[Mark Suszko]

I have actually seen some PC software somewhere that looks and acts like the post-its, so you can use it on a laptop and “take the wall with you” to your other locations, to meetings, etc. and even print out a version of it or share it over the web for group collaboration.

I just don’t remember what the software is called.

I wouldn’t want to run it on the same system as the NLE, though, it would have to stand apart from my “working canvas”.

To answer the questions about detail level, across the top ot the wall I usually put up post-its that describe a general story arc, your three-act structure, any places where you need a cliffhanger brefore a commercial break, etc. maybe with predicted or expected rough run times.

The second level of mine, running below the first, is usually done in loose generalities or ‘beats’, then if I feel a need, more detailed versions go underneath the specific note in a ladder-like way. Like “Bob recalls the fishing incident (Interview, tape ###)”. That’s all I need at that stage. Get too detailed and it gets too hard to rapidly re-configure the arrangements, you may lose parts of it.

The other thing is, the standard 3×4 post-it note I tend to use is about the right size to keep it short, sweet, conceptual, no room to fill it up with too much extraneous detail. It’s even the right shape to doodle stick-man type storyboard sketches too, with arrows to show things like pans or zooms or DVE moves or block diagrams of what the graphics could be shaped like.

[Mark Suszko]

Well I usually have an outline at least before I start. I don;t know too many people who just walk into a situation and start taping with NO preconceived notions or point of view.

But you are editing, all the time.
Even during aquisition. Each decision to turn the camera on or off, to stay or leave, is an edit, because if it’s not on tape, it never happened, reality is altered, right off the top.

Anyhow, I normally have a main story in my head and roughed out before I start. if things come up spontaneously during the shoots, I will work them in if they add something.

When there’s a lot of footage and ideas to work with, my favorite method of initial organizing is decidedly low-tech. I like a wide piece of wall and several colors worth of post-it notes. Each great quote, each main idea and location, get individual notes. Then I basically build a timeline on the wall using the notes, sometimes with branches leading down from the top level to other things that relate, sometimes left to right. Whatever feels right at the time. One of the things I like about this method is, the glue on these notes is only good for a certain number of attachments and removals. If you keep moving a post-it note around the outline until the glue no longer holds, maybe it means the shot, while cool by itself, really has no place in the program.

When I have the structure close to final form, I start recreating it on the timeline.

During digitizing, I do my first rough cut, again, choosing not to even digitize some footage is already editing. Depending ont he context, I may digitize into many little discrete clips, or I may ingest one whole section of tape as one grab, if i feel like I’m going to be shortening the one clip down but using it for a base.

I come from an early background in tape to tape linear A/B rolling, and while searching thru source tapes and watching pre-rolls was time consuming and boring, it forces an editor thru repeat viewing in both directions to really learn his or her raw material. You tend to pick up little impressions and flashes of inspiration as the tapes skim back and forth, to see “rythms” or patterns in the footage going by at 10x that you’d never have piecked up by just going direct to a single clip.

Very often in those old days, I would remember an image from the tape-skimming process that was not in the script or logs, but that would be PERFECT for use in a certain place. Bits of b-roll and cutaway, sources of room tone, that sort of thing.

So I think it’s important the editor does the ingest themselves, and not leave logging and digitizing to an assistant. This stage is where you get so many impressions from the raw material. So one reason I may digitize one long section instead of pre-dividing it into clips is, I think there may be some use in being able to scrub thru the footage later like it was tape, once it was in the bin or on the timeline. Cutting the raw stuff up *too* much at ingest would prevent me from getting those impressions.

Later, when stuff is on the main timeline, I may sub-divide the clips and assign better names to the new components for efficiency’s sake. By then I’ve done the harder parts.

[Mark Suszko]

When you ask this question, you are asking two questions; what software and what hardware (prompter head).

I find almost all heads out there ridiculously overpriced. I bought a head from Stewart instruments and as very pleased. I thought it every bit as good as a Q-Tv for half the price. It has more than paid for itself. It IS a CRT-based head, which has pros and cons. Most folks today would probably go with an LCD-based head. Stewart may offer those now as well, you’d have to check. They are the ones that advertise the “ridiculously low-priced prompters”. In the back of TV Technology magazine. They bundle some prompting software with most heads, it’s just OK IMO.

For mac based prompting software, I’m not sure, not up on the latest choices. For PC I HIGHLY recommend DRS-Digitrax’s stuff. WAY cheaper than Q-TV or similar, no annoying dongles, works on anything from a 486 to modern laptop, easy to use plus extra features. Free working ownload to evaluate, if you like it (you WILL) they email you an unlock code to make the nag screens go away.

