[Mark Suszko]

Ask about this in the live stage evernts forum, those guys work with this stuff all the time. The way your boss has presented the idea, I’m not sure it’s workable. I would use arented video multiplexer specifically for video walls to place the playback across all the screens with correct positioning, etc.

[Mark Suszko]

That DOES seem like a good deal! We have used USHIO lamps, can’t think of any complaints.

[Mark Suszko]

If you have a parametric EQ plug-in, play a sample of the buzz in a loop and push the frequency bands until you make the buzz MUCH worse/louder. Now apply a negative value to tat frequency to notch it out. Or you can apply a noise reduction filter to a sample of the buzz, and kill it everywhere there’s a silence.

[Mark Suszko]

Hey, Rich, I was being conservative on the “authoring” issue, because I was taking in such things as designing and executing the external printing of the disc and packaging, picking out stills or other graphic info and adding animations to the buttons and menus, you know, all the glitz of something you’d rent from Blockbuster. Not to mention, fully testing the resulting DVDs for compatibility, playability, links all work as designed, etc. I assumed the client expected one-stop shopping for all that.

And also I had to add an hour or two to learn how to use idvd or the more advanced Apple DVD pro authoring system, since I haven’t used it yet;-)

It wouldn’t have been a full day’s work, strictly speaking, perhaps, but if it’s going to keep you from doing a full day for someone else, (and it would have) you might as well bill a full day, so you don’t rush the job and screw it up. Best result for client, most honest return on your time as the editor.

If it turned out so simple and fast and perfect as to leave the whole afternoon free, I *might* consider a rebate on the quote, but I’ve never seen a job *that* perfect. Something always comes up at the last minute; you always wind up calling home to say you’ll just be another 30 minutes and then heading home, etc. And then you find out the dub has been running for an hour with a missing audio channel, or the timeline has stopped on a system hiccup during play-out, you suddenly catch a typo, or some such nonsense…(sigh).

So, I did like Trek’s Mister Scott, and made the estimate conservative, so I could continue my reputation as a miracle worker.;-)

[Mark Suszko]

I tried to do one of these a long time ago using just a steady camera dolly move, and the results were poor, without a motion control rig of some kind it’s just really hard.

Luckily, we can cheat now. Just shoot full frame wide shots of the two rooms and do a DVE move where one frame pushes the other off screen, and add an animated layer over the seam like a photoshopped image of the between-walls space (pipes, wires, stuff). This is even better if you can aquire in HD and mix down to SD, because you have more room to do other moves like zooms and re-positions to line things up yet retain much resolution.

For object wipes, it’s always easiest if as already mentioned the object touches out of frame top and bottom, but if you really feather the wipe well, use fast, good timing, and trick the viewer’s eye to look at the best part of the wipe, it is over before they notice any parts you don;t like.

have to remember though, that effects that call attention to themselves are usually not the best thing to do. I understand you might be going for a stylistic statement, and there are no absolutes, but do it because it’s motivated, not just because it’s cool.

Finally, a lot of shots like these *look* like wipes but are actually CUTS. Especially i’m talking about when people or cars “wipe” thru the frame, often, if the object is dark enough, you can do a hard cut just as thery are about to re-open the view to the scene behind. It works really well when the following scene is much tigher or much wider, but otherwise maintains some orientation or continuity witht he previous one.

First example I can think of: beach scene in JAWS, Brody (or was it the mom?) looking past bathers to try and see if some kid is getting eaten among the crowd.

And some of the reel changes in Hitch’s “Rope” were like this.

