Labelling helps too. I use my own little abriviations to list out as many things on that clip as possible. I never use thumbnails as they take up space. I sort by list only so I can see everything I have.

[Grinner Hester]

Pan and Zoom is useless compaired to AE.
Man, you can do so much more without losing the quality avid tosses aside. You can mask parts and principals and animate them slightly different, bring a whole new depth to your otherwise boring pan and zoomed flat stills.
Pan and zoom is for down and dirty quickies for people who have to split in 10 minutes with a tape. If you have timje to make something look cool, hop into after effects and create.

[Grinner Hester]

you coo, man.
You guys’ll be watchin’ Moddin’ Art on yer big screen soon.

[Grinner Hester]

but of course, you’d never allow another house to be in chage of sending out the master, right?

[Grinner Hester]

just keep a bin for your sequnces, a bin for your titles, a bin for your b-roll per topic, ect. Then its as easy as just naming your latest sequence it’s revision number.