[Mike Smith]

Of course there are individual browser differences in rendering css, and in compliance with css standards. IE comes in different versions – which again don’t all render the same.

You can help yourself and minimize your problems if you try to stick to standards – compliant code. The worldwide web consortium kindly has a code validator for html online, free, at https://validator.w3.org (and another for css at https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ ) so you can check. Your linked page fails on html compiance (20 errors, when I looked today).

Some browsers (including IE) will render pages along their programmers’ understanding of along html / css guideline so long as the pages are standards compliant – they call this “standards mode”. But if a page is not correct html, the browser may change to “quirks mode”, where the programmers are trying to guess your intent. This can produce even bigger discrepancies between browsers and platforms.
Another resource that might help you is https://browsershots.org/ which will show you a target page rendered in /on multiple browsers and platforms.

Btw that looks like a lot of css for one small page!

as If sites don’t achieve validation, many browsers

[Mike Smith]

That would depend really on how you were hacked / how much of a target your site might be. SSL would do good things for you in protecting against man-in-the=middle attacks or sniffers picking up details in transit from wherever you log in to the site. But that stuff is quite high tech and probably not concentrated on non-commercial sites.

No doubt you’ve run a virus check on your regular log-in computers looking for malware / trojans / ley loggers, and come up clean?

Is it more likely that you have another kind of attack? Have you given out your password to other contractors or colleagues, who might have passed it on? Have you logged in and left a session open on your machine, while you went away to a meeting? Do you have a unique password for your ftp access, or do you use the same password for various things / sites? Do you have a weak or easy to guess password? Have you let a browser remember your password when you logged in from a public place / internet cafe / some place where others might be able to use the browser sometimes …? Any of these might offer a route to an easier hack of your site.

You don’t say whether you are on a shared host (were others on that host also hacked?) or whether this is a simple html / css site, or a site with forms / scripting / a database – so some of this list of stuff to think about might not apply to you.
https://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/how-they-hack-your-website-overview-of-common-techniques-002339.php

https://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/hosting/website_hacked_what_to_do.php3

https://news.cnet.com/Kevin-Mitnick-Web-site-hacked/2100-7349_3-6108032.html

[Mike Smith]

The amount of time it will take you, multiplied by your time rate, plus an allowance for hiring the necessary equipment, plus any expenses you will incur …

[Mike Smith]

Worth a look is the resource https://www.useit.com/alertbox/ – strong on research into how users interacts with screens, and to how things work on the web. https://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/ is good in this area too ….

Also interesting are https://www.alistapart.com/ and https://www.wpdfd.com/

Of course you might want to check your sites are standards compliant, at https://validator.w3.org/ and https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Further on, if you get into html and css (recommended), then https://www.csszengarden.com/ is worthwhile. And the archives at https://ago.tanfa.co.uk/ have some fun and useful bits and pieces.

[Mike Smith]

If you made a mistake, it was perhaps to storyboard and plan for a three-and-a-half minute script project without raising this issue clearly with your client. I’d guess you knew at that stage that things were headed out of scope.

Your client may be genuinely strapped for extra budget, may be playing hardball, or may just want to avoid going back to his/her boss to ask for the extra.

My experience is not the same as grinner’s, in that I haven’t found that raising such issues, early, politely and clearly, causes any long-term relationship damage with a non-grinder(copyright Ron)client.

The question for you, I guess, is whether or not it’s too late to be firm. If you based your pricing clearly at least partly on on running time (which can be fair for an animation project) and you are now asked to deliver more than quoted, then you could reasonably revisit the price.

You could try calling your client and trying to get into a negotiation – you want to help, but you’re at nearly double contracted running time: what percentage of the overage can he get you this time? Or alternately, which two minutes would he like you to render and deliver? And see what response you get. It’ll tell you a lot about your client.

In fairness, though, he could point out that you should have signalled this issue much earlier, at the planning stage, so that you both could adjust running time or price ahead of your doing all the animating and project setting work anyway.

But if he takes grinner’s suggested view, is not at all sympathetic (he knows he’s trying to get more than he’s paying for), and tells you to eat it “this time”, not only does it tell you what kind of client you have, but it leaves you with the question of how to respond. Either deliver and be happy, or negotiate firmly (contracted length or additional costs, causing client distress at failing to get something extra for nothing) and be happy.

