[Mark Suszko]

Charlie, here we call that a “zero-frame trim” or “single-frame dissolve”.

I will admit only to using it one time as a test, to see if a client was serious about a change that was going to undo several hours of work. All for the placement of an eyeblink in an A-B-roll sequence of some twenty dissolves. Had they said it still looked bad, I would have heaved a big sigh, pushed the buttons for real, and written off another night of dinner with the family. Lucky for everyone, essentially seeing one extra preview was all we needed to see it really wasn’t an issue, avoid the unnecessary change. Sometimes just changing the pre-roll length made a difference in how people perceived a cut. Man, I am SO glad not to be cutting dissolves on linear systems anymore. Though I still have a warm spot for the Grass 141. I use it maybe once a month, mostly for cuts-only news now, so I’m staring to forget the more esoteric functions we never use anymore. My FCP skills are growing to compensate though, and I’m happy for the trade.

I find that after a lot of concentrated viewing of a very tiny piece of the puzzle, you need to periodically go back sometimes and watch everything from the beginning, as one whole, to re-establish what the overall flow and feel was. Kind of a ‘forest for the trees’ kind of thing. That is lost time, sure, but far better than losing your course on the entire edit and getting a bad product that was rushed. You often see the work in a different light on these breaks and find errors or things that need changing to work even better.

[Mark Suszko]

This has been a very interesting discussion. I took a look at that link about the school official who got his picture in the paper at an aquatic keg party, the school paid him off two year’s salary and bennies to go away. If you dig deeper into the story, the guy had already been under an ethical cloud for some financial shenanigans that he and some other admins admitted to; the school had decided not to press charges in that matter (tends to scare off the alumni fundraising, you know). So that guy was already on “double-secret probation” with his employers when the photo controversy erupted. So he’s not the best example of saying or posting one little stupid thing online haunting your career.

Someone earlier made the point that if people do post something really stupid, that points to their character and judgement, which is a valid topic when hiring, even though the incident happened in a non-business, semi-private, social context. I think this can be true, as long as the “incident” is appreciated in a full context. I’m not fully convinced that this happens every time. In the above mentioned incident, the aqua-kegger party broke no laws. It didn’t happen on school grounds. There is dispute of the facts in the photo, whether the keg is actually full or is working, and if the photo was deliberately posed to be “wacky”. It only hurt the sense of decorum the university officials wanted to preserve regarding staff. And I’m not sure he got punished for legally attending the party as much as for being photographed at it in this way and getting the bad publicity. The article points out they paid him off two years’ worth BECAUSE they didn’t think they had a snowball’s chance in court.
These things are just not always as clear-cut and binary as we’d like them to be.

I joined the COW back before Ron had changed the sign-up rules and people could post under pseudonyms. This is common at a lot of sites, then and now. The pen name in that case is just a little bit of extra “cover” in those cases, to preserve some fig leaf of identity for the person as well as the named client, so exercising your first amendment rights don’t lead to a pink slip. Without that fig leaf, a lot of discussions cannot happen. That’s a loss.

Of course, it can be abused, and very badly: people on the net can get quite rude and cruel when shielded by anonymity. It is called “Internet Tough Guy Syndrome”, and it makes you say things you would NEVER dare to in a face to face situation. I can’t imagine any of us standing up at, say an NAB convention gathering, and making a jerk of ourselves in front of the entire industry.

Ron definitely created a barrier to ITGS when he changed his site rules to use true names. Plus, he has active moderation going on, which acts as a “bouncer” to anybody acting out of bounds. That’s his right, and what it does is it makes you the poster make a conscious choice in what you decide to post. That in turn makes the COW’s s/n ratio among the very highest of any such web site. You can’t argue with success, so you have to accept the consequences of posting with a true name if you decide to post. You’d better believe that I have checked, re-checked, previewed, and edited THIS post several times before hitting “send” and yet there always remains a chance it will bite me in the rear some day. I wish I could do this to my spoken word conversations, I’d have more friends, I’m sure:-)

But (finally) back to the question of googling people as a form of background check.
It certainly is not a very accurate way of doing it, but is popular because it’s free. Everyone with online access pretty much should know about this by now, and decide for themselves how much of themselves and their persona (and WHICH persona) to put into the aether. Also, this is a system that can be gamed, people can deliberately plant things about themselves to be googled. Some links get called up more than others, and this too is an imperfect measure, since link popularity is generally connected to notoriety or scandal, and not how well you answered last week’s question about wiggler expressions in AfterEffects. In some sense, saying or doing something stupid-bad on the net is like getting a criminal record. You can spend a lifetime making up for one bad decision, if you’ve reformed or not.

