Ken Summerall
Forum Replies Created
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Dean,
Man, I feel your pain. I am in an eerily similar situation. I work at a small university, mainly producing products for Distance Education, but we do the occasional job for the Marketing department, and we have many of the same issues. I do not have all the answers and am myself learning some things from this thread, but here’s a few things that we do.
1. We bill the client. It’s not much, basically a reimbursement for salaries. For example, I log my hours, figure out how much I get paid an hour by my department and bill those hours back to the client. If I use one of my student workers I back charge the client for those hours as well. This goes along with what mark has said. We tell the client that we only have so many hours to work on outside projects, but we can “hire” someone to help with it so that we can get it done in a timely manner. This is part of the politics that we have to play.
2. Let them go outside and bid a project, once. That’s all it will take. We weren’t working fast enough for the client on one project so they decided that bid out the editing. They were back in three months because the bid was about 7x what we were charging and they still couldn’t get it done any faster! They love us now.
3. We are just beginning to implement a write and review policy. As someone mentioned they never know what they want and it tends to change by the day. We will on future projects write a treatment, get feedback, write a more specific one, get approval, write a script, get feedback, make changes, get it approved. When all of this is approved and has someone’s signature on it we will start scheduling and shooting.
4. We will also probably use some version of Mark’s budgeting idea. In the initial proposal I will estimate how much time it will take. When a number of hours has been agreed upon I will stick with that number. When those hours are up we will have to begin again with another proposal. Hopefully this will discourage the “grinder” type client that always wants one more revision.
FWIW,
Ken
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time?
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
[Bret Williams] “ou forgot to point out that all the clips in the bins also change color. “
Yep, that’s what I meant. Had a little brain freeze about that. Thanks for making it clear!
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
Someone gave me this tip a few weeks ago and it works for me. Select all of the clips in your sequence then assign a color to all of the clips. It’s not without its drawbacks, but it does work.
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
Well funding is a big hurdle, but the larger one may be becoming a NFP to begin with. As someone else said the paperwork is mountainous. I have passed that hurdle with my own NFP, but it is not easy. My suggestion is to find someone who knows what they are doing and pay them. You can contact me and I can give you the name of the group that I used, but I am sure that there is someone locally that could serve you better.
As for funding there are a lot of foundations out there trying to give away money but most require you to be a 501c3 organization first. Although some will pay for you to file the paperwork to get that designation!
http://www.wellwaterproductions.com (be gentle, this is site is undergoing a redesign, but you can contact me there)
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
[Arnie Schlissel] “I bet there’s a lot of people who have their HD-DVD players sitting right next to their laser disc players thinking the same exact thing.”
Well, probably right beside their Beta players, which are on top of their laser disc players. Now where did I leave that John Denver 8-track, oh yeah, it’s in my Volkswagen 412.
Oh yeah, don’t forget your Atari or Commodore64, and then came the Apple IIc!
Now that takes me back!
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
[walter biscardi] ” I attended NAB back in 1990 when it was right here in Atlanta. Just one show floor and all heavy iron to work in broadcast. “
Hey Walter that was the last time I went to NAB. I’m going this year after a looong time off. I kinda hate that Apple won’t be there, but for me it is not a real big deal. I’ll get to see them at the Supermeet.
What do I hope to see at NAB? Well, I hope that I will get to meet some of the great leaders on the Cow, and see just what innovative new stuff is out there in my field. This is the one place that I will get to see a whole bunch of stuff in one place. I guess I could do that on the internet but it’s just not as fun. There’s something about the energy of being around a bunch of people, seeing some really innovative stuff and racking your brains trying to figure out if it’s what you really need.
I also agree with many folks that NAB needs to make this show more affordable for both exhibitors and attendees. I hope that they will shrink a little so that they can move the event around the country again. If it’s true that LV is the only place big enough to hold them then it will never get more affordable. It’s supply and demand baby! Maybe a few years down the road it will back in Atlanta. At least I can drive there!
For what its worth,
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
I have no idea what your budget is but we use a Teac p-55 with an autoloader. It is a thermal re-transfer printer and believe it or not costs are about the same to print as inkjets. We did a cost analysis before we purchased it and there was only a few cents difference and that was based on using thermal discs. Teac has now released a ribbon that will print on inkjet discs as well (they say any disc, but that has not proved to be exactly true for us) and that makes the costs about even.
There is a learning curve and the initial expense is high, but for a print that virtually indestructible it is amazing.
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
Paul and Shane,
I don’t mean to confuse the waters here but I noticed that you are already using 2 30″ ACD’s. I think that trying to add a MXO to this mix would cause you to lose use of one of your 30 inchers. Shane, you have a MXO, is this correct?
Again, don’t mean to confuse but I would hate for you to have to retire a 30″ ACD, unless you want to send it to me!
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.” -
Are you sure that you have the lastclip.txt file for each card? FCP will not import with out this. And be sure that you selected the folder containing both the Contents folder and the lastclip file.
In other words in this scenario you should chose the Card001 folder: Card001>Contents and lastclip.txt.
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.”