[Mark Suszko]

Maybe one way to cheat this is to project a green gelled light at the helmet, and then any spots reflecting the green will accept the matte paintings in those spots. Most of that would not need to be motion-tracked, I reckon.

For the actual visor, you might try a transparent green filter gel applied to the inside surface. The green lets you do a translucent chromakey, but still lets you see the facial and eye expressions beneath.

Depending on how you stage the cockpit set, I don’t see why you can’t video project your matte paintings on a screen in front of the helmeted actor’s face and pick up natural reflections. From a directorial perspective, this has lots going for it as well, because the actor has real imagery to react to, so his/her performance will look better. A large screen TV would do as well for the source. Frame it right, you only need 2-3 feet of ‘real’ cockpit seat area behind the head, the rest can be comped in later.

[Mark Suszko]

Depends where you live.

In Chicago, my college FM station, which I G.M.’d for a summer (88.7FM WLUW) was only 100 watts, but with the antenna in Rogers Park, I had a *potential* audience (people who could tune in a strong, listenable signal) in the millions. I can listen to the old place from the Loop all the way West to O’Hare airport. Shame what the Jesuits did to it: they blew a lot of endowment money with Enron, had to cut costs, and so basically gave away the Loyola radio station to the main Chicago NPR station to run. So far, it seems to be a benevolent master: WLUW’s built itself quite the reputaton meanwhile for being a model of what these low-power stations can do for the community as advocate and shared communications resource.

For urban centers, LP radio could well serve a pretty densely populated area ignored by the conglomerates like ClearChannel. Very useful as a neighborhood association channel, you could also use it to break bands playing their own stuff, (so fewer licensing issues ) comedy groups and standups, radio dramas, poetry slams, high school and college debate team competition, trivia and other quiz or game shows, local school sports coverage, folks telling their personal oral histories, local officials taking constituent questions… it really boils down to the amount of work you care to dedicate to it. It’s local in a way internet radio is not.

If you’re living out in the boonies, then it may be a losing proposition, but for urban centers, it could be a great resource. You should go for it, because these things are often “use it or lose it” propositions- if everyone stays too intimidated to make use of the frequencies, it just encourages the big conglomerates to grab even more spectrum using their pet politicians.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, you could always make a generous estimate on the time required for a job, multiply the hours by the hourly rate, add a premium, and *call* it a flat fee, to be paid up front. The more experienced you get, and the more you know about the elements and the client, the more accurate the estimates can get. Straight cuts and dissolves with a simple lower third key every once in a while, you can pretty much get that done in 2.5 times real time using a linear editing system, tape to tape, that is, if the show is an hour, with only good takes already lined up in sequence, you can throw in simple cuts and dissolves in two and a half hours. You are really gambling though, when you do flat rate work with unlimited client approval cycles. You must set a hard limit of one revision only, or you will always lose money on these flat rate deals.

You could offer a flat-fee service, but position and market it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, with more “limited” effects and fewer fancy features and with *any* changes or revisions requiring a completely new flat fee. The rate also has a hard limit of hours attached, up to, but no more than, say, 10 hours. (Whether you charge anything or a reduced rate for pre-edit work like digitizing is up to you)

This approach gets them in the door, then once they’ve worked with you and established some trust, they may ASK to go to an hourly rate for changes or the next project, as a “prefered customer”. Particularly when you show they save money over the flat fee.

You could flat-fee every element of the production process, from logging tape to making dubs, till your rate card looks like a Chinese restaurant menu. I know a guy in town that caters to local folks that lack video knowledge; In the rate card for editing home movies, he actually charges a fee for each time he fades in a lower-third name key or title… even the same name! (!!!) He charges individually for each page turn or wipe! I could never work or bill that way. It’s completely the wrong model for the kind of work we do. Uneducated clients accept it because it’s similar to billing other things in their world they ARE familiar with: “I’ll lay carpet in three rooms for x amount flat fee”. Creating a video is more like building a house: no two are exactly alike in price or features. Both homes keep you out of the rain, but other than that, a mansion and a vacation hunting cabin are pretty different in price, detail, and features. Similarly to building houses, the architect and builder have to fully agree before construction starts, because once the roof is on, it’s much more expensive to add three more floors to the structure. Your clients may accept an explanation like this. Or do the same example with cars: a new Mercedes will get you across town no faster than a ten-year-old Trabant, you’re paying for extra features and details, for extra craftsmanship.

Your real problem, I sense, is structural and organizational.
You start with your expenses and figure out the true costs of the business, the gear, the amortization, maintenance, utilities, insurance, taxes, raw materials like tape, and a little to put aside for future growth/ replacement gear or future upgrades. THEN add a margin for actual profit. Now you know what your true cost of business is, you can calculate the best rate structure to meet those costs and get into a profit. If a competitor lowballs your price, resist the temptation to match him, he’s only gambling that he has more savings to live off of than you do, because he’s probably losing money on this deal trying to drive you out of business, or he’s delivering a much inferior product – if he delivers at all!. After you’re gone, he will raise his rates to the real level or even higher.

