[Mike Smith]

Hi Peter and Mads

I don’t think you’d need to go to the expense of suing them. If you were to shell out for a session with a lawyer and a solicitor’s letter (if the lawyer advised it), wouldn’t that give the director pause for thought?

[Mike Smith]

Hi Peter

I agree that this is a no-win – you are unlikely to see more business from this, whatever. There’s not a lot of point in making waves – you could be floating new projects.

But as background:
I am UK based. Under our current legal system (but take professional advice before taking action), unless you have a contract that specifies differently, UK law will regard the copyright holder in a production as the producer – you. More, you are likely to have “moral rights” in the work, though you may have to made a written declaration that “asserts” those rights to protect them. Moral rights include your right to object to or prevent interference with or defacement of your work.https://www.gillhams.com/articles/140.cfm

If your funder credits were a contractual requirement from the funding bodies, which they may well be, then perhaps those funders would be interested to know that the work they paid for and you produced is being distributed. When I have worked on projects with funding from public bodies, it has often been a condition of funding that their credit receive appropriately prominent crediting.

So if you wanted to spend (waste!?) the time making life difficult for this organisation, you probably could: but is it time to swallow it and look to whatever’s’ next?

[Mike Smith]

Or model the car in 3D …

[Mike Smith]

Lisa, it is your job.

You do not have to take direction from a third party (or from the client – he or she is paying you because you can do that. You just need it to work for their audience, and /or for them to like it when it’s done. )

Let the age thing go – it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you want out of the project, what you can get out of it, and how best to go about it.

I agree with Steve’s suggestion to spell this out in front of client and junior, get the cutting room cleared so that you can make something decent out of what you have, and to terminate if client does not support you.

If there’s another time, you really won’t let anyone else take over your shoots – a lesson worth learning, as many a time there’s someone around who thinks they know, or have an idea. Mostly they have no clue. You have to be brutal, in a kind way – it’s yours to run.

Look really carefully at what is actually spelled out in your contract – if need be you can fall back on that. For the value of the job, it’s causing you too much grief – if they want the tapes, they’ll have to pay you for at least half the contract amount for your shooting and editing time to date.

[Mike Smith]

Amen to that! Work out a great message, credible and interesting, package it up in a fresh and appealing way, and you have a chance to make watchable video. If you take the customer’s own script and try to “visualise” it, it’s often downhill all the way …. except for the rare occasions when the customer has professional scriptwriting expertise to hand.

Here, I’d guess a shorter piece faster pace of cutting, with a stronger music track and some Trapcode effects might get the client back onside …

[Mike Smith]

Clarify why the client is mad and check that you agree the crew was in the wrong.

Refocus the video on the core target audience and the objective.

Replan the video as from now/where you are, with a sketch / treatment of what you’d like to do and why, and associated costs.

Discuss and negotiate with client.

This is a clean break / new proposal starting from here approach, seeking to take charge of the project as a producer, and not find yourself reacting as an editor or an add-on to a client who may not have a clear plan for the video and has already been in difficulties with one (probably pro) production outfit….

[Mike Smith]

Doesn’t a distance node just output a distance?

You could have all the objects follow one object at a fixed distance / position by using global position data and a math: add node in vector mode for each follower. You’d have to set up each individual object first, getting the distances from your “leader” as vector data … though it might look a bit mechanical.

Anyway this set-up might do it – set the math node data type to vector, the constant to add to vector, and fill in the x y z offsets.

[Mike Smith]

Have you read The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho … not strictly industry, but hey. https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Fable-About-Following-Dream/dp/0062502182

Alternatively Techniques of Film Editing by Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar is I think a classic – best general approach to film making I’ve seen. OK, it’s old – but film story construction hasn’t really changed that much (see below!)
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0240514378/qid=1106269351/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-6683729-8917628?v=glance&s=books

Or there’s the brilliant The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, if you’re really a speed reader!
https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Basic-Plots-Tell-Stories/dp/0826480373/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204283766&sr=1-1

[Mike Smith]

Yes.

Procoder and Procoder Express can also be good on Windows), and Bitvice (slow but nice looking results) and Digigami Megapeg can produce good results too on Mac.

[Mike Smith]

You should probably run through this with your director / producer / post production supervisor.

HD / BluRay is agnostic as to frame rate and should play back high definition video (from a number of codecs) in a number of HD standards, including 24fps. It’s not a PAL/ NTSC world any more for hi def.

There’s more at https://www.vnunet.com/computeractive/features/2199250/definition-heaven-hell-3389985?page=2 and https://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray

As a caution, you may want to sort out early and run technical tests on your AE to film workflow – get to the lab or facility which will handle this and get their input in just how to set up your AE frames for best results on film. Again, the rest of your team might want to look at this too!