[Mark Suszko]

Yes, this storage/erase phenomenon is like the old saw about the phone: it never rings if you sit next to it, but will ring off the hook as soon as you get into the tub or leave the house.

It drives me nuts that I have more than half my storage tied up at any one time with footage for projects that are waiting for approvals and final sign-offs. It takes some juggling to keep space enough open for the new incoming project, and I explain to clients that the changes are exceptionally easy and fast as long as the files remain on the hard drives, but once removed, everything becomes much harder. Harder for ME, of course; the essence is, the clients never really give a darn how hard they make your job, long as you get it done on time and to spec.

One answer, if you can afford it, is to never erase anything, just bill for more drives, remove the drive with all the elements and put it in secure storage, however long you want. I wish I could do that but neither I nor my clients can afford that.

What I have done as a practical solution is to lay off the archival master several times thru an SDI connection onto a DVCPro tape, each pass of this safety archival master concentrates on isolating the most important and most-likely-to-need-changes-later elements. So I record a clean pass with no keys or thirds in it, passes with music tracks muted, with dialog tracks muted, one with the dissolves turned to cuts, etc. This may sound quite heretical, but I have not saved, imported, or referred to a stored EDL of any type for about a decade now. I just reimport the protection/archive masters, and a minimum of any new footage that is needing to be put in, and work from that, rather than the original source footage, in almost every case.

This saves an incredible amount of storage space and re-digitizing time for me, rather than if I did things the more traditional way, re-importing all the original elements. For the kinds of programs and edits and re-edits I do, this “cheat” has always been more than sufficient, because the work is mostly straight cuts, and the nature of the programs means there’s usually enough “handles” around a shot that I never need to reimport and re-time an original source shot just to gain enough margin to cover a transition. So I’m not gonna re-import 4 hours worth of tape to make a simple change on a 20-minute or less master, ever. Since all my import/export is SDI, with no a/d conversion losses, the quality remains to all intents and purposes, good as the original.

[Mark Suszko]

If it’s something the client messed up: say, they gave you a misspelled name for a lower third, and you have it on paper (or as an email) that that’s what they gave you, they eat that. If they had it right and I screw up, I eat that. If I hire someone under me to assist with the project and they mess up, I eat that too, then I try to get back something from the guy I hired, depending on the situation. If I didn’t listen and ask enough questions about the specs for the deliverables, that again is my fault.

The captain is responsible for everything his crew does. Your sub-contracted guy made some kind of goof, or made incompatible files, well, that looks like it was your business to insure that and check it. Sorry about it, but that’s how it looks based only on what I read.

Change orders must always go thru the approved process. This is the first thing grinders use against you; doing anything outside of the established process chain, even if they talked you into that or manipulated you into taking the shortcut int he name of making the deadline.

[Mark Suszko]

Transcript:

“Hey, just calling to tell you they have screened the final vesion and LOVED it!”

“So, they approved it?”

“YES! They approved it, no changes, you’re all done!”

“So, the project is completed, then, and we’re done, is what I’m hearing you say.”

“Absolutely. And a great job you did, too, they ADORED that montage.”

“So…. since we’re all done, and no other changes, I’d like to get those files off my hard drives to make room for the next client coming in today. I just wanted to go over this with you one more time, to be absolutely sure. I want you to understand that if we’re done, and I remove the files from my drives, it’s going to be a huge hassle to go back and make any changes. Huge. So forgive me, but I have to ask you one more time: it is okay for me to erase these files because your project is done and approved, you have the master and dubs and there is nothing else to be done for this project, I can file it away as complete and get on with the next client, is that right?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“Are you lying?”

“No, I mean it, we’re really done.”

“Sure?”

“As God’s my witness.”

“Okay, then well, I’m going to let you go then, thanks for the work, it has been fun, I hope we can do another one for you in the future. I’m off to go erase the hard drives with your footage on them so I can get the next project started. See you around.”

“Yes, great job, thanks, see ya.” (click).

(The next morning, 4 hours into logging and digitizing a new client’s reels)

(ring)

“Hey! Our favorite editor!”

