[Ryan Mast]

[Dave Johnson] “my opinion is that you’re making a serious and irreversible mistake by working for that amount. “

Not always irreversible.

After working for such a low rate, you’ll probably never be able to raise your rate for this client, ever. However, if it’s good showreel material, and if you don’t have much of a showreel yet, use this to land your next gig.

When I got started a few years ago as a college student, I did some very inexpensive work. A couple of those clients were legitimately sweet people with interesting things going on that I cared about — so working inexpensively for them was fun, low-drama work. A couple were good exposure and awful pay, but I don’t regret that work, because I’ve used that to find much better gigs.

If you don’t think that you can get more money out of this client, try negotiating for things that will make your job easier. Have the client line up 10 interviews back-to-back. Negotiate a long turnaround time (maybe two weeks), so that you can work on this in between other gigs (or finding other gigs).

Yes, you are getting ripped off. But some work is better than no work, if there’s no other work to be had right now. Do consider opportunity cost, though — if a better gig comes along, will you be able to dump this quickly to start on the other one?

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

[Stephen Smith] “If you go over 10 minutes your clip will be deleted, or not recored.”

When does this happen? I’ve never seen this.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

If it “went bad,” throw it out.

If you want to test it first, I recommend doing a zero-wipe format in Disk Utility, then reformatting it in your camera. If your card is iffy, the zero-wipe will throw an error. And then you throw the card out.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

I’m getting the hum in the recording with AC adapter power and with Anton Bauer battery power, in different locations on different sides of the state — any other environmental factors I should test?

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Steve — post example footage. Your camera might actually be broken if it’s hunting that bad.

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Zelin,

I wan to learn, and I learn quickly. Can I work for you?

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

White balance every time. Even if you set it to one of the presets to get it close, never rely on AWB (especially if you’re grading).

I rarely actually white balance with the DSLR; I just use one of the presets so it’s close and consistent. Precisely grading footage shot on AWB is an exercise in misery.

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

I cobbled together my own PHP script for this. I upload via FTP, then a backend page shows me links for all the files on the server with a link to my player page for each video. It looks like this:

https://meteortower.com/proofs/tgv/?video=TGV-wb%20promo%20edit%204-proofs%20VGA%20AVC%20TCR.m4v

It’s not pretty, but it works. And it auto-detects WebKit to show iPhone/iPad/Safari the HTML5 version instead of Flash, since several of my clients are heavy iPhone users.

I had a password protected version for a while, but it confused people. A long, annoying URL is enough security to keep people from poking around.

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

The short answer: If you don’t know why you’d need the HM790, you don’t need it.

Get the HM700 — it’ll be great for what you need. Essentially same sensor, same recording format, same picture controls, and similar form factor.

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Again, how will you be mixing the live webcast? Biggest practical difference between the HM700 and HM790 is timecode/genlock and rear module connection for studio gear on the HM790. Will your video switching setup require you to genlock the cameras?

—
Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.