[Mark Suszko]

But usually not the kind of chicks you’d want to brag about with the engineers.:-)

There are other ways to screencap as well, Snapzpro or camtasia being among the most popular. You can also create batch operations in photoshop and the like to convert a whole folder’s worth of images automatically.

[Mark Suszko]

Whichever side paid, their name goes first. I also think it’s more fitting generally to have the bride’s name first.

[Mark Suszko]

I may be out of touch with the latest version, but I don’t think you can roto in Premiere, you would use AfterEffects in your case for that. Or the color pass filter plug-in he mentioned, in premiere, I couldn;t recall the exact name, thanks… That gives you a picker tool to select what is retained normal color and what is changed, and to what color it changes, if any. How well this works depends a lot on having strong contrast and well-saturated and differentiated colors to work with in the first place. If this doesn’t work well enough on it’s own, it can sometimes be used to help generate an easier-to-mask frame, where magic wand selection tools can be brought into play.

Or if you’re old school, export a “Frame Movie” of stills from premiere into photoshop, where, hopefully using a wacom tablet, you draw the mask around the subject in each frame. Why yes, it IS hellaciously tedious. Time was, this was the only way. Re-import the frame movie frames back into premiere, stick the roto’d layer above a monochrome copy of the same shot on a second layer, alpha key, done.

In A.E. I think they now give you masking tools using vectors. These are great because you no longer need to draw an entire near-identical mask onto each frame, like the frame movie/photoshop system above. You draw the tedious mask around the subject in a key frame, say every 10th one, and the software interpolates the mask shape between all the other frames you passed over, so you’re already masking 10 times faster. This is not perfect, and less so the more dynamic the scene changing is. So you do a process of drawing masked key frames, going to a playback to see how the automatics did on the in-betweens, then you may have to tweak a portion of one or two of those masks by dragging on the edge with your cursor… anyway, that’s kind of the basic method.

I try to use chromakey on location if I know i’m going to do this single-color item over monochrome effect later, it saves SO much time. Not every situation lends itself to that, of course.

[Mark Suszko]

David, in the case of my own such experience, we were able to show the judge plenty of attempts and good-faith efforts. I doubt one can get more generaous than 20 dollars a month with no interest on a 2-thousand-plus-dollar debt. He fought even giving us that much. It was a case of a grifter deliberately gaming the system. Our case was iron-clad, he had such contempt for his victims (us and the post house), he left all kinds of a trail behind his shady dealings. Didn’t take a detective to figure it out.

I am willing to give a new client with no history one chance, but even then, I insist on certain guarantees, enumerated earlier. The thing is, it’s not just the new, untested client you have to watch out for, lot of these tricks can be served up to you by long-term clients that suddenly undergo a change in management.

Another thing to think about is how these dealings have an impact on your local business reputation. You don’t want to get a rep for being an easy mark, to start with. Second, reputation is everything in the local market, and if you don’t take action against shady dealers,rightly or wrongly, you risk becoming associated with them in people’s minds. Meanwhile, their antics are tearing up your profit margin, perhaps disrupting your production schedule for other clients as well. There’s no upside in stringing things out, and every chance your delays allow the crook and your money to escape.

I have to stick with my first reaction, which is, be as fair as you dare, but once you are sure it’s a shady client, it’s war, Merry Christmas;-)

[Mark Suszko]

You have a funamental decision to make regarding your shooting style before you choose. My own opinion is, one of the most glaring distinctions between amateur and pro-looking coverage is, the amateurs shoot EVERYTHING hand-held; the camera is in constant motion physically, or optically (tromboning zooms). I’m of the school that prefers to artistically compose a frame and let the motion happen *within that frame*. Easy enough on a tripod. I would suggest you go with a pure monopod for many of the resons already well-stated, but also because a tired arm is a shakey arm, and a wrist-centered steadicam can’t compensate too well for that. Monopods let you move and stick, move and stick, getting a rapid sequence of stable, pro-looking shots, with action happening within the shot. Running around the entire reception hand-held, even with a steadi-widget, is going to give you a certain, frenetic look, it can’t be helped. I like to break up the coverage, going handheld where it makes the most sense, then back to sticks for wider shots or nice, steady cameo telephotos of unsuspecting people being charming across the room from me.

A plain monopod, with a pan head on it, is the best option IMO.