[Mark Suszko]

Nick, sorry you misunderstood, I was responding to Duffbeer’s later hypotheical question, I thought that was obvious because my answer came immediately after his question, which was:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“ok, so if a client rang you up and said….
“I’ve got 2 HOURS of vision that my uncle shot for us. We want a ten minute video. About half will be the CEO talking to camera ,the other half will be shots of the showroom and the building process. The audio on the tape is fine, can you add some royalty free music. I’ll send you a rough script but choice of shots is up to you. Can we have 3 DVD’s with an option to purchase more. Can you give us an estimate of the cost?”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< To which I answered "a day", for a workmanlike, news-like edit. If you read my post closely you will notice more qualifiers in my statement. I do *this* kind of job (2 hours of basic stuff collapsed into a few minutes that make some sort of sense) on a weekly basis, have been editing for 19 years plus now, and yes, I can do that kind of job in a day. it won't be really fancy, it will be "acceptible", the client will express that they are pleased with it, even if I don't like it. It will be about as good as the footage and audio that was supplied. Not Emmy quality perhaps, but something that will do the job. Assuming the footage was watched and logged by him before starting the edit, a guy who can't select out 10 good minutes from 2 hours of raw stuff in 8 hours is, well... I'll say inefficient. 😉 I have made good PSA/commercials with 4 hours and no more script than a stick figure drawing on a bar napkin, and I have worked with professional producers that spent a month of prep and logging, and agonizing over boards and a REAL SCRIPT before they even walked into the edit bay. The amount of preparation and autonomy/decision making ability you are given make all the difference in these situations. I think Coppola and Murch on Apocalypse Now, despite their genius, must have been the most inefficient team ever: in his book Murch explains that they were lucky to make and KEEP only ONE cut PER DAY. One splice decision! He had good excuses: multiple camera shots for one. They had to screen all the camera rolls for each shot, synch them up, make a decision, make the splice, watch the take, gauge the effect, then either change, keep, or modify the decision. Then they watched it in context with all the previous cuts, and again the next day afer the following cut, they might go back and revise it again... Bozhe Moi! In government and corporate work, you just don't get that kind of luxury. You have to move ahead and be efficient. You're right that I can't cut five days worth of footage in a day, but that's not what we were talking about at the moment. Here's the thing; the better prepared you are and the better prepared the project is, the faster everything can go. You bring me an uncomplicated script with time codes for the best takes all pre-selected, little or no image correction to be done, I don't care how many days shooting it was, soon as the footage is loaded I can slap those takes into a rough assembly as fast as I can type in the code numbers or drag the clips across a bin into the timeline. The skeleton of the video is there, we then flesh it out. The two-hour hypothetical footage he mentioned probably has 30 minutes of bad takes of the CEO before he hit his stride, (based on my experience) so if we know his good stuff was all all in the last three takes, we can skip ahead and just digitize those and fix the breaks to clean him up. Grabbing b-roll can be done quickly by scrubbing thru the files or consulting a log sheet to get you in the neighborhood. Then it's graphics and sound tweaking, etc left to do. It takes longer to finesse and trim the final ins and outs, add L-cuts for audio, cutaways and b-roll and title screens, but that is *real* editing work, theoretically the aesthetic and "craft" decisions are most of what we're being paid to bring to the work, not so much just butt-splicing all the good takes together with star wipes between them (Simpson's reference). Indeed, microsoft I think it was, last year was offering some software that would automatically ingest a consumer home movie, make cuts based on scene detection info and completely assemble a "music video", cut "to the beat" hands-off. Of course you know what the output looked like.;-) Clients have no idea about most of or any of this, they just put money in and expect a product out. That is why your answer to "how much" has to be a whole bunch of questions. Otherwise you give them "exactly what they asked for, but not what they wanted". I had to re-learn this lesson myself this week: an inexperienced client came in with low expectations/ demands but a short deadline, and a poor understanding of the results the approach would give. They had no time for frills like a script, teleprompter, stopping the presentation to change up screen shots on a single-cam shoot, video is magic, don't you know: push a button and there it is... They reallty thought making a video was just "taping what happens in front of a camera and removing any mistakes". I said ok, you want it cheap and rough, here you go, enjoy... it was not enjoyed. Now we're re-doing the work from scratch in a more methodical way, the right way. You have to understand, really understand, the client's expectations, what level of product they want and can pay for (often 2 different things). You are just as bad a producer/editor if you over-perform as if you under-perform, if the overly-glossy work costs them way too much time/money.

