[Mark Suszko]

Have you looked at the AFI and ACE websites?

[Mark Suszko]

I think Jeff’s right about the roto work, but you could perhaps get lucky and reduce some of the workload if you can create a hi-con matte by tweaking the color correction settings and using a luma keyer first. Use that to help build the green screen version.

[Mark Suszko]

You don’t want to seem greedy on this, certainly. Be sure to bill for the time, but you want to name a price that’s still cheaper than the client having to go somewhere else to re-do it all from scratch. Also, charge too high and it establishes a lasting resentment so they will be looking for ways to cut you out in the future.

You *might* consider charging just for time and materials this time, with a line on the invoice that says something like “license fee waived for the first instance for one month”. To give you more time to work out what’s fair for the next time you do this.

You can think of this deal as similar to a stock footage scenario, I think. Look around the stock footage suppliers and get a feel for their rate structure as a starting point for your own.

[Mark Suszko]

To get what you’re asking for, you’re going to have to build acoustically-dampened walls and ceilings inside the existing structure, and a silent HVAC system. And a lighting grid with supporting power lines and controls. You’re not saving any money. Also, you’re showing what I call: “build it and they will come syndrome”. You’re customizing a space before you have a customer. How do you know what someone is going to want or need? Are they just going to be doing green screen FX work and stunts in there? What kind of sets will be constructed? By whom, and with what? I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but let’s be practical here for a second.
This is not a space that can cheaply be treated for good sound, and you want to spend thousands to prep a space with no obvious customers waiting to use it? Do you even have a list of local producers and what they need in such a facility? Doesn’t sound like a good business decision to me.

What *might* be useful in a warehouse like this is to construct a few generic sets that stand-in for places film makers have a hard time getting access to in the real world: generic hospitals, banks, schools, airline interiors, stuff like that. Then soundproof around those sets, not the whole warehouse. But even then, you shouldn’t be spending a dime until you have some paying customers lined up to use the resource.

[Mark Suszko]

There are several levels of whiteboard animation, and different techniques; some of them fast and cheesy, others take a lot of manual labor and time but give a good-looking final result. The ones RSA does, for example are high-end. You can also use the cheap plug-ins like Scribe or whatever, which are easier for a non-artist to use, but isn’t all that customize-able. And the cheaply-done versions of this technique have kind of burned-out the uniqueness of it, to the point that it’s cliché now.

And it’s not enough just to be able to animate the builds of doodles – it takes actual graphic design skill to “cartoon” the audio track, deciding what individual elements to detail, giving them expression and character, and what text and color effects to add and what the camera moves are going to be. So a person hand-animating actual drawings on whiteboard or tablet SHOULD be charging a lot for it. $250 per finished minute, in that context, sounds like a bargain to me.

[Mark Suszko]

I think ideally you are supposed to render your movie out as a DCP package and let the theater’s playback system handle it. You may not have the thruput to make this work, coming out the mac thru a cable.

[Mark Suszko]

Don’t try to compete with the local TV station in a game where they hold all the winning cards. I’d say forget broadcast TV altogether, but, if that’s an area in which you want to try and work, ad spots have no margins for you unless you’re also a salesman for the time buys. Instead, look for specialty niche areas where the station can’t compete or chooses not to compete. Locally originated programming, sports, info-mercials, that kind of stuff, where you bring producer director and editing skills in, and shoot in places where the Tv station doesn’t already have sets and equipment. Stuff shot on location. Now that still requires a time buy to get it on the air, so what you need is to partner up with an ad agency in order to get their agency discount on the time costs.

I’d say as a general statement to forget broadcast though, and concentrate on stuff for the web. There, the playing field between you and the local TV is much more level, and the expenses are low. I’d suggest talking to people at the local newspaper, because most papers are building up their online operations and are always hungry for fresh, fast, cheap content that attracts eyeballs. Not just clickbait, but USEFUL clickbait.

If you can do the equivalent of a 3 minute TV morning show interview/demo piece, and turn it around overnight, the paper could probably use you, at least in a freelance capacity. You could shoot local high school and college sports, which is of high local interest but not something a local TV station or wide-circulation paper has time to handle in depth. More local radio stations are adding a web video component as well.

But also you could go around to local events, city government meetings, etc. and cover those “beats” as an independent freelance reporter would. You could do profile interviews of local people involved in the community, an easy and popular one that also has potential sponsorship money available would be a health series where you interview a medical expert on something they specialize in at the local hospital. Senior citizen issues are another area that carries growing viewer interest because of demographics. A lot of this kind of stuff used to be covered in local access programming, and local radio, but now you can also find an audience for it on the web, and make money by having a newspaper or a hospital, etc. link to the content you’re generating.

Don’t fight the TV station: BE THE TV STATION.

[Mark Suszko]

If those were captured in the camera, you may not have any good options. First be sure that you have all the codec and frame-rate settings absolutely correct. With luck, you set something wrong during import or render.

I have no Vegas expertise, but I have seen banding from LED lights repaired on other platforms thru a pains-taking combination of keying and the use of the “limit color” selection tools in color correction to make the darker bands the same color as the background and soften them. The bands were much wider and softer to start with in those instances, though.

You’ve played with the “rolling shutter” correction plug-ins?

[Mark Suszko]

Bryce, “looping” the vows in post would be a nightmare for you, especially if you’re not an expert editor. Put the wireless on the groom and the receiver for it on ONE of the two cameras, then inside the groom’s jacket pocket, also put a miniature digital audio recorder and one of your wired lavs hidden in/under his boutonniere. Don’t have one? You can get a used one on ebay for under fifty bucks, or a simple audio dictation type unit at Walgreens or an office supply store. If the groom ( or you) has a smartphone, you can set it up as a digital audio recorder and hide it in the handkerchief pocket. Used smartphones from pawn shops are cheap stand-alone audio recorders that can be hidden on the lectern, piano, organ, wedding reception head table, etc. That’s triple-redundant audio for the edit, at least one of those will work.

Many churches have assertive listening devices for the hard of hearing; you just have to ask for one. Ask to look at one before the day, get your own fresh batteries for it, and an adapter cable to connect it to one of your camera audio inputs, or another recording device. This gets you clean sound from everything that’s mic’ed in the church audio system, including the Celebrant/Officiant/Minister.

If you have a go pro or go pro knock-off, Plant it somewhere for a nice master shot of the audience for cut-aways. It will also be handy at the reception.

It will help you immensely to bring your gear to the rehearsal to check the camera placement and angles and to see where things may go wrong, as well as to confirm with the minister what his rules are for where you can and can’t go.
Sometimes the bridesmaids and groomsmen will stand in a way that blocks your shot, and only going to the rehearsal wills ave you from finding this out too late.

Good luck, and I’m here if you have more questions.

[Mark Suszko]

To expand on what Grinner said, it doesn’t have to be brand new, though that’s of course ideal. A two-year-old one should still be okay for 4K, as long as the RAM has been maxed-out. I don’t know if the retina displays on the 2016’s or 2017’s are 4K or not, so that might require a 4k external monitor thru the BMD box. For BMD compatibility questions, BMD no doubt has a web page with that info.