[Mark Suszko]

“Sweep the leg, Johnny.” 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

Second rule of negotiation:

You have to be willing to walk away, (or at least they have to believe you might) or it’s not really a negotiation.

[Mark Suszko]

What’s a “record”?

[Mark Suszko]

Can you counter-offer that you would be willing to sign an NDA and a very specific non-compete instead? If they want for example to list all their current and past clients, would you be willing to not touch any of those for some specific period of time, say, three years?
I think I’d rather do that than have to play “mother, may I” every time I want to make a sales call.

This is going to be a hard one to play right, no matter what, I think I would want to hint that I’m willing to play ball up to a point, but if they threaten to pull the plug, all bets are off and then all their clientele are fair game to me. Really, that’s your only leverage, if they can find someone else to shoot the, um swimming for them. And they can always find someone else, believe it.

So decide if you want to be owned by these guys and if said ownership is for a fair rate. Maybe what evolves is that they offer to put you on a retainer to keep you paid off and loyal, or you jack up your rate and stay loyal in exchange for not letting your eyes wander from your “steady date”.

[Mark Suszko]

Steve, you would think much less of my writing here, if Ron hadn’t put in an “edit your post” feature:-)

Misspelled implies you didn’t ever know how to spell it, typographical error implies your fingers slipped while keyboarding.
As long as someone catches it in time and corrects it, shouldn’t be a big deal. If you ever had one of those clients that yell out “whoa!” every time you make a momentary litle error typing, even one you know about and are already correcting, you know how painful editing sessions with those folks can be.

My best story on this topic; back in the 80’s we were making a promo for the grandstand concerts at the state fair. Headliner band was Hall and Oates. The editor (not me) was a country music fan with only a GED and had never heard of them, and, not seeing any copy, just hearing the announcer track, he just spelled them with the old Chyron as “Hauling Oats”. Our studio graphics capabilities were meager then, and I remember the spot had to be rushed to a better-equipped shop to fix it using a then-expensive paintbox, because he’d put the graphics in live into the middle of a multi-dissolve sequence and it just wasn’t re-doable in time at our shop.

I got to do those edits after that incident.

( I can’t go for that, noooo, no can do…)

[Mark Suszko]

If you had the right to run anything you wanted on it, say, advertising for others, it would be like leased-access infomercial time buys… which you then turn around as your own revenue stream, selling ad space. But I don’t know how in their right mind the ad company or stadium would go for such a sweetheart deal, particularly as it is basically competition.

If you had a wedding and events video business, maybe….or to advertise music videos from local bands…

… still, I really don’t see that venue as “right” for a video production company to advertise in. If the stadium has sky boxes, I would be more interested in putting some kind of promotional items or messages in there, because that theoretically is where executives with need and power to decide would be.

[Mark Suszko]

October is the perfect time to pick up a cheap Halloween fog machine and fluid at many local stores, this will really help the effect you’re trying to do, especially if the fog wafts in from the light side of the door.

You can use white foam core somewhat larger than the door frame as a “white mirror” reflective source (smaller panels gaffer taped together will do), angle that about 45 degrees to the door and hit that with some 1k totas from just inside the next room/ opposite side of the set wall. Or make a wood or PVC frame or using a butterfly frame if you have them, hang an translucent white diffusion material on that and as has been said, pour on the lights from behind it.

Diffusion for this effect could be something like a plain white shower curtain from the dollar store or white gift wrapping tissue, but warning: those things are not heat-proof so be careful not to melt or ignite it with light palced too close. In this use, you want the lights farther back anyway, to maximize the coverage and eliminate hot spots. Otherwise, yeah, a Rosco or similar tough Opal frost is what I’d try first, in the frame and hit from behind.

You can do a little ramping up of the iris to help blow things out, and finish it off in post, but I’d be careful with the manual iris settings so as not to throw off theparts of the shot we want to keep, and to match the shot before the door opens.

[Mark Suszko]

Your aluminum foil solution reminds me that one of my favorite tools for a small room is a Bogen or Matthews auto-pole, which will span between two walls up high near the ceiling and lets you create a ceiling “grid” wherever you need it, and eliminate floor stands. Darned useful and pretty flexible.

[Mark Suszko]

I think you’re making a mistake pulling your advertising. Marketing is something you need to increase in bad times, and the good news is you have more of the market to yourself when others pull back. The event video business erlies heavily on referrals; have you been working the people that can give you a referral as hard as possible?

As far as 45 minutes max for a ceremony… not at any wedding I ever shot… at least an hour.

[Mark Suszko]

This reminded me of the funniest disclaimer I ever saw in a movie, it was in the third Indiana Jones movie, the one about the Holy Grail, where Hitler unknowingly autographs Professor Jones’ notebook.
They had to apparently disclaim that Hitler autographing a fictitious character’s book was drama and not fact. Afraid of a lawsuit from his estate?!?!?

Something is wrong with the business.