Nick Griffin
Forum Replies Created
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[Greg Ball] “Do you think that’s fair?”
[Mike Smith] “Yes”
More than just being a contrary POV, No.
I think at that price you are underselling yourself and the value of your footage. We (and many others) have an understanding with clients that a “buy out” of the raw footage is AT LEAST one third more than the cost of shooting material we will then use to complete a program. Afterall, when they want the footage they are telling you that they are going elsewhere for future post production. I don’t see how asking for it two years later is any different.
Why don’t you try asking them if they’d like to save that extra cost by having you do the new program? Editing in PAL is not very different from editing in NTSC — just about every NLE can do it, and if the product stays in the digital world and doesn’t have to go to tape you probably already have everything you need. And with tools like MediaBatch non-local clients can easily participate in initial cuts through to the finished show.
The big issue here is at what point you make the NTSC to PAL bump. And can your material get away with a conversion less expensive than going to a facility with one of those really, really expensive hardware-based conversion boxes. That you might want to explore on one of the COW’s other forums.
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[maurice jansen] “1/2 Inch CCD are not so common anymore all commonly used camera’s in the broadcast industry are 2/3inch.”
Umm, not so fast Maurice. Here in the US many of the cable, especially news channels have people shooting with 1/2″ cameras. Ask the guys who use them. Their lighter weight makes a shooter’s day of so much easier.
As to the original post, I believe that one of the primary issues which networks, as well as independent producers, are attempting to specify with chip size is also “the look” bigger chips give. Even with a lot of density filters it can be difficult to achieve a nice soft background with 1/3″ chips. By virtue of their smaller size they simply carry a lot more depth of field than the bigger ones do. The 2/3″ cameras make getting the look of a sharp subject standing out against a very soft background fairly simple. Less so with 1/2″, but still do-able.
It’s also quite possible that the spec is used to determine a degree of seriousness and experience on the part of the shooter. If you’ve invested upwards of $20,000 you are more likely to be serious and good at what you do than is someone with a sub-$10,000 investment.
As to the use of lipstick cams, isn’t it kind of a given that their use, inter-cut with the main camera, is story-driven and therefore acceptable based on how well it works?
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I think what Walter as well as David have been saying is correct so I’ll summarize and add a few of my ideas.
Bottom line, when you’re being hired as a freelancer there’s no way you want to come off as an alternative to the people who are hiring you. Mostly you don’t want their clients to think of you as being a way to go direct and eliminate the middleman. So behave accordingly. Don’t take clients away from anyone already giving you work. It’s simply good ethics and good business. BTW, this includes not giving business cards to the clients of those hiring you.
Second, for any number of good reasons you should run all income through a single entity, namely your sub-S corporation or LLC. If you receive checks made out to you endorse them over to the business. That will make getting legal and proper deductions on the equipment and software you use a much more straightforward process.
Get an accountant and do it right. (And just to save your next thread from starting, get someone who will set you up with Quickbooks. You can read all about it in earlier posts and, done properly with an accountant who isn’t looking for your nickels and dimes, it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.)
Yes, you probably should set up one site where it’s your name and another where it’s the company name. So be one of two entities when approaching clients but only one when it comes to accounting and taxes.
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[Bob Cole] “I’d like to see that Anthro set-up sometime.”
Not hard to see a LOT of Anthro stuff. Here’s one of the bigger ones, there are many.
https://www.anthro.com/ppage.aspx?pmid=35
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I have an Anthro desk for our primary work station and know that a number of others do as well. Proud Bovine Walter Biscardi’s #2 edit suite appears to be configured with Anthro furniture always at the standing position.
While the Anthro desk doesn’t adjust the monitor up or down (have to tilt them up or down to shift positions) it does raise the keyboard/mouse surface for standing and lower it for sitting. I don’t switch back and forth to standing often, but do on occasion. More often than not I’m switching between the keyboard at its lowest point and a mid-point while still seated.
