[Nick Griffin]

[Mike Cohen] “The client is always right. Even when you know they are wrong”

Male Bovine Excrement. (IMHO)

Probably not with you Mike, but all too often, especially with those just starting out, this kind of attitude results in getting grind-ed. (ie.- Ron Lindeboom’s Clients or Grinders article.)

That said, being confrontational will likely result in losing the client. The key is to maintain rapport and communication and coach the client to talk their way through how — even though it’s not THEIR mistake — it’s a circumstance that developed that both you and he/she need to solve. It can be helpful to approach this kind of situations with the attitude of “how can we make sure problems like this won’t come up again?”

Always rolling over may solve short term situations, but it enables / creates bullies.

BTW, the other side of this is for those times when it is your mistake, you have to be the very first to bring it up and apologize. It’s always better to be seen as being completely up front and completely communicating.

[Nick Griffin]

Paul –

I think what you’ve put together is a great idea, one which could find its market and be a real moneymaker, but, at the moment, appears to lack an adequate “front end.” By this I mean the mechanism which feeds business into your sales cycle, thereby delivering a large enough number of prospects that, even if you only close 1 in 10 sales, will make a viable business.

Basically if you want 20 productions a month, you need to be having 200 face-to-face meetings with serious prospects. Not a casual chat at a social function but an actual sit down meeting in someone’s place of business. This could easily be an individual’s full-time job and may be exactly what’s needed to get your package idea launched. Once it is, it should be easier to attract new business via an expanded circle of clientele’s word of mouth.

Something you might also consider would be a campaign of (postal) direct mail — when done properly far more effective than email. You could create a series of postcards with themes like “How one Essex businessman increased sales by making his own web video.” A month later send out “How a Salisbury spa got the attention of hundreds of new customers.” Just about everyone in business wants to learn more about how someone else achieved success, even if they think they already know the techniques themselves. This method also provides a great way to promote yourself and your services while seemingly talking about someone else.

One thing which may be causing some reluctance is that much of your pitch appears to revolve around the business owner or his appointed employee appearing as the on-camera spokesperson. This can be a very frightening and off-putting idea for most people. It’s usually the “David Brent” (The Office/UK, or “Michael Scott” in The Office/US) kind of boss who thinks he could look at a camera and talk for several minutes. So you should have a professional voice-over option for those who might want a video, but are camera shy.

A final bit of advice: your low end price is too low. In my humble opinion there’s little difference for a business owner between the decision to purchase a service for £500 versus £750 so go for more money.

[Nick Griffin]

Thanks, Bob. I would have expected a recommendation for an AJA product, but I take this to mean the BlackMagic box is cheaper or more capable.

I’m aware it’s still an SD monitor, just an SD monitor with more resolution than any home set and most less-expensive pro monitors of its era. The question remains, is it worthwhile to pop for the $460 upgrade to keep using it in a lesser capacity or is it worth more to someone else by virtue of being a living, breathing CRT?

[Nick Griffin]

We recently received a new, fully Spectroradiometer-calibrated professional video monitor. When I set it up for playback off one of our NLEs I immediately noticed how much more red was in the Apple Cinema display than the calibrated monitor — a disturbingly excessive amount. So I got out a Spyder which had been sitting in a drawer and set about creating a calibration profile for the Apple display.

Well it’s better, but still has slightly more red than the video monitor. Long and short of this, as far as I’m concerned, is that low end monitor calibration is certainly better than nothing but still nothing which can be relied upon for serious cc work.

This ties in fairly well with a discussion held in this pasture a few weeks ago about whether or not one could “get away” without a real external monitor. It all depends on how critical you need to be. Or perhaps more accurately, how critical your clients are.

[Nick Griffin]

Back in the early days of desktop publishing when the client said things like:

“Oh we don’t need to spend money on professional brochures anymore, Margie, my secretary, has Pagemaker so she can do them for us.”

I would reply:

“Great! Give her a stethoscope and see if she can handle your health plan.”

And desktop video is any different?