[Mike Smith]

It’s just so not true that all DVD player/screen combinations in PAL land will play NTSC discs. Some will, many will play a hybrid near-decent version (NTSC 4.43) which some screens show OK and some not, a few older players and many older screens (there are lots of them) won’t show anything at all.

From a PAL land resident!

[Mike Smith]

No (plodding) narration to cut to – what a lucky thrill. Don’t waste it!

What from your stuff is your “can’t miss” footage and story material?
Who says or does anything memorable, even unforgettable? Can you thread those gems into a necklace, a storyline or message full or sparkling best moments ..? What are your very best pieces, for the front and maybe the ending ..?

And of course who is your audience? Prospective kids, their families? What would they want to know, that’s true to the spirit of the school? How can you convey that?

Alongside, of course, variety and diversity – can you show a good social racial cultural gender mix, in significant roles, at the school?

Personal preference – make sure there really is something emotional, engaging, moving, some story worth following to hold the piece together. And keep the audio and music track as busy and varied as the visuals. Relying on a single bed rarely has big subject impact – you can end up looking like a budget promo video for the song or music, rather than a luxury promo for the subject. Though of course Night Mail brilliantly contradicts all that with its threaded, poetic voice track …

[Mike Smith]

Verbiage here means contract terms – what a court would probably enforce, if you were unlucky enough to come to that.

Those are not good terms for you.

If the customer wants to monitor and control your performance, s/he can send a person to do that alongside you. If they want to review the tapes before deciding whether to pay you, then you are working on the chance of payment.

Your chances of successfully and economically enforcing a copyright infringement claim look slim – how will you know they’ve used your footage? And unless you have lawyers in the family (and maybe then) you will be finding plenty of money up front to try to enforce a claim – assuming that your client has any assets to meet the claim from.

[Mike Smith]

Walk away.

If you are a hired hand on a (lower) salary, why would you even consider investing in kit and taking on risk for this show.

You may not have heard the full story of why the show no longer airs.

Unless you are to (try to) do everything, monthly cost will also include people for sound, lighting, props, editing, graphics, along with any outside shooting, any guests, anything “beyond the minimum” you might do to give a show spice. Oh – and of course any sales costs involved in running the ad sales operation …

If you feel like it, go into your local station to discuss possible other deals with them.

But this has “avoid” all over it ….

[Mike Smith]

15 minutes is a long time to live on 7 interviews. can you cut it shorter?

Will you handle them as individual pieces, or will you intercut them into themes or a storyline, so that people come and go in much shorter bites? Is there a story you can build that goes somewhere – a small selection of things than come out well from your subjects, but with different illustrations, or a range of key points that you are trying to put across?

Personally, I find it more absorbing when people are giving their best stuff, they are saying things that seem important to them and are not totally obvious, and those snippets build up to a more satisfying sense of completeness, of being about something, rather than a compilation of individuals.

Since you’ve taken the trouble to greenscreen them you do have great flexibility. Can you acquire or use any relevant b roll? Nothing, though, is going to work for 15 minutes continuous …

It might be nice to have a long enough roll of mixed office activity including your subjects that you could time-lapse this in a background … taking care not to make it too distracting. Maybe sit it under a low-contrast adjustment layer..? At worst, an attractive street setting with very diverse users, again could be speeded up with the isolated interviewee front and centre, not necessarily in a box … A day picking up office interiors, shopping, transport, street scenes, leisure and entertainment, with or without your subjects but showing people with disabilities getting along in the general mix. It would pay them to pay you to shoot it …

With the green screen, there’s no real need to sit the subject back in a 4×3 box for framing …. if you feel it has be a box, then it could be any aspect ratio. But there’s no point making the visual so cute that it takes attention away from the story line – it has to be serving the points they want to make of course …

For something to look at, I put this little promo together on a micro budget for a voluntary sector organisation, based on a 1 day shoot – tried to mix up what was briefed as a “just come and cover our awards ceremony” by picking up some local footage and interviewing some of the key people. Scroll down the page at https://www.adept.org.uk/ to see it if you like.