[Mark Suszko]

Based on that small bit of info, I’d say you are not at all ready to freelance, and should stay put on the job and build skills. Some shops have policies allowing their staff to use company equipment for personal development/enrichment, as long as it doesn’t interefe or compete. I had a boss who understood that the things you learn in “playing around” on private whimsies on your own time can be applied to the Monday thru Friday 9-5 clients, so he said I could goof around in the suites all I wanted, on my own time, within a framework of rules, nothing for money, and he wanted to see whatever I came up with.

You might ask your boss sometime about such a setup, where you come in on your own time and work out some tutorial exercises to sharpen and expand your skills. Start with projects that have an obvious application to your for-pay work, branch out from there.

Then try to do more development at home. Buy used books and training DVD’s off the net and bone up. I often suggest people find a charity or cause they believe in and do pro-bono work for them as one way to build a reel and make contacts. Take you time with these projects and perfect them to a high degree, using whatever resources you can scrounge up.

During the day, try to find a good time to ask the head editor to show you things when clients are not around, or, if you get a chance, sit in silently and watch the head editor work, ask him or her questions later on break. After every completed scutwork project, ask: “Hey, got those dubs done and shipped, when you have some spare time, could you show me how you do (xyz)?”

Baby steps, and they are mostly free or low-cost. Work your way up. The owners will supprot your development more if they get a good sense that you’re going to apply the new skills to their work and not just use them and skip out to hang up a competing shingle. So balance is important.

[Mark Suszko]

I like to mix practical effects with digital ones myself. Check out the ad on the right hand side of this post for the compositor’s toolkit from Digitaljuice. Their rain components look like they might work pretty well for you. Check out the demo movies to show how they layer and scale them.

As far as the lens, why not shoot a practical? Shoot a black cloth with your focus set properly, hang a piece of glass in front of your lens and get out your toy squirtgun or spray bottle. Add it in as a straight key in AE.

[Mark Suszko]

I think you want everything to look as much “of a piece” as possible for something like this. So your options seem to be, down-rez the HD and make everything look similar in SD, or try to uprez the SD to match the HD stuff.

It is always easier to step down from higher rez to lower, and have it look good, than to uprez SD footage to HD and risk seeing it get blocky or soft. There’s also expense for fancy high quality encoders or at least a time cost in uprezzing with whatever software you use.

So an all-SD presentation will look smooth, and if the player and projector are good, they will improve the look a bit more. If you mix and match, the SD stuff will look obviously less good in comparison to the HD stuff, and this puts an artificial weight of importance on the HD material over the SD material. A weighting that may not align with the real imporantace of each component presentation.

Is there some way to prioritize based on the video content, i.e. out of the 12 videos, which one or ones are most vital to closing whatever deal you’re trying to close? Is there a majority of those in one format or the other? I’d say, align everything to that, then. If the HD content is for stuff that’s just newer, made with newer technology, but not necessarily any more important, that should not be the driving force.

One other consideration is, making it seamless and reliable makes a bigger impact on the audience than having a few brilliant pieces within an overall higgledy-piggledy assortment, with a few interruptions and hiccups interspersed in it. You want to look like everything is well under control, and a mixed-media presentation with interruptions, no matter how small, detracts from the “buttoned-down” vibe.

Just my own opinion.

“Oh, you wanted to RECORD that?”

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, it is getting lost when it rewinds over a discontinuiy in the time code. Try to always record between seven and ten seconds before and after the shots you want, to give the tape deck room to lock-up and cue up. And if you are playing back and reviewing takes in the field while shooting them, you have to be careful re-cuing the camera tape before you roll again. My guess is this is how your time code got disrupted.

[Mark Suszko]

I don’t drag the effect icon onto the footage, I use the menus at the top to apply the effect to a highlighted clip. Then I go to the tabs in the viewer and turn down the triangular “spigots” to reveal the controls and I use the little micro trackball on my apple mouse to make fine adjustments in each relevant slider. I also switch between the numerical and non-numerical controls. When I do this, the highlighted clip updates for me in real time while it is paused on a a still.

[Mark Suszko]

I have been super-pleased with the simple film effects plug-ins from Nattress to get these film effects. And they are easier to customize IMO than an aftereffects project.

[Mark Suszko]

Did you pan the channels left and right?

[Mark Suszko]

There’s a bunch right here on the COW web site, plus links to more, including self-paced courses on DVD, with pre-made files for you to work along with. You struck the mother lode when you found this place, browse areound, enjoy.

[Mark Suszko]

Addendum: you’ll have to go thru the camcorder manuals and find the menu settings that turn on the data overlay and superimpose it on the composite video output. Do you have your manuals? if not, usually you can find them free in PDF form on the web at the respective manufacturer’s web sites.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, this is what I suggested you do, and I’m fairly confident it will work.