As to clients that come in with unrealistic expectations, or that become overly demanding, I am always a big fan of breaking the payments into “progress payments” for each major step of the production process. Usually I would go by thirds: a third up-front to start the project, a third after the first version of the edit is complete, and a final third when the master or dubs are handed over. Typically, to be a nice guy, I would offer one revision for free after the first cut edit. Also, mistakes *I* make, like misspelling a key, I fix for no charge, but if I can show the CLIENT supplied the misspelled name, etc. they have to pay for that. When they understand their responsibilities and the costs for being sloppy or indecisive, they will shape up.

If at any point the project is stopped, for whatever reason, with progress payments you are not left in debt for services already rendered. The clients should feel protected too, because they are paying only for work actually done and delivered at each stage.

You don’t say exactly what kinds of projects these are; training films, commercials, etc. but let me recommend a wonderful book that changed my life in this business. If you follow the guidelines and examples in it, your projects have a very good chance of being successful every time.

“Scriptwriting for High-Impact Videos” By John Morley
ISBN number 0-534-15066-7
copyright 1992 Wadsworth Publishing, USA

Don’t let the title fool you: this book is WAY more than just how to write the script, it will shepherd you thru all the necessary steps and processes to avoid just the kinds of trouble you have been having with the clients.

It’s out of print, but used copies have been available at Amazon.com
Good luck to you!

p.s. go buy the book this instant!;-)

[Mark Suszko]

Besides the Rockport workshops, Sony teaches some as well, using all Sony gear of course… they do a big deal over the balloon festival out West every year.

I find the best free editing tutoring comes from renting a DVD of a really good classic movie or TV show and listening to the commentary track or even just playing it with no sound, calling out the shots aloud to yourself, making notes on the number of cameras, the setup, the coverage. Watch the best sequences in slomo.

I recently had some AMC channel on in the suite while building and rendering graphics, and I would steal glances at the film “In the Heat Of The Night” witht he sound off. MAN, the chase sequrnce where the good ole boys chase Poitier into the warehouse… it was gripping, even without any sound. Had to go home and watch the whole movie again.

Walter Murch’s books on editing are popular.

Michael Wiese Productions web site has many books on directing and editing skills, some good info in there…

Look over places like the AFI and Director’s guild web sites…

[Mark Suszko]

While that sounds like a good idea at first, there are caveats to the school play and ballet recital thing.

First of all, there are the legal issues, you just don’t have the legal rights to distribute copies for money, on tape or DVD, that include the music from the show. Risking it anyway and possibly exposing the school district to potential lawsuits is something you need to discuss and make your own decisions about. Frankly, it’s unfortunate, but the expense and time spent to get all the legal permissions make the end product too expensive for most people to buy. When I made my earlier recomendations, it was with the expectation you’d use pre-paid needle-drop library music, or stuff you generate with a looping program on your own.

Secondly, any enterprise that offers to sell copies of an event like this has to deal with piracy taking a bite out of your margins. What often happens with things like school plays and video yearbooks is, a handful of people will buy it for full price, then sell or give away pirated dubs of that program to all their friends. You’ll be lucky to sell a dozen before the pirates take away all your demand. If you insist on pressing on with the scheme, you need to take orders and get the money up front, with the express understanding that unless you hit a minimum number of advance orders/payments, you can’t afford to do the show.

It’s business.

[Mark Suszko]

Compiling photos and raw home movies into montages and the like, call it a video scrapbook, what have you. Scrap booking is a money phenomenon right now, see if you can tap into the zeitgeist with a video version, animating stills to music with some effects and use all those novel background papers and gewgaws they have at the crafts store for backgrounds.

If you get certified, you can make money as a court/deposition videographer. But only if first certified, it’s not for the inexperienced.

Offer to bring people’s stories to life: have your kid tell us a funny, true, or made-up story, draw a few pictures, and we’ll “animate” it for you into a real mini-movie. or, “bring us your home movie, we’ll make a tightly edited DVD for you overnight”.

Shoot freelance news for local stations. Go cover stuff they didn’t have enough people to cover, cover blah city council meetings on the off chance something exciting happens, etc. They need fresh material every day, expecially for the morning shows. News that happens after five may be your best bet. Also local school sports, especially playoff games. They never have enough shooters to cover a good-sized town when all the schools are playing.

Create and produce a weekly show for local access cable, for the charity or cause you support most.

Volunteer to run cameras next pledge week at the local PBS station, they need the help.

[Mark Suszko]

I already responded in depth to this in the editing forum, but my take essentially was that billing was not the problem. The real problem is these people don’t have a clue about the right process for production, they have left out all the pre-production steps from needs analysis and research to writing and approving a creative treatment before a script is even begun. Thus they have no objective measures of what the finished project is to be. If you stepped in and fixed that, the issue of unlimited re-edits would never come up. You could charge a lot of money to be the guy that fixes that.

