[Mark Suszko]

When they complain about shooting to edit ratios, point out that Apocalypse Now often was chugging along at a whopping one cut per DAY. That’s one cut from maybe five iso cameras, reviewed, chosen, inserted, previewed in context with what was before and after,then either kept or removed and re-tried with another shot.

The fastest job I ever cut was a one-hour straight-cuts machine-to-machine VHS thing, chopping up a VHS reel into a master. I booked an hour and a half and was done with the one-hour master in an hour and ten. Obviously, didn’t have time to play the whole thing back right then. And I walked in with accurate logs and a script. Something very straightforward and uncomplicated could be done, at bare minimum, in about 2.5 times the running time. Something more “artistic” where you have to cut and try things out plus build composites, tweak color, levels, make graphics, etc. is all going to take longer, more like 10 times or 20 times the final runtime.

News is it’s own animal, and takes exactly as long as they give you time for. Always.

[Mark Suszko]

Specifically which kind of clients? Don’t just say:
“Paying ones”.

[Mark Suszko]

https://char.txa.cornell.edu/language/element/color/color.htm

[Mark Suszko]

Try picking the colors using a monochrome monitor setting.

Because 2 colors can look very different at first, but under the B&W filter, you see they are too close in “value” so the letters don’t “pop” off the background the way they should if you’re using real complimentary colors. This helps color-blind people read the words easier as well.

You can throw a glint or spotlight beam across the lettering in combination with reducing the brightness of the background and adding blur.

Want cheezy? Magnifying glass pass.

[Mark Suszko]

I wish you all the best in “working retirement”, Ned! You’ve certainly earned it! Somehow I picture you a year from now as the tribal Shaman for a local production Collective, a bunch of active, earnest and tech-savvy kids doing social concern Docs because you can’t sit around all day without getting into something.

[Mark Suszko]

It’s a nice reel. It doesn’t point to a *specific* area of VFX that you like or do best; it paints you more as a generalist. And that’s fine, too, if that’s true.

You can and should customize the reel to emphasize the key skills asked for in EVERY opening you try for. At least rotate the items so those key points are towards the front.

One thing I didn’t see a lot of was synthetic set extension. That is a huge area of VFX work on a lot of today’s shows. You might comp up some extensive photo-realistic period location, with as much detail as possible, and add actors and a standing set to

[Mark Suszko]

Not the complete answer, but a portion of the answer, perhaps, is that old-timey guys did everything by face to face or phone, back when phones had real audio quality and real duplex communication. not this glorified CB radio junk today. Texting and emailing turns the live person you were speaking to and with into an anonymous metal candy bar in your hand. it’s easy to de–personalize in that format, and then to drop more formal manners.

My wife occasionally chides me in the fast food drive-through if I don’t give the order-taker’s squawk box a clear salutation as well as a loud “please and thank-you”. I AM polite and do that stuff when I get to the window, but not always so when just addressing just the intercom speaker.

The impersonal candy-bar-shaped box lets people who are lazy or shy avoid the stress of politeness. Perhaps if texts and emails always came with a clear, large picon of the sender’s face, it might help, but that’s not a standardized thing across all platforms.

Zelin also makes a great point, as usual. Everything is commoditized, even things that should not be so. Ordering thru interfaces instead of people has desensitized individuals who hate trying to deal with salespeople. I get the impression that users are much more interested in getting the opinions of non-salesperson users than in talking to a sales expert. Isn’t that one reason forums like the COW do well? Or, in a similar vein, the user reviews on any Amazon catalog page? We trust the average guys with nothing to gain from the conversation, more than the experts themselves.

Ned, maybe this is something you can turn to your advantage, by getting “rated” by various related prosumer or consumer sites, letting them speak on your behalf. Wedding/event shooters have third-party raters like The Knot but aside from something like ITVA, (whatever their new name is) which people outside our biz never head of, where is the similar trusted third-party rating system for commercial/industrial producers?

[Mark Suszko]

“This should put half the companies on the “upper south hall” out of business over night (if this product actually works)”.

– Zelin

The second half of that sentence has always been the hard part to bank on. Like being in love. I’ve had infatuations with BMD and AJA before; been amazed by both and let down by both too. Now I’m going to wait and see how well they deliver, before sticking my neck out at the office to insist we “MUST get one TODAY”.

[Mark Suszko]

Sounds to me like they may have repeating work for you, and they want to know if there’s a billing method that’s cheaper or discounted for them. Everybody always wants to “commoditize” what we do as if what we do is the same as buying pallets of new tires or boxes of printer cartridges, etc.

You can just multiply your hourly rate by ten to get the day rate. As a sort of “discount” you can offer to charge the hourly rate on stuff that’s less than a day’s work, however, remember, there’s an “opportunity cost” to work that takes up enough of your day that there’s no other projects you can work on to fill the rest of the time.

There’s also a typical discount in equipment rental that renting for the week comes with a free 1 or 2 days.

If this is a repeating weekly or monthly assignment, if you feel like it, you can offer ten percent off the normal day rate, AFTER the first three gigs. NEVER on the first gig.

Never EVER on the first gig.

[Mark Suszko]

I have never done this shot, but it seems to me all you really need is the foreground and background “plate” shots on separate layers. Then I would add the critical part of the effect, the lens distortion, in post, by keyframing changes to the virtual zoom/lens DOF settings. Should be able to mock this up in Apple Motion, or A.E. , whichever floats your boat.

Next, Todd will gently explain how everything I just wrote is bunk, and how he does it:-)