[Mark Suszko]

I would look at the issue this way: window dubs are supposed to save you from clogging precious drive space with unwanted/un-needed clips. Digitizing “everything” just to make the DVD TC window dub, before they even come back with selects, doesn’t save you any drive space, it probably costs you drive space, if you don’t have an easy way to dump the extra trims from the drive (consolidating media).

If your clients, after looking over the DVD, can hand you an easy to use/import log file or EDL for the batch digitizing job, that’s going to save you lots of time. Now, does the “paper edit” using the DVD save more time or money than the digitizing of the entire footage into the NLE? Probably it does. For sure, digitizing into the NLE first takes some measurable amountmore time and energy on your part, and may tie up the system from making money on someone else’s project.

So I guess if it was me, the way I’d look at it is, I’d dump right from the TC-burn feature of the deck, and not bring it into the NLE first. And charge a lower rate, just enough to cover incidental wear and tear, and the black stock. Margins are tight, and the “value-added” DVD window burn service can be one of he things that distinguish you from competitors.

[Mark Suszko]

I think the filter is called ‘limit color’ or something like that; premiere and AE are not my forte’, but an eyedropper tool in that filter lets you sample a region and tell the computer to include or exclude it. Rotoscoping is the ‘brute force” method to do this, and it’s not too bad if the shots are short.

But if you shot with the camera locked-down, you would want to shoot a “plate” of the scene without the actor(s) in it, then shoot the same scene with the actor and try the adobe “difference key” plug-in to generate an automatic matte. I hear these are not super-clean, though.

Chromakeying on location would be easier in a couple of ways. One could cheat using chromakey, bringing a sheet onto the location, or if you only have one item that needs this treatment, like a flower, or other prop, you could color it chroma bue or green before shooting.

Another tack might be to play with one iteration of the footage, exaggerating the contrast to see if you can come up with a suitable luminance key, which you then put in a separate layer to divide the actor from the background monochrome layer.

[Mark Suszko]

I disagree: though it’s not very Christian, you only allow one strike per player in this ball game. It’s business, and it’s pure survival. You have mouths to feed, a company to run. Do not tip him off further, if the money is worth going after in court, strike fast and without further warning. Or turn it over to a collection agency. These bad guys count on their victims being nice people full of understanding and second chances. They also know that just by seeming to be “wanting”to pay, they can run out the clock for a long time. They will push all your buttons, manipulate your good nature, and the only way to beat them is not to play the game at all.

I had a bad client once that was ripping us off on our percentage of each dub order he was getting. We took it to small claims,won, and got the judge to order his bank accounts garnished. We cleaned him out. He was on the phone to us within hours of that, after not returning calls for a month. “You bastards took all my money, I’ve got nothing for groceries or rent”.

“We gave you many chances, (name withheld), we even offered to let you make 20-dollar monthly payments, we didn’t even charge you interest for the money you scammed behind our backs. You used up our hospitality long ago, now you can eat the extra dubs you hid from us and didn’t sell. Your account was $500 short of what the judge says you owe, be thankful we don’t send the Sheriff over to auction off your Advent big-screen TV for the balance.”

We let him off on the $500, figuring the time and paperwork to get that final amount was not worth it… but he didn’t know that.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, there is more than one way to structure these. The real old-fashioned percursor to these was that a single advertiser would buy all the time for a movie or show, and interrupt at intervals for 2-minute stand-up pitches. As a tiny tot, I would spend weekend Tv time watching “Flash Gordon” serials on WGN, all edited into one long complete story, and hosted/brought to you by spokesman Lyn Burton, “your TV Ford Man”, who would pitch three or so different card/station wagons on each break. When he was feeling his oats, Burton would ad-lib some really surreal segues from the cars to the clay people.

Nationally, this technique was popularized by Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”, where Marlin Perkins, the host, would come on for a transition in the story of some animal and their habitat, and draw out similarities between their needs and your need for reliable insurance coverage, then they would go to an actual spot, and get back to putting poor Jim Fowler in jeopardy being stalked by Hyenas, while host Marlin ‘supervised’ from the safety of a hovering helicopter….