I think the more a person posts, the more you can infer of their personality on an AVERAGING basis. To pick out just one outrageous post isn’t usually fair or accurate, as is picking out one comment a politician makes in an entire campaign. Or one dud joke out of a comic’s entire routine. Perhaps if the one outrageous statement, in context, is so beyond the pale it remains unforgivable, that’s all you need to know about a person. I would hope though to be graded on my overall average, and not on a particular “bad day”. I think that’s true for most people. I also know that the more people I talk to, the more I learn, and this changes the way I think over time. If I don’t engage in a give and take, I can’t grow as a person.

I would hate to see people take the fear of being googled to such an extent that it puts a chill on discourse, and imposes too much self-censorship. We do that self-censoring already, normally, in everyday living, just so we can all get along. To a reasonable degree, unless we have Tourette’s or something. But if we’re that scared people will really know what we think, that we don’t speak, ever, we’re all in deep trouble as a society as well as business professionals. That leads to stasis and stagnation.

One site I know of handles this by letting archives age out and go offline over a set time. Though the nature of the net is that you can never un-ring a bell entirely, such archives going stale and fading out, like human memories, give a bad past decision some chance to get drowned out under all the noise floor of daily chatter and more recent versions of who a poster is today.

Maybe it comes down to: do you think people can change, and how much and when do we forgive. What does your faith tradition or personal code say to you? And are you applying it to others as you would have them apply it to you?

I’m Mark Suszko, and I approved this message.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, we’re in good company. Watched Trouffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 with my teenage son the other day, and we picked out several scenes where the film had been run backwards. In one place it was being used for deliberate effect, making the firemen slide UP the firepole in several shots.

But in others it was more likely that it was done to fix a continuity problem. Early in the film, the first time you see Montag put on the fireproof gear and torch some books, you’re seeing a reversed shot, used again in forwards-time, minutes later of him taking the gear OFF. The smoke running back into the flame gun was the giveaway that caught my eye, but watching it a second time, it also does add a little feeling of surrealism to the whole thing.

[Mark Suszko]

If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich? 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

Whoa, I’m glad I don’t have “friends” like that! I curious Steve, as to what you think of those people asking for the job in that way? Are they just ambitious, or snakes?

[Mark Suszko]

So, let me get this straight: you’re working without a contract, but still being paid as per the previous contract? Then that’s the contract.

I’m not a labor mediator, but from my own experience, while negotiations are going on, all previous agreements and protocols from the expired contract usually remain in force until the new contract is signed. However, if management substantially alters something from what was customary in the old contract, like a radical shift in hours, pay, or rules, at that point the old deal is usually considered broken, and then the parties make choices about strikes or arbitration. That’s for union deals, and this is not a union deal, but the money man seems to be operating under similar rules so far, is how I look at it.

You are at plankton level in their food chain. Your only power at this point is based on if you come in the door or not, if you do something they cannot live without or find a quick, cheap replacement for.

And they know it.

If you think about it, they are treating you not unlike they would a farm club ball player coming onto the team. You show some innate talent that needs development, but have no record yet, and nobody else wants you. Until you turn into a scoring monster that wins games single-handed and packs the stadium with raving fans, you could be sent down or traded any time.

FWIW, I think perhaps you overstepped when you suggested the mutiple payment scenarios, but perhaps I’m reading in too much from your descriptions. Two prime rules of negotiating are, first guy to name a figure loses, and you have to be willing and *able* to walk out. From what I read, you named three kinds of figures/deals and so you gave away a lot of negotiating power. And you are young and starving and without an impressive resume yet. So you’re down two strikes already.

Not that the thinking behind the 3 options wasn’t good, it was. I think though that you should have held them close to the vest and waited to use them as counter-proposals to their opening bid, if you didn’t like their offer.