On our standard def workstation (and my desk work area) I have a small ledge under the desk, a couple of feet in, which allows me to prop my feet up and lean back for a different work position.
Quite possibly of far greater comfort for back and neck pain is having a set of fixed vision glasses. You youngsters won’t understand this but once you get over 40 close-up vision starts to go. The solution to this used to be bi-focal or tri-focal glasses. Then somebody came up with the bright idea of “progressive” lenses which gradually change from close-up at the bottom of the lens to distance around the middle and beyond. This must work for some “normal” people, but for me it means that only a horizontal sliver is in focus at a time to I’m left to hold me head at a particular angle to see the screen sharply and raise and lower it to look at different parts of the monitors.
I cured this idiocy by sitting down with the optometrist, determining the exact distance I work from the monitor and having a special pair of single vision, that distance alone glasses cut. They reside on my desk and that’s all they’re used for. Honestly having them has relieved more back and neck pain than any chair or desk ever could. (But that’s just me. What do I know?)
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There’s an on-going joke in the advertising business about self-promotion pieces. Something to the effect: “Well it’s as good as we could make it because the client was really difficult to work with.” Moral of the story: the stuff you do for yourself usually defines how good your work truly is or can be.
My guess is these guys (or guy singular, perhaps) are very new to production and simply don’t know what they don’t know. Have to say though that the promo makes it look like they’ve only done about three or four things in total because it keeps looping the same stuff over and over.
OK, Walt. Get your head out of the oven. It’s going to be alright. They’ll probably only take a third of your clients.
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[Steve Wargo] “However, be advised that the IRS has special rules for the production industry.”
Okay, Steve. We’re all on the edge of our seats. WHAT are the “special rules?” Details, dude. We want details.
Through no particular plan in recent years our business evolved to the point where none of our clients are in our state. We were told we could therefore stop filing the monthly sales and use tax reports.
Now there’s the possibility that we may be again working for an in-state company and I’m intrigued by Todd’s idea of claiming ownership of all physical product and only transferring the rights to the data. On this particular client it could work out well as they’ve already stated that they want to duplicate DVDs for themselves.
And just to chime in on the invoicing thing. I go one of two ways depending on the client and their overall operating procedures. We either give complete and excruciating detail (Log and Digitize Scenes — 4.75 hrs) -OR- we “black box” everything into broad categories (2 days Field Production and all related expenses).
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There’s a “making of” DVD also sold by the Discovery store. The unfortunate thing is that it’s standard definition versus the series itself which is available on BluRay. And WOW!!! Planet Earth is THE REASON to get a BluRay player.
Did I hear correctly that Disney’s current theatrical release “Earth” is re-used and re-edited “Planet Earth” footage? Seems odd, but if any footage was worthy of being re-purposed, this is it.
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We do a “Hall of Fame” show once a year that’s co-sponsored by a magazine. That means we have to use a number of shots of the inside and covers from the magazine.
Problem is if the shot on a page is close at all you easily will get a moire pattern off the screens used to print the photos. (ie. – 133 lines per inch CMYK dots.)
My solution has been to scan the magazine pages and, whenever possible, obtain and scan the original UN-screened photos. Then in Photoshop I replace the magazine’s photos with the clean, un-screened versions. The resulting image(s) are then taken into AfterEffects where do moves on the resulting “pages.” It’s clean and can be considerably easier than trying to do similar moves with a camera in macro mode. AfterEffects also provides CONSIDERABLY more versatility and options that one would ever get from just a camera.
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Noooo, Uncle Ron. PLEASE don’t turn off the filters! I once had a site where people could post without restriction and it got beyond stupid after a very short while — bad posts were going up faster than I could pull them down and drowning out the real ones.
The sad part was that it was a eulogy site for one of my best friends and suddenly bots were dropping ads for Vi*gra on it over and over. However the funny part was knowing that if he could see it he would be very amused.
So, no, Ron. None of us think of you as the Gestapo. Git-Mo interrogator maybe, but not Gestapo.