Scott Sheriff
Forum Replies Created
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Incorporation has advantages, and disadvantages. A lot depends on the state you live in, where you incorp, and a million other things. You should really talk to your CPA, and ask yourself do I really need to.
The main reason most choose to do it is to shield personal assets from loss should your company get sued, or go broke. There are other reasons, but that would be one of the biggies unless you own a fleet of vehicles or want to hide your personal identity/credit (Nevada) from the business public, or need a ‘presence’ in a particular state to get contracts/jobs. Now if you don’t really have a lot of personal assets to protect, a corp may not be worth all the other headaches it brings on. An LLC is supposed to do the same thing, but in most states, they are worthless and anyone suing your LLC can still go after your personal assets.
I’m not a lawyer, or a CPA, so YMMV.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Sam Cornelis] “(Scott, what do you mean with TL;DR?)”
It’s net-lingo for ‘To Long, Didn’t Read’. I’m saying I know it was a long post, and wouldn’t blame anyone for not reading it.
I’m glad to hear you are not advocating, or tolerating the lowering of standards. For a while it seems as though you might have been. My mistake.
I think there is a difference in who we are talking about. There are the new and inexperinced people, that are learning but still understand this is a professional craft that has standards and requires a certain level of commitment. These people know that everyday is a learning experience.
And then there are those that think it’s so easy a caveman can do it, just because they have some hits on a youtube video. They disrespect those of us that have put years in learning our trade, dismissing that, as the stuff for the oldtimers.
They are people that operate well below the threshold of what a lot of us would call minimum standards. They don’t own, rent, or even use lights. Tripod, whats that? Shoot it all handheld. Putting lots of jump cuts in your finished work makes it more ‘arty’, why shoot cut-aways? And of course reading the manual is for geeks, not us creative types. Does anyone know where I can download some sick light leaks and lens flares for free?
These are just a few examples of what I’m talking about. They have never taken the time to learn the basics of the craft, and don’t want to invest in what most would consider the bare minimum when it comes to equipment or skills. They do this because they would have to charge a higher rate, and no interest in the time it takes. And with their experience they’re unable to justify a higher rate. So to compete with the rest of us, they shoot everything in a run-n-gun style, junk it up with a lot of free plugins, and edit with some bootleg copy of whatever they got from some cracked serial number website, or by using an academic copy of the software. The cut every corner possible. They are the equivalent of those people that are selling burrito’s they made in their home kitchen, out of the trunk of their car. Real restaurant owners that pay their taxes, have insurance, permits, employee’s and equipment overhead have every right to complain about the bootleggers. We do too.
These are the people I’m talking about. The people that are dragging the average rates down for everyone. The people that got into the business last month, and are driving around in their GMC Denali with the magnet sign on the side that says “Joe Blow Video Production”. Last month the sign said, “Joe Blow Amway Dealer”. And then when these people get in over their head, they get on here at the last minute and expect us to help them. There is at least one of these posts on the Cows somewhere everyday. I don’t consider these people my colleagues, and don’t feel any obligation to help them. I understand that some of these folks are just niave’, or put in this position by their boss, or a hundred other excuses. But it doesn’t really matter why they are doing it. Helping them hurts the true low budget working professional in that market, as Tom and I have been pointing out. It’s is the same as acting as a ‘look-out’ for the burrito seller, and letting them know when the food inspector is coming so they don’t get caught. I’m not talking about the guy that has been doing this working for someone else for a few years, that is starting to do some lower budget freelance work in his spare time, who has some education, and professional experience.
There are a couple of standard arguments. One is that you can’t stop the gate crashers. True, or not, that doesn’t mean I should help them drag our rates down. And if one of these guys gets in over his head, and crashes, maybe that is the chance a colleague could use to get a much needed gig. Another argument is that the rest of us should be able to beat these Johnny-come-lately guys with our skill. Often that is true. But, sometimes these guys ofter a little better rate and underbid the job to get the guy on the hook, overstating their abilities and experience. Then they just take much longer at their lower rate, to run the tab up. You never get a chance to tell the client that paying someone that is more experienced is often more cost effective, and delivers a better product. Especially if some Cow member comes swooping in like Superman from the other side of the world to save the day when these guys have an epic failure. Not everyone works in a market where the client has the experience, or is sophisticated enough to understand who the pro’s are. And the other way these people drag the rates down is by doing this, and making the client think this is “how it is”, and lowering expectations.
