[Mark Suszko]

Go to Best Buy, radio shack, or similar.

Buy an RF modulator for between 15 and 30 dollars

Video or s-video from computer to RF Mod

RF mod to TV antenna, select channel 3 or 4.

This will look like crud, but will work.

[Mark Suszko]

When you look at what the spot billed at compared to what the cost of the time buy to SHOW it was… you’ll probably be raising your prices. Many agencies, and especially cable outfits, give the spots away for free or a cut rate, because they make the bulk of their money selling the air time. If you wanna bill way more, you need to start getting into placement of the ads as well as making them. Agencies get a discount rate for palcing the ads, which they convert to profit.

One can certainly overpay for producing a commercial, as well as underpay. We see lots of multi-million-dollar super bowl ads that just don’t seem to be worth it. One of the questions you have to ask is: what dollar amount of new business is this campaign supposed to bring in, and, once you know that figure, what percentage of that amount is it worth to get a good chance to actually succeed in the goal? If your campaign could bring in 2 million in new sales over the coming year, it may not be so crazy to spend two percent of that amount in chasing the millions, get it?

But of course, that large amount may be overkill, if you have something that’s very cleverly written and gets most of it’s success from the concept or editing execution rather than expensive location work, high-priced actor/spokespersons, super-duper effects, etc.

These are just some of the reasons it’s so hard to pin down a number when billing or pitching.

[Mark Suszko]

I agree with much of this.

I would say for ENG news and wedding reception type shooting, where you need to move quickly from point to point but then shoot very stable, perhaps with a motion-sensitive telephoto lens setting, for long periods that would tire you if hand-held/shoulder-held, a regular monopod is the ticket. Especially where there’s just no room for a tripod, or it’s too heavy.

Where the Fig Rig would work best is if you are working very close-in, lens full wide, and you need to move around a relatively stationary subject a lot and move at various heights, and there’s no room for, or it’s otherwise impractical to use dolly/jib/track.

The kind of stabilizer that uses a vest and arm is most fitting for use where you’re going to have to walk or even jog along with the actors a bit and the terrain/situation makes a dolly or jib impractical.

My belief is too many people, especially beginners and indy “wannabees” ascribe supernatural powers to these stabilizing tools and insist on using them for every little thing when they should just be practicing good shot composition, good tripod and proper hand-held shooting technique, which works just fine, maybe better, 99 percent of the time. Like Johnny LaRue and his quest for the Big Crane Shot, they think it’s impressive “movie-like” TOOLS that make it a good movie, instead of *technique* and craft applied judiciously. Not every shot is improved by flying the camera around people’s heads like it’s a cloud of gnats.

[Mark Suszko]

Having a lawyer come to small claims with you will likely, win or lose, cost more than the 700 bucks they want from you, so settling may in fact be the best *business* decision.

I do think you should pay between $50 and $150 to consult a lawyer or at least paralegal in his/her office or by phone or e-mail to get some guidance on your odds and if/how to contest it and what to bring/prepare, etc. Small claims is not quite like you see on Judge Wapner’s TV show, but my experience of it was that if you have your paperwork in order and a simple claim that’s proven by facts, and a trail that shows you tried to do the right thing all along, you get a sympathetic hearing. It goes by pretty fast, the cases I saw while waiting, and my case, from swearing-in to ruling and exit paperwork, took an average of five minutes per case. But nobody is going to hold you by the hand and walk you thru the process, pro se court means DIY, and you are expected to have done all your own homework. Sometimes the court clerk’s office has some resources they can point you to, or you can bone up at the library or online.

My obervation as an ex-event video guy is, while everybody is sympathetic with your medical emergency situation, a business deal is a deal, and if you are suddenly incapacitated and can’t deliver as contracted, you need to be able to refer the work off to a trusted peer, and be ready to take the financial hit for having to sub it out, or you have to efund the money. If you charged a realistic price for your level of service (which from your description, sounds like you lowballed yourself), your financial hit after referring the job would have been less, maybe not a profit, but maybe a break-even. But good referrals have a way of paying you back over time, a successful long-term events person builds a network of people he can lean on, andthat can lean on him as needed; you generate more business between you than if you only were competitors.

I think since they agreed to give you an extension, you might have some luck in court showing you did after all deliver the product. But you should ask a real lawyer.

