[Mark Suszko]

You don’t say what kind of products you sell, so I have to generalize.

Shooting product shots in the garage is easy and relatively cheap, if sound isn’t an issue. And if sound isn’t an issue, it may be that most of the walls are irrelevant as well, unless they are there to help control light and to create a visible backdrop.

If you plan to do all the audio as voice-over, then you really don’t have a “sound problem” for the product demos. Not until you want to use an on-camera spokesperson. Have a conversation with the other stakeholders about that limitation, and how to work within it. You can record audio in a closet, heck, some people record it in their very quiet luxury car interiors, then add it in post – it’s all a matter of what resources you have on hand.

No, your biggest problem is when someone wants to use the space for a conventional person-talks-to-camera bit. In your case, unless this is to be done more than once a week, and an office or conference room isn’t available, I’d go find/rent a space for those specific jobs. You could even do those in a nearby hotel, if the room has the right characteristics. The concierge’ may give you the eye, until you explain you’re not there to stage an adult type of shoot. 🙂

With that as a basis, let’s talk construction. You need the back “wall”. At a minimum. That could be a hung cloth curtain, or a hard wall, what they call a “flat” in the theater. The flat can be a simple 4×8 panel of press-board paneling for ten bucks or so, backed with a few 2×4’s and c-clamps to hold it up straight. It can have a sturdier frame and wheels or skids to move it with, and corner framing so you can clamp multiple panels together and bend corners. There are books in the library and illustrations online for how high school and college theater groups can make simple sturdy, multi-purpose flats.

I prefer a medium gray cloth, because it’s easier to store and move, and you can light it to make it any color you need. Stay away from trying to green-screen anything in the garage: I sense you don’t have the budget or experience pool to carry that off yet. You *could* pay a sign company to make you a big logo sticker graphic for the wall, or you could use a video projector on the wall to add logos, etc. But I like cloth.

Cloth bought large enough will not show seams, whereas, building a flat with standard 4×8 panels WILL, unless you’re using drywall. If you choose a drywall “back wall”, you need a frame of wood or metal, anchored to the floor and ceiling, or braced from behind, which takes up a lot of room. I’d hire a drywall specialist to put up the wall and gather all the materials, and get it to the basic finished state, then you can paint it yourself. Or, buy the really wide cloth sold at Rose Brand in NYC, and just worry about hanging pipe at the ceiling and laying chain at the bottom of the curtain, to hang it. If I had to make the 24-foot by 10-foot drywall myself, I’m estimating 2-300 dollars for all the materials, not counting how to get them to the site. Go to Rose Brand yourself to pick out the cloth and estimate that cost.

Lighting should be a separate discussion, once the “set” is designed, and you give more details on the exact uses the set will be put to.

[Mark Suszko]

I still hate you, but I’ll answer the question:-)

They went along with my logic for as long as we still owned 4:3 cameras. When the HD upgrade came, a few years later, we had to go with the wider shots, but our style of doing these has also evolved, to where we usually shoot a live-switched, 3-camera interview, and retain isos of the single-shot and 2-shot, in case some future user disagrees with how I called the live switch, or they need the raw iso for another reason. I try to make it a practice to shoot the iso backgrounds with some room tone, after the interviews, to help anybody who wants to pull a difference matte of the guest speaker. I think the day isn’t far off though, when cameras can record detailed depth info for every pixel, and we’ll do “chromakeying” by just lassoing everything we want that’s at a certain x-azis depth. All else will just drop away.

[Mark Suszko]

I think you’d have too much competition unless you had a lot of high end stuff, or even more low-end stuff, rented cheaply.

What I would suggest instead is to form a production co-op with a few partners, and offer studio space and room to set up green screens and edit bays on a DIY/ buffet table basis. Then you get local indie types, artists’ collectives, etc. to rent the space out as and when they need it.

