[Mark Suszko]

There is also one more new tool came out somewhat recently, it is a three-head video output adapter, basically you make one giant comp in aftereffects and this triple-head gizmo will simply split it three ways to three projectors, in full rez, which reduces the complexity of these projects and the cost of showing them by a large amount. Removes all the syncing-up multiple computer platform issues.

I’m trying to remember which COW forum I saw that in, it was in the last three months or so, and it may be a Blackmagic product or not, my brain is fried after spending the week live-switching the governor’s impeachment hearings for the entier planet to see, adn I’m spending my weekend unconscious… I would check the Final Cut, Live/Stage, Corporate, and Events forums for the last couple months and see if it pops up.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m not an AE guy, but look at the ad on this site for Digitaljuice compositor’s toolkit for the paint splatters.

The colorizing effects could be done using a tritone color effect setting and most of the rest is simple compositing of pre-made, pre-cropped layers.

Again, just thinking out loud, I am not an AE guy.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, use a particle effect gnerator plug-in. Wondertouch is great, there are others.

[Mark Suszko]

Depends to some extent who’s door you’re talking about. Old joke:

Q- “What do you say to a guy with a Masters in Com Arts?”
A- “Yes, go ahead and super-size the fries, please.”

Now I’m a huge proponent of a liberal-arts and sciences education myself, and respect people that continue learning beyond the basics. However, generally I have found the industry decision-makers on the production end of things care more about demonstrable results and referrals from respected peers than academic credentials. Meaning a killer reel and references often are given more weight over what it says on your diploma. Lord knows I’ve met enough postgrad types in my career that weren’t worth as much as a high school intern for some jobs.

On the Gripping Hand, as it were, if you are positioning yourself for a job higher up the corporate or academic ladder, like an art director or ad account exec, the credentials become more important than the reel. I’m speaking in gross generalities here, of course.

I think it may boil down to, are you trying to be the guy that plans out the campaign, or the guy that has to have completed dubs in hand, ready for the 4 PM fedex pickup, or you’re fired. Everybody is somewhere along that spectrum, one end or the other. When you know more precisely what kind of career and job you want, how to get there becomes more obvious. If you’re not ready to make that decision yet, fine, but try to sample a little of everything; in that case, more schooling can never hurt, but always, ALWAYS, in company with hands-on practical application. I have a BA in Com/broadcasting, but little of the com-related lectures were of direct use to me back then compared to all the practicum work I did at the campus Tv and radio stations, my own reading, and the internship which really was the “education”.

[Mark Suszko]

My dimmer is usually the square-cube law:-)

[Mark Suszko]

Don’t try to use plastic pipe. And be sure you know how to hang this stuff while tying it into the proper structure of the building; grids usually get heavier over time, not lighter, and expansion anchors in drywall just won’t cut it.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes. Individual lettering is not how you would do this. Unless you had a LOT of time to kill. I’m not an AfterEffects guy, but my guess is, they used a stroke recording function to trace or freehand draw a more conventional sketch of Biggie, then, using the recorded strokes as the guide, some plug-in automatically or semi-automatically replaces the weighted lines with text of apropriate size. I am certain there is more to it, but that’s my guess as tot he main technique.

If you have a copy of Synthetik StudioArtist, you can sort of fake this semi-automated with a brush set to paint with text instead of color.

[Mark Suszko]

David, the question from the clients thatn comes back as “how come then that I cans ee such great broadcast quality product from other people on youtube, or via WMV, but you can’t seem to make it as good as them?”

Now you and I know that the answer is along the lines of “Give me a week to tweak an encode, and yes, it will look as good, without their budget”, but clients erally are impatient with such explanations, which they consider excuses or fibs. They just want it perfect adn they don’t want to know how or if it is possible. They see TV at home so *anything* is possible.

Managing client expectations certainly is hard, especially when they are not tech savvy and uncooperative.

[Mark Suszko]

Dino is right, that’s what you have going on. I still have a Matsushita-made 2-part VHS portable VCR that can select between either linear or Hi-Fi tracks, mixing either or both, it still works very well, never changed the heads, thing is at least 20 years old. They sued to know how to make them pertty good!

I woudl try playing it in an S-VHS deck, which is also VHS compatible and may have the FM decoding you need.

[Mark Suszko]

My boss used to use a thousand dollars per finished minute as a sort of rule of thumb in the 80’s. And more or less it was about right, for the kind of work we did. But you have to understand that things were very much simpler and more constrained then, and that that figure was more of a coincidence than a hard metric.

That figure represented shooting one to three 20-minute umatic or beta tapes in a one-day or half-day shoot, basic three-point lighting, lav mic, tripod, no dolly, 2-man crew in studio or within 20 miles of the studio, edited online A/B roll to one-inch on a linear editing system with a Chyron VP2 for graphics and pre-paid needle-drop music. (Using real needles then!). The edit would be a one-day job in most cases.

In terms of man-hours, it would have been about 15 hours, and we were doing it at a loss as part of a government public service. In that era, the room cost a quarter million dollars and up most everywhere you went, was tended by actual EE degree-holding technicians, rates were $500 an hour and up to edit, and there were few format choices and few facilities to compete. None of those factors are true today.

Go back and figuer out your true costs of doing business, calculates a break-eve rate from that, then figuer a profit margin and some money for upgrades and maintenance, divided intot he number of days a year you’re working. THAT will tell you what your day rate, and by extrapolation, hourly rate, should be, *just to survive*.

Anything below that rate, you are a charity, a tax deduction, or a hobby, not a business. Not for long, anyway.