[Nick Griffin]

[Rich Rubasch] “certain clients are phobic or untrained in using FTP sites. That has been an issue.”

[walter biscardi] “some of our clients, especially the corporate ones, seem to have problems figuring out how to download the clips.”

And here I thought it was just my clients who were kind of thick when it comes to file transfer and FTP. Then there’s the whole matter of getting an FTP app for them or directing them which to get. Media Batch’s interface eliminates that problem entirely.

Out of the eight clients we’ve had use Media Batch so far, eight have gotten it instantly. That alone makes it highly useful. And the ability to view and/or save makes it far superior to FTP.

[Rich Rubasch] “It mentions that you can approve a clip, but it looked like it could be approved by only one person. Sometimes you need approval by many.”

Rich, buddy, you’ve got to see the real thing rather than just the demo. The ability for everyone to leave notes creates a great environment for group review and approval. Are there other ways of doing this? Of course. But here it’s all integrated and working extremely smoothly. The built in ability to leave markers at exact timecode points AND draw on top of the video is something I have not seen elsewhere. Could you develop this and have it as a feature on your own website? Probably, but who has the time to re-invent the wheel? (Or the budget to pay someone to program it for you.)

Speaking of cost, when I first saw the website I was a little put off by the price tag on the pro version. But after having used Media Batch for a couple of weeks I’d easily pay more. (Don’t get any ideas, Marco.) Maybe that should be their marketing — give away a full working version that times out after 30 days. Among serious users the purchase rate then would probably be about 99%.

[Nick Griffin]

I haven’t done it in a while, mostly because the cable was too much in the way for the kind of stuff I do, but Canon’s EOS capture will let you control the camera from the computer and immediately open shots in a decent sized preview window. From there it’s up to you to open the image in Photoshop, but the image IS stored on your hard drive already. Surely Nikon must have something extremely similar, right?

One other reason I haven’t used this in a while is that EOS Capture was somewhat buggy — worked great for a while and then didn’t. Not exactly the kind of thing I want happening during a shoot with a client looking over my shoulder.

[Nick Griffin]

At the risk of stating the obvious, you should be approaching this just like any other business decision: Does the increase in capacity provide a sufficient enough advantage to justify the increase in cost? Will it therefore pay for itself or simply be an unnecessary added expense?

Sorry not to have any ideas on getting huge bandwidth at a low cost, but if that’s even possible it’s well outside the scope of my limited technical knowledge. (That’s why I hang out here in the Business pasture.)

[Nick Griffin]

Emre-
We’re located north of Baltimore, so probably a tad far to go from College Park. But if you still want the recommendation we use Callan & Palmer, a firm of about 7-8 people, 4 of whom I believe have their CPAs.

BUT, they know very little of the specifics of the production business and I don’t think it’s all that important that they do. What is important is having a good handle on small, closely-held businesses in general. When it comes to accounting and taxes I doubt there’s much difference between what we do and what a small machine shop does. We both require an investment in machinery which is amortized over as few years as IRS rules will allow. We both can have employees, or not. And in both businesses the purpose of a knowledgeable accountant is to help you get the highest return from your business LEGALLY.

Hope this helps and glad you liked the 12 Things piece.

[Nick Griffin]

Walter, you are leading a truly blessed life if this situation is even in your Top 20 — make that Top 200 — of bad things that have happened during your business career or hard decisions you’ve had to make.

1) Have you fired a partner? Regular firings can be a nightmare. Firings where equity is involved get very complicated, very expensive and very ugly, very fast.

2) Have you ever been burned for more money than you make in a year by someone you used to trust? Someone who kept using the personal relationship so you’d just keep doing that next thing, and the one after that? (Man, did THAT one teach me a thing or two about survival.)

3) Have you taken on a client, researched and found good credit references, only to months later find out that your original instincts had been right and it had been their intention all along to screw you?

4) Or then there’s the one about the big client, for whom you cut a special long-term deal and over the first two years realize that he’s using the special deal to kill you, knows that he would pay much more elsewhere, and also knows that by virtue of doing so much work so cheap you can’t afford to walk away.

There’s a reason we oldsters develop a sense of what to do and what NOT to do. It’s because we learned not to touch the stovetop when we think it’s hot because all the warning signs are there. Please learn from us, kids. The stovetop IS hot and all of us on the masthead, in addition to many others here, want to prevent you from getting burned.

Now, just like the magazines, here’s the answer key (at least as best as I have figured it out from personal experience):

1) Partnership agreements should be lengthy, complete and therefore expensive. When you pay a real business lawyer a lot of money you should get an agreement that makes divorce simpler, faster, and believe it or not, cheaper.

1b) Be the majority shareholder or be the minority shareholder and don’t forget which one you are.

2) This one is so deep and so multi-part that I have yet to devise a defense for it. In my case it developed over 12 years and the only way I can view it that makes any sense is to rationalize that I was forced to give up a 10% discount at the end — just nobody ever told me that 100% of the discount would come out of that last year’s revenues.

