[Mark Suszko]

Look at the Band Pro Duo Pod, this can be bought separate and added to most other monopods, or ordered complete, it’s a fold-out “footplate” you step on, which makes the monopod as rigid as a tripod, but flip it up in a second, you’re on the move again.

I like the Fig Rig and want one badly for close-in hand-held shooting using palmcorders, but for long-lens shooting, a monopod is a better choice.

[Mark Suszko]

Apprenticing yourself to a full-time wedding producer will be a quick and useful education. You will only grip at first, then move up to backup/ wide shot/cutaway work, and maybe editing. At first you will be working for low or no pay, until you’ve become proven and reliable. Wedding guys that are full-time very often overbook or get too many gigs to handle, and that’s when they refer off to someone like you, usually expecting a little gratuity for the referral, or some other arrangement. It’s boot camp, doing weddings, the stakes are high, failure is not an option, if you do it right, you learn a lot about how to shoot documentaries and plan angles and shot selsction “in-camera” to tell a story.

[Mark Suszko]

Okay, you don’t need a picture of the laptop, or home movies of the lucky engineer revisiting his lunch, you only need to record video of the laptop’s screen output in synch with whatever the camera is picking up of the fluid action.

Most modern laptops have an s-video out,it mirrors the screen output. This can be connected to a Sony “clamshell” Dv deck, something you can buy for maybe 400 bucks or rent for less. Rent two, and to the second one, connect a “lipstick” “bullet” or “ice cube” (all slang for tiny POV cameras) camera with a close-up lens. Our shop uses a Sony LS-1 lipstick cam with various screw-on lenses, I think it matches our PVV-1 betacam footage pretty well, but there are probably more modern and better POV cameras out there now. The lipstick camera can have plenty of resolution (they are sometimes used for medical and industrial process imaging) with the right add-on lens. Some of the Sony lipstick cams can take power right from the clamshell deck, eliminating a separate power supply for the camera and thus cutting weight and complexity. Another benefit of the lipstick cams is they are small, light, easy to make custom mountings for, and take up little room, making your whole experimental unit more compact and more sturdy against the positive g-forces on the bottom of the parabolas and any in-flight vibrations. The two DV clamshell decks will record time code and audio, so, if your guy can make a noise or a beep or something to slate audio at the beginning of the experimental run, the two tapes will be able to be locked into synchronization in post, and you wind up with a 2-window screen of the laptop data and the experimental glop’s behavior all synched up.

All the gear I mentioned, two clamshells and a lipstick, can be rented from a reputable place for not too much money, under $500 a day I would expect, maybe more on the coasts. The expense would mainly come from finding someone experienced and capable in rigging the stuff up so it works and is safe and reliable. That may include adding lighting and a suitably contrasting background to the experimental cell so the fluid behavior is easier to discern. Finding a gaffer that works on a nano-scale can be difficult, OTOH, the craft services table is only a foot long;-)

BTW Tim, I thought the v-Comet was retired, or did they just change aircraft and keep the nickname?

[Mark Suszko]

To me the Q&A is often the most important part of these, how do you plan to handle that?

[Mark Suszko]

I guess it’s a tested axiom that it’s cheaper and more profitable to retain a happy client than to go out and try to generate new ones. It looks to me like your business is on the cusp of the growth decision, and when times are uncertain, I’m a conservative person in issues of money, so I would focus on retaining and growing long-term relationships with a select list of your best current clients and raising your rates in a gentle, structured manner, over drumming up one-shot gigs with new accounts.

I say this because it seems to me you are selling “you” as the product/service, and there just isn’t any more “you” being made to add on to the business. So adding partners and expanding a staff don’t necessarily amplify the product of “you”, they just raise the overall stakes of the business: you add overhead, you now have to generate more volume or higher prices to support it, and the circle feeds back on itself so that it’s more about volume and thruput than quality and craft. If it is just about making money, this is not an obstacle. Me, I also have to get something out of it besides a payday.

There is only so much time you can spend in a day, so I say if you have the luxury, spend your time with the clients that make it worthwhile. If the issue is dividing your time between sales and creative, then look into hiring a rep to handle sales, the previous posts had great info on this. My info is likely outdated, but when I was more in tune with this part of the biz, every good editor, producer, and director in town was repped by someone/some agency. Often because a lot of “creatives” just don’t like to be bothered with “business stuff”, that’s not what’s fun about the work, better to offload those tasks on someone who likes to do it. That has probably changed over time, a friend who’s a high-dollar corporate editor reps himself, and pockets the commission he would be paying the reps, but he has the luxury of a long-standing near-full-time, well-paying client to lean on, and many contacts built thru long-term relationships. It would make me nervous in this economy to have only one “sure thing” client, but everybody’s comfort level is different.

