[Mark Suszko]

He keeps it next to his Burroughs D82 and IMSAI 808, by the way… ☺

I kid, but only out of respect.

[Mark Suszko]

I keyframe mine as I go. If the stakes are much lower, I can apply a plug-in to suppress the noise floor in between the higher level of actual speech, it’s gating. But that would be a very casual way to do it.

[Mark Suszko]

My own way of working would be to keep each mic on a dedicated track, and ride the levels on each thru as many play-throughs as it takes.

If you’re in a hurry, I was thinking, you could use multicam mode and tell the multicam to switch the audio with the corresponding videos- this kills the non-essential audio in between the various shots – then you can go back into that cut and refine the audio. Multicam can be set to lock to one master audio track, or switch the audio and picture together. One could just duplicate as many tracks as needed to make each “switcher” choice a particular version with the particular isolated mic on it.

[Mark Suszko]

BITD, this was a feature built into Apple computers.

One of the methods used today is to send proxies to the client any way you can, be it by courier or file transfer – then, you only need to exchange updated project files each day, which are small.

There are several third-party apps specifically designed to let you work in realtime with the client seeing what you’re doing and even making notations in the program that stay with the EDL. They require a pretty fast connection speed to work well.

I think I’d hate that for anything but near-final tweaks of something. My regular clients all gave p sitting in with me years ago, they say: “we know how you work and we rust your judgement – just send us your best final version and we’ll critique that” – and they leave it largely up to my judgement. You can have this kind of relationship if you build the trust up front.

[Mark Suszko]

You have to be more specific about the type and size of the product, and the kind of demos you are wanting to do. What works for a cereal-box-sized product on a table top is different than something bicycle-sized or larger, or a product that’s worn, see? Are the demos static, or do you move around in some location?

[Mark Suszko]

I know B&H takes on consignment sales. Obviously they’ll want a piece of it, and they tend to be picky as to the condition of the gear.

[Mark Suszko]

My Spider Sense tell me this is not really about locking in your rate for ninety days, because if it was, they’d just sign the contracts NOW, wouldn’t they? It’s not like the big event they are planning is in danger of being cancelled. They’ve locked-in the hotel and the transportation already, I’m sure. The publicity has gone out, or is about to. The ads are bought and paid for. This is happening.

I think this is a probe to see how firm you are, so they can try to negotiate your price down. Either they already know you are the guy for this, and are (redacted)-ing-around, or they have one of your competitors on the top of their list and you are just the “official” (required by accounting rules) benchmark comparison price source, not the real candidate for the job.

My take is, re-draft a new bid with the 90-day guarantee and raise the price eight to ten percent, to reflect the extra risk. You are neither a bank nor an insurance company. They sense you really want this gig; that’s risky for you. You can’t bee too eager. Rule two of business negotiation is; they have to believe you can walk away from a bad deal – if they don’t believe you could walk away from a bad deal, they own you. And that reputation will poison your future deals in that market because now people know you can be rolled.

[Mark Suszko]

USB converters for your mic have gotten way cheap, try the Shure or the Icycle with an XLR mic.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, when I did this the Paul Crisp multi-point mask tools were a Godsend, especially since they could be feathered. If you do a DEEEP search of the COW archives for Paul Crisp it may turn up still-not-dead link to those masks, which came in 4,6, and 12-point versions, maybe more.

[Mark Suszko]

Well I don’t use “real” go pros, I use a knockoff brand that costs around fifty bucks but they are still 4K, have a built-in screen and offer most of the same features. Cheap insurance.

I mount them with a “skeleton” frame that fits a standard threaded photography tripod screw, like the Vixias, and allows for external power. The fisheye effect can be dialed-out in-camera using a menu setting, which I don’t do in-camera because it reduces the resolution to accomplish the flattening, so I un-bulge it in post.

I can stick one on top of my P2 camera and know I have a wide cover shot of whatever I’m pointing at with the P2. The cards fit an adapter and slide right into my iMac, editing has not been any problem.

GoPros being small an unobtrusive and be stuck in useful angles and places on and around a stage and etc. in a way that doesn’t call attention to them or intimidate people. Sticking one next to the ppt projector lets the auto-iris expose well for the screen and not the room. But I’d still just use it for a guide to replacement slides, generally.