[Mark Suszko]

The board output is almost always going to be line-level out, (mic-level outs are very limited on most boards) so you’ll want an attenuator or a mixer of your own that has impedance matching and attenuation in it, or set the camera to take a line-level feed in the first place. For a long cable throw to the camera, a line level signal works better than mic level anyway, less overall noise. Be sure to take the camera off automatic audio level control: you need to set levels manually or you’ll be sorry later.

Not all line or mic levels are the same, some are hotter or weaker than others, another reason to have the attenuator along. Radio Shack sells a phono plug adapter with the attenuator built in, I believe they are color-keyed red versus normal black, but check the bag labels. I use XLR cables wherever possible to keep the signal clean, and Shure and Canare make little inline XLR plugs with selectable-level attenuators in them. Markertek and music instrument stores sell these, try FullCompass’ web site too.

Most common board ouput is a “Phono” (like guitar cord) jack, so you’ll need to adapt your mic cable to the camera to have a male mono phono plug on the board end, and whatever your camera takes on the other, perhaps with the mixer and/or attenuator in between.

Another good reason to put a mixer of your own in-between is you can add an audiece/room ambience mic to the mix to add a little more “presence” or flavor of the room, plus the cheers and applause. For maximum flexibility in the edit, you would run that as a separate audio channel so you can bring it in and out in post under full control, but for a casual kind of recording, just mix in a tiny bit of it live at the venue. One reason you want this is the drums and things like that are not always mic’ed, so the mix will sound weird on the camera version unless you add that back in thru a house mic.

Board mixes are optimized to work in the room under the particular acoustics of that room: that mix fed to the camera will not always sound “right” because the mixer man at the venue may have had to really boost or cut a certain EQ band to deal with a particualr sound problem like too much bass or reverb. Another reason to bring in the house mic thru your mixer: it’s audio POV will often come across better than what they call a “dry” house board mix. You want to preserve both options, is what I mean.

[Mark Suszko]

Training. Lots and lots of it. Firefighters have a LOT to learn while hanging around the station between calls. Programs on how to use, store, and maintain very specialized gear they use, training on strategy for EMS and lifesaving practices, chemistry training regarding recognizing and dealing with hazardous materials, knowing when NOT to put water on something, for example.

Police training, same deal, plus keeping up on law and civil procedures, new technology, techniques of investigation and interviewing, self defense techniques, civil rights, dealing with the public, the schools, etc etc etc.

They say you haven’t really learned something until you’ve tried to teach it to somebody else.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, use a firewire based DV switcher then take it’s DV output (if they have one) to your computer or a portable Firestor hard drive pack? Typically I think what I’d do if pressed for time would be to live-switch but also run iso tapes in all the camcorders as backups. Then only import the master switched feed and as much of the iso takes as needeed to fix any mistakes from the live or to add enhancements.

[Mark Suszko]

Online browse of sounddogs?

We used to use DeWolfe but let it lapse as they seemed to run out of gas. We then switched to Music Bakery and have really enjoyed those. Mostly now I alternate between music bakery and stuff I throw together using Garage Band, Sonicfire pro, and CD’s from Music Bakery.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, the Magic Words come in many variations:-) Another variation suggests that you’re “investing” in the production. There is a legit practice of deferring payment in the business, but it’s usually a very special case.

Typically, the only people who do that are already very well-off successful actors and directors, who work for scale or a deferment because of a personal friendship with the producer, or they really believe in the material but know it’s not really “commercially viable”. In that case, they are hoping some of the PR buzz from working on this “edgy, indie production” will translate into more better-paying commercial gigs.

Or it’s just literally a favor they do for S___and giggles, just because. But, see, they can AFFORD to do those things once in a while. They already MADE their money.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m not at all an expert in this area, but yes, you need to “host” the finished piece on a server. This is what YouTube and those other similar services do. You can do that from your own computer if it’s connected to the web 24/7 but I wouldn’t recommend that.

If it’s for business, you’ll want to set up an account with a provider that will host the file for you and have enough bandwidth/ capacity to serve many multiple streams of the thing simultaneously. If you just tried to do that from home, only a handful of people would be able to see it any any particular time, the rest would get some kind of error message and probably you’d lose the sale/contact.

