[Mike Cohen]

This is the great thing about these forums. You get different perspectives on a subject which can be, as in this case, very different.
Mike

[Mike Cohen]

As I said, the rules are not hard and fast. And no you don’t wear a suit at a lot of jobs but traditionally you wear a suit or a sharp outfit to an interview. Call it “tradition”

This was my hiring process for an entry level job. i did not say these folks had no professional experience, our advertisement called for 1-2 years experience – including solid work in college.

I was hired right out of college into the same job, so perhaps you could say I was looking for me.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

Mark – you are on a roll! Nice work.

I can see a Dilbert-style comic interpretation of this. Let me get to work on that.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Having recently been through this, here is what I did:

1. Sift through the resumes. In my ad I asked for links to online video examples. No links, no interview.
Ok that is not entirely accurate – a couple of people brought their DVD to the interview. But seriously, it is very easy to post your stuff online.

2. I narrowed it down to 9 interviews. Each one took about an hour. It is exhausting doing more than two a day. Lots of talking.

3. Interview. No suit, no 2nd interview.
Again, this is not entirely true, but one should at least dress for success. Granted, success as an editor can mean sandals and a tank top. In other words, the candidate should dress for the job, but use your judgement based upon your company’s culture. A suit can never hurt in my opinion.

4. The reel / interview. I do not let a great reel influence my decision too much – the personality and enthusiasm gets more weight. But enthusiasm and a crap reel is not good. Whereas a great reel usually goes hand in hand with enthusiasm, Youy gotta talk the talk AND walk the walk.

I am not so concerned about particular software or video formats. If you know FCP, you can learn Premiere, etc.

I was filling an entry-level job, but one in which the candidate will hit the ground running shooting and editing lots of different projects. I am looking for an understanding of aesthetics and basic editing understanding.

Let me break it down for you:
(the names and some personal details have been changed to protect the innocent)

1. Shirley – she had recently earned her Masters in communication. Apparently you can get that degree, at her institution, by not learning anything. Her reel was pretty bad. But she seemed to know what she was talking about and seemed intelligent. However the lack of any decent work samples, even considering it was college work, disqualified her.

2. Tom – He went to film school in Boston, and soon realized you can’t do much with that – in Boston. So he worked at a sign shop for 10 years and then recently did a two year digital filmmaking program in Boston. Again, with an eye on working in film, this did not go as planned. He did have some freelance gigs with a few CT based production companies. His reel consisted primarily of a documentary about dairy farming in the state, which was shot with a home video quality camera with pretty shoddy editing. However, amazingly, it had won awards in some local film festivals. And his enthusiasm and intelligence were high, so this was an exception to the bad reel/good personality scenario.

3. Vince – his reel consisted of a wedding. In fact he was doing weddings as his vocation at the moment, and commented that he did not like doing weddings. But he didn’t give me anything to go on, and he seemed pretty nervous, sweaty palms etc and I did most of the talking. Sorry Vince.

4. Dave – He had recently gone through the CT film office training program, in which you learn how to change film mags, setup dolly track and run a genny. This was with the promise that you would soon get lots of union-ready film work in CT’s burgeoning film industry. Only problem being, that film production in CT tends to bring in crews from Boston and NY. So he was working in a garage. He oddly had graduated from the same institution as Shirley, but as a Bachelor’s degree, and his reel was quite good. It was primarily his student film project. Most student film projects are cut form the same mold – 21 year olds acting like 40 year olds in silly adult situations. But he pulled it off, had some nice camera work, lighting and editing.

5. Charles – This was a guy who talked the talk, was enthusiastic but had nothing to show for it. No reel to speak of and no real experience. I think he was an English major – which is OK if you have some experience – but he didn’t. I think actually showed me a video he shot for a friend, which was actually nice.

6 & 7 – I don’t remember these, probably for good reason. I know one of the interviews lasted about 15 minutes. One of them was wearing a stained sweater vest, the other one a bathrobe. Not really.

8. Ricky – He seemed talk the talk pretty well and his reel, once we figured out how to play it, was not bad. But the fact that he brought a DVD that did not play to his interview said something about his attention to detail. Maybe this is too harsh, but you only get one chance to make a first impression.

9. Steve – He came in with a reel, a suit, knowledge about our company (you’d be surprised) and enthusiasm and intelligence. His reel consisted of a documentary about the melting polar ice caps, actually filmed on location with a college group. The video was good and had been in some film festivals also. Steve seemed to want the job. Everyone else wanted ANY job they could get, but Steve wanted THIS job. You want to hire someone who wants to work for you, not just someone who wants a paycheck.

So it comes down to trying to find someone’s work ethic without actually working with them.

I made an Excel – the best way to sort out information, and decided to bring in Steve, Tom and Dave for a 2nd interview with me and the boss and our other editor. In the end, it came down to the personality/perceived work ethic – if that is there and it is legitimate, you can teach someone what he or she does not know. There is about a year of teaching for new hires anyway, but the enthusiasm needs to be real. You can’t teach that.

We hired Steve, who is probably reading this right now thinking, “Polar ice caps? You sure you remember our interview?”

Once on the job, it will become apparent if you have made the right choice or not. It is a chance you take. Hopefully you have gone through a selection process so believe you are hiring the right person.

Good Luck.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

I have found that the larger the organization, the more complex the systems are. One assumes larger organizations = efficiency.

However this usually means that approvals for spending money have to go up the chain of command, often with multiple signatures and approvals. Sometimes there is even an enterprise level IT system involved with approvals and payments, as opposed to just expecting the accounting department to blindly pay every invoice.

In other words efficiency is only efficient if it takes into account all parties. Paying every invoice that comes in quickly and without oversight may be most efficient to you, the vendor, but in order to comply the corporate accounting rules and regs, the payment is part of a larger process.

