Nick Griffin
Forum Replies Created
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A while back I was given a talking head session with audio that HAD to be at least 48db too low. It was shot by a one man band who obviously understood video a LOT better than he did audio.
My solution for getting back to something useful was to boost the track by, what I believe at the time was the 12db maximum. Then I copied the track and stacked in on three additional audio tracks beneath it. Viola! It worked. I also feel that I got lucky because the noise floor on the tracks was so low that even quadrupled it was barely noticeable.
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Todd-
Truly one of the greats. My deepest sympathies on the industry’s loss of such a tremendous talent and for your personal loss.
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For several years now I’ve kept an email computer beside my main work computer with the thinking being that anything malicious would come from one of the aforementioned email attachments. Perhaps that’s not safe enough as all of our computers are on the same network. I do like the idea of only plugging in the Time Machine drive once a day, though. Of course there’s no practical (cost effective) way of backing up the 24tb RAID. At the moment all I’m using on it besides the fact that it’s level 5 RAID is an external 6tb drive, backing up the current projects. Any better ideas?
As to Ned’s mention of fire damage, I have very fresh first hand experience with that. Everyone said, “With your computer experience surely you had back-ups, right?” Why yes, I did keep multiple back-ups of everything on bare drives in storage boxes. Problem is they were on a shelf in the same room, hence a lot of smoke and water damage. A couple of these drives work, but far from all.
For anyone facing this kind of situation DriveSavers is, and for me was, an excellent solution. They were able to recover the contents of each of the four internal drives and the one and only off-site 2tb back-up of the main drive allowed us to get back the applications.
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The complicating factor is all of the communication with this client was done by my partner. He was the one working with her because he was doing the coding. It was a mistake for me not to be more involved as he’s not the type to tell a client, “You know these changes are going to cost you?” That’s my job and I neglected to do it. Combine that with the fact that when I wrote the post I was seething with his attitudes toward how we had gotten to this point. Once I calmed down the client and I had a very polite conversation.
Compromise on both sides is anticipated. However we have no interest going forward working for her as we doubt she’ll always think we’re working on spec rather than by timesheets. The fairly senior guy who originally hired us understood that and when I attempted to reach him to discuss the situation I was greeted with the old “He no longer works here.”
C’est la vie. Time to keep moving forward and not get mired in complex and potentially ugly situations.
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I can only tell you what we do. Since we bill our projects (in all media) based on time, we bill for the amount of time it takes to search and recover from archives. Not a lot of money, but at least some compensation for the time. As to re-licensing, no. When someone has already paid for something their feeling likely is that, while they technically don’t “own” it, they sort of do. Not worth the ill will and bad feelings, IMHO.
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[Neil Orman] ” wondering if you could but this same tape from places like Target or Home Depot”
Simply put, no. You can buy “Duct” / “Duck” tape at consumer stores but I’ve always been told that the whole point of gaffer’s tape is that it doesn’t leave a residue the way most other tapes do.
I buy almost everything from B&H and Adorama because shipping is free on orders over $50 (I believe) and because they’re in New York state, and I’m not, there’s no sales tax charged.
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I had that issue once with a dual screen Mac set-up. Fixing it was stupidly easy. If you have a Mac go to System Preferences>Displays>Arrangement and put the second monitor ABOVE the one where the windows are bleeding off the top. Then just move them down to where you want them and then click “save current” under windows>workspaces and move the monitor arrangement back to where it is physically.
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There are numerous posts on the COW’s Business and Marketing section on the topic of calculating your base rate. More than one of the better ones come from Mark Susko. Research it there and go back a few years and you’re certain to find some excellent ideas.
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Clearance from the hotel will be needed because that is someone else’s property / marketing image. But rather than you going through the time and hassle why not have that as something the movie using your footage has to arrange? Obtaining clearances is something many film makers have to deal with on a fairly regular basis.
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[Todd Terry] “You can avoid the sale tax if you have a sales tax deferment ID number because you are purchasing raw materials to be used in creating a product that you will be selling as a taxable item in Alabama… but of course we don’t do that so we pay sales tax on anything we buy.”
I believe that, at least where I live, “machinery used in manufacturing” (i.e.- cameras, computers, etc) could be acquired free of tax, BUT…
A few years back I had our accountants provide the forms for doing this here in Maryland. It was one of those multi-page documents that I could only read for a few minutes at a time before seeing spots in front of my eyes. I soon decided that the many, many, many hoops I had to jump through would not offset the amount of non-billable time needed to provide what the state was asking for. Pay the damn tax. Move on and make money.