3) It simply made no sense that this particular client, who had a close relative in the same business as me, would have any need whatsoever to use me. Had to be something wrong. Turns out that even with good credit and what should have been an otherwise solid business, they knew their ship was sailing towards bankruptcy because of an impending divorce. Lesson learned: when it doesn’t smell right don’t be shy about asking questions and digging deeper. Better to lose the lead than lose the time and money on something you could tell from the beginning made little sense.

4) Simple answer: don’t put too many eggs in one basket — especially when the company holding the basket knows it and is made up of the kinds of people who will exploit a vendor’s problems for their own benefit. Along these lines, try not to do business with people who you wouldn’t otherwise have as friends. (Tough to do sometimes, but these days I’m feeling extremely lucky in that area.)

Additionally, while long-term deals may be fine, avoid them early in a relationship. It’s best to set various milestones for mutual review and re-negotiation. This is why strive we to have multiple clients and let the clients know it. This makes it much harder for one to hold you up and much less likely that any one can kill you. (BTW, this one deal didn’t kill the company outright, but it was one of the leakier parts of a boat that did eventually go down.)

So Walt, here’s some grist to help drive the mill of discussing “hard decisions.”

[Nick Griffin]

Thanx, David.

Wow. Advice from TWO of the Cow’s most preeminent leaders.

[Nick Griffin]

Thanx, Walter!

[Nick Griffin]

[walter biscardi] “I’ve had a very VERY bad experience with a partner and will never do that again.”

Ditto. (Although a junior partner may be in my future. The closer you get to equal the bigger the headaches.)

[walter biscardi] “I’ve never used an investor and never will. I answer to myself and nobody else.”

Double ditto. I would much rather build something up than being put in the position of immediately having to start paying off a fully equipped facility.

The simple answer to how much is probably more than you think. Add a healthy amount of contingency funds to your plan.

I also authored an article on going into business for yourself which ran in the last issue of the COW Magazine. Not as detailed as Walter’s four part tome, but might be helpful with some additional insights.

One big question you have to ask first of yourself and then of the investor is What’s in it for him?? Post production is about as far from a rock solid investment as one can get. Some make it, many fail, many just get by. Almost all of us do it for love of the art and craft. OK, the gadgets, too.

And the biggest of the big questions are: How solid is your source of business? Do you enjoy selling? If not you better have someone who does — a LOT. Could your investor direct a lot of business your way? The very last thing you want is a partner, an investor and you sitting around arguing about who is responsible for bringing in the business which will keep you in operation.

[Nick Griffin]

Well maybe this will seem simplistic, but it’s been working quite well for us for several years.

We use the Mac version of the computer-based (not hand-held) calendar for the Palm, “Palm Desktop Software” to be specific. With it I’ve set-up Category 1 with client names and Category 2 as task names. This enables us to both set appointments and track sessions in as small as 10 minute increments.

When it’s time to do billing I export into a tab & return file which I open and sort in Excel. Viola – a highly detailed timesheet which I staple with the invoices which use the language “XX.X hours, per attached detail.”

In 7+ years of doing this I’ve had one client complain — and he was and is a complete jerk. Everyone else seems be quite pleased with our level of detail. In fact, I’ve yet to see an invoice from any of OUR vendors who charge by the hour (lawyers, accountants, etc.) with any where NEAR the detail we provide.

The advantage of this over simply keeping a written or Quickbooks-based record is the calendar format. As mentioned before, it provides a place for scheduling as well as billing. And because it’s visual, it’s simple and straightforward.

[Nick Griffin]

Das-

Obviously, your biggest challenge is creating a structure which will make your show watchable. Certainly backgrounds like those from JumpBacks, ArtBeats and others will help. They will also give you a third place to go instead of just the two talking heads. If you are using a background you might consider a DVE build that puts the patient on one side and the doc on the other, then zooms up to full screen for their individual clips and back for the transition from one (Doc) to the other (patient). At least you could do this a couple of times before just using cuts, since using it for every transition would get REAL old in a hurry.

Assuming you have a music track, you can also hold on just the background for a few seconds before going back to the talking heads.

Another source for backgrounds might be stuff from one of the cheap stock houses like iStock, BigStock and StockXpert. I believe that only iStock offers video clips, but you can buy a still from any of them and blur it for use as an appropriate but neutral background. For example, a lab or a hospital hallway, a doctor’s examining room, someone doing an activity that the drug makes possible, etc, etc.

As to no product shots, ask, ask and then find someone else to ask again. Beauty shots of drug bottles exist in some drug companies, if only for their own sales literature. Sometimes they exist for ads, too. Failing that ask to borrow empty bottles and shoot your own. We frequently do things like that as digital stills which are put into AfterEffects for some slow pans and zooms. It’s not the ideal situation but it’s a whole lot better than not having enough (or in your case any) B-roll.

Hope the above will help generate a few more ideas.