Something else that’s an under-served market is a place that has special interiors generally unavailable these days: airline interiors and cockpits, airport concourse, hospital operating rooms and exam rooms, Dental office, school classrooms, bank lobbies, prison cell blocks, subway stations and cars, train compartments… get the idea? I’d find an old mall or industrial building outside of Chicago proper, maybe in the old steel mill area near Gary, Indiana, with the open space dirt cheap, and create these kinds of standing sets to rent out to movies, TV, Commercials (lots). You’d be the only guy in town for that stuff, and could thus usually name your price.

[Mark Suszko]

I saw him 3 times in 2 weeks. In addition to an arena and a festival-style event, I saw him at a bar with 300 people!!! I was right at the rail, close enough to touch him…which I did a couple of times when we slapped palms. A life highlight for me, for sure.

I’m pretty sure I hate you now.

There’s apps you can download to the phone that automatically turn live vertical video into landscape horizontal for the times when the operator is too stupid or excited to think of it. I think the majority of vertical video you see in candids is because of idiocy, not intent. I believe this horizontal conversion app should be a default setting in every cameraphone, and I think the cute puppets that started this thread are exactly right.

There are too many exceptions out there; it’s largely situational. I think the Beeb isn’t really so much a fan of vertical, as it is just making allowances due to the huge number of poor photographers supplying content.

I remember having an argument about shooting some oral history in 16:9 versus 4:3. My argument for 4:3 at the time was first, that we had more of the gear available in that aspect ratio, but then I asked, if the subject is a seated person in medium to tight shots that rarely change, what do you do with all the extra space to the left and right of them? I went on to say, the 4 by 3 shot could be comped into a larger 16 by 9 in various clever and creative ways during post, based on the intent of the producer and editor using the footage, but I didn’t see a value in raw 16:9 for compositions that were in effect vertical portraits. But then again, the nature of the subject being shot makes all the difference.

[Mark Suszko]

Dude!

[Mark Suszko]

Nick is EXACTLY right here.

If you want to itemize everything for your own organizational and billing needs, continue to do so, but don’t present that data to the clients that way. Not only will the things Nick warned you about come to pass; you’re also giving away to much “secret sauce” to possible competition.

They are more hassle – bill a little extra to cover it. Your hourly and day rates are minimums, nobody said they were maximums.

[Mark Suszko]

I really need it for everything I do, and though it may be a comparative bargain, it’s still outside my range, partly on price, partly because my shop prefers a completely automated solution without monthly charges, that they can just pay for once and own forever. Even if that comes with a lower accuracy; due to “sunk costs”, they’d rather have me correct the files, than pay someone outside to do it, since I’m already here on payroll anyhow. So I’m still looking for something similar that’s pure machine-translation-based, with the functionality of a plug-in. If I was self-employed, Speed Scriber would appeal to me more.

[Mark Suszko]

I think it’s getting there… but the fee model, I’m not crazy about

[Mark Suszko]

I can sympathize, Ned. I’ve been through the “it’s what I asked for, but not what I want” mill a few times. As well as the “You should have been able to read my changing mind when I said what I said before I took it back without telling you”.

Boiling away all the other details, as I see it, it comes down to: you made an educated guess at the deliverables, based on previous history, and it only came out half-right this time because the players and their methods have slightly changed. Specific deliverables have to be locked down right from the beginning, every time, and if the client’s are not educated enough about their choices, it’s going to save later drama if you walk them thru it first, before making the quote.

I often offer clients a link to download VLC and MPEG Streamclip or the free version of Switch, if it can help them with a file compatibility problem. If you offer such, and they make noises like “I think you should be making the conversions” or “I really don’t know how to work with that”… they’re telling you, basically: “I’m willing to be up-charged for the convenience of you taking care of all this for me so I don’t have to work on things I find boring, uncomfortable or hard.”

The guys are right about being a stickler on the established rate. As in card playing, you sometimes have to bluff and wait them out, instead of folding. The only guy in charge of a negotiation is the one that’s willing to walk from a bad deal. Like the neo-nazi interpretive dance recital. Thanks for putting THAT in my head this morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukFAvYP3UU

[Mark Suszko]

Then why not laptops?