Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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If you need to have a septic tank replaced in your yard, you hire a contractor with good references and a quality work reputation. If he has a new Komatsu excavator vs an older Samsung model, you should not care, as long as he can do the work to your satisfaction and not tear up your patio too much in the process.
Likewise, if you need your prostate removed, you may go to the hospital with the robot, but the surgeon’s skill is the key factor, not his equipment.
Bill summed it up to some degree – your clients are paying for your expertise.
Thus far, in 25 years, our clients have not asked what kind of camera we use – they ask when they will get their video and if it will be any good.
Mike Cohen
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as a test, tried importing the h264 m4v into Encore, and similar freeze, complete system freeze happens. I also waited an hour to see what would happen, but same thing – touch anything else and the screen goes white.
All other CS4 apps work – Photoshop, Encore for SD, Premiere, Media Encoder, AE.
Windows 7, i7, 8gigs ram.Thanks
Mike Cohen
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A standard def DVD menu is 720×480 maximum (NTSC) – we recently were in a similar situation – the client wanted to use the DVD in a touch-screen display. When you start a DVD, either in Windows Media Player, VLC or whatever, you first have to maximize the player, which is difficult with a touch screen given the tiny size of the maximize icon in the window’s upper right corner. Then we could easily navigate the oversized buttons on menus, however once a video would play, there was no way without a mouse to get any pause or return to menu functionality.
So we decided to author in Flash, with a custom interface designed to work with the limitations of finger control on a touch screen. Much better result. This comes down to using the right tool for the job. Sure, Encore authoring is easy, but there are limitations.
Mike Cohen
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There are many, some free, slideshow makers – the end result of most is Flash, which can be embedded in a html document, and put on CD easily enough.
What is your application?
Mike Cohen
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Recently I shot 2 cameras for much of a day. A Sony V1U on a boom pointing down at tabletop activities and a Canon 7d on sticks. The primary shot was the V1, with the 7d locked down on a wide shot/safety. The two shots cut together nicely. The 7d shots look very nice indeed given the shallow DOF and rich colors and contrast range. Make me want to shoot with 2 7d’s!
The native files load into Premiere just fine – playback is a but jerky but once rendered it is fine.Mike Cohen
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I tell this story every so often:
Clients often ask me where I went to school for this, “this” being medical video. Did I get a degree in biology? Where do you go to learn this?
The answer is, I learned on the job.
However, I started with the company duping tapes and going on shoots as an assistant, to learn the ropes. And then I worked my way up.
However, once an opportunity presented itself in the company to do some editing, it was both my academic as well as my technical training that got me the job. I always say college teaches you to be a critical thinker and teaches you good work habits, not so much actual job skills. Most of the technical side of things I learned by being motivated and taking the extra time beyond classes to learn. I made friends with the tv studio engineer and he mentored me for two years.
But with some initial job skills, such as figuring out a foreign edit bay, some basic troubleshooting, timing an edit system and using a waveform and vectorscope in the case of the job opportunity I was presented with made all the difference. I showed that I was able to think on my feet, not “throw my arms up in the air when there was a technical malfunction” (TM Emre Tufekci SOA) and work until the job was done.
So have a strong work ethic and enough of the technical skills needed to get the job you want. If a certification is the way to get it, or simply buying donuts for your teacher, do what you think is best for YOU.
Mike Cohen
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There is no free lunch unless you are the one buying lunch. Sounds like you are being asked to make the sandwich, only after you also bake the bread, grow the lettuce and probably learn to become a butcher so you can get some meat. That’s a bad deal if all you want is a sandwich.
Mike Cohen
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Taylen,
This has been discussed often on this forum. Kudos to you for seeking out advice.
Check out this similar thread:https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/869108
Regarding certifications – clients want to know you can do the work they are paying you for. Employers generally want the same thing. Focus on your craft and building a set of useful skills and samples of good work. You can be a great technician, and if you want to be a technician, that is great. But to be a storyteller and artist, what you need is practice and a series of challenges to make you work hard and become a master at what you do.
Mike Cohen
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That’s business.
You hope your bid is good for the client, but also good for you. If you do not know the client’s budget, you give it your best shot, hopefully based upon previous work you have done for them.
Best way to respond is “sorry we won’t have the opportunity to help you with this project. It sounded like a great fit for our company. I hope we can remain in contact and be considered for future jobs. It is always great working with you.” Etc…
As described on this forum to the point of absurdity – there is the occasional client who goes with a hack because it is cheap, but they eventually will see the error of their ways and come back to you!
Mike
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Internship 1- WCVB-TV in Boston – rare for a college sophomore to get this position. 3 days a week I helped put together the mid-day newscast. I would get the preliminary rundown, work with an editor to cut the VO and VO-SOT stories, find file footage, rip scripts, distribute rundowns and scripts, write Chyron orders and try to only clog one copy machine per day. It was actually a good deal of responsibility for a 19 year old kid. No horror stories. And WCVB would have a big cookout one Friday per month – free food for all after the noon newscast.
Internship 2 – WFSB-TV in Hartford. While I was primarily working the assignment desk, calling the state police barracks to see if anything was new (it never was), I got to spend the afternoons going in the field with reporters. At the time, the roster of reporters included such names as David Ushery, Mika Brzinski, and Gayle King, all of whom went on to national tv jobs. Thanks to them all for being so nice to me. I got to shake hands with Jesse Jackson and Dr Henry Lee and I think Barbara Bush smiled at me, once the secret service guys let me in the room that is.
I would then sit in the control room during the 5, 5:30 and 6pm newscasts, and then wander the station talking to different people, like the paintbox artist and the weather guy, learning about areas that were basically off limits otherwise. I got yelled at a few times because I was not allowed to be within 12″ of a Betacam deck without being in the union. So it was generally a hands-off experience, but I learned a lot by watching and asking questions.Internship 3 – Cox cable advertising. I would work with another intern 3 days a week cutting local spots, donuts, assembling the U-Matic tape for the commercial insertion system, deliver tapes to the head-end, and go on a few shoots.
Internship 4 – this was supposed to be the “job at the end of the internship” one. They hired their previous intern who has since become one of the top Avid/FCP editors in the northeast – in 1992 he was possibly the only Avid editor in the northeast. First day on the job I was handed gloves, a rag a bottle of Armorall, and a crate full of XLR and BNC cables used in a warehouse video shoot, and covered in rat and bird droppings. “Excellent experience for a young guy like yourself” I was told.
Once that torture was over, I helped with shoots – loading and unloading gear, setup and breakdown of lights and tripods – we did high end work for corporations in the greater Hartford area. One such shoot was for Jose Cuervo – at the end of the shoot I was given a case of Tequila and Margarita mix, and was the most popular guy on campus that weekend. It could be the only time Vin Baker actually talked to me 😉
Alas, at the end of the gig, they gave me a few days of freelance work, but no offer. No worries, I had my job at Cine-Med lined up by the time NAB rolled around and it has been a great career ever since.
We have had just a few interns – the first one lost some tapes from the first shoot she went on, so that was a pretty short internship. More recently our interns have been paid summer workers from around town and have done a pretty good job because they work in my office under close supervision. We try to treat people fairly – give them some responsibility but check their work before it leaves the building.
I am grateful for the internship experiences I had as the supervisors treated me fairly, gave me some responsibility and checked my work. And that has made all the difference.
Mike Cohen