And then there’s the “who do you think you are” excuse, from the very people I’m talking about. They get on here and make excuses for their behavior, and try to assert your some kind of snob, bad guy, etc, if you wont do all their work for them for free. They quite often demand help as if this was some type of vendor provided customer service, and get indignant if you call them out for not doing their homework, or cutting corners.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Max Kaiser] “We’re being asked to edit a network tv show (for a small network, mind you, not a biggie) and the payment terms are sort of tough on us. They are 25% down, and then the remainder when the show is paid for by the network which is a few months after we finish the work.”
That is a ridiculous amount of time to wait. Don’t do it.
Ask them what their terms are to buy commercial time. I’ll bet they expect most, if not all of their money upfront and won’t run spots and let the clients pay months down the road.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Jeff Barringer] “Yes I cloned the disk”
Hey, if you cloned your system disc before you ran the upgrade that caused your problem, your golden.
Then clone is a mirror of your old working system, so just move that system disc clone to a fresh drive, make it the boot disc, and your back in biz.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Jeff Barringer] “Hi everyone! About two weeks ago – at the latest OS upgrade – my FCP 7.0.3 abruptly quit working and my computer told me I had a ‘kernel panic’. I’ve taken the machine into two different service companies and both of them have only suggested that I completely wipe my drive clean and do a full new install. Which, I’ve done. Nothing. Now FCP won’t even start, it just ‘quits unexpectedly’ as soon as I try and start it up. I’m stumped. My system is a three year old dual 3.0 Gig processor system w/ kona3 – which until now has run flawlessly. What can I do? Any ideas gratefully implemented:-)”
Did you clone your system, or at least have a Time Machine backup of the system drive? If so, just roll back before the upgrade.
Always, always make a copy of your system before making changes, especially if your system is running fine. And don’t upgrade without doing some research first. There has been a rash of these KP’s caused by the latest OS upgrade, and the upgrade has nothing that’s going to make editing, or other pro apps improved. Just some code to make it easier for you to use the app store, and break your pro apps in the processes.As for why a clean install won’t start? Hmm, thats weird. Is it just FCP, or can you open other parts of the suite? It should work if you:
Is your system drive formatted incorrectly? Should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Install the OS on a fresh drive. Manually update the version with the downloaded update file, instead of the auto update, stopping at the last good working version.
Do a permissions repair.
Install FCS, and do the pro apps updates only. Don’t update anything else until you get a working system, and then only if you clone it first.
Install your drivers for things like the Kona.
Install any plugins.
Repair permissions again.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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Check out the Field Production forum. I know we have talked about this in the last couple of months. Shouldn’t be to hard to find.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Eli Wieczorek] “Any thoughts on how to make this work?”
In addition to Marc’s suggestions, you might want to work with the performers and the house sound person and build some click tracks that you can send the performers on their monitors.
Before the beginning of each song, they get a 5 second or so click track at the proper tempo. This might help with slight tempo deviations between the two nights.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Anhtu Vu] “can someone point me to an excellent garbage mask plug for fcp, the included 4 and 8 point GM in so limited.”
There are a bunch out there, but you can do this in Motion and have as many points as you need. Best thing is, you already own it.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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[Shane Ross] “Final Cut EXPRESS? That wasn’t mentioned. FCE does NOT work with IO devices. At all. Period. Sorry, need FCP 7 for that. Oooohhhh…it’s no longer for sale. And FCP X doesn’t do this.
Hmmm…but…AJA does ship a capture and output application for their hardware. Just export a self contained QT file, and use that to output to the deck.
But not with an iMac. Unless you want to spend $3500 to test that with an IO HD.”
That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t 100% sure. I said I thought he was going to have to send it out to someone with a deck and a card.
Here’s the OP, it says FCE, but maybe its a typo???:
“So, I’ve got a bunch of footage edited for national broadcast in FCE. However, the TV studio production procedures state that the footage needs to be submitted in either Beta SP, Digital Beta, or Beta SX. Is there anyway I can get my footage onto these tapes at a decently affordable price? I would prefer to do any conversions “in-house” rather than send it out to some third-party company. Does anyone know how I can get my footage to these tapes?
I did a little of my own research and I might need a deck converter or something.
Any ideas?”Looks like the ‘Easy Button’ won’t work here.
How the heck do folks manage to get national level work using only Express?Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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This guy posted this earlier, and when he re-posted it here, he neglected to mention that he was using FCE, not FCS. On his original post where I said he would need an I/O card, I also said I wasn’t sure if FCE worked with I/O cards.
Anyone have any thoughts on that?Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?