[Mike Smith]

So your question is perhaps more about negotiating styles.

Some folks in salary negotiations will go for the offer-counterbid approach you seem to think your employer may be using here.

Others will take a different approach, make a full and generous first offer to try to establish a good, collaborative working relationship, and won’t be thrilled if you take a hard-ball approach.

You are in the best position to “read” the people you are working for, how they like to do things, and whether they’ve held a little back and want to go through a haggle.

Either way, if you decide to negotiate for more I guess you’d want to do it “nice” – you really love the place and work, would like the gig, but the stress on your mortgage / the bill or comparators to other staff suggest more is needed … can they stretch?

[Mike Smith]

At a simpler level, could you prepare a b/w (and shades of grey) version of the client logo as a video-sized image and use it in the gradient wipe effect? Playing with the b/w logo would allow you a lot of flexibility.

[Mike Smith]

Have you selected audio to play back on dv hardware in your playback settings, and are you monitoring the firewire audio playback?

If you search, Steve Gotz has advice in this forum on how to change the windows firewire driver to sync playback on the computer monitors and via firewire.

So I guess the good news is that your problem can be solved – this is an issue with your setup and playback, rather than anything intrinsic / difficult …

[Mike Smith]

Sorry about your bad experience in the parking lot.

Isn’t it odd how things like that, aggression and bad karma, can grow, spread, spill out, when very few people want to be part of that?

As a man, I remember the shock I felt when I realized, as I walked down a quiet suburban street late evening, coming from the subway, that the woman walking maybe 100 yards in front of me was scared of me. (I had to slow, go back a way, cross the road – let her get right out of her sense of danger.)

A lot of guys play fair, do the right thing (by our own lights, granted), want to be the good guy. But if we let it, it only takes a very few to poison things. And that spark, in my experience, can come from men, or from women.

If we sit in the room and let one person crack offensive, racist, sexist or whatever remarks, or abuse the office junior or the support staff (one broadcast exec of my acquaintance over here, female, is notorious for that – it’s really not only guys), do we become complicit?

Hope you find the space you’re looking for.

[Mike Smith]

Can you freelance for the directors and producers who’ve given you work over the last five years – they’d be the ones who’d know you best, and most likely to trust you if your work is good.

Otherwise, you’re starting again to re-establish a reputation, based on your credits, the work you have to show, any any endorsements you can glean.

[WideWorld HD] “Where I can work with others but also very independently. Where I can be given the material and be trusted to make a show out of it.”

By “independently”, it might seem that you mean “away from a director or producer”. And the next bit, “given the material and be trusted to make a show out of it”, also supports that interpretation. That kind of approach or attitude might sit better with producers looking for budget finishing, rather than directors or producers who’ve invested a lot in a show, time and input, and want to see it come to fruition as they intend … a different kind of editing?

[Mike Smith]

It’s hard to fault-find remotely.

Does your system slow right down / go into heavy activity before you launch PPro / AE?

Could you have picked up a virus?

Are you very low on or out of hard disc space?

Have you added previously-unused filters or effects like e.g. Magic Bullet or some 3D transitions ..?

[Mike Smith]

Amen to that. Once appeased, always your bully …

And, btw, did you get to see the disc and verify there was a problem?

A few times, I’ve had incompetent people at the display end mess up their playback arrangements, or fail to use a proper (software or hardware) DVD player, or accidentally spread sticky fingers over the disc surface – and then claim there’s a disc problem. On review, there was no problem at all.

So perhaps you’d get the disc back and test for yourself? At the least, if there really is a disc problem you could identify it and make sure any future freelancers don’t repeat it ….

[Mike Smith]

I guess it depends a lot on where you want to get to, and the budget.

[edhaydenlannon] “The brief is to turn full color video into a two color composite.”

Isn’t a two-color composite “just” an image with color simulated from just two color sources (instead of video’s 3 -color rgb / yuv) ?

If so, you could duplicate the footage layer, turn each layer into a color (using levels, or whatever colorise effect you like. If you want a neutral tone in currently-neutral areas, then you go for complementary pairs like red / cyan, blue / yellow, green / magenta ..
If you really wanted to “kill” the red)(s)you could use just green and blue.

Then combine the layers by using a transfer mode like “add” ..? This would strictly be a two-color composite image – not sure why that would imply taking out the red coat …?

[Mike Smith]

Are you connected to Matrox?

[Mike Smith]

There’s a little more on all this here.

https://www.a-p-a.net/docs/copyright_law.pdf

Question:
If a producer, a director, a lighting cameraman, a camera operator, a focus puller, a sound recordist, a key grip and artists all contribute to a shot, who is its “author” ..?