“Hey yourself, I must say I didn’t expect your call so soon, got a new project in the works already?”

“Actually, not quite. We have changes.”

(carrier lost)

[Mark Suszko]

What you’re looking for is a freelance spot news stringer guy; in Chicago, they can sometimes be found for the price you listed, sometimes even less, and they generally can light and mic adequately enough for the webcast thing you envision. They tend to have multiple gigs in a day and depending on the news-busy-ness of the day and the distance to drive, might cut you a deal, especially for repeat business. You could try some of the locator services like Crews Control or similar to see what’s available. While a booking service adds come cost, they also pre-screen the quality of the operators so you avoid expensive surprises.

[Mark Suszko]

Your friend is a grinder. That may or may not matter to your friendship, but it’s my observation from outside looking in.

Key facts:

You set the rate ahead of time. It was agreed.

You arrived as agreed, he did not call you ahead to cancel, and he only “cancelled” the morning. You still shot the same day, meaning you still had to be available that day. If I book a full day for shooting but we only get one good take, I’m not discounting the rest of the day and billing only for the fice-minute good take for something that’s not my fault. He is paying you to be there. I feel his offer to go fishing was a deliberate attempt to create a disconnect from the billable hours, and it was a dirty trick.

Had the shoot been weathered-out completely, well, everybody should have a personal policy in advance for rain-outs or failures of gear you did not bring to the party. You’d still have to bill for the fact of losing a productive day you could have spent elsewhere. 50% or a discount off the re-scheduled gig sounds round to me, for a cancellation with less than 24 hours notice.

But really it wasn’t a cancellation so much as a delay, and you can’t be expected to discount a charge for that, it was nothing to do with you. In the wedding biz, I always got a deposit up front for a third, and this was retained for cancellations with less than 24 hours notice, refunded if notice was longer. I admit asking your friend to lay down an advance deposit sounds like a good way to lose a friend. OTOH, your friend grinding you is out of order as well.

If you wanted to apply a discount because of the rain-out or a gear failure that was not your responsibility, when and how much is up to you, but you should have that figure in your head and announced ahead of the gig, and everybody agreed to it, on paper. If not, then you’ve created a gray area and diplomacy has to take a hand in the negotiations at that point.

That’s where I see you at now: in the absence of a specific rule in advance, you make your best counter-offer, and decide, as per the other folk’s good advice, what hill you want to die on – lose the deal, lose the friend. And all his future deals.

I will say, not knowing anything else about your friend, that his behavior sets my spider-sense all a-tingle. I would be leery of any future projects without paper and a down payment.

[Mark Suszko]

I would ask myself: if the client ever found out how much the markup was, would you be terribly embarrassed at the amount and could you instantly justify it? A markup is expected: you are at least charging for your time and trouble to make the arrangements and locate and pre-screen the guy working for you on the project, and all that costs *something*. Same reason your breakfast cereal box costs more at the 7-11 at 3in the morning, than it does at your regular discount grocery you visit once a month.

[Mark Suszko]

For the market you are in, just call the Engineering or news departments and ASK what they prefer: letterboxed 3:4, full-frame center-punched 3:4, anamorphic widescreen in a 3:4 that they’ll re-stretch, etc. They’ll often tell you, though maybe not right away. If you don’t have the time for that, then in your package give them the best shots both ways, 3:4 and Letterbox or Anamorphic, and slate it that way. Leave a phone number slate at the beginning and end of the tape asking them to call you with their preferences for next time. This also lets you know they seriously considered running it.

As to shutter, I would stay away from 24P motion artifacts for any news footage. You have to realize your footage is likely going to go thru at least three dubbing/transfer generations or re-renders before it airs, and if you introduce motion artifacts at the front, it will only get worse over time, maybe so bad as to become unusable. Some stations do their HD by running all conventional SD sources thru a converter near the end of the signal chain. Others take their time and do a real HD job from initial aquisition thru to broadcast, but these tend to be the largest market stations with bigger budgets. A lot of shops remain mostly SD inside the plant except at some terminal stage where things get “blended” and conformed. It’s about money.

