Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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If I was sent a demo reel which uses movie footage, my first thought would be “Wow, did this guy cut that trailer?” I think using recognizable materials is distracting.
Don’t you have some existing work to showcase? I thought the point of a demo reel is to showcase your own work.
If you are trying to get new work based upon an example of your talents, I would do what the others have said, find a shooter with some footage you could use.
Or if you want to make a demo with say, a 30 sec spot, some talking heads/b-roll sequences and maybe some dialog, you could hire a shooter for a day and get some friends to be your actors. For maybe $1000 you can get some footage which is tailored to your needs – which is of course what happens when you get your editing jobs!
Good luck.Mike Cohen
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you say you have funding already – if so how could you not have your own compensation budgeted?
If you have a business, even if you are an independent contractor, you need to consider cost, overhead and profit in your price quotation process.
If using federal money, by the way, your end product needs to be section 508 accessible. For a DVD that may mean subtitles, but make sure it does not need to be closed captioned. That is another consideration if you want to sell it to a broadcaster.Mike
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You need to get a company interested in you, offer you a job, then they have to help you get an H1 visa, which is a 3 year work permit. It costs good money for an immigration attorney, and a company needs to justify that similar talent is not available domestically.
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if your yoiutube videos are pixalated they already look better than most of the video on there.
Do they let you upload an FLV file? That is what they convert it to anyway.I do mine at windows media 1024k, 720×480 – however they have a 100 MB limit so that does not always work. Be sure to deinterlace.
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we use these enclosures (very affordable) and Seagate SATA drives. It is a low cost reliable solution – lots cheaper than buying standalone external drive units. Why buy the USB/SATA interface everytime you buy a drive?
So far so good anyway.
https://www.cooldrives.com/esata-usb-enclosure-removable.html
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here is a trick I have used a couple of times. Captured 6 tapes in their entirety.
Then I did a rough trim on the timeline using the razor, deleting the rubbish, keeping the good takes separated by blank space.
Then I did a project manager, which creates new clips and they are in my bin. Open the new project, name the new clips in the bin and get editing.
Back in the Media 100 days you could drag a clip from the sequence back to the bin in real time, as all you are doing is referring to the IN and OUT from the source video. Does FCP let you do that?
Anyway, for some projects this works, for most I just capture the whole tape and cut it up on the timeline – for weddings and surgery this works the best. You never know when you might need some audio or another shot to cover an edit.There is no wrong way to edit – only many right ways.
Mike
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what sort of stability problems are you having? Our Premiere Pro computers have the odd problem, but it is mainly the PC, not Premiere that screws up.
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that’s one thing I miss about the Mac was the reference movie. In fact right now I am waiting for a sequence to render out as AVI, so I can batch encode several windows media files overnight.
I know Procoder could import a Premiere 6.5 project, which is sort of the same thing – does it still have such a capability?
You can save reference movies within QT Pro, but of course if using AVI that could make for trouble.Mike Cohen
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you might want to use project manager to make a new copy of the project, all in one folder. It can take a while to process, but it can save you time and frustration later. Just make sure the new project is good, then delete the old one. Personally I delete the large media files but keep the old project/title files just in case.
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Try cutting a piece without music, then find some music you like and make it fit by either slowing down some shots or lengthening or trimming to fit the music track. As the others have said, a few cuts on the beat at the beginning and a key transition points are good, but not to be used every time.
If you have a track with the occasional drum fill or guitar riff, try cutting to that, with natural transitions in between.
I know you said these are quick turnaround, but you could do a few easy effects to hit on the occasional beat, such as freeze and isolate a person doing something, like jumping over a log or whatever.
Sounds like fun.
Mike