I also had reasons why the retainer concept, at least as these people defined it, had too many negatives to be considered good business practice.

[Mark Suszko]

Concur with Jeff 100 percent.

I think those effects are like spice in cooking, you can easlily overdo it. The effects and filters-heavy look I think is fine for short 3-4 minute music montages or a five-minute wrap of the entire day, but doing them “wall to wall” just cheapens everything. Fine camerawork/ lighting/sound and good cutting beats FX every time.

[Mark Suszko]

Wow. Just…wow. This could be a goldmine, or it could be a jail sentence.
You will have to weigh carefully the pros and cons. Let’s make a short list, the rest of you can chip in items I missed:

Retainer means a steady cash flow, plus.

Retainer means contractually you might have to drop other, more fun and lucrative jobs that interfere, Minus.

Could lead to many other future gigs, a plus.

Many more future Gigs with idiots that are a pain in the tuchus, minus.

As you can see, we’re like my good friend (who never calls anymore) Matt, equally divided.

Matt brings up a great point about the problem really being in how the entire production process is structured. Their’s has no structure. probably somebody or bodies each wrote a “script” right off the top of their head, and they are confused and angry that it doesn’t translate to an effective message. They want you to keep throwing stuff on the wall and they’ll decide what sticks when and how much. They want to steer, but don’t know how. This must not be a business school department at the university! Tell me it’s something like the philosophy department!;-)

You could offer to consult for an extra fee to get them back on the right track, but this group already sounds like there’s a big catfight going on within for control of the project, you jumping in like Roy Horn is not going to solve that part. You might, though, offer to come in for one meeting and lay out the right way to do it, the proper steps that will ensure everyone gets their input in but that the project eventually does have an ending that satisfies everyone. Then name your terms to work within this framework.

That process is very well outlined in the book Matt mentions. It starts with a needs analysis and research to define the exact communication problems the client wants solved, then once the problem is laid out, a creative treatment is developed that solves the communication problems point by point, and the academics can bash this thing around and modify it like a cat with a ball of string under the couch as long as they want, it should not interfere (much) with your other projects until it’s approved.

The point to that process is, the changes made to the treatment cost nothing until they are implemented. You are shifting all this dartboard decisionmaking nonsense into a phase where it’s all virtual, theoretical.
And this will save you later when the project is done, because you have taken away the subjective measures for the project’s success – and your success is defined as meeting the *objective* list of criteria from the treatment process… Objectively, if it meets the goals outlined in the treatment, it is by definition an acceptible product, it’s the exact product they signed off on before, now executed to exact order. No one can point to anything in the master tape and say they didn’t know it was going to look like *that* or talk about *those*. If they don’t like it at that point, you’re free and clear.

Once the treatment is agreed upon, a script is written based on it, a budget and schedule are worked up based on it and a contract is signed off to execute it. Approval steps and progress payments occur at all those places.

It’s not uncommon for a project to die somewhere in this development chain, but that should not lose you much if any money, if you are getting paid by the increment. Changes after that point are either just not accepted, or billed at outrageous fees. Just like architects and builders for buildings on the campus, as you explain to them: After the roof is put on is not the time to start adding more floor levels.

If I was desperate enough to try to take this on, I would insist on regular contractually agreed progress payments for each phase, as it’s the only way to hold any real leverage on the process from your end, and it gives you discrete places to make a break if it flops too badly…

It would also be in my contract (yes, this must all be in writing) that the only person I accept change orders from is the one with check writing authority, named in the contract. In the final analysis, nobody else matters if the guy with the check book isn’t happy, and moreover, a lot of the worst meddling middle-manager stuff goes away if they first have to get it past their own boss before it comes to you. Make their boss***YOUR***gatekeeper. Be firm on this point, and you will prosper.

If you went with a retainer and “AOL all you can eat for $29.95” approach, it will tend to push aside all your free time and other potential jobs, and you’ll likely lose money. Also, once you’re on retainer, you’re a commodity to them, since they feel they bought you, you will not command respect in future dealings. If you remain the gunslinger, working case by case, you’re on more equal footing. If you really don’t give a hoot, make it an outrageous amount that will either scare them off or totally pay for the angst as well as the lost profit opportunities. “Be willing to walk away” is a key tool in negotiation. If they sense you can’t/won’t walk away, they will not capitulate.

If they refuse to follow the advice about the proper production process and your stipulations, walk, no; skip and cavort away, tra-la-la. You will not regret it. Let some other guy take the suicide mission. That’s what it would be.

[Mark Suszko]

As far as jobs in Minnesota, I would look at the huge mediacl community in and surrounding the major hospitals you got there. I bet medical illustration and video training tapes are a big biz in that area.