[Nick Griffin]

TT-

I wish I could give you the answer, but he’s not anyone that I think I’ve heard before. And like you, I’m pretty good at identifying the celebrity VOs, starting with William Shatner doing a salad dressing in the mid 70’s to Gene Hackman for Home Depot (or was it Lowes?) to James Spader for Acura.

Most actors love VO work because they’re able to concentrate on a single facet of the performance — one that doesn’t require hair, make-up, blocking, facial reactions — just the vocal performance. Problem is when the celeb is doing on-screen work, they’re seldom available for VO.

But none of this solves your problem, does it? Have you tried going through the big talent agencies, ie- ICM, CCA (New York AND LA for both), William Morris, Don Buchwald, Atlas, etc. and asking agents there if they know who this guy is? Any friends at SAG (or, as a spot would this be AFTRA) who could look up the production report? Yes, I know that one’s a long shot, but in the age of databases it would be a lot simpler to find than it would have been in the paper age.

WHEN (not if) you find out, please let us know. The guy has a great presence without pushing any individual personality.

[Nick Griffin]

[Jonathan Ziegler] “I’m pretty sure broadcast networks (ABC, NBC) pay more than cable/satellite (USA, TBS) or pay cable (Showtime, HBO).”

First, I work in industrials so I have no first hand experience with entertainment. That said, I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox necessarily pay more than the top cable channels. At the very least there’s a lot of variation, based on a number of factors, not the least of which is what’s paid to name brand versus non-name brand on screen talent.

Many of the shows on the leading cable channels like USA, TNT, AMC, FX, etc. win higher ratings than do some of the shows on the big 4 broadcast networks. You might assume that “The Closer” (on TNT?) or “Burn Notice” on USA can’t be that high a budget, yet they’re getting more eyeballs than a great many of the broadcast dramas and more eyeballs means higher ad rates which means, we can assume, higher production budgets.

As to pay cable, ie. HBO and Showtime, they have to spend really big bucks otherwise people would stop paying higher cable bills to get to see them.

When I visited and wrote about HBO’s The Wire for the COW, I was told that their budget for the 13 show final season was $33 to $35 million — right on par with some of the higher end broadcast network shows. And have you seen Boardwalk empire? Those sets and that much GCI where the sets are extended can’t be cheap.

Anyway… just the ramblings of someone who aims cameras at factories and machinery rather than celebrity actors.

[Nick Griffin]

Todd-
Why not just use one of the NY or LA-based clearance houses. BZ Rights and Permissions in NY is (212) 924-3000.

Also, Lucy may be one of the many, many shows now owned by Viacom. Then again, they (or whoever) may just own the re-broadcasting rights. Call the clearance company.

[Nick Griffin]

Thanx for your suggestion, Michael. The problem is only happening on a single sub-clip out of hundreds in the same project, over 8 disks, coming in successfully and dozens after the problem came up with the one sub-clip.

My best guess at this stage that it was a small hiccup when the proxies were being created. A possible solution would be to trash the proxies for that whole disk and re-load it. Problem is that would wipe out the best record of the many, many other working sub-clips.

C’est la vie. As long as this doesn’t happen on anything else in this project I’ll just move on.

[Nick Griffin]

Nope. Of the four drives plus the RAID I have:
571 GB available on boot drive
1.37 TB available on Time Machine drive
354 GB available on manual backup (Carbon Copy Cloner) drive
9.41 GB available on extra drive
764 GB available on RAID

Import destination
at “/Volumes/HDPro … may be read-only or full.” This sounds like it’s in a pure UNIX file structure rather than OS X Unix structure. Any idea where this directory lives that can be accessed by someone NOT fluent in Unix?

My next step is to re-build permissions and run drive repair. I really don’t want to trash the proxies of the disk in question and re-mount the disk because I’d lose all the current subclip info, but that may be necessary if I can’t find a better fix.

Thanx in advance for any ideas anyone can offer.

[Nick Griffin]

My framing almost always is well above the area of any chair arms so they’re not an issue. So as Scott said, no wheels, no swivels … yet still there are certain people who want to lean forward during parts of an interview and when working with a shallow DOF this is a problem. I’m ready to resort to framing only the face so the gaffer’s tape I’ve used to wrap around, them tying them to the back of the chair, won’t show.

[Nick Griffin]

Rich-
I was composing my reply while you were posting yours. Couldn’t agree more, especially where we said some of the same things.

[Nick Griffin]

Ouch. This sounds like it has the potential to go bad in any number of ways.

[jensen yancey] “We’ve agreed that no matter what, 10% should always go back into the company to buy equipment, office space, pay for the website, etc.”

To me this indicates a fairly un-realistic view of just how much it costs to operate a production business relative to what it can earn. Think more in terms of 10% to go back into equipment and 40 to 60% going to overhead: rent, phones, utilities, multiple kinds of insurance, transportation, sales & marketing costs, etc.

As to how to “divide up the money,” the simplest way to do this AND survive, God forbid, should at some point you and your partners seek a “divorce,” is to assign stock or some other form of divided ownership based on what each person provides as their initial investment. Say you come into this with a $20,000 camera and your partner has $10,000 worth of lighting, grip and sound equipment. You should get twice the profit because you provided twice the start-up investment.

Where this gets simpler is everyone gets a base salary first — which can be equal — and then at year end (or other agreed upon date) profits are divided based on percentage of ownership. Get a lawyer and an accountant who understand small business to help you set this up. Then, God forbid, should the aforesaid divorce come about things should be MUCH cleaner.

Where it gets more complicated is when one party isn’t pulling his or her weight relative to the others, or in the opposite direction where one party is “making all the rain” and bringing in the majority of the business.

Don’t mean to be a bummer, Jensen, but for this to really work you’ll also need someone to assume the position of boss or president, typically based on who provides the biggest investment. Operating a business is not for the faint or heart and learning one’s way past naivety can be VERY expensive.

“Creativity always dies a quick death in rooms that have conference tables.”
-Source Unknown

[Nick Griffin]

[Mark Suszko] “This is not a commodity like making boxes…”

HEY!!! I make a lot of money with people who make boxes, Mark. Some are commodities. Some are works of art.

Back on topic: Greg (and especially Steve) should consider a progressively increasing discount that provides an incentive for this to remain a long term project and NOT build in a discount of which there’s a risk of it not being earned. As to money, IMHO, you should set a schedule of regular payments which should mirror your normal procedures — third up front, third in the middle, third at the end, for example.

[Nick Griffin]

Thanx as always, Floh! That’s the timesaver I was looking for.