[Mark Suszko]

You mean the laptop got damaged in transit because it wasn’t packed deeper in the guy’s duffel? If that’s what you mean, I’d call that a 60-10 case of negligence; 60 % his, for the bad placement, 10 percent yours, for not catching and correcting his mistake. The rest, is on the shipping company, for being too rough.

[Mark Suszko]

Go highlight it and look at the inspector more closely: some preset titles come with a default behavior(s) you must check or un-check, to get what you need.

[Mark Suszko]

In order:

Producer, Jane Doe

Jane Doe’s boss, if necessary, gets and Executive producer credit, but this is probably overkill.

No director. A director for this would have been on the location telling the camera operator how and what to shoot, and maybe operating the switcher for multiple cameras, or directing a technical Director to switch it. This task was offloaded to the shooter. So the videographer credit covers that. You could also call it “Camera operator”, but I think “Videographer” connotes that the shooter made key decisions on site for lighting, grip, sound, etc. in the absence of a dedicated director.

Videographer: Joe Smith

Editor: you

Writers – no. Not in the circumstances you describe. If you need to get some recognition for the extra talents you brought to this, then “Additional production services (names here)”

[Mark Suszko]

I’m thinking it may be time to go back to an earlier era when there were more and smaller shows in multiple key market cities, rather than one annual consolidated mega-show. In Chicago, it was always the Swiderski Open House that was our “mini-NAB”; you could make the drive, see everything, have a nosh, hobnob, and get home before bedtime.

Then later in the year, we’d drive to a VMI show in Saint Louis, see the stuff that didn’t make it to Chicago, talk to some other vendors. The shows went for 2-3 days, but you really only needed one. And our visits to those mini-shows led to actual purchases. It was certainly cheaper and more convenient than the Great Migrations to Las Vegas. We never could get permission to travel to NAB, mostly *because* it was in Vegas, and there were always fears by management that the trip would get talked about in political columns as a “taxpayer-funded junket to the city of sin and gambling”. Had the NAB been held in practically any other major city, no such issues.

As time passed and the internet came along, the need to physically go there dwindled for us more and more, and I started picking up the info I needed in places like Dv magazine and the COW here. What attending a show in person does is let you get the hands-on experience with a product while you talk to someone about it. That’s *if* you can get past the throng of people at the show exhibit and get enough of the demo person’s time… not always possible, at any show regardless of size, when the demo is something very hot and trendy and popular….

But if the vendors have that product available at regional rental houses, you have the ability to go to that closer place and get that same hands-on demo, without the time pressure. Anyway, more and smaller is what I think might become a new-old trend over time. That’s good for the rental houses too, as it builds the local biz contacts with potential gear renters.

[Mark Suszko]

Is this an additive dissolve you’re applying, and what kind of “handles” are on the clips?

[Mark Suszko]

I’ve looked at the demos and they show you can import the new 3-d models that come in the latest FCPX build, like the flying bug alien robot thing, so not just text. Apparently, it only works in one particular 3-d format that Apple is using, for now, though I may be wrong about that exclusive model thing… its just what I’m reading between the lines in the descriptions.

The demo movie touts the extreme things you can composite once you have a good 3-d tracker, but my applications are far more mundane, generally, and a demo showing how to use it in digital set extensions, re-mapping graphics onto buildings, cars, billboards, etc. is more my speed. Some of that I guess is doable thru 2-d trackers, I know, the follow-on demos could maybe point out how a 3-d tracker is better? –

As to a purchase, I wish i had the extra cash to just get it now but absent a paying client with a real need for it, the Business Manager says; “not now, not until someone else is paying for it”. Also; “Your lunch is ready, come upstairs.”

[Mark Suszko]

I had something like this happen when my system resources were just down to nothing. Just clearing out my downloads folder basically solved it for me.

[Mark Suszko]

Is the audio really clean on all the tracks, of is the app struggling to match waveforms? In cases where the audio is bad, I’ve had luck pre-treating a duplicate clip to enhance the audio using sharp EQ filter settings to drop the bass out and push the human vocal frequencies.

That might make it unpalatable for your final mix, but we don’t care, so long as the plug-in can hear it, because we’ll do an audio replacement later, or we may not even need that audio for the final mix, since, if it was important, we’d have grabbed good audio on that source form the beginning, right?

Other possible explanations for the problem are that the clips are for some reason hogging a lot of ram by the nature of their codecs or something. Can you do a short test with proxy footage?

[Mark Suszko]

That looks incredibly useful and the price is right. Now I have something to replace Mpeg Streamclip with, once they pry that out of my hands.

[Mark Suszko]

You may not like my answer because it is never simple or right IMO to tell someone like you: “Charge X dollars for this.”

