[Mark Suszko]

Rich, steer the kids into careers in copyright law and IP litigation, and they will be able to pay for a very nice retirement for you later 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks, Todd. I’ll amplify one more point, and it’s not really video-related; The most critical time to be a father is RIGHT DARN NOW, before the kids get into high school, and it’s also important to be there and be accessible and available during the high school years, though the dynamic there is different. You’re forming their character, the core of who they are and what they believe and what they value. Consciously or not, just being present and living a good life, being a model husband and being interested in and involved in what they do, to the extent you can.

You’re your daughter’s primary model of what a woman should expect from a man and a Gentleman, and what’s not to be tolerated, the model to your son for how a man treats a woman and a life partner, as well as his fellow man. No amount of cash can replace those lost opportunities, or the potential bad times that might ensue, if you don’t keep your hand in, today.

I’m not disparaging single-parent families or blended families or anything like that; I’m saying that the parenting role, whoever is doing it, is a partnership and is most critical in the pre-teen years. After they hit their twenties, they are more self-guided, based on the fundamentals you ingrained. BE THERE to instill those values and culture. Or someone else will do it for you. Their way. It’s your first duty after feeding and sheltering them. The career can wait for when they begin to assert their independence and autonomy.

Here’s my corny analogy: I’m fixing up an old boat and getting it ready for painting. The painting will take maybe an hour. The PREP – that is, all the sanding, filling, more sanding, priming, yet more sanding and more priming – has taken me many weeks… but the PREP is what makes 90 percent of the final finish quality. Skimp on the prep, and every bump, flaw, and speck will forever remain visible in the final product, a testimony to how much or little time you put in at the stage where it mattered.

This is as true in life and in a video production and edit as it is in making love. As it is in raising human beings.

Make the business decisions accordingly.

[Mark Suszko]

My take on things is, the traditional, more monolithic market space I grew up and made a career in is all shattered, fractured into narrow niches. Get into the right niche, with the right ideas, and the right timing, and yes, you can do well. The “generalist” market that used to be served by editing boutiques and collectives – it’s being commoditized away to a shell of it’s former self, and the margins are low.

I’m not you, and I don’t have the complete picture of your situation. I’m very conservative when it comes to career choices that affect my family, so I’m not a gambler. But if this was me, I’d keep the Good Thing I have going, and concentrate on building a side business in my free time, that gives the creative kick and personal “hands-on” work you are very obviously missing from the Monday to Friday. I think it’s less about finding something lucrative and more about finding something that satisfies your personal passion, and hopefully, brings in enough money to at least self-support the work, if not turn a profit.

For you, that may be working on your own indie movie, or a specialized YouTube channel, something like that, which you base your vacations and weekends around. There are an ever-growing number of non-broadcast movies and show pilot projects going on, most of which will still die, as they always have… but the demand for more and more content – that’s a huge magnet for new productions. In that regard, we’re really in a new Golden Age for production.

All that said, there are only so many hours in a day, and pursuing the two distinct jobs, week-day and free-time, inevitably means missing out on home life and relationships. Search yourself to consider; are you really able to make the needed level of commitment for success between the divided activities, and still have time for the most important people in your life? It’s good to have a plan in advance for knowing when to cut back on one of those commitments, and which it should be.

And this may seem out of left field, but if what you feel you’re “missing” is more hands-on creativity, it may be that you can scratch that itch in ways other than what you do now, Monday thru Friday. The satisfaction and personal growth could come out of something totally unrelated to the “day job”. For me, those outlets currently are boat-building/restoration, creative script-writing, and playing in a local uke band. None of those activities brings in money, (well, the scripting does, sometimes) but they pay off big in satisfaction and peace of mind, and in new friends.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m gonna miss it like I miss my dad’s ’68 Mustang. Any suggestions on replacements? The client base is locked into seven-year-old Windows Media Player, and for reasons I can’t get into here, getting the client side to modernize isn’t on the table, so I need to be able to make files they can view in high quality, with minimal bandwidth, and no IT support. Streamclip was my go-to for this, making MP4’s that worked well for the clients. For some reason, MP4’s rendered from FCPX always wound up with playability issues on their platforms.

[Mark Suszko]

Mostly fast and easy file format conversions that are compatible with our clients’ older, PC-based media viewing software, and to convert incoming, client-supplied non-standard media to an editable format. Though we do also do the occasional DVD rip from old shows we’ve made. It’s kind of a Swiss Army Knife around here. And I often recommend it to clients with no budget as a superior playback software than their old Windows Media Player, along with VLC and FlvCrunch.

[Mark Suszko]

If you can’t find tripods that size, and a single pole or guyed extension ladder isn’t stable enough, you might want to look at an unconventional use of hunter’s tree stands, which are pretty affordable and break down to store in a car trunk or pickup truck bed.

[Mark Suszko]

There is no such animal any more as: “internal use only”. EVERYTHING finds a way to get “into the wild”, i.e. some idjit or a member of his family WILL post the video somewhere, and it WILL get on the internet. You can bank on it.

So, what happens, legally, when that occurs? Do you want to be the one left holding the bag for any damages?

I may be overly cautious, in that these days, people flout copyrights all the time. There may even be a Fair Use argument, correct or not, that this is protected appropriation because it’s parody.

I would never bet my income on it, though. “Fair use” doesn’t prevent you from getting sued; it is just the excuse you give the judge after you’ve been found to have appropriated copy-written material. He may or may not buy it. Then, where will you be? Where will the client be?

[Mark Suszko]

Greg’s on the right track, I would add that throwing a gobo pattern onto the backdrop, whatever that is, can help a lot. The simplest one I use most often is to use a pen to randomly punch various sized holes in a sheet of black cinefoil, and hang that on the barn doors of one of my lights. You can adjust the holes a little, and add a color gel if you like; the random cloud-like patterns from this are just right and don’t attract too much attention, while increasing visual interest. If you have the room to take advantage of depth of field, the out of focus backdrop could be *anything*, including some colored lights on a dimmer.

Also remember that you can chromakey off of most any color; blue and green just happen to work best since they don’t carry as much flesh tone. But I’ve chomakeyed off of red or orange. You just have to be more careful in the lighting setup to make it flat, even, and all the same chrominance.

[Mark Suszko]

Joe, if you work for these guys, you really should tell them to just buy an ad.

[Mark Suszko]

Rich’s idea should work… you don’t want to come across as ethically “complicated”. The other options include, flat-out asking the current place for permission to extract short clips, which yes, may accelerate your departure, but you never know, it might also lead to a raise offer to retain you. Though that’s a long bet.

Better yet, as soon as you started thinking about leaving, you should have started building your own demo projects at home, unrelated to the client properties in any way, but using the skills you’ve learned.