Rich Rubasch
11
COW Coins
3
Premiere Pro Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Hi all; I live in Madison WI so we are a small market. Many of you discussed production and talent fees. No one mentioned the extensive time it must have taken to get good keys and plan out all the compositing. This spot could have been a disaster in the wrong hands! The combination of the objects landing in the talents hands, the swirling paint color lines and all that put this one much higher than $6K in this market.
There are the $3000 spots out there, but truly the creative and amount of compositing would be much less than this spot must have taken.
I am more curious how many hours of purely compositing this took because if the hours pile up it’s gonna cost ya!
Nice work. I think a few of the edits were perhaps a little clunky especially at the end…I found it hard to keep up with the flow. But these kinds of spots are always a bear when you are bouncing between your editor and the animation program. But I liked the idea a lot and since I have done quite a bit of Credit Union work (CUNA is right here in town) this is more than most of our local CUs would do for their advertising.
Nice job,
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Wow….I disagree with others about posting rates for a couple reasons. First, Honolulu was where I got started in production. Every post house posted their rates and we all sent rate cards to agencies. This created a somewhat level playing field. Second, it was infinitely convenient for agency producers to simply refer to a rate card to put together a proposal.
Rates can be a way to quantify your business. You are being honest and forthcoming about your rates. Your rates are almost exactly what they are here in small town Madison WI, but we don’t all know your specific business model and might be just fine for what you are doing.
We are one of the only post houses in Madison to list our rates. We are starting a trend. Already producers have expressed their appreciation for having a convenient place to find current rates. We are priced pretty much at “market value.” Soon, as we formally roll out duplication services, we will post those rates as well.
If you have always operated in a market where rates were not usually posted, you will probably fall on that side of the issue. But where I’m from I believe in providing more context and information on our site rather than fluff. Plenty of fluff on post house sites. Give me something real.
Your rates are real.
Wired coined a phrase last year called “radical transparency” and it basically means you cannot hide anything from your clients these days. I agree, so why not put it out there.
What if one of your clients was networking at an event and heard of your company and asked someone what they thought your rates were…and they guessed market rate for your market. but what if in fact you were 25% cheaper, even 15% cheaper. Wouldn’t you rather have the conversation go like this…”why don’t you visit his site…they are posted there.”
I would.
Don’t take down the rate sheet just because a few old codgers haven’t heard of “radical transparency” yet.
You obviously have.
Nice site.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
I’m with grinner for the most part. We have the JVC 26 inch new broadcast LCD for HD monitoring only, and a Sony PVM-14U for SD monitoring. Component analog feeds the Sony and HDSDI feeds the JVC. Together they offer the best combination for our shop which still does quite a bit of SD work.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
One more thing about the S-Corp vs an LLC, at least here in Wisconsin. I do a lot of work with corporate clients. As an S-Corp, after they pay me for my services there is no more paperwork necessary. With an LLC, in Wisconsin, the corporate client must issue a 1099 at the end of the year.
Not a deal breaker, by a long shot, but if most of your work is B2B, being an S-corp can be a somewhat advantage to your clients.
I personally like the S-Corp payroll plus distribution model, at least at this stage of the company. Sounds like Fantastic Plastic is raking in the dough…what a problem!
Why not simply pay yourself and buy some real estate? That will shelter it pretty well. Sure you can have the company buy equipment, but why not pay yourself and buy some property?
2¢
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Since we work with many production companies and we exchange files quite often, AND we don’t always run the exact same version, we have used the XML transfer quite a few times with pretty good success. It might not be completely reliable, but when you need that 6.0.3 project to open in your 6.0.2 software, it is THE solution, at least to try.
I criticized Walter because you asked a question and I figured Walter would have at least suggested the XML workflow, again, at least to try it.
We don’t always know what your situation is and why you might need to do this, but we all get backed into corners and sometimes need a way out.
For us XML has worked.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Hopefully you have a good relationship with your current boss/coworkers. Here’s what I did, successfully.
I set up a meeting with the owner and let him know that I wanted to go out and freelance. I appreciated all the great work I could do with his company and learned a great deal. I said I could still be an asset to his company and would sincerely be willing to give him a preferred freelance rate for any work he needed me to do with his company as a freelancer. We did not commit to any particular amount, but agreed it could work for both of us. He could still call on his ace editor/designer, and I could make a freelance rate and control my destiny.
We made a gentleman’s agreement that I had no intention to go after any of his clients, in fact i was really planning to be a fill-in at all the post houses and in-house corporate gigs. i just felt I had enough foundation to do this and it was something I always wanted to do.
He agreed it would be a good move for me.
I set up my company as an S-Corp (the book called Inc. Yourself – on Amazon helped me get started, along with some tips from peers). I set up my home office for doing design work etc from home.
In the first year of business my (former) employer was my biggest client.
I grossed $30,000 in sales…and had two kids! But i kept my determination and things were looking better.
Up until the 5th year of my business my former employer remained in the top 5, and in my top 10 clients I had 5 other production companies as loyal customers. The rest were corporate direct.
Seven years later I own a half million dollar production company with three employees and continued growth.
If you are as good as you say you are, and you have already and will play nice within your community, you might try this approach. Again, validating your proposal by showing that paying you as a freelancer might even be cheaper because he won’t have to pay benefits and healthcare etc, and only when you are working on a project. It really can work two ways here!
Let us know what you do…
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
What about creating an XML from the 6.0.2 project and import that into the 6.0.3 project. We have done that with previous versions wit pretty successful results.
Not sure why Walter didn’t mention this possibility…
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
WAIT a minute!!!! Remember that not only do you have to set the Project color space, but you then must ALSO select each clip and go into the color space tab and choose the SAME color space you selected for the project. There will be TWO places to make the color space change, once to the Project (Project-Settings) and once on each clip (select clip and hit command-F to get to the color space tab on the clip).
Be sure you did both before rendering. It’s not just the project color space setting!
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Hey Chris, excellent post and invaluable info. The original poster was lookng for some kind of comparison to an SD workflow, in other words, add up all the extra render time and handling the larger files and what does it add to an SD project. As an example we mostly work in SD DVCPro50 and don’t have an offline process…DVCPro50 is our online.
In the HD projects we have tackled, we went straight in to DVCProHD cut as usual, but in every case the process took a lot longer. Things like making the QT for the FTP took MUCH longer than making the same file from our DVCPro50 material. We calculated almost double, but most of it was render time, working in AE, dealing with cross conversion of SD material things like that.
Any calculations based on a straight SD workflow (30 minute program) vs a direct to DVCProHD for the same program?
Also, we are on G5 dual 2.7s, so that is part of the slower performance than you guys on your screamin’ new machines!
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
In AE, go to File-Project Settings and in the Color Settings select in the pulldown either HDTV or SMTP-C. We have successfully taken DVCPro50 and DVCProHD from FCP and back with no shift doing this. You will also have to choose your footage and match the setting you chose in the project settings for color. Click on a footage clip in the project window and hit Command-F (Control-F on a PC) and in the second tab you will see a setting at the bottom with your color settings. By matching this to your project setting, and a little trial and error, you should be able to take clips back and forth with no shifting.
Try it and post back. Has been working for us, even though other posters have not been successful. It took a couple tries, but we got it to work.
Best way is just to render out a clip from a comp without doing any effects and put it back in FCP and compare it to the original…
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media