[Mark Suszko]

Erik’s answer was pretty comprehensive. Just wanted to point out a deetail.

LCD’s don’t use the same interlacing that CRT TV tubes do, LCD’s use a progressive display and that’s why you never have the “scan line” problem running down the screen as you do with CRT displays.

If this is a computer-based system, attach a scan converter between the computer’s monitor output and the monitor, then you can recod this to a deck. Scan converters come in many price ranges, and to an extent you get what you pay for. For simple powerpoint grabs, a 99-dollar one will work out. For trickier work where you need to clearly show small details, you can spend more than six grand for one that does magnification and filtering of the signal to eliminate vibrating effects from too-thin lines on the screen. I like the Scan-Do line from Communications Specialties, but there are other brands that are good too, like Extron and Sony, to name just two. On the low end, the Averkey imicro is a good deal, works on either PC or mac, 99 bucks or less from places like tigerdirect.

If you don’t do this sort of thing a lot, and need a GOOD converter the best plan is to rent the converter for just the day from a A/V rental supplier.

Note; the scan conveter is not going to show the finger on the touch screen, only the cursor the finger is steering and the rest of that display. If you have to show the actual finger in your close-ups, use the macro setting on your lens to get really tight shots. With some monitors you’ll get a better look if you crank the display frequency high as it will go. To work with clearscan adjustable shutter speed easily, pick a display rate for the monitor that’s a multiple of 30.

[Mark Suszko]

As it happens, this is what I do. The State of Illinois has sort of it’s own A/V department. We’re a small shop, and getting smaller, so don’t bother calling me or sending me resumes (!) and I don’t do hiring related stuff anyhow. But what we do is a variety of stuff:

News coverage of the constitutional officers, Governor, Lt. Governor, Treasurer, etc. and the State House and Senate. We tape their press conferences anywhere in the state and sometimes out of it, and feed raw tape and sometimes VNR packages up by satellite so TV stations statewide can cover government stories even if they can’t afford to go to the locations themselves (this is a depressing but growing trend in news, and why they lean on VNR’s so much). We’re careful to present the facts and leave their interpretation to the end users.

Several Senators and reps tape public affairs talk shows in our studio on a regular basis to air on the cable systems in their local districts. They tape in our studios when they are here in the capital during sessions. Dick Durbin will often use our studio and uplink on a Sunday morning when he is going to appear on Meet The Press or similar Sunday morning political shows. We also cover a lot of their floor action on bills and committees, like C-SPAN, again, because commercial TV news is too poor these days to field their own full-time government beats. We also rent out the dish to other users like CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC when they come down from Chicago to Springfield and want to file stories or live shots. A network of fiber optic runs lets us relay live shots from sveral locations inside and outside the capitol building. We charge them more than our internal clients, it all goes to pay for upkeep of the dish, which we just upgraded to digital as well as analog Ku.

The same studios are also used to cut a LOT of in-house training programs for various state agency clients, and we also use them for live satellite teleconferences that go out statewide and sometimes nationwide, where we have a panel of experts take live calls from people watching out at the downlink sites. These are more and more also simulcast over the web as streaming video, but we’re still kind of primitive at that.

We also cut commercials and PSA’s for state programs, promos for the state fair, and even help law enforcement with the occasional forensic video problem, though we’re not as sophisticated as a dedicated video crime lab or CSI on TV. We shoot DVCPro 25 and betasp, edit on Discreet Logic as well as two FCP workstations and a linear A/B/C-roll suite. We keep a staff of five or so guys very busy down here, and we also rely on a number of freelance stringers to go where we can’t.

I like the job, there’s a lot of variety in the work. I produce, write, animate, direct, edit, composite, shoot, narrate, even do Foley and compose music occasionally.

