Ned Miller
3
COW Coins
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Oh sorry, my point was that Mayo Clinic, THEE Mayo CLinic, is doing this. There’s a lot of shooters in MN that they use…
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Grinner,
They don’t consider it “low quality” like we do. They consider it “just fine”, which is what used to be our mid-level. So it is taking food off my table (I’m experiencing it) in terms of these were once jobs they used to call us pros for, when they couldn’t find a cheap kid they could trust.
Later,
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Go to https://www.dvxuser.com then the HPX300 forum and search “noise”. There’s been lots of threads regarding this. Before going further make sure you download the latest firmware updates. Then download the files listed in the Panasonic site which were created by a DP. Also, shoot in -3db whenever possible.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Think the Flip is a joke? It almost saved my career yesterday…
HERE’S MY UPDATE: Today is late Wednesday afternoon and I just completed (barely) shooting 3 days for a giant international IT consulting firm that had simultaneous large conferences in Chicago/Paris/India. Each site had a pro crew and by early afternoon we had to select best takes and upload at the Westin to Paris so the footage would be edited overnight and shown the following morning at each of the 3 sites. Chicago is 5 hours behind Paris and they edit through the night because India is way ahead of Paris, so you can imagine the pressure.
Well, mid Tuesday AT&T shut down (or perhaps we crashed it?) the Westin’s internet capability because we exceeded their capacity and the place went bonkers! Imagine an IT symposium with no internet!!!! We had been provided a dedicated ethernet vlan line of 4MB but still choked it. Solution: I had my media wrangler/editor rush to his alma mater and upload on their T1 line.
The point of the story is: I came within a hair’s breath of using the client’s Flip camera (although I have never touched one!), double recording the audio on my Panasonic HPX300 P2 camera, and sending the audio separately as a wav or MP3, which probably could have been emailed or taken to Starbucks or Kinkos for an upload, and then synced at the French editors. We were extremely close to doing that! And although I have been a DP for 33 years I am not sure my footage would look any better than a Flip because I had to shoot in the DV codec to keep the file size small, then in FCP export convert into PAL (ugh), upload to Paris, they edited and converted BACK to NTSC (another ugh), and show on hallway plasmas at the hotels and convention centers.
So…It may be useful to have a Flip in one’s toolkit? I suppose soon they will have an audio mini jack input? Or record audio separately like the old film days.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Milton: The link was for a Flip seminar Ragan is running, must be down, but he’s a proponent of Web 2.0 communications, see:
HERE’S MY UPDATE: Today is late Wednesday afternoon and I just completed (barely) shooting 3 days for a giant international IT consulting firm that had simultaneous large conferences in Chicago/Paris/India. Each site had a pro crew and by early afternoon we had to select best takes and upload at the Westin to Paris so the footage would be edited overnight and shown the following morning at each of the 3 sites. Well, mid Tuesday AT&T shut down (or perhaps we crashed it?) the Westin’s internet capability because we exceeded their capacity and the place went bonkers! Imagine an IT symposium with no internet!!!! We had bene given a dedicated ethernet vlan line of 4MB but still choked it. Solution: I had my media wrangler/editor rush to his alma mater and upload on their T1 line.
The moral of the story is: I came within a hair’s breath of using the client’s Flip camera (although I have never touched one!), double recording the audio on my Panasonic HPX300 P2 camera, and sending the audio separately as a wav or MP3, which probably could have been emailed or taken to Starbucks or Kinkos for an upload, and then synced at the French editors. We were extremely close to doing that! And although I have been a DP for 33 years I am not sure my footage would look any better than a Flip because I had to shoot in the DV codec to keep the file size down, then in FCP export convert into PAL (ugh), upload to Paris, they edited and converted BACK to NTSC (another ugh), and show on hallway plasmas at the hotels and convention centers.
So…It may be useful to have a Flip in one’s toolkit? I suppose soon they will have an audio mini jack input? Or record audio separately like the old film days.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Good points Mark. I’m not freaking out about it, just getting depressed about the cheese being moved again.
Had a good run with many of these companies. Maybe for my wife’s bday I’ll buy her a Flip to see what the buzz is about.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Thanks Nick. I was beginning to think I was the only one to have a corporate video client base that was turning to do-it-yourself one touch cameras! You are fortunate that your client was disappointed, many of mine are not. They have a slew of twenty-something employees who ain’t half bad, they’ve figure out they need a $40 tripod, softlight and get “acceptable” audio in or move the camera closer. Because they grew up on MTV, Youtube, iReports, cell phone video and User Generated Content they unfortunately like the look, have fun doing it and gain popularity by being the Video Guys.
So I think I will reconfigure my marketing and client mix to move away from the Fortune 100 corporate video scene, even though there are dozens dotting the highways of the Chicago area. Lately I shot a CEO with their DV camera, not to save money but to not make a “scene”, they didn’t want to make it look like they were wasting money on video! I don’t see this movement going away because from what I have experienced the market always moves to what is cheaper and faster, it becomes the New Normal. And these little one touch cameras are only going to improve. Wishful Thinking and Hope are not business strategies…So I will move my marketing towards non-fiction TV, docs, website videos, spots, sports, etc.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
Ugh! Here’s a test of 4 one button camera models:
https://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/video/2010/03/05/4-way-camera-shootout-wvu-75/
The reason they are a threat to pros is that all the people who hire us that are afraid of camera controls now only need to press ONE BUTTON! If they figure out how to light and attach a lav mic, why call us?
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
I hear Zacuto has made focus rings for the Flip. The rods and matte box are bigger than the camera.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com -
I too have many IC agreements I had to sign as a DP that I can fax you. Go to https://www.nedmiller.com or https://www.bizvideo.com and hit the email button.
However, I personally know that IC agreements will not keep the IRS from considering your freelancers employees. Rather, it is more protection as a work-for-hire status in case the vendor (freelancer) claims part of the copyright or wants to use the footage for themselves, like DPs may want to do.
The reason I know they are useless in regards to protection from withholding taxes: I had a working relationship with two prod companies who were audited and the IRS does not care about ICs to establish freelance status. They have a checklist, about 12 items long that determines whether someone is an employee or IC. Stuff like: Does the producer tell him when to show up? Does the producer supervise his work? Does the producer provide the tools (like rent the grip truck)? Does the freelancer bill hourly? etc. Whatever you do, never allow a non-incorporated freelancer to put the word Overtime on their invoice!!!!! That last sentence may be the best advice you ever saw on the internet. The word Overtime firmly establishes in the eyes of the IRS that the person is an EMPLOYEE (meaning you should have withheld taxes) regardless of an IC they signed.
So you can see that just a signature on an IC agreement means nothing to them, remember they are responsible for so much in taxes and fines per audit hour. When all factors are equal hire the INCORPORATED crew member over the non-incorporated. The IC agreement may help if someone gets injured on your job IF you have a Workers Comp policy, but it is useless, from what I’ve seen, for protection in establishing someone as a “freelancer”. Only the IRS determines that.
I don’t know much about tax and legal issues but I do know about this IC angle.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
http://www.bizvideo.com