[Mark Suszko]

Which reminds me: if you insist on “blacking” the tapes this way, for time code reasons or whatever, don’t mix tape brands in the same camera or deck. Some call this superstition, but I have seen way too much empirical/anecdotal evidence of the old “wet and dry lubes mixing on pinch rollers and heads equals clogs” issue, so I believe it. If you have to mix brands, always run a head cleaner cassette between the changes, preferably the “wet type” that uses a cleaning fluid. The dry type are abrasive, but also work, they just increase head wear.

I’m long out of the event video business myself now, but if I WAS still in it, one very good piece of insurance would be one of those strap-on external DV firewire hard disk recorders like the Firestore as a backup to the tape one shoots. Head clog would never affect the images going into the Hard Drive, only the tape. This or bringing a spare backup camera would be the plan if I was working on multi-thousand-dollar event videos.

[Mark Suszko]

Head clog. Play the tape on another machine to see if it was clogged during recording in which case you got nothin’. I think only the most expensive decks have a confidence head after the recording head. On all the rest you are always rolling the dice unless you stop frequently to check playbacks.

[Mark Suszko]

Sometimes you are forced to lean more on one track because of something that happened in the field recording that makes the other track less desirable.

To me, when you’re thinking about the audio, you want to create, as much as practical, a realistic space, one that duplicates a real or directed sense of the ambiance, the reverb, echo, etc. So I try to pick or modify the tracks to replicate that. It doesn’t always work out.

In scenes where one character is on the phone with another person offscreen, for example. You can leave both sides of the conversation the same, or you can deliberately attenuate and filter and EQ and compress the “phone side” person’s dialog to give it a more authentic sound, the way it would be in real life. Here you are deliberately degrading that track in the service of making it more “realistic” or naturalistic, to preserve the willing suspension of disbelief. I have done that on a job or two and then the clients made me take it out because they’d rather break the illusion of a real phone conversation and keep the dialog as clear as possible. I don’t think they “get it” always, but they have the final say…

For two characters talking, facing each other, I would want to know what is behind each character. If one has his back to the street full of traffic, I would want to throw in more street ambiance behind all his sides. If the camera cuts to a long shot, I feel that the conventional approach is to keep the sound balance the same as for close conversation, unless you’re trying to hint that they are being overheard by someone else who is suggested by the POV long shot, in which case if you’re THAT character, your hearing is attenuated by distace and maybe some reverb.

To summarize it, I put myself in the place of what each character “should” be hearing, and decide if and how much of that the audience needs to hear, to enhance the illusion or to point up some essential detail of the story.

[Mark Suszko]

It won’t be pretty, but yes I believe you’d have something on the other end. Good enough for what you’re trying to do, maybe not broadcast quality. It somewhat depends on the quality of the BNC cable you use if we’re talking analog composite or analog RF (the worst case). You also might want to invest a few bucks at Radio Shack for a Distribution Amplifier (a “D.A.”) which will boost the signal out from the camera and let you run cable farther.

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks for the insights, Grinner. I was just talking to an aquaintance this week about what guys like us do in a down-market, in a small town, to keep making a living at this on our own, and it’s a hard thing.

His take was (and he had a relatively good business going for a time) that the bottom has dropped out of production in our neck of the woods: the local cable throws in production for free when you buy the airtime, and even if your quality is better than what the cable company throws together, to the local advertiser, free beats good any day. So the stuff that still makes money ’round here is corporate, but there’s too many guys all going for the same business.

I think one of the few ways to get around that is to make your own market, as you are working at doing, Grin. I was wondering about setting up a cheap podcasting boutique, nice cams, a real studio space, NLE and nice FX and graphics available… I think the real money there though is to be the guy with the servers and bandwidth to host the ‘casts, as you get a piece of everything that flows. Like stock brokers and bookies, the web host middleman makes money whether the customers do or not!

[Mark Suszko]

Meh, I like my version of the story better;-)

[Mark Suszko]

That’s a tough one… So it seems the most you can bill them for is the boxing and shipping.

As to the other thing… well, after over 20-odd years of doing this job, I doubt any of us here could claim they *never* shot or recorded anything stupid/funny/potentially embarassing between takes, while checking recording/playback quality, testing mics, etc. in their whole career. How else do blooper shows happen.

