[Mike Cohen]

Rejection is the worst part of cold calling.
Perhaps you can send out a postcard campaign to a select list of business, and then do the cold calls about 10 days after the mailing goes out. For a couple thousand dollars, or less, you can print a 4 color 2 sided 8.5×5.5″ postcard, and either print your own address labels or use a mail house.
Given that businesses receive a lot of junk mail, this may or may not increase your name recognition, but it is worth a shot.

That’s my idea.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

You might heed Todd’s advice, and also consider leasing some office space in a corporate suite setting. Most cities have an office building that will lease you offices, and you get the use of copy machines, fax, kitchen, conference room and the receptionist – without the overhead of renting a place, paying taxes, utilities, buying furniture, etc.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Droidmaker – this is a comprehensive history of digital editing. As with computer animation, George Lucas is partly responsible.

For something completely different, read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell or Freakonomics. Those books get you thinking.

Enjoy your vacation.

[Mike Cohen]

It appears that Mainconcept has a Premiere plugin for most flavors of HD, otherwise Cineform.

[Mike Cohen]

When a client approaches a professional and says “I don’t know what this would cost but…” they are doing so because as a professional you are likely to give them an accurate estimate.

We have a client presently who asked for a quote to re do an old video. We gave them a quote and they accepted immediately – partially because they trusted our capabilities based upon previous work and word of mouth.
Now we are hearing “we’ve never done this before, so we are relying on you to steer us in the right direction.” A statement like this is an opportunity to educate your client and show them good value for their money.

By the same token, if you send a quote for X dollars and the client says “wow, I had no idea it would cost this much. My nephew offered to do it for Y dollars – what more do I get from you?” then you may want to walk away. Or let them negotiate down to your own lowest acceptable price.

Just don’t compromise.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

This is an urban legend:

A man was so proud of his young child’s ballet recital, featuring music from the Little Mermaid, that he sent the videotape to Disney. Disney sued him.

I don’t know if that is a true story, but it is in the spirit of this thread.

Someone mentioned sound-alike stock music. That is a very good idea.

This makes me think of nearly every NBC made for tv movie – they all use no-name bands doing covers of hits. To the audience, this background music is familiar, but no doubt a lot cheaper for the network.

The same issue applies to shooting a wedding.

Just say no.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

Clients asks us for this from time to time. We have a link on the menu, then that links to a static menu page giving directions on how to access the content.
However, navigating to the DVD drive is not as intuitive for your average computer user as it should be. Most people will double click the DVD icon, which of course plays the DVD.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

this is why we still have our 1″ machine in our dupe rack. It has not worked in years, but it sure looks cool!

[Mike Cohen]

the multiple zoom out can be done using a lot of nested sequences, but it could get unwieldy. AE might be easier, although I do not use it, so someone else can chime in.
To mute an audio clip, you can either adjust the clip volume or what I like to do is drag all silent clips to one particular track, and then mute that track in the audio mixer.
To loop a clip, just copy and paste the clip.
Sounds like you are just starting out – there are many tutorial websites mentioned elsewhere on the COW, or get a non-Adobe published book.
Post questions here any time of course. We are all here to help.
Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

perhaps we should have a “new products” forum here on the cow.

Obviously a website, videos showing the inventions in action and some press releases are part of your plan. I would think that going to NAB would be risky due to the possibility of getting lost in the clutter. You might think about a regional Video expo.
Another option is to engage the services of a independent manufacturer’s rep, who can in fact make sales calls to video equipment re-sellers. You pay the rep a percentage of the gross.

You could always sign up some beta testers here on the COW! 😉

Mike