[Mark Suszko]

“Half” of it is graphics. Talk about textbook definition of a potential minefield!

What KIND of “graphics” are we talking here, simple single-page CG keys? Grabs of lame powerpoint slides? Or custom motion graphics using extensive compositing tools, animation and layering? 3-d CGI? Synthetic b-roll?

The more specific the documentation of the job, the better an estimate will be, but when it comes to graphics, even “simple” isn’t, always.

I had a program edit once with a client from hell. This lady was the person NLE systems were BORN to serve. Except we were editing linear tape A/B-roll. So we had to cover 30 seconds of voiceover with a simple 6- line text build, with the previous five and subsequent eight or so shots all A/B dissolves or wipes. For you kids out there that don’t remember when MTV used to play videos, any change in a sequence of dissolves like that on our linear systems meant every edited dissolve/wipe between the change and a hard cut or fade to black had to be re-done or you’d risk a color shift or drop-frame. This client kept making me re-do the build. Over and over.

She wants to change the color from gold on blue to white on blue. OK, let me preview this for you, ma’am. That means I’m going to make it look like we’ve committed the change, without actually committing it to tape, just to see if this is really what you want me to do, because if you say “ok”, it means I have to re-do the previous five edits, dissolve into this graphic, make the builds, then dissolve into and re-do all the shots that come after this, at least the next five of those. That is all going to take some time, so we preview this cut first before we commit to all that work, right? Okay! Watch the preview now… Did you see the change in color? Good! Did that work for you, are you SURE you want to make all the builds in the new colors? Ok then, if you agree, I’m going to hit the button that actually performs the edit now, but like I said, we need to re-do the parts leading into and out of the section because they are all dissolves… and here we GO!

(FX:analog clock on wall in time-lapse speed-up)

OK, pushing onwards, we’re going into the next chapter now and…
(client) Wait.

(me) y e s ….?

(client) I think the bullets on each of those building text lines needs to be bigger, and a different style; I want arrows instead of spheres.
(me ((sotto voce)) ) /I want arrows too, and a bow…/

Um, you know how we talked about the fact that we had to make a critical decision back, oh, about 90 minutes ago? About how to make any other changes in the CG builds, I’d have to re-do all the dissolves around that shot? We’d have to do all that again, if you’re really serious about this bullet change. I’ll do it, if you really want to, but we’re going to lose another 90 minutes to do it. Same process as before. Are you sure this is worth it?

(client /ice cold/ ) Oh, definitely, it just wouldn’t look professional otherwise.

(One hour, 55 minutes later, finally making some progress on the next section of the show)

(Client) Um… you know what?
(Me)/ That I’m underpaid and you are a complete loon?/ (well, I said this in my head anyway) No, What?

(Client) I’ve changed my mind about the white… we need to go back to gold for that section.

(Me) The way it was originally, you mean.
(client) But with the Arrows too… except smaller.

(4:45 PM, closing time)
(Client) This is unsatisfactory, I’m just not happy.
(me) With the text section still?
(client) This is just moving too slowly, we need to make more progress. You people (who are doing this job for free BTW) are not competent.

(This client went on to complain to my then-boss about my “gross inefficiency” in not getting more than three minutes of running time edited in just one day. I was the third editor on the job, the previous two had quit, claiming it was her or them. Boss called me in to hear my side of it. Told him a little longer vesion of the above. He called clients’ boss. Told them client was no longer welcome in the shop, as she was completely unprofessional and was torpedoing a job his editor could have done “un-assissted” in less than a day. As well as bad-mouthing good workers. They canned her, and told us to put it together ourselves, based on our experience.)

OKAY, so few of us edit linear anymore, but you could still get situations just like this, and while NLE’s make it easier to try every possible way to please a client, they don’t stop time. Even “simple” things can completely blow the schedule, if you don’t keep the specs well in hand.

(To relieve the suspense, I went with the white on blue.)

[Mark Suszko]

For those hours and level of work, using pro gear, $4,000 for the week, plus expenses, the edit and dubs, is lowballing it, IMO. When you run all the numbers versus the true hours put in, be sure you’re not working for minimum wage! The better you understand and can break out these numbers, the better you can sell them to the client as the minimum cost of doign the job right. They already self-admittedly got a bad job for their money from the first guy. Cheap bastards always end up paying twice.

Don’t be afraid to charge more for doing more. And better.