[Nick Griffin]

When I first got DVRs for home and office a few years back I asked the Comcast tech what the FireWire ports on the back were for. He said he had no idea. So I experimented with trying to “look” at the ports with various forms using the input of video software. No luck. Nothing there.

Skip ahead to when I was finally able to reach someone “technical” on the phone at Comcast I was told that the I.E. -blah-blah-blah (what we mortals call Firewire 400) ports were for (cue mysterious music) “the FUTURE.” Exactly what future or even WHEN the future would be coming he couldn’t say.

So like the posts before me, I just play out what I want to a DVD recorder through the S Video port. Strictly for PERSONAL USE — just to get something which can be viewed elsewhere or de-constructed for further study like spots and promos.

Maybe someday when I have the time to move a DVR near an edit system or an edit system near a DVR I’ll see if I can get anything by looping the component signal between it and the monitor. When I tried this with the component part of the DVD recorder I got nothing. But then the recorder is SD, not HD.

Fact of the matter is everyone wants you to buy their content, even if you’ve already — in theory — paid for it.

But that’s just my opinion… I could be wrong.

[Nick Griffin]

I have little doubt that there are any number of people in these forums far more qualified to address this than me… but let me give it a stab.

Lens price/value comes down to what you are asking the lens to do and therefore by extension what its manufacturer must put into it in order to accomplish that.

Huh?

Let’s make it simple. A camera with a 1/3″ CCD (lets say a Canon XL-H1 or JVC GY-HD250U) requires a lens which puts out a circular image larger than 1/3″ in order to cover the whole CCD. If it just barely covers the CCD then there is fall-off at the very edges, in other words the image is brighter in the center than it is in the corners. Not having this happen requires more and better elements. This equals more expense.

A camera with a 1/2″ CCD (lets say a Sony 355) obviously requires a bigger image circle at its back end in order to cover the bigger area of the bigger CCD. This means the lens elements themselves are larger. Hence (see where I’m going here?) more expense.

A camera with a 2/3″ CCD (lets say a Sony 700, 900, Panasonic 1000 & up, etc.) needs still larger pieces of glass to create a still larger image area at its back end. A “High Definition” lens will be designed and manufactured to tighter specs to make it able to define a sharper image than one of the older generation of “Standard Definition” lenses. Hence lenses labeled as HD command a higher price than those which are not. SD lenses may still fit HD cameras, but probably won’t look as good.

And here’s where it gets interesting. Much to the chagrin of the purists, someone like me comes along and, with the help of an adapter ring puts a older (Standard Definition) 2/3″ wide angle on a 1/2″ camera and viola — the CCD is well within the “sweet spot” of the lens and almost everybody who sees the output agrees that it is, in fact, High Definition. The downside for me in this scenario is that my wonderful 5.5mm wide angle which looked great on my old SD camera has now a fairly normal angle of view because the 1/2″ CCD is only seeing part of the image circle the lens is putting out.

Then there are lenses which cover even larger areas like those used for cameras like Red, 35mm /70mm film and so on. (Wonder what iMax lenses must cost!)

Other factors that come into play, and again contribute to the amount of glass elements inside the lens and the size of these elements, are what you are asking the lens to do. That’s why a specialized wide angle or extra long telephoto lenses cost more than a “normal” lens. And there’s more to it. The higher cost lenses will, as you stated, have less chromatic aberration because they have better (ie.- more expensive) coatings which cuts down on the reflectivity between the elements inside the lens.

Anyway, that’s what I think I know on the subject and, can state from experience, you get what you pay for, just be sure you don’t pay for more or settle for less than you need.

(OK, boys. Tell me what I’ve missed or mis-construed.)

[Nick Griffin]

[Martin Slidder] “1. What are your thoughts on the apple monitors???

I believe Mike is correct that the Dell 30″ monitor is cheaper. Personally, the last time I bought a MacPro I also bought the Apple monitor. Time is money and doing so was fast and simple. So fast — about 10 seconds as I remember it — that the kid in the Apple store was left stammering about didn’t I want to consider other options in the CPU and monitor. That’s me. I had a big job and a big RAID waiting back at the office and little time to linger around the Apple store.