[Mark Suszko]

This is very much like a number of projects I work on monthly. If there are no suprises lurking, a straightforward execution in a news-like style is a one-day job, which you could bill at day rate. It would be a workmanlike effort, with a smattering of graphics work, music from a needle-drop library or generated via Sonicfire, garage band, or similar. If you just wanted to burn a DVD using a stand-alone machine like the panasonics, hourly rate for doing three copies one after the other. This is me, knowing my gear, knowing what I can do, and accepting the premise that the source material is complete, adequate, and not needing a lot of repair work or work-arounds. That’s the biggest ‘if”.

An ‘authored’ DVD, something made with iDVD to have a little nicer menu on the front and chapter points, adds a day billed at day rate.

Since there’s no way to tell just how much graphics work you will require, and how fancy you want to author the DVD, I’m at the limit of what I can recommend to you without seeing the materials. I could imagine though, adding a lot more eye candy and fancier graphics than a few lower thirds and some full-frame still titles, especially if it’s advertising/marketing type stuff, where you want a slick look. That could add a day, maybe two.

[Mark Suszko]

What’s not clear in your post is are you only editing this, or are you going to in fact be the producer/writer/graphics/foley/music guy as well? Big difference there, mate. One assumes all the other organizational legwork has been done and approved, the other puts all that stuff on your plate, and you need to charge appropriately.

Is there in fact a script?

One of the typical horrendously painful assignments I get is stuff where people don’t understand the process for making a successful production, they start by going out and randomly spraying the place with a camcorder, then drop that in my lap and ask me to make something out of it. No script, no outline, no brief on exactly what we’re trying to communicate, what ideas and feelings we’re supposed to create in an audience’s mind, what indeed the audience *is*. This is especially true of “training” and “marketing” videos. Some clients have no idea how much advance work is supposed to go into making one of these, it’s not just “shoot what happens in front of the camera and cut out the dull bits”. They think TV is magic: you push a button and there it is.

Anyhow, if that sort of extra work is involved, do not under any circumstances offer a flat fee. Hourly rates for sure, bill three times: one up-front for the prep work, one at first rough cut, final at approved dub master.
Stipulate the number of “free” re-edits or changes, or the thing will never be done.

[Mark Suszko]

Radio Design Lab’s “stick-on” series may have something for you.
Markertek used to carry them, you might google those.

[Mark Suszko]

If you have no compositing experience, then yes, find yourself a used copy of AfterEffects and the Adobe training books/DVD’s and spend the time learning all the supplied tutorials. AE is probably the most common/numerous compositing platform out there, and is heavily used in the creation of motion graphics and the like. To have “mad AE Skillz” is a big plus for you, to have no compositing skills at all will tend to lose you editing gigs. The folks hiring will like to get the most talent for their money, so add this skill as best as and as soon as you can afford to. Once you have the basics of compositing down in one platform, you can apply much of that learning to rapid mastery of other specific platforms.

Based on what you described, I would emphasize the fact that you’re a team player who’s not afraid to take on the occasional extra load, that the three simultneous gigs you have now show how well you can multi-task and that you’re committed and active in your pursuit of the craft. Pointing out that you’re learning compositing on your own time will add to that appearance as well.

Also you can spin the fact that you mostly do it the way the boss acts into a positive; it means you have learned to lsiten to whatt he client wants. Good client skills can make or break an editor. You may be the next Murch, but if the clients can’t stand to be locked in a room with you for six hours, you’re out of work. Conversely, clients forgive an awful lot of little mistakes and the like if you can communicate well and know when to advize and when to just listen, making them feel good about their experience with you.

Always find a way in your cover letter to name the job and relate something int he requirements to something in your resume. Example:

“When I read the description for your editor opening, It sounded like the perfect fit for my client skills: the kind of heavy-turnover work you do on tight deadlines is my specialty. You can read about how I did similar work for xyz corporation in my attached resume….”