You have several things going on in your situation and not all of them have anything to do with you, nor are they anything you can control in any way. So try not to go crazy over those things you can’t control. The situation where the suit came in with grand plans and bad or no execution, you can’t control. All you can do is deal with the results best as you can, until the suit gets replaced or gets a new idea. Until your work becomes so critical to them that they HAVE to keep you, I think you have to keep taking it in the neck, for now.

Concentrate instead on a plan to make yourself more valuable, and to cultivate some sponsorship or at least interest from other people in the organization’s management. Say hi to everyone in the elevators, strike up innocuous chat at the water coolers, etc. and just become known by face and name to everyone, even if they can’t do anything for you directly. Dress for work as if you DID get a little bump in pay, send out the vibe that you are looking to move up and expect it to happen, by the way you carry yourself. If jeans and t-shirts are the daily norm, go to Khakhis and a polo, or a dress shirt and vest with the jeans, and every once in a while, a tie, for no reason at all. If asked, say “no reason”; they’ll start to wonder if you are interviewing elsewhere.

Have more than one exec become aware of you and your worth, what things you can do. Maybe at some point they’ll get into a bidding war over using you. See if you can take a lateral shift into another area of the operation, under another suit’s sphere of influence. The larger the number of people that have a say in your pay or your continued relationship with the organization, the more secure you are. From that secure base, you can build up networks of people that can help advance your career in large ways and small.

Another way to go is to take your work for hire status they stuck you with… and run with it. Become more of an outside contractor, and not just for these guys; start building up freelance gigs elsewhere. You need to create options so you *can* eventually have the “I can walk away from a bad deal” attitude. That position is never easier to take than when you’re young and single, with nobody else relying on your steady income, and perhaps friends and relatives who will take you in temporarily if or when you crash and lose work for a while. This is the age where you can most afford to be bold and take risks. The older you get, the more responsibilities you take on, as a spouse or parent, the more risk-averse you will have to become.

Finally, young people are impatient as a rule, even if they are polite about it, and nobody likes to spend inordinate amounts of time “paying their dues” (Are we there yet? Are we there yet?). But maybe that’s all you need; to remain patient but alert to sieze an opportunity when it arises. Suits come and go; if you just outlast the bad one, the next one may be better. You lost the negotiations this year. OK. Consider this your “rebuilding year” then, and work hard on building those storytelling skills and related tech skills. Keep coming up with ideas and innovations, pitch a new idea every week or two, even if they don’t go anywhere. One of them may catch on and lift you out of your hole into a new negotiation situation. Worst case, you will be one year better and smarter than you are today, and maybe you’ll take a better position somewhere else that will appreciate you and pay what you’re worth. The freelance may take you in some other, better direction you can’t know today. If you don’t own an editing setup at home, I suggest you invest in one, but don’t let on at work yet.

[Mark Suszko]

Randy, The freelance vs. salary comparison is IMO apples and oranges, and doesn’t really apply here.

Salary is always lower on a full-time salaried job than comparable freelance pay because of who is picking up the tab for FICA, health care plan, insurance, taxes, etc etc etc. A self-employed freelancer has to charge for all of those things. Well, he does if he’s smart.

Salaried people tend to have no idea except in a general sense how much of their pay goes off into that HR netherworld of “benefits”, they usually are most interested in the take-home amount. If you like to inflate your salary description, replace the net take-home with the gross before deductions and benefits. But the worker is getting those benefits either way, the difference is just who’s keeping track of it all.

Salary is also not the only way to pay someone. In Aarons’ case, if the bosses can’t spring for the raise, (assuming he’s good and has earned it) there can be other ways to reimburse, like paying for some training courses, DVD tutorials, books, etc. or buying him hardware or software but depreciating it off the company’s books. Or paying his travel to a trade show or user group meeting, maybe paying his dues to some professional association… Added dental or other health care, spousal inclusion, a gym membership. Company car or travel reimbursement? Who knows what kinds of trade-outs can be arranged? There are more ways to pay someone than just in cash, is what I’m getting at.

One place I know of had a deal with the editors that they could bring in their own freelance jobs after-hours, as long as it was cleared in advance and didn’t create any obvious conflicts of interest or bad publicity for the company. The owners felt that the more time their editors spent on *anything* in the suites, the more skilled they would become and that things they came up with in private projects, for fun or money, could eventually transfer and be usefully applied to company jobs. They even considered freelance clients on weekends good marketing; a lot of those one-time weekend clients were so happy with the editor they wanetd them all the time and the jobs got converted to monday thru friday bookings with the same guy on the official books, after that “get-acquainted session” on a weekend freelance gig.

