Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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We use Constant Contact on a weekly basis. The best part about this service and others like it is the tracking of opens and clicks. Since we are selling products and services, we can directly see what the most effective links are, if the link has converted to a sale, phone call or other inquiry, and then we can take the list of people who opened an email and / or who clicked a link and create a more targeted list for more specific messages.
Plus you get automatic list management – when someone opts-out they are automatically removed from the list.
Mike Cohen
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why not post specific questions in the Creative COW Adobe Encore forum:
https://forums.creativecow.net/adobeencoredvd
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I have autosave set to a short interval and keep about 50 backups. This has saved my neck a few times. Unfortunately really big projects become unstable and/or corrupt. Not sure if Adobe acknowledges this, but it is true for some, has never happened for others. Weird, eh.
We also are in the habit of doing a save as.. periodically, or weekly/daily depending upon how much has changed.
If all of your backups are corrupt, I am not sure you have many options. Maybe Mike V or Tim have some ideas…?
Mike Cohen
Try these links:
https://premierepro.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:How_do_I_recover_a_corrupt_project%3Fhttps://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/889524#889528
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Peter – everyone has had moments of doom no matter the software. The occasional rant does feel good, but the whole point of a forum is to get responses from others.
Doing much of anything in Premiere 6.5 was pretty challenging, so it has been exciting seeing it evolve to CS4, which is pretty stable and feature rich in most cases.
I would agree that the multi-cam feature leaves things to be desired. I usually do a multi-cam edit not using the multi-cam feature.
But seriously, what is your question and your system specs. Sometimes a seemingly serious problem has a simple solution.
Mike Cohen
PS – I like monkeys and drugs.
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Like with the previous budget estimate threads, you can’t know the unknowns.
We always write “travel and lodging billed at cost.” This way, if a shoot is a last minute idea and it costs $3500 for airfare, you are covered. Some large companies may demand estimates of travel costs, even if they don’t tell you how many trips or locations there might be.Thus, you need to bid high. When they see your budget of $1,000,000 + travel for 3-5 years of work they may think again about the project, or if they just got their TARP bailout they won’t bat an eyelash.
Some people charge for travel time, others charge for a shoot. Just make your rate fair to the guys who will be away from home for 6 weeks.
The time lapse needs to be in some hard position, protected from the elements, and in a spot that won’t get blocked. Imagine if your time lapse movie was a long shot of a house that was built in front of your camera when nobody noticed! Obviously someone needs to check the camera monthly to make sure it is there, working and to get the data.
Regarding training them on Final Cut. If that’s what they want, fine. But your job as a vendor is to determine if what the client thinks they want is what they really want or need. Maybe they are looking to save some coin. But you could probably build a retainer fee into your budget for spur of the moment editing. You will have all the footage, and you could share with the client dailies or some online archive of timecoded footage.
If they are gung ho about editing themselves, tell them to take some night classes 😉
Training someone who is not your employee or colleague to do a job that you yourself usually get paid to do has an unknown monetary value. I would say your annual salary times the number of years it took you to become an expert is a good place to start. Could be a deal breaker as Mark has suggested.
Mike Cohen
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I guess those months at Dimension Media Services cable advertising paid off. And I thought all I learned was how to film shots of raw steaks for the weekly IGA donuts.
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Rather than thinking of ways around the rules, think of some creative ways to help viewers make the connection. For example:
“Heading to the big game this weekend? Be sure to stop by Family Ford on Route 1 in Foxboro.”
or
“Show your team spirit in Foxboro and your American spirit by checking out the latest Ford models in our Fall clearance.”
or
“It’s football season in New England. And it’s the season to save big in our October Madness sale. Tailgating is a blast with a new F-150. We’ll even throw in the charcoal!”
you know, I could sure go for a hot dog…
Just some food for thought.
Mike
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Why not contact the front office of the Pats. They probably have a PDF they can send you of what’s allowed and what isn’t.
As for your actual commercial, there are so many things you can do to show football without having team jerseys and logos. Think about the displays at your local supermarket leading up to the superbowl. My Stop and Shop store surrounds their Doritos display with astroturf, football imagery, pom poms and generic banners.
The audience knows who the local team is, you don’t have to pretend to be something you are not. Just sell the cars, the service and the idea of local team spirit.
Stock footage of a generic football game, crowd noise and footbally graphics can go a long way.
Focus on the message.Mike Cohen
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David,
Congratulations on your new responsibility. It can be exciting and challenging. You just need to know what you are getting into, especially with a tv pilot project. There are a lot of people with grand ideas, but who have not thought everything through. Always look at the big picture.
In any budget, you need to get estimates or quotes for prices. Budget for known rates plus some leeway for the unknowns. And as others on this board have said, along with our former SecDef, there are the known knows, the known unknowns and also the unknown unknowns.
But don’t get too caught up in trying to figure out a “mean rate of variability” – that sounds like something a Six Sigma blackbelt would say – just be realistic. One area you do not want to skimp on is hiring qualified crew, especially if, as it sounds like, you are somewhat inexperienced.
if you have specific questions do not hesitate to ask this group – we are all very helpful (and occasionally sarcastic). Non-specific questions will likely get you non-specific responses.
Good luck.
Mike Cohen
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[Rebecca Gillaspie] “Editor must be mobile and have a deck / 3 chip camera, laptop, hard drive and all equipment they need to properly edit film in a timely manner both in Orange County and La County….The majority of the time will be transferring the footage which is on eleven tapes and about ten hours of footage”
So it seems you need a 3-chip camera in order to be an editor. Interesting.
And it appears the job is mostly digitizing.
People.
Mike Cohen