You may be feeling like you’re missing the parade, like you’e missing the bigger payoff. That’s often a gambler’s instinct talking it’s siren song. Myself, like I said, I play it very conservative in terms of finances. I will go for less money on the sure thing than gamble on a bigger payday when the results may be snake eyes, because I’s a family man with kids. If I was a single bachelor, I would be less risk-averse.

[Mark Suszko]

One area where you might be able to negotiate is retention of rights to the finished product: it may be worth taking a lower fee for this video if you retain the ownership and rights. Get that on paper, have a lawyer look it over for an hour’s worth of time, it’s worth 50-100 bucks to do. If the band becomes hot, you then can make back some of that initial loss re-selling and re-purposing the footage, see what I’m getting at?

I am fascinated by the work of Spike Jonze: he can make award-winning and breakthru videos with very small or very large budgets, it’s less about the money and more about the creativity and talent.

[Mark Suszko]

I don’t think there is, but they all share the obvious elements in common: what was done and where/when, how long it took, what the rate was, any additional charges or expenses, any rebates etc. and the grand total and the due date for payment, plus any terms.

A little trick you might employ is to offer a “prompt payment” discount if paid within say 15 days. Many government clients, and some corporate ones, have a rule that any bills that give discounts for early/prompt payment get processed first/faster. For someone on short margins, fast, reliable payment may be worth the “giveaway” on the discount.

Terms since I was a boy were 2/10 net 30. Many, many places will try to stiff you with net 90 and more, you tell them if they want interest-free loans, they should call a bank, but you want your money as contracted, or late fees will be charged, and collection procedures will go into effect. Of course, the best guarantee for prompt payment is to retain the finished product until payment. You will be surprised at how well this circumvents the “well, it’s our universal policy to take 100 days to pay a bill, it’s just the way accounting is set up”.

“I’m not allowed to be a chump. That’s how MY accounting is set up”.

[Mark Suszko]

the “transformation scene”, is the main point and hiughlight of the movie, after all, and I think this was completely botched. 20 some years after the first Sw movie was produced, you still can’t do much “acting” inside that suit. Here’s what i would have done:

The conversation about what Annakin did to padme would have happened while he was still on the table, being worked on. The key revelation that he was the one that killed her would be given just as he is about to have the helmet attached, so we can see his ruined face contorting into anguish, see his eyes flash their torment, see the actor ACT… I imagine, with a tortured, haunted scream… as the helmet comes down over him, cutting him off in mid-scream, as if his humanity is being buried alive inside the suit. THEN the trademarked breathing comes on, etc.

What we got in that scene instead was a little hand-waving, no emotional impact, no drama.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, you don’t start with a camera shopping spree.

You start with research into the market, consultations with an accountant and lawyer, forming a business plan, figuring out the ture expenses and costs of the business, raising the capital tyo cover those, generating the leads… there’s many steps before the fun shopping parts, and even then, I would counsel you not to buy any gear like cameras you first year, but to rent such items only as jobs come up. It’s a business first. The only tool you should need to buy up front is a phone. Make the first call to your local SCORE office or other business assistance organization.

[Mark Suszko]

Usually not well.

Of course you’er going to bring inthe numbers, the spreadsheets, etc that tell the money side of the story, how this new approach is going to benefit, etc. But that’s often only part of the sale.

In my case, I think most of the problem is that for myself and some experienced co-workers, we can convey just a few sketchy details of an idea and we’re creative enough to visualize the whole thing, complete, in our heads. We have a lot of creative shorthand in our common vocabulary so we can state “A>>>Z” without having to write out all the letters in between.

The wall I keep running into is many clients outside of our creative circle plain lack this ability, they really *can’t* imagine the finished product, you have to mock up a simulation or actual example, as close to the final version as possible, before they “get it”. Any little visual discontinuities like a title card insert that says “so-and-so effect HERE”, just blows their minds. Any little perceived technical issue they come up with must have a counter-argument prepared to a fine level of detail, or they just put the blinders on and say “it’s impossible, that can never work”. And you’re done. I have had exactly that happen, down to the “it’s impossible”, only to be able to show a competitor doing exactly that impossible thing a month later, too late for us.

So often, I can’t get permission to TRY to do something until I go ahead and DO it and thus SHOW it can be done… very circular!;-) I guess this is one reason why Animatics, photomatics, pre-comps, pre-viz, etc are all so popular, because they get the creatives and non-creatives to one standardized common vision of what’s to be done. The visual equivalent of a script treatment.

So my advice to you, Frank, FWIW is to make as finished-looking of a demo as you can, however you can, and bring that to the pitch, unless you’re a really good stand-up storyteller.

The danger of this demo piece is that they may fall in love with an element in it that’s really not the most important part of the whole, and they will get really tweaked if you cut or change that later, whether your reasons are good or not. And obviously, if this is a knocked-together simulation of the final product, there’s the danger they can’t make the cognitive leap past a poor-looking element and the future one that will replace it. Some people get it just looking at the wire frame, other people have to see a final shaded render. It’s all a balancing act.