[Mark Suszko]

Gritty reality version, or golden fake commercial version?

For sure, you’re not going to use the existing lighting except as on-screen motivation for your real lighting, which would tend to be big softlight banks with perhaps a cookie to throw an outside tree branch pattern on the inside wall, and various gels in the red-orange range to warm things up and imply sunrise…

For gritty road warrior reality, flourescents and deliberate counter-white-balancing or adding the bleach-bypass look in post to get that blue-green, anemic feel.

[Mark Suszko]

Jeff, I see a couple areas where you as a younger beginner might get some traction:

1. Building motion graphics montages for use as support materials for worship applications. I’m thinking little custom music videos illustrating various scripture passages, psalms, gospel stories, etc. for use either in Sunday services, as a lead-in to a sermon, or as interstitials for broadcast/cable religious shows. This is something you can do in a basement studio on your own schedule and budget and market via internet nationwide, perhaps set up a business where you do them on a custom basis to order, or where you offer a “religious jump-backs” kind of thing, elements that don’t go stale and can be used by a number of denominations. Needle-drop sermon warm-ups, if you will.

You know who does nice work like this, I have to say the LDS (Mormons) do some great PSA’s on general topics like the importance of family, of a dedicated father figure, of charity to people you don’t know, etc. Depending on budget, you could do smething ona similar laevel, or if you can’t afford the cost, time, and logistics of shooting actors to illustrate the bits, you could go with 2-d or 3-d animation, or a more abstract, graphics-intensive approach. The huge mega-churches that are taking over sports stadiums and the like, could probably find multiple uses for such programming, in support of sermons and fundraising campaigns for various charity projects, sunday school, etc.

2.The religious equivalent of the young guy in the sports remote truck, roll from town to town with a revival, as a video roadie. You might try to get listed on several of the freelance crew rental lists, plug yourself as particularly suited to the religious stuff and available to work Sundays… (the most ironic part I think).

[Mark Suszko]

Yes and no. For very short projects, and home movie stuff yeah. For anything serious in length or budget, no, get the tower.

[Mark Suszko]

During the next conversation with your client, tell them you wanna make a free copy of all their proprietary office software to take home, it’s just for, you know, internal use….

Stealing copyrighted/uncleared music, especially getting paid to steal it and put it on someone’s video, is not legal under any circumstance, period. I think the document you are referring to is one indemnifying you… meaning, you and client admit that you are breaking the law, and if you would get caught and sued by the copyright holder, then the client promises to reimburse you for your losses from the suit.

No corporate client in their right mind is going to go for this, it’s shaky legal tactics at best, and you’d be taking an additional risk in counting on them to hold to the agreement, since what judge is going to enforce a contract that pays you to knowingly break the law? And if the guy suing you finds out about that indemnification, he might be able to use that to hike the penalties up double!

Bottom line: any use of the music without clearance is illegal, and you should not agree to participate. There are plenty of safer options instead, including custom composed “sound-alike” music, needle-drop libraries, and music composed on the various looping programs out there. If you decide to go ahead and take the risk, you are playing Russian Roulette with your business and your personal assets, so be sure to bill accordingly.

If your clients can’t get this thru their heads, you need better clients.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, anytime your company is still alive and kicking after 19 years, you must be doing something right, so I would be leery of changing the name, just because (New Coke?). Like it or not, when you change the name, people “feel” like the old place is gone, even if nothing changed BUT the name. Banks have to spend lots of ad and marketing money explaing their mergers and name changes to retain the customer base.

But, perhaps instead of junking what’s been working, you only need to create a subsidiary identity that branches back to the main name, that way you keep the best of what you already have, but attract the new clients with your new “angle”. So if your old brand is “Industrovision”, and you now want to get more into authoring pro DVD’s, perhaps your new “boutique” side operation is: “Industro-Interactive ( A subsidiary of Industrovision)”.

This way, if in a year it hasn’t worked out, you can shut down the subsidiary without having lost what was already established before. If it works out big time, you can add more “branch offices”. All the phones and e-mail can go to the same old desk, you can just have people answer one line/email account/web presence with the new name, and the main line with the old name. I know places that have three or more “layers” like this in their one office. It’s all about addressing segments of the market. Kind of like having multiple identities. Hopefully you can keep them all straight;-)

[Mark Suszko]

This wouldn’t be City Lights, by any chance?