And I get to do a little bit of everything and see a lot of everybody else’s jobs thruout the state. From my 20-plus years in this job, I’ve hobnobbed with nuclear physicists, met mass murderers, movie actors and heads of state, gotten practice landing a twin-engined plane at night by myself, learned how to plant no-till corn and beans, how they put a stent in a vein, how to make home-made napalm and use it to fake an electrical fire in your car for the insurance money (fire marshal’s investigative office), run 80-100 miles an hour in the back of a state trooper car, hung out of choppers shooting aerials, just a lot of varied experiences. The pay is less than in the private sector, the insurance and other benefits, a little better. The people are great, all dedicated civil servants with a true sense of working to help our citizens. I have some small-potatoes awards on my wall from regional competitions over the years, no Emmys or anything, most of my work is not what you’d call especially “sexy”, but it’s meaningful work and sometimes creatively rewarding.

Most if not all states have a similar bureau or agency in the government somewhere. Even if it’s just a small office that contracts the work out to freelancers. I know Florida and New York have pretty active ones, as I see their stuff on the downlink monitors every once in a while. The states all have H.R. departments where you can submit resumes. Some have web-based systems that will tell you when they have a match to your application, others make you work harder to find the job.

My suggestion is you contact the administrative agency for your state and ask for contact information about their media departments. Many agencies, particularly health and safety related agencies, will have their own small departments in-house, the legislature may run their own media operations too. You can check with your state and city Film Office as well for contacts. Larger cities will have resource contact books online. Often a stepping stone to this kind of work is covering local town hall on video for the cable company, or working with a school district, as well as doing police and fire work.

Best of luck on your job search.

[Mark Suszko]

Be very careful about “free” work, and who you do it for. Once you do that with a client, they will forever expect it and you will find it nearly impossible to ever raise your rate with them. Plus, everyone else will want you to give them the same deal.

If you decide you want to do “pro-bono” work for a project, you should still keep track of your hours and day rate and hand the client an invoice showing what your work was worth, had you been actually charging. This will help you later to be able to say: “look, I love working with you guys, but I’ve already done x dollars worth of pro-bono work for you this year, and I can only give away so much of that a month and still pay my own bills, so you can wait another 4 weeks and I’ll take a look at it, or you can pay my day rate now and I can do it right away. I can even set you up with an installment plan (thirds, POD) if you’re hard-up, but if time is tight,I have to have some cash up front to get this going for you. You know my level of work is worth it, right?”

There are some “magic words” you need to be aware of. Any time a client tells you some variation of: “If you comp us on this one, we’ll give you all our future business”, he is absolutely LYING, and never intends to pay or use you again. Best to walk away from the deal as soon as you hear the magic words. Either they will cave and agree to pay, seeing that you are no bumpkin, or they will go find some other patsy to do the work for free “for the experience” as they like to say. That kind of business “experience”, you don’t need. You are an editor, not a loan company:-)

[Mark Suszko]

I forgot to add, keep offering your services for the unglamorous stuff like digitizing/logging or night editing. Talk to a local facility guy, ask for a tour, chat a bit then ask him if he’d like to get more productivity out of his idle gear overnight by having you come in and cut in the small hours, run dubs, etc. The business is actually very tight and most hiring IMO is based on personal relationships, your local reputation and people vouching for each other or recommending people they know. So the key in my opinion is to first get known in your local production community, any way you can, by gripping at gigs, by renting gear and working on small projects for yourself or a charity you favor, that sort of thing. Then when openings happen, usually the managers run thru a list in their heads of people they know that fit the needed skills and are trustworthy and competent. It is truly a daunting hassle to advertise an opening and take cold interviews and resumes and demo reels and still not be sure of what you’re getting.

One thing I would stress is, never promise more than you can confidently deliver. We were backed up with lots of work one time, and the boss hired a guy with a lot of production experience to come take a load off. Well, the guy’s main experience was as a writer and producer and sometime shooter; it turned out he didn’t know the first thing about how to operate an editing system, he’d always just told an editor what and where to cut, while he supervised. In our shop, every guy is a one-man-band: write, produce, shoot, edit, audio, etc. Instead of him lightening my load, he increased it because on top of all my other jobs I had to train him, and he was at an age and a place in his personal life where he just didn’t really want to try and learn new skills anymore. He didn’t last very long, and frankly, I got more work done without his “help” than with him, even though I liked the guy personally and still do.