Granted, if it really IS newsworthy, like an assasination or airline crash or something of that nature, they won’t care if it came in on a fischer price pixelvision or your kid’s 350-pixel cameraphone, they’ll run it. But for things like video news releases, where the material is not that urgent, don’t create a tech barrier to the use of the footage by introducing temporal artifacts. And of course never put CG’s on the footage itself, but you knew that already.

[Mark Suszko]

You are getting good advice so far. Where in Illinois are you headed? If Southern, SIU Carbondale has a very comprehensive program, Final Cut suites, KU and C-band Uplink dishes, a respected journalism program as well as a focus on producing documentaries.

Up North, Chicago offers great programs at Northwestern, and Columbia College has a very comprehensive hands-on media department we were always jealous of when I was at Loyola (I’d plug my school here, but I’m afraid their programs have gone downhill since I was there). Pursue all the internship possibilities; they are what make the adademic tracks at these schools more useful: leveraging the theoreticals you get in the lecture classes with practical hands-on work with the real tools, making things you can put in your demo reel, and the university/college internship programs give you an inside track to many businesses tht work with the schools, ad agencies, all the Big O&O TV stations, etc.

While you’re still in Germany, if your German is fluent you might explore contact with Radio Deutche Wella, (or however you spell that), they may be able to use you as a correspondent or stringer when you get back to the states, to file radio and video reports by internet. I feel the key these days to getting a decent career in video is to find a niche market that you are uniquely qualified for, and exploit it, creating a job for yourself rather than applying for one.

One of the things I did to get by just out of college was videotaping legal depositions; made really good money, but the schedule was feast or famine: could make a thousand one week, then only a hundred the rest of the month, that kind of thing. Getting into that business was easier back in the eighties; a lav, a camcorder and a tripod and you could start charging upwards of fifty an hour:-) Nowadays, there’s more to the game, it helps a lot to be certified by an outfit like WEVA or similar. Still, it makes a great way for a young single guy to make money in video on weekdays, while you shoot weddings or parties on weekends.

So does working on remote trucks cross-country, shooting sports or concerts or corporate IMAG work. They need guys who have no family life, that can travel on short notice and stay in crummy motels without complaint, and put in long hours loading in and out. The payback is a lot of great hands-on experience with broadcast level gear in a hurry, and the money can be okay if you save it rather than spend it all.

[Mark Suszko]

Quote: ” I admit that I’m no lawyer, but I would disagree here. If someone hires me to create a video with copyrighted material, as a for-hire artist I am not violating the law by including that song.”

This sentence is about 50% correct.:-)

The fine point missed is, you took money to perform that work. That kicks it into a different arena. A home hobbyist making video mix tapes and sharing them with family with no exchange of money is different from a guy who charges money to take known copyrighted material and incorporate all or part of it into another creative work without a rights clearance.

If you have a family depending on your income, you should be careful in the risks you expose yourself to. As I said, likely? Probably not. Safe? Absolutely not.

[Mark Suszko]

Fair Use does you no good up front.

It only comes into play as your DEFENSE when you are hauled into COURT to defend yorself against a claim of a copyright violation. It may or may not protect you; that’s up to a judge. But tell me, WHY would you open yourself and your clients up to costly litigation in the first place? Can you afford the weeks or months the case will take to work itself thru? Do you want to spend production funds or profits on attorney fees and court costs, just to prove your point? Do you think this would make you look good to future clients? Even if you win, you lose.

Fair Use is not some miraculous fairy forcefield around your project, or a magic incantation to make lawyers turn tail and run away. Your noble intentions in the program are no defense at all. You should consider it the last life preserver after all other strategies have been exhausted, because music companies have deep pockets for their legal teams to work from. You on the other hand, may have a small business with loans secured against your personal property. Is this guy’s need to hear “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on his touching kid’s video for free, worth you losing your studio, car, house, everything? Because worst case, it could happen. Likely? Can’t say. Possible? Most definitely.

Go ahead with this and you are playing Russian Roulette and the “boss” is handing you extra bullets each time you spin the chamber. Some day the gun will go off.