[Mark Suszko]

I never heard back on how you did with the tripod….

It sounds like you have automatic iris control and automatic white balance engaged on the camera. Such features are best used once at the beginning to get the camera settings where you like them, then they should be switched to manual, because they will continue to adjust, usually at inconvenient times. Some cameras have the option to stay in manual iris, with a momentary button-push to let auto-iris fix your issue rapidly… then you let go the button and you are back to manual control. This is ideal.

Consult your camera owners’ manual for how to engage and dis-engage auto white balance and auto iris.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m not sure he can make any profit supplying it to the Court, Bob, except for incidental costs for, say, the drives to copy it off on, and his labor for that.

If it was a work for hire situation, the construction company still has “dibs” on the material, and thus their lawyers do as well. They’ll have to provide copies to the prosecution during the discovery phase of the trial, unless the government directly subpoenas the materials themselves. NTSB, DOT, FBI and Florida and federal Attorneys General might do that.

If it’s not a work for hire, he owns that raw material, but it’s a catch-22 that he can’t re-purpose it without the former client’s okay. He can own it, but he can’t distribute, as I understand it. But even if he was able, I’m guessing morally he’d be opposed to making a profit selling the footage to people sensationalizing the tragedy.

If it’s not a work for hire situation, he may be in the same kind of position as Flagler in Walmart v. Flagler.
Flagler was the “in-house” video production arm for Walmart Corporate, on a retainer, and had a lot of candid, embarrassing material gleaned over years of working with Walmart on various projects. Walmart decided to screw Flagler and change to a cheaper vendor – which is standard Walmart business policy.

Walmart’s lawyers were sloppy and a court ruled Flagler wasn’t contractually bound to turn over all that material when Walmart ended the relationship. They’d bullied Flagler and offered Flagler a pittance to own and destroy the library. Had they paid real money, they’d have got all of the compromising material back. As it was, Flagler was able to prove he had rights to his materials, and he monetized them by allowing lawyers for various organizations to access the footage library for “legal research”. A number of follow-on cases for damages against Walmart ensued.

The moral of the story, I guess, Is: Don’t be a %6$& to your subcontractors.

[Mark Suszko]

Also, the tragic event points up the importance of getting a deposit up front.

You never know when or if something is going to happen that scuttles a project, so staging milestones for progress payments as you go along is a kind of “insurance”, that (hopefully) covers the bulk of your outstanding production costs, at least up to where the project is ended.

It doesn’t need to be a disaster that interrupts a project; it could as easily come down to a sudden change of mind by the client, or a new development of some kind that renders the project irrelevant. That’s why you cover yourself so you’re not left holding the bag at any point.

[Mark Suszko]

But did you get back Motion and DVDSP?

Losing DVDSP was a huge deal to me.

[Mark Suszko]

By no means am I an expert in Ppro or AE, but to me it sounds like this job is more suited to a pre-assembly in AE.

[Mark Suszko]

This project is likely a write-off. And one that going forward, you probably don’t want to be associated with anyway.
Do make sure you have secure storage for all the footage, as it is likely to get subpoenaed at some point.

[Mark Suszko]

iPhones with extra software apps to control them, like Filmic Pro and others, can give phenomenal results. Some issues they will have include needing external power, and over-heating, as well as having sufficient memory space.

And you still have the issue of needing to hang a lav or a shotgun mic to get optimal sound.

I don’t know if they are less obtrusive than a DSLR or goPro type 4 k action camera, or a more conventional camera shooting from concealment on telephoto.

Unless you mean you’re sticking the iPhone in a chest pocket and having the lens peek out over the top?

[Mark Suszko]

So you’re saying, the deceased’s life flashed before YOUR eyes? ☺

Aside from the funeral montage bit, a potential market I can imagine is to set up in a parlor on a nursing home or veteran’s care center and do oral history interviews of the residents who are willing, for their families, or for a local historical society or even library. The concept would be to do a sort of residency/retainer situation. Billing could happen thru the facility.

It’s time-consuming work, but the results can be gratifying. The folks often enjoy reminiscing to a fresh audience as well. Everything from favorite recipes and family jokes, to singing songs they liked, and their reactions to key historic events and trends over the years, as well as the more conventional stuff.

It doesn’t require a lot of resources; some flattering, soft lighting, that’s not hard on their eyes. A good shotgun boom or lav. A 4K camera on a wide shot where you can extract medium and close shots in post, when needed. Lots of storage. Really the hardest part is having a good interviewer to talk the subject thru an hour or so, for however many sessions they want/need. Montages or adding b-roll of scanned photos would be an extra up-charge.

Families who have an elder in care could be interested in preserving their loved one’s best lore for their future generations, before memory loss takes it away.

I know from personal experience that this could be considered quite valuable to some people.

[Mark Suszko]

This would be kind of crude, but place a square of chromakey green tape over the navel of your Teletubby, er, actor. Color sample the adjoining flesh in the shot and feather the key. Kind of quick and dirty but might avoid the work of doing it the better, but more complex and time-consuming way, of planar tracking.

And you can still go to match-moving and planar tracking if the chromakey trick doesn’t work… you could use the tape as the track marker:-)

A scientific quibble: unless the body is 3-d printed, I think even a clone or artificially grown body would need the equivalent of an umbilical cord and thus, a navel.

[Mark Suszko]

Newtek Talk Show might be something that you can use for this.