The difference is the wiser guys re-recorded over those things that are potentially compromising immediately, before they could turn around to bite them later, or they eventually stopped goofing around the set to that extent. If you don’t learn that self-discipline, you eventually can get in trouble. Like cameramen on live IMAG jobs or multicam live- switched sports programs. Yeah, it’s all funny in the truck when the offline cameraman uses his 2-x extender to capture some audience member’s anatomical features in rich detail. Not so funny at all (especially these days) if the TD takes that camera to air by mistake or without warning, or if a spare preview buss feed is going to the green room where the guy who signs the checks and his wife are watching….
Remember Reagan testing the mics before a National Address with that “We start bombing Russia in five minutes” crack? Or the footage of the then-governor but now-current-President flipping the cameraman the bird, while they were “just practicing”? That’s all over the internet now.

From a purely technical standpoint, Dv to Dv dubs over firewire are lossless bit-for-bit clones, the quality is indistinguishable on a dub versus an original. So technically I suppose the clients are not missing out on the things they knew they were paying for if you cloned the tapes and…. maybe…. paused the record deck from time to time or cut out the audio during the dubbing. Time code discontinuities would remain however, and have to be explained, unless you jam-synched new timecode. However, if they have EDLs or logs that suddenly don’t match up to the footage, you’re busted…

Such a choice is however, ethically sticky.

If this is going to ever go to court for some reason, they could subpoena your still-existing originals and find the “discrepancies”, and that would look bad to a judge. Very bad. Plus, your whole conversation here is now public record, should they search the internet during discovery proceedings.

Is that as bad as giving them 100 percent originals now and having them hear you call them bad things behind their backs on the audio tracks? Or whatever it is you did then that’s making you blush now? I can’t tell you. This being an exercise video with bodies in various poses, I can only imagine what the extreme possibilities of your perceived transgressions may have been. Ah, rash youth! Or maybe you just insulted the client verbally, I couldn’t say.

You and your conscience will have to make this call. But on the bright side, everybody reading the thread has learned something useful today. I hope. Best of luck.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m not a lawyer, but from my reading of this, they have the right to ask for the raw tapes BUT they have to pay you for the cost of the stock, and whatever minor costs are involved like shipping. You gave away the rights to use the footage yourself, I’m guessing you got paid all right for the job of shooting and editing from before. From what I see here you signed back all rights to the stuff to them, so the footage is of no further commercial use to you. If the raw footage is on stock they already paid you for from a previous job, I’d just bill them for incidental shipping and handling and hand it over. If the stock was never billed before, bill them for it at the lowest common rate. If you parted on neutral terms at least, then show them you’re an honorable pro and give them the stuff without complaint. To add acrimony to the deal doesn’t benefit you, staying classy to the end *might*, somewhere down the road…

[Mark Suszko]

Congrats!

So, how has being your own client been working out for you? I remember when you announced you were done working as other people’s editor and going into self-produced programming, it was with quite a bit of trepidation and uncertainty. Has it been a year yet? Re you mixing the two types of work still, or are you fully committed to this new course now? Any observations you’d care to share, about what was easier and what was harder than expected about the transition? If I’m not getting too personal, I mean:-) They say the self-employed always get paid less, true? Do the freedom and creative expression make up for that enough, do you think? Or is it just the same hamster wheel, turning in a different direction?

[Mark Suszko]

Sorry to hear that, Al. Don’t be afraid to walk away, it’s the only way you have leverage in a deal like this.

But that guy said THE MAGIC WORDS.

The Magic Words vary somewhat but their essence is always the same: “If you do x for free, now, we’ll pay you for Y, later”.

This has never actually happened in the history of history, and anybody that runs this line on you is a crook and a liar, plain and simple. My own policy is that upon hearing even a sublte suggestion of the Magic Words from a potential client, I stand up, pack up everything I came in with, and leave, without a word.

Except maybe a “(censored) you, (Censored)”, delivered with a chilling smile. And never deal with that person ever again.

Ever.

That part becomes easy because usually the scumbag that uses the Magic Words winds up fired or in jail in a relatively short time.

The Magic Words are really very freeing. Other times you are making a deal, you can beat yourself up over and over afterwords, wondering if you charged enough or too much, or if this job will lead to more and better things, to contacts.

With the gift of The Magic Words, you don’t have to wonder: you can absolutely KNOW you were going to be screwed, without question. Not only that, but you would have been every other future employer’s punk and would never be able to build a reputation or a firm rate card in that town again.

You should thank the guy for making this all so easy.

If you still want to make a video like this project, contact a local club thru the bike shops, figure out how you and they can share the profits for it, and you can use it to promote yourself. Best of luck to you!