Some shops sponsor all their editor’s efforts to enter awards contests by paying the entry fees for them. That’s good PR for the editor and the company when they win something.

There are many creative accomodations a boss and valued worker can come up with, if they happy with each other but are up against a problem with a cash limit on salary. Some things can be worth more than cash but cost the company less to make happen.

When I got my current job, the salary was abotu 25% lower than private sector rates, but the benefits (at the time) were incredible, as well as the pension plan and investments. To sweeten the deal, and make up for the low initial pay, I got brought in 2 levels higher in the command chain, which didn’t make any difference in salary or day to day operations ever, but jumped my bennies significantly on the back end, essentially leapfrogging my pension and promotion schedules by several years’ head start, right from the get-go. That little give-away in the 80’s will let me retire with higher pay a few years sooner in this century.

[Mark Suszko]

Turbosquid is a neat site, but is mostly models you’d have to render first. You should look it over anyway. Veer has some cool stuff as well.

[Mark Suszko]

Randy makes a vital point. It is always ironic when we as communications professionals have a breakdown in communication. That’s what I see here as well: a small shop where three people gave each made certain assumptions and not bothered to compare them to see if they are congruent. If stuff was first talked out, written down, and signed off, this thread would not exist, since Aaron would know the score and so would his “owners” regarding what was covered under salary and what was “off the books”. Aaron could then have a clear choice as to what was expected of him and what he was comfortable doing for the couple. The absolute worst thing though is letting this situation fester. You have to do something here. Have a heart to heart about what the policy is and get it written down. See where things go from there.

This may or may not heal the working relationship there, my guess is it is too badly bruised to fix, but you can never tell with human beings, they can surprise you.

My take as a non-manager mid-level grunt is that the work situation has deteriorated gradually into something that borders on abusive from the aspect of how much overtime or uncompensated time is being asked of him. I agree with most of you that when they have him on the clock, whatever they ask him to do is pretty much fair game. However, there are naturally some boundaries to a blanket assertion like that. Some of you have probably been asked to do spots for tobacco companies, or political campaigns you oppose, or something you may find morally distasteful, like porn. Your choice to play along is yours, and one consequence of the choice may be you lose the job. However, most good employers I think (hope?) would give you an option regarding some of these tough calls.

I remember working as a teen, raising college money in a summer job in the packing and shipping department at VCA Teletronics in DesPlaines, back in the 80’s, labeling and shrink-wrapping VHS and betamax cassettes on a line with other students and housewives.

One day the line got a work order to process a large shipment of porn tapes. We didn’t have to watch them like the dubbing crews, (who only did that work at night) just label, box, and shrink-wrap them and put them in crates for shipping. The line manager told us we had the option to go home without pay, stay and sweep up or stack shelves or something if any of us didn’t want to handle the illustrated boxes all day. Those that packed would get a small bonus for working short-staffed. I’m sure they could have just insisted on work or quit, but they didn’t. So there *is* a line to be drawn somewhere, is all I’m saying. Where we’re having the argument is more about the exact placement of that line, IMO.

If they are strong-arming Aaron to do stuff outside of what would be considered the normal work, AND they are not paying him for it, seems like he’s working under duress in fear of losing his job. How is that good management in 2008? Why should Aaron be the bad guy, if that is really what’s going on? This is the feeling I get from Aaron’s writing, I’m sure the couple sees things very differently. We all react to the facts of a case study based on our own triggers and tropes. I don’t think we know enough about what the real situation is here. In the interest of full disclosure, my interpretation comes from the POV of someone who has experienced very good as well as very BAD managers over a career.

I do think you learn more, or at least more quickly, from failures and bad examples than you do from a perfectly fortunate life. No believer is more devout than the converted, they say. Should I be in a real boss position someday, I aim to remain flexible and have options, but also to not let a situation get this far out of control in the first place. All it would have taken was a simple document to spell out the boundaries. Simple communication.

[Mark Suszko]

The word I like to throw around in these conversations is “honorarium”. Which may br a token amount or serious coin. Have you reposted this question in the indie film and doc forum yet, if not, I think you should, to get the perspective from those guys like Harry Pallenberg.