[Martin Slidder] 2. Apart from Mac pro, monitors, final cut software what other editing equipment is vital if say I do end up buying a Sony PMW-EX3 with downlaodable SxS cards???”

[Mike Smith] “But you also need a third screen – a dedicated video display, CRT, LCD or Plasma, that is calibaratable, that uses video colour space, and that can handle HD and SD reliably and in good quality.

Absolutely! If you simply rely on what you see on the computer screen you can easily miss bad stuff going out the door. At the moment I’m working on a review for the new line of Flanders Scientific monitors and, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m impressed by their features and quality relative to price. But, as you will see, professional-grade, which can be CALIBRATED are not cheap. Then again neither is not being able to see exactly what you’re doing.

[Mike Smith] And you need a card that can feed a signal to that display. The card could be from AJA, BlackMagic or maybe Matrox.

I initially bought a BlackMagic card/box for FCP only to later switch to AJA because it could run both FCP and Media 100. When we added a second Media 100 specifically for HD we went with their HD Suite (Kona III card). I prefer Media 100 for speed and ease of use, but have to also have FCP and, in particular, all that comes with it, around. More on software below. Also, many people for whom I have a great deal of respect think AJA products are the superior solution.

[Mike Smith] You need suitable fast disc storage – a large, fast RAID for HD work.

Essential. Plan on at least £1,000, probably more.

[Mike Smith] You need decent speakers. Some would argue you need a sound mixer or control surface.”

We have mixers at both of our edit stations and truthfully they’re really just a convenient way to switch between monitoring multiple audio sources. Actual mixing is done in the software. A control surface might be nice for some, but not an essential (IMHO.)

As to other software, perhaps you CAN get away with only what comes with Final Cut Studio, But I prefer After Effects to Motion. The other biggie, and this probably IS essential, is Photoshop. Yes, it’s a still image program, but I don’t believe there is any other single program which is part of every production suite’s work the same way Photoshop is.

So, Martin, if you’re going to go out and spend a boatload of money, at least take some of the advice here on the COW and buy stuff you won’t regret in a year.

As to the camera — anyone who is in a position to wait should AT LEAST wait until after NAB when new stuff is introduced and many existing products drop in price. And once again I will point out that buying this stuff NEW is a lot more expensive than good condition used equipment is.

“Some people say that I’m superficial. But that’s just on the surface.”

[Nick Griffin]

[Patrick Ortman] “gather around a virtual water cooler”

And THAT is exactly what the COW (and its never to be named here predecessor) is all about. It gives most of us the peer to peer interactivity and conversation that, as smaller self-employed people, we otherwise would lack. The COW was social networking before social networking was cool — or even named. Long live the COW!!

[Nick Griffin]

Martin-

On this side of the pond we have an expression: “Build it and they will come” is a recipe for bankruptcy. In other words, slow down on the acquisition side of things and get to work generating business. Business which you can job out to small post houses and individuals until you have a steady flow of incoming work. THEN you can fund your own stuff without going into debt or depleting savings.

Produce (not direct) on shoots, sit in on edit sessions and learn what you can. This will be a far smarter and cheaper way to learn what you’ll need to know and should reduce the chance of failure. The only downside is that you’ll have to pay others for their skills and investment in equipment.

As to the gear, with the exception of computers, consider buying (lightly) used gear. It can be a tremendous savings with essentially the same output. And, by the way, there’s a whole lot of stuff you’ll need in addition to what you’ve listed. Yet another reason to work with others, learn and observe.

Going to NAB may not be as productive and cost-effective as you would assume. Mostly because a show of it’s scale can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not going to see specific vendors for specific reasons. You can easily end up spending too much time looking at things which have little relevance to what you need. Like the booth babes with the short skirts and big… oh, wait. That’s what I get distracted by.

Anyway, these thoughts are just my opinions. Other people may have different ones. I would suggest, however, that you spend some time looking through the Business & Marketing forum as this kind of thing is exactly what we discuss there routinely.