Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Nick used perhaps the most important phrase in sales “pre-qualified lead.” Insert Glengary Glenross comment here!
You can send 1000 pieces of advertising to 1000 random people and get no response. Or you can send 100 pieces of more customized pieces to 100 “more likely to purchase your service” people and get a greater chance of a response.
Pick up “The Accidental Salesman”, a good book for people whose first love is not selling but for whom selling is a necessary part of business.
Mike Cohen
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I do not think you can go back to mini-DV as 24p HD. Mini DV will accept 720×480 or HDV. But P2 or any kind of 720p is not going to go to mini-DV without transcoding to HDV or DV.
In CS4 you can copy and paste a HD timeline onto a SD timeline. In CS3 you will need to import your 720p project into a 16:9 SD project, scale the clips accordingly, render and export. Same goes for importing it into a HDV project.Mike Cohen
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We used to use the 230 with a Media 100, however this was pre-firewire, we fed it from the computer with S-Video and unbalanced audio.
Does the 230’s menu have a way to select the audio channels. I seem to recall a button on the front left side of the deck’s front panel that toggles between 2 48k audio channels and a 2nd set of 32k audio channels, which seem like a little used feature of DVCPRO25, and likely not compatible with Premiere’s firewire output.Mike Cohen
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A text message is going to a cell phone number. So a text message from a website is basically an e-mail. You can write a script to send e-mails, and collect user data using standard web methods.
Maybe there is a more sophisticated way to do this, but that is how I would do it (clarification, “how I would have someone do it”) -
Another way to figure how much to charge is:
COGS + Overhead + Profit = Total
COGS = cost of goods sold, or how much it actually costs you to do the work. If it is a 8 hour shoot plus 40 hours of editing, multiply by your hourly rate, this is how much you get paid.
But how much you get paid is only part of the puzzle.
Overhead is rent, utilities, phone, gas, equipment financing, etc. You could be a hero and take these costs out of your COGS but that leaves you with a low hourly wage. You are a skilled professional and have the right to fair pay.
Profit is an easy one. You are in business to make money, not to simply survive. What you do with the profit is up to you. You can share it with your employees, contribute to a 401K, reinvest in the company with equipment or facility purchases, or save it for a rainy day.
Thus, the amount you charge a client should be divisible by 3 in a fair manner to all 3 buckets. For example, if you list your hourly rate as $300 on a proposal, this does not mean you personally get that per hour, but it covers your expenses.
My dad always used to say “Pay yourself first.”
Mike Cohen
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do you have a company website? Just setup a subdomain like domain.com/download – password protect the folder and then post your files in there via basic html pages. We have a php script that automatically displays any files in the folder.
Mike
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rather than posting the document, why not just list a few of the key clauses in this thread – you will get feedback. Our agreements vary – some customers take our agreement and add it to their own SOW which we have to agree to. Protect your interests, while serving your client.
Mike
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Todd – let me know the next time you have this booth setup. it sound like a great spot to hang out all day!
Seriously, a trade show is an extension of your other marketing efforts.
We do a lot of direct mail, maintain an e-commerce website, and of course do a lot of networking. Do you go to NAB and buy a video camera on the show floor? Of course not. We sell books and DVDs at our booth, but in pretty small numbers. The main purpose is to hand out catalogs, get people on our mailing list, answer questions and promote our products.
For a production company marketing production services, this is a tough sell given the clutter of a trade show. If you do weddings, attending a wedding show makes sense. What niche do you serve, do they have a show, and who are the people who attend the show?
It is a big expense, given the fees for a both, the extras (carpeting, electrical, internet ($1000/week) furniture, freight shipping, hotel, meals, airfare. Make a budget.
Mike Cohen
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an opt-in newsletter is what you should do. Check out Constant Contact – they have reasonable rates and triple opt-out for SPAM avoidance.
There is also a low cost WordPress newsletter plug-in which makes it pretty easy to send very basic newsletters – but again, these need to be based upon users signing up on your website.
There are huge companies such as e-dialog that do this type of work for big companies, including on-line marketing promotions with lots of data tracking performance of the campaign, but it is all as a result of a user ASKING to receive mail.
We have a contractor who uses Constant Contact to keep in touch with her customers but not more than once a month.
Mike
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CS4 Media Encoder seems to work best when it is the only thing running. On a dual core under XP, Premiere becomes unasably sluggish if Media Encoder is running.
Can you set the processor affinity in Processes tab of Task Manager, so Premiere and Media Encoder are using different cores and see if that helps?
I may be crazy, but when Media Encoder is doing the dynamic link when you import a project, if I click back and forth between media encoder and Task Manager, it seems to speed up the import.
Try importing the Premiere or AE project from Media Encoder, that way Media Encoder is the only thing running.
Other threads have raised this issue of slow dynamic linking.
Or are you exporting an uncompressed file from AE and importing that into AME?
Mike Cohen