[Ryan Mast]

Hi Steve,

What kind of cost and effort is required to trademark a name? Would I need a lawyer, or can I do the paperwork on my own?

[Ryan Mast]

One time, I made a matte for a liquid-y transition by recording pouring milk into a wide, square glass jar on a black background. You could also try using paint if you want something a little more viscous.

[Ryan Mast]

I know a guy who does that. Seriously. A several-thousand dollar used car purchase on a whim. He thought he might need an extra car for his daughter, so went to the dealer, found one that looked okay, paid, and drove it home that day. And it’s not like he had ridiculous amounts of disposable income, either.

So I guess it’s not implausible, but is that kind of consumer behavior common? Does the ad create a need, or does it play off of ideas already in a buyer’s head? If someone was already thinking they needed to replace their car, does the screaming panic of the ad push the consumer over the threshold to get out and actually buy a new car?

[Ryan Mast]

I’m with Dylan — use some real, destroyed VHS footage. I have a stockpile of VHS, film, and RF reception glitches to use with my footage. The easiest application is to put the glitchy clip atop your existing footage and change the composite mode to Add, Overlay, or Hard Light, and color correct to taste.

It won’t give you tracking distortion, but it’s a fast, organic way to rough up your footage.

[Ryan Mast]

Then present it to him as a way to save time and money. Unless the shooter is someone I know and trust, I usually budget more time for editing & cleanup than I would if I were shooting myself. In many situations, it’d be the same amount of time/money for me to shoot and edit my own footage, as it is for me to clean and edit someone else’s footage. When talk with him and offer to give a shot list to the shooters, explain to him that this will save time and money. It will also save you time and give you a better product for your demo reel, so it can a good deal for both of you.

I suppose it doesn’t hurt to offer to shoot, too. Even if you shoot your own footage for just one of the projects, you’ll at least have one that you can use on your demo reel. And if he like you and notices the difference between your footage and the other shooter’s footage, you might get more work.

Good luck!

[Ryan Mast]

Hi Roger,

I’m in a similar position — although, I’m still in college. Actually, I haven’t had any major problems with raising prices with existing clients. However, they’re mostly business people — they understand that I do need to make a profit, gear cost money, and expertise is valuable. YMMV. If you’re on good terms personally with your clients, explain to them why you need to charge more, but explain to them how they benefit.

Have you heard a variant of this? “Well, a friend of mine’s uncle has a video camera. He’ll do it for us for $200! I don’t understand why we have to pay you so much…” The reason you can charge what you do is not just because you know how to run a camera. They’re paying you for your expertise. They’re paying you for your degree. They’re paying you to know that it’ll get done correctly the first time. So, how can you explain or show this to your clients, in a way they value?

For instance, one of my clients used in-house house to get a project done, and the employee took basically two weeks of work time to complete the project, to a mediocre quality level. I took over the project as a sub-contractor one year, for very cheap ($600, I think). That was two years ago. Last year, I raised my rates, and the project cost $1,500. This year, the project was $3,900 (including duplication). I already told her that I had raised my rates again this year, but she still had difficulty understanding why I charged that much. So, I explained to her the value of my experience, even over the past year. I used SmoothCam and color correction to fix almost all of the video they shot that I was given to edit. I showed them how to deal with paying royalties for the music they used. We were able to quickly compare the value of my rate, compared to the former employee’s salary & benefits (plus time off of doing what he NORMALLY does at the company). Paying my rate for the project, and paying that employee for two weeks was comparable. And, I didn’t disrupt the flow of work in the office during production, the product was better, and the final presentation flowed more smoothly.

Again, YMMV. It depends a lot on the personality of the client and your relationship with them. Try adding in something that has a great perceived value, but little effort or cost to you — maybe offer to throw on a Magic Bullet filter for free in one segment, use a slick Motion template for the intro titles, add SmoothCam, do a custom label design for free, give 5 free copies of the DVD to whoever is writing the check for the whole project, something like that. The value comes in the presentation. e.g., “I’m sorry, I can’t drop my price any more than $____, but I’d be willing to throw in (extra) for free. Normally, my rate for something like (extra) is around $__, but since you’ve been so great to work with and gave me a start last year, I’m happy to add that in for you.” Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t.

Or negotiate for an intern, to drop crew prices — maybe there’s a young eager student related to someone in the dance group who wants to learn how to make videos. Tell him about what you’re doing, and get him to help carry gear. (That plan can also fail miserably; again, YMMV.)

I’m just trying to figure how how this works, too. This is just some of what’s worked for me.

[Ryan Mast]

Ah, okay. Now that school’s out and the show run’s over, I’ll devote some free time to reading my insurance policy.

Y’know, just for fun.

If I met with my insurance agent to check on things like that — what I have to do to prove “possession,” etc., what specific questions do you think I should ask him? Is it okay to tape a meeting like that or get assurances written on paper, or would that just be acting paranoid? He said that he and his agency, although they do a lot of commercial insurance, never dealt specifically with a “videography” company, but I did explain to him what I did, what kind of equipment I’d be using, situations I’d be in, etc…

Or should I shop around to find an agent that deals specifically with videographers?

[Ryan Mast]

Check out some Shyamalan films. Signs and Lady In The Water are particularly good with controlling the suspense & appearance of monsters.

Ah, Alien… also a great source of monster inspiration. Part of what makes the appearance of the creature so terrifying is the pacing. The movie is, on the whole, very slowly paced. It provides a great contrast to the appearance of the face-huggers and the xenomorph — it moves very rapidly. The abrupt & dramatic change of pace heightens the energy and scariness of the moments. In the air shaft, we only get a brief flash of the alien — and the rest is left to sound effects and our imagination.

Don’t underestimate the power of sound. Get a genuinely frightening real creature sound in there, like a tiger or elephant or something, and try tweaking and sweetening it so it sounds a little otherworldly.

[Ryan Mast]

I guess it depends on what level of production you’re doing. For a while, I did some projects in FCE for another guy locally — I’d capture miniDV tapes and do a rough edit for him, then he’d take the media and FCE project files and finish it in FCP. Worked fine.

Now, you can’t work with uncompressed, you can’t work with FCP projects, and you don’t have the 3-way color corrector or scopes, but if you don’t need that now, FCE is an economical way to get started and learn the Final Cut interface. There’s not much different about the interface between Express & Pro — just more features & functions, but editing is exactly the same.

I agree with Ben — get a used/refurb G5 or a Mac Pro, even if you start with FCE for now. You can economically upgrade to a Kona or whatever, add an eSATA RAID, etc, when you have the money and need the functionality.

[Ryan Mast]

Hi all,

Based on the collective wisdom of the COW, I recently called a local insurance company to get insurance for my company. I could tell they weren’t used to dealing with videography companies, but they gave me a general liability policy covering up to 500K for anything that is in my “possession, care, or control.” Specifically, I asked them if that would cover me if I, say, dropped a light on someone’s head, accidentally caused damage to someone else’s property during a shoot, or damaged equipment that I borrowed/rented from someone else — and they said yes, it would.

Is this normal? It seemed pretty simple — do I need some kind of specialized insurance for this? Do you see any red flags? Are you guys buying additional insurance beyond your company’s general liability policy?