Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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I’ll relate a tale to you, bscuring the details of course:
Shot a video for a customer – a darn good customer we have had for years. Cut the final edit which was used in a webcast – what we were hired to do.
Shortly thereafter they asked that we send the raw footage to another vendor with whom they were working on another project. Were we upset they didn’t just bring us the work? Sure we’d love all their work, but this other vendor was doing a marketing campaign and needed to cut their own video, and they liked what we made but wanted to start from the source, not re-edit our deliverable. But whatever they wanted it for, it was the client’s to use – they paid their bill.
It turns out we know this other vendor and sometimes we send each other materials needed for different projects with the same client. I guess there is plenty to go around.
So yeah, as the others have said, save your ego for when you are trying to sell your services or your great cinematic masterpiece. But when doing work for hire, show some humility and do good business with those who give you good business. Don’t “give people the business” as they say.
Mike Cohen
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Update – SOPA is basically dead as most of the sponsors pulled out and congressional websites were slammed with e-mail. Lamar claims he’ll keep the bill alive anyway. But in an election year most elected supporters of the bill have realized their jobs were at stake if they continued support.
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I see why this is so contentious. I skimmed the text of the legislation and it seems the things being quoted in the media about shutting down sites that link to other sites that link to other sites may be a suggestion of what would legally be possible if enough lawyers were given the opportunity to pursue such action. But it is possibilities of legal interpretation by district court judges that can turn a molehill into a mountain of legal wrangling.
Now I remember why I got a B in my Congressional Legislation course in college – it’s boring stuff reading bills. I spent many long hours in the Trinity College library reading bills (this was before the internet).
I have found little on google about why one should support this bill but I’m sure there are some reasons.
Mike
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I have helped manage the adwords and now facebook advertising for our company for a few years, though nothing having to do with video. The real problem with google adwords is you are hoping someone will search for your keywords. With Facebook you can target a demographic, such as women who like cooking, Oprah, ultimate frisbee and who are members of XYZ organization, who have birthdays in July and who are unmarried and between the ages of 29-37 and who speak Pirate English. Facebook actually tells you how many people are in this target audience and then suggests a budget. It is pretty powerful but supposedly Facebook ads get washed up in about a week.
On google, the year I analyzed a whole year of performance, we spent about $X and made about $1.5X – that’s just shy of breaking even. But at least we didn’t lose money.
On my limited Facebook experiment, I invested $Y over two weeks and made $30Y. That’s a great return, but it fizzled out after two weeks. Given the limited audience you reach the most reachable people out of the gate. And of the target audience that FB gives you, consider only about 10% of them even notice the ads.
So one can extrapolate that as difficult as it is to get someone to click your ad, it must be even more so to get someone to click your video. If posting videos on your own site, look into a video site map that google can see. If posting on youtube, vimeo or right here on the COW, you need to let other websites know that the video is available. There is so much saturation of video that just posting it and crossing your fingers does not work. Things only become viral if they are propagated, just like a real virus. Kids catch colds at school not just from showing up but from touching the LEGOs and tinkertoys after wiping their noses.
I just noticed that we do have a social media forum here – I will have to start visiting there too!
Good luck.
Mike Cohen
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Tom – I received my copy. At first glance it looks like it will be a great resource for years to come. All I need now is time to watch it!
Does the Creative COW sell a Time-Turner pendant? That would be very handy.
Mike Cohen
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actually, if i put the nested HD sequence on the 854×480 square pixel sequence, the scale/crop effects that were correct in HD are out of alignment. Seems the best answer there is to export to an HD native less compressed file, then pull that onto the 854 timeline.
Mike
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good suggestion
Along the same topic, if I export directly from an HD timeline to a non-hd format (say mp4 720×480) – any video or graphics that both a scale and a crop effect do not export correctly – things are misaligned. This is probably the same reason.
Thanks
Mike
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I think the elves must have set this up last night – I didn’t notice it yesterday:
These are the same elves who used to sabotage my 1″ machines at night – glad they have changed their ways!
Mike Cohen
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Or just make your shoot cost such that your travel time is rolled in. Some clients might be more prone to question a separate travel time charge of X vs a single shoot cost of 2x.
Mike Cohen
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Potato latkes ARE potato pancakes. The significance is that they are cooked in oil, representing the oil which lasted for 8 nights back in old timey Jerusalem – the miracle of Hanukkah. Judaism is all about symbolism.
Back to Christmas for a minute – now I have a multi-denominational household so we have a Christmas tree and a menorah living side by side in harmony.
L’Chaim.
Mike Cohen