If it plain and simple is out of their price range, see if you can get your costs and partial profit up front and the rest on installments. Or re-figure the edit and/or dubs as a separate deal and only bill for the shoot right now. Break it down into more affordable steps, which they can take as and when they can afford it. But Get Paid for every step before you take the next one.

[Mark Suszko]

That was an awesome post, I agree with everything in it.

[Mark Suszko]

If you work on macs (don’t know about PC), you can map many repetitive functions of various programs to voice command, and the latest version that comes with OSX is actually pretty good at recognizing. While it works better if you wear a headset boom mic, In a relatively quiet setting, the built-in on my imac hears and obeys me just fine. There are a number of uber-inputs on the market like a trackball with, I dunno, over a dozen hotkeys on it, where you can plant the arm and hand in the most comfortable position and only twitch a finger ever so slightly to get something done.

I personally enjoy tablet for most things, and will keyboard with the stylus trapped between a couple knuckles on my tight hand, then flip in down and use the stylus for a lot of things as needed.

But I agree the biggest, most effective improvements you can make are going to be ergonomic ones.

[Mark Suszko]

As far as billing, start with your day rate times the number of days, add-in extraordinary expenses such as tape, non-rechargeable batteries, meals, gas, lodging, transport, any specialty gear you have to rent for the job. Decide if you are doing 10-hour days and what your policy for overtime is. Add that all up and you have a starting point. Do not bill a flat rate for everything; you will almost assuredly under-bill or overbill, and neither is good for you. Sme guys leave all the meals and lodging and transport to the client to pay for you. If they can get these at a company discount, it saves everyone money. You will want a portion of the money for the week, say a third, paid to you up-front to cover your up-front expenses as well as contingencies.

For shooting while in motion, keep the lens fully-wide, run a little bit of shutter on it, not a lot, concentrate on keeping the frame level. A steadicam type stabilizer on a bike is not going to work too well, but out the back of a van or pickup truck, it could. We used to use a web of bungee cords to float a camera in the back or side of a van for those kind of shots. See if you can rent a camera that has built-in Electronic/optical image stabilization. This will help a lot, if you keep the shots wide…

As to the interviews, the key is to ask the right *type* of questions and to prepare the subject a little bit. Tell the subject to try and put the question back into their answer, example: Q: What is your favorite ice cream and why? a correct answer begins: “My favorite ice cream is (name) because it has…” This lets you cut out the questions in post and just assemble the answers into a coherent narrative. It is vital to not ask anything that can be answered by a yes or no, if you do that, immediately re-ask the question with abroader scope. Ask HOW-does a-, ask WHY do you- type questions. And the over-used news shooter question: “How do you feel?” Don’t ask it like that, though, ask: “How do you feel you did on that last segment of the run, compared to so-and-so? Rate how he did and compare it to your performance.”

Good luck with it. The more interviews you do, the better.

[Mark Suszko]

They talked about this in school long ago, that the PR and advertising industry has this little gimmick about the “agency discount” for acredited agencies, which becomes a built-in profit margin on every job, and restricts competition from non-“members”… They didn’t go into great detail about what makes your agency “recognized”, but part of it had to do with paying dues and belonging to one of the recognized advertising associations. That was what they taught us in the 80’s, but I wonder if it is still valid today. Ron seems to be saying it still is. But I imagine that serious inroads have been made on the barrier between “recognized” and not-recognized, because there are so many more options now.

[Mark Suszko]

Will they (the church) get away with it if you go ahead? Most likely. Are they on solid legal ground? Almost surely not. Could it come back to haunt you? Very possibly.

Worst that could happen? Yes, a lawsuit, and you as the pro who should know better and made it happen anyway would in all likelihood become one of the named defendants. Worst case, if all of that happens and they go for big damages, you could lose your rig, even your house, if you work from home.

Is this likely? No, it is exceptionally low in probability but while the suit is a low probability, it remains *possible*. Even if you go to court and win, can you afford the time and costs to defend yourself against Hollywood studio lawyers? And when those lawyers browse the internet for your name during discovery and find this thread, evidence you weren’t sure it was right, and asked for opinions and read warnings before going ahead with the violation, you are toast.

I wouldn’t touch it myself, not under the circumstances. I can’t afford to gamble, when the stakes are high as this.

I would see if there were ways to get this done using permission from the copyright owners, or if you can get sample footage or stills from a stock footage house that pre-clears such things. Otherwise, I’d turn the job down as too legally questionable.

“Be just, and fear not.”
-It’s in the Bible AND Rocky Horror!