Often marketing budgets, which is where the money comes from for your invoice, also entail many other expenses. That money may be allocated annually or quarterly, and is based upon how much money was used vs available in the previous time period.

In other words, and not to defend or justify slow payments, there are often more things going on with slow payment besides foot dragging.

This is another reason why money up front should be the rule for any vendor. Don’t be caught holding the bag.

You want to do a great job and meet your client’s time line, which means the delivery date is before the day you get your final payment. You want to keep this customer (or maybe you don’t!) so you tend to give them what they need when they need it.

Usually with a repeat customer, you will learn the nuances of their accounting department, so you know that 30 days to you = 90 days to them. Another reason to get paid in advance, as others have pointed out.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Let us not forget that CNN devoted valuable broadcast time to Larry King investigating Michael Jackson’s ghost appearing at his mansion. It turned out it was a shadow. A SHADOW. Doesn’t CNN remember Three Men and a Baby?

Ridiculous. Now I know why I stopped watching tv news.

Nick – kudos for keeping us grounded.

Mike

[Mike Cohen]

I would compare this to showing up at a hospital and the patient doesn’t show up for the operation I was supposed to film.

The client pays. Especially if you have out of pocket expenses, such as a plane ticket or a freelance crew. They may ask for a break, since you spent 1 hour instead of 12 – work that out on a case by case basis.

But if weather is a concern, discuss this ahead of time and come to a written agreement with the client.

You tend to only eat the cost of something if it was mostly your fault.

And if you can be blamed for the weather, then you must have signed this contract:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/865818

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

The Real World

SD is far from dead. In the broadcasting world is one thing. But in the corporate world we have a way to go. Corporations cannot upgrade 2000 computers every two years.

I have had clients, first ask me the difference between a DVD and a CD, and then wonder why their laptops could not play a DVD – no DVD drive. This was less than a year ago. This is not a criticism or a sign of ignorance – it is a sign that the consumer world and the corporate world run at different speeds.

Our final product is a SD DVD. We sell a lot of SD DVD’s of our products and a good number of MPEG-1 based CD-ROMs.

Our more recent CD-ROMs use F4V Flash video, but alas it is still 720×480.

We see some HD in the convention industry, but often a SD DVD is simply being blown up on a 70″ LCD monitor. The only times HD is shown at a trade show there is usually an XDCAM deck or hard drive playback involved – rarely.

Acquisition

We try to shoot in HD as often as possible, because the resulting SD image looks better IMHO, and when a client says “hey, can we get this on Blu-Ray?” we’ll be ready. Also the video stills from HD are pretty nice.

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3529/3197403509_0db002caa5_b.jpg

Let your market demand the format. Just because you never see non-Blu-Ray DVD players advertised in your Sunday newspaper anymore doesn’t mean there are 100 million players out there. But that is the consumer world. Aside from weddings and mass market video content, a lot of video production (non-broadcast) is geared toward the user base of SD players.

What Does the End User Want?

Most video content we produce is likely played on a computer – so there you are relying upon drive speed, video card, monitor, screen savers, and background processes. I know you can play a pretty sharp DIVX file off a CD, but your average corporate user does not necessarily have the latest up to date computer or video player, and certainly no Blu-Ray compatible drive.

Thus, I for one will not give you any heat for admitting to using SD to conduct your business. If you are shooting docs for national networks, then…well obviously you are not since you would be doing that in HD.
Obviously for your business at this point in time, SD makes sense.

I always say “if the client is happy, I’m happy.” My clients usually don’t care about what technology we use, as long as they get the final product they want.

Keep the end in mind and you can’t go wrong.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Upon further reflection, I’d like to add that a manager needs two things:

1. An expectation that employees work differently from one another and from the manager, just as long as they have the same end goal/eye on the ball etc – a finished product.

2. A manager, while needing to be cognizant of one’s own communication style (verbal, non-verbal) also needs his or her directs to know that they should keep them on their toes. It is a two-way street.

For example:

Manager: Bob, I need you to get this package design out the door today.
Bob: I’ll try, but not sure I can do it by 5.
Manager: Well FedEx closes at 7, so that gives you two hours right there.
Bob: #$%^&

If a sound manager-employee relationship/rapport exists, the conversation should continue:

Bob: Hey Mike, you said you wanted me to tell you when you are stepping on my toes. You’re stepping on my toes.
Manager: You’re right Bob. I was feeling the pressure of Dr McGyver, our client. Maybe I can help you out so we can make this deadline more manageable and we can both get home at a reasonable time.
Bob: Great.

or

Manager: Oops. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so blunt. I know you have a life as do I. How much time do you think you need?
Bob: I’d say 45 minutes.
Manager: Ok, it’s 4:30 now. Let’s see if we can work together either get it done by 5, or let the client know we need another day. I think they will understand. How about if I do the CD label?
Bob: That would save me about 15 minutes.
Manager: Perfect
Bob: I’ll put the file on your laptop. Thanks for your help.
Manager: No thank you.

Gumdrops and Rainbows all around!

____

An emergency to one person can be a bother to someone else. You have to consider all perspectives and act accordingly. Sometimes the best action is to pause and consider the options and how the selected option will affect everyone involved. In the above example, certainly there are times when we need to work beyond reasonable hours, but how you get from 4:30 to 6:30, for example, need not be through exacerbation.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

I have revisited this thread as I consider adding Twitter and Facebook accounts for my company’s online presence. I think the moral of the story is social media should be an extension of your official website, in the hopes that people you know will get people they know to link to you, and eventually back to the master web site.

But don’t expect people to stumble upon anything.

Mike Cohen