That’s not because I’m trying to be a pedantic jerk, but because I’m such a strong believer in calculating your day rate and hourly rates – before – you start making and taking bids, because that’s the only way for you to really know if what you’re asking is the “right” number. Once you know your day rate, you can answer your own question about the bid proposal with a number that not only covers your costs of production but also includes the appropriate markup.

Somebody tells you: “Charge a flat $1,100 for this” with no context, you are either going to be under-bidding this or over-bidding this; you won’t know which, and neither one is good for you over the long haul.

I will give you the shortest possible procedure for figuring your day rate and thus your hourly rate. Multiply the figure by your estimated hours, plus a couple hours fudge factor for changes or last minute problems, then you have a solid number.

How many days a year you want to work? Take out some vacations, sick days, weekends. Maybe you get to… 325 work days. And you wanna make $50,000 a year. So far that’s around 150 a day minimum you need to be pulling in, that’s before all your expenses for housing, transportation, utilities, taxes, health car, retirement… (and this is why freelancers charge more than you expect, because they have to carry all the expenses where their full-time employer might have covered some of it as a salaried job). So let’s bump that $150 daily nut up to reflect the costs and we’re at about $200, let’s say….

Next, your work stuff: the gear, the software, the subscriptions and fees for music, for software apps, upgrades, plug-ins… the cameras, their support gear, batteries, lights, audio, the computer, the editing package, the storage drives, planned maintenance and upgrades… let’s skip the actual totaling and accounting for now and say, for you, this comes out to another 30 bucks a day that will cover your system and equipment and operating costs.

Now the daily nut (for you specifically) is $230. This is the number, below which, you are losing money working on something. Any job estimate that works out below this is a losing proposition and your time and energy is better spent going out to drum up better jobs.

And we haven’t addressed mark-up and profits yet. If you are in this as a business and not a hobby, you need to add a markup of a few percent. We’ll estimate for now that based on a five percent markup, we’re now at a day rate of $250.

Are you using a ten-hour day or an 8-hour one? Both are common. For a ten- hour work day that makes your hourly rate $25.

How long were the seminars? At a very minimum, figure twice the event length for editing time, and it’s usually more than that, if you’re going to be color correcting scene to scene and adding graphics and sweetening audio and adding titles and music. Four times the running time is not a too-wild estimate. Then you gotta figure an hour or two for applying any changes they ask for, or fixing unexpected problems that crop up. Then rendering time and making the deliverables.

You didn’t say how long the seminars were. Let’s say it was two, two-hour sessions and a keynote they want broken out into it’s own, one-hour, stand-alone segment.

Five hours times my 4-hour estimate is 20 work hours, round that up to 22 so you have time for lunch, dinner, and bathroom breaks. – you’re not a machine. 22 hours at your hourly rate of 25 per is $550. That’s your bottom line number you tell yourself for this job. Below this price, the work is not worth your time. Above this line is all profit.

Now, you could ask for more than that, and you should. How much more? The cynics will tell you whatever the market will bear – however desperate they are, however few other options they have.

But you’re in this for the long haul; you want their steady, monthly repeat business. You want your number on speed-dial in their office. You do NOT give a discount to earn this business. You just spent this time calculating your magic number that makes sense and you will keep this number limit holy.

What you do, if you have the time, is ask around to other companies in the area, what their hourly rate is to edit something for you. You want your rate to fall into the upper third of the range; neither the most expensive, nor the bottom-feeding cut-rate guys. Maybe you decide $600 will keep them with you. Round numbers sound “made-up” to many people – it’s psychology. They tend to accept a number that isn’t round as something that is “more accurate”. So now I’m going to suggest the final price all delivered is $622. The $22 will pay for your celebratory latte.

Now you know your true value, the negotiating is up to you. I’ll suggest that the first person to say a number, loses, so wait to hear their offer first – they may have ridiculously offered too much.

If their offer is lowball, at least you KNOW that now, because of your calculations. You should counter with the right number, or a little more, but be prepared to walk away if they don’t come down. If they know you can’t walk away from a bad deal, they own you and always will. And eventually everyone else knows that too. So hold the line, even if it costs you.

They may counter by saying: “my cousin’s girlfriend’s sister can do this for less.” Maybe they can. You have no way to know what their context is, what their expenses are. What their experience level is or if their gear is reliable. You can’t let a lowball offer from anybody else drive the number YOU will quote. You have to live YOUR life, not someone else’s. You may find at first you lost a gig to the cousin’s sister or whatever, but in many such cases, they come back to you later to fix it because what was promised was not what was delivered, or the competitor didn’t figure all the costs that you did. Trust the rate number you generated. Stick by it. Because you are a businesswoman, not a hobbyist.