Around the holidays, thankgiving, Christmas break, etc. local advertisers would often ‘sponsor’ showings of classics like Wizard of Oz or ‘it’s a Wonderful Life”. “Life” was a popular choice for this, because it was in the public domain and thus cheap to show, plus had a built-in audience. Then they’d break every 20 minutes or so for several minutes witht hehost company, like PBS pledge drives.

Our local cable station, and most I figure, has one channel just for marketing local stuff. In my town, one of the big car dealers does an extended “talk show”, where they go out to local locations and tape actual segments about people and events, using the dealership lot as the home base. The car-related segments are done as in-depth interviews, where they quiz a salesman all about a certain car, and he/she walks you through all the features, etc. Each episode has a theme they try to work around.
I don’t know how well this works today, unless you’re actually desperately car shopping. Myself, I can’t watch it or more than a couple minutes.

The best informercial I ever saw, was one I watched all the way thrugh even though I had no interest in the actual product. It was for some exercise machine like a Bowflex, might even have BEEn a bowflex. The producer had created an actual, engaging story, about motocross racers. Our protagonist was looking for some “edge” to help him win races, and a pretty friend suggests that if he built up his upper body more, he would be able to have better control and stability of his bike during the motocross races. Between typical music-backed workout montages, that included actual user tips on how to target the exercises for the particular results, of course, he winds up finally winning the enduro in the end. It was all just terrifically executed, which is why I kept watching it.

[Mark Suszko]

A guy I respect says:

“With the right people, a written contract is never necessary – with the wrong people, it’s never enough”.

Obviously, the best policy is to identify the “wrong people” before you get into deep dealings with them, but there’s no sure-fire method for this. However, they sometimes do give off clues or warning signs…sometimes. They don’t all come in twirling a handlebar moustache and wearing a black cape or a bandit mask, after all. Lots of times they begin things as your bestest buddy ever: kind, cordial, buttering you up about your fabulous skills and all. You are SO much better than that last “loser” they had to work with!

I won’t try to write your deal memo for you, but will supply some topic areas you want to cover with some clear, direct language in any such deal memos in the future. You are likely to scare off some business if you address these topics at the beginning, but my opinion is, those that depart in a huff are the very ones you didn’t really want, that were going to be “grinders”. These are best left to your competition.

Not having a partial down payment or initial payment available, or otherwise not wanting to front any cash at all, is a major warning sign. One of the things that proves a contract legally exists, even if only verbal, is the exchange of money, called “consideration”. A judge looks for such tangible proof when determining if a verbal or “handshake deal” was made in good faith. It need not be a huge amount, a token amount will often do, just so you can show a cancelled check labeled “down payment for editing services on xyz project””

Out-of-town addresses and phone numbers on the paperwork, and they make a lot of noise about being on a schedule and having to blow town on time: Alarm bells. Corollary to this is, due to somebody else’s mistake or whatever, the entire project is on a very tight deadline to ship a finished master by a close, but workable deadline to a prestigious destination. “This is going to be on the half-time break for the so-and-so bowl this weekend, we’re gonna be famous by Monday!” Because you are the kind of guy that always comes thru in a clinch, you WILL have it in the Fedex Guy’s hand at 4:30 sharp, but wait… SHOULD you? They want you to ship tape before getting paid, because their accounting paperwork is slow… this statement requires you make a call to their accounting manager.

The client has brought incomplete stuff from another facility to finish with you, and is cagey about why, usually citing “creative differences” or “incompetence”. Typically, this is given as the reason why their clearances and permissions paperwork for using coyrighted materials is not available/in order either.

The client saying they need to get an OK for anything from some third party who is not present and not contractually bound. This is often a dodge used to shift blame for non-payment as well as to duck responsibility for creative changes. You want it clear that for change orders that will add costs, you only deal with the guy who actually signs the checks, directly, anybody else doesn’t really matter. You can spend a week trying to satisfy the person sitting in the suite with you, only to find out that’s not the real client, the real client is somebody up the chain, who never authorized all the changes, and who doesn’t approve the finished product. The approvals have to come from TGWSTC. (The Guy Who Signs The Checks) Corollary to this, the actual approval person, who is not on site, needs to see a final master tape before he or she approves the payment, and is not satisfied with seeing a window dub or something with your bug obscuring part of the frame. Or the producer wants to take a sample home overnight to show the spouse, or to re-think and analyze the cut “off the clock”.

I hope others here will chime in with their own favorite “warning signs”.