Steve Kownacki
3
COW Coins
2
Premiere Pro Coins
Forum Replies Created
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My biggest concern would be ambient lighting. Over the course of the day, let alone several days, the lighting in the rooms will change drastically by the sun’s movement. Can you shoot in rooms without windows or at least rooms without windows in the shot? Any natural light coming in can be blocked with Duvetyne or even black landscape plastic or trash bags. Another option would be to shoot at night. You can easily create the illusion of a window with a grid casting a shadow. Hunter is right on about taking lots of notes and still photos for reference too. And the story is what it’s all about as he mentioned – engaging content is king. If you notice on any show like 48hours, 20/20, etc, you see changed outfits all the time because follow-up interviews may be weeks or months later as new questions and insights are developed. It’s not about the clothes, but the content.
Steve
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Oddly enough we had this exact situation a few years ago! My first suggestion is to contact the audio company, maybe they recorded the presentation and you can get a clean copy of it.
Second: Your best bet is to recreate the exact setup- same mic, same podium, same venue, same signal path. Hopefully it’s not too far away. If the audio guy brought in the gear this could be a problem, we were fortunate that the equipment was the house PA. The only difference was that we couldn’t fill the house with people which affects sound reflections. We did re-tape it but it had no emotion because of no audience for the presenter to play off of and it was a different time of day so sunlight was off. Ended up patching in those few seconds of audio here and there and you could barely tell. If it was a tight close-up, you may need to put in a cutaway shot for lip sync issues.
Take along a laptop to play back the previous clips so the presenter knows how the message was originally delivered and try to get the same emotion; let them practice reading along to their original track. If you edit on your laptop, fix it then and there and be done.
On a business note, I know you want to produce the absolute best for your client, but this is not necessarily your issue if your agreement stated that someone else is providing sound. You will have a few hours of production in this fix not to mention travel and setup. You can professionally tell them that there is a solution (described above) that can be provided at X dollars.
Steve
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You might be better off hosting a 1 hour seminar for $249 where you teach realtors to use a flip cam and upload themselves. Give them a camera to take with them and a full instruction sheet on how and what to shoot, how to narrate, how to edit it & upload it. They may just get fed up with doing it and then pay you; or maybe they shoot it and you edit it and upload. Make it VERY formulaic.
You’ve seen the quality of their flyers, they tend not to spend money.
Way back when, when panoramic first came out, we were right on the verge of charging $500 per pano – seriously, we had customers. Then literally the next day Kodak and Motorola (I believe) teamed up and was giving it away! They told you to shoot 36 images – a whole instant camera’s worth in a circle – and they’d create the pano for free. Ugh. We never made a cent. And now for something completely different… I got out and the other guys went on to become https://www.spinimagedv.com/. Fun times.
Steve
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I hear some hiss but alot of hum.
Is all the gear on batts?
Have you swapped out the XLR to the cam?
Only your lights; no fluorescents or cheap wall dimmers around?
Have you moved the location of the cam and receiver to different spots in the room? There could be high voltage conduits in the floor or ceiling inducing that.Steve
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Maybe there could be a bluetooth video tap for iPhone so you get proxys on the phone from the 1st cam, then you could rough cut that on the way home and send the edl to the suite for finishing.
Steve
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hmmm….
Well Clipwrap converted 2 shorter tapes (20-30 min) and 1 54-min tape rather quickly, but is having issues with the 4 remaining 55 min tapes. [I have been working on this for 30 hours now, and will not rent JVC again and will stick with the EX1 & 3] Clipwrap will get near the end of the encode and quit with a long error message to be sent to apple. Best luck so far was to reboot the MAC between conversions and only have 1 item at a time in the queue.I am now trying to recapture those 3 tapes with DVHS on the intelMAC where I edit. I thought it might be that it captured past the end of the tape, but that’s not consistent as others have encoded. All this for a stinkin’ window burn? Ouch.
Clipwrap says it works extensively with JVC, but they don’t elaborate on how they acquired the source footage.
Steve
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Thank you Peter!!!
I have been fighting the JVC issue and have been able to grab the missing the frames but what a pain. Your solution is excellent! And the best part is that Clipwrap retains the original TC. Kudos.Steve
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Bill nailed it, rated him a 4.
What to do?
1)Like any startup, have 2 years of your salary in the bank. If you don’t sell anything else the nex 2 years.
2)Have a years salary for your employee too.
3)Do what you love, sub the rest. If you are tired of production like you say, be happy with what this person can provide. They will never be you.
4)Alot of you time will be managing this person, bill enough to cover that time.
5)Are you not meeting deadlines because you are doing too many non-profitable projects? Maybe you don’t need an employee but raise your rates and cater to better clients.
6)Can you “hire” this person thru an employment/temp agency, let them worry about everything (including a background check) and you simply have an expense. If it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings and no tons of paperwork and legal stuff.
7)Remember you can’t talk to employees the way you talk to freelancers. There’s legal stuff you can’t ask and labor laws to be adhered to.
That’s all I can think of at the moment but there’s plenty more. Good luck!Steve
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[Craig Seeman] “that person to make payment is watching a sporting event”
Hmmmm… I think the Pres of BP was watching a sporting event too. Maybe it’s a trend.
Steve
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Hi Keith
I’m not trying to be rude but the editing you’re talking about is about 15 minutes of work (maybe less – even for a 2-hr show) and you can do it without nodes if you’re using a program that you can cut the audio separately from the video. What app are you using?There’s usually a definite pause between the end of the dance number and the applause; Line up the audio like you mentioned to eliminate the delay, then cut the audio clip at that silence and the beginning of the next song; select the music clips of shotgun mic during the show you don’t want, delete them or group pull the volume to 0; then select the applause live audio and group adjust to the level you like. This is quick & dirty but fast and simple. You can even quickly paste a fade in/out on the live mic clips.
Personally I’m not a fan of “clean” music audio on a live event DVD. I like a touch of the live room, especially if you can hear tap shoes for instance or audience laughter. Using the technique above, all you need to do is raise the entire clips audio to a pleasing mix. Again, depending on your editing application, you may be able to grab all the music clips and bring them to say 50%. Do you have more than 2 tracks of audio? Put the live feed on track 1, (cut the audio as described above at the silence point) then put live mic music on track 2 and live mic applause on 3. I’ll then be easier to select an entire track to adjust.
Why are you opposed to nodes? That shouldn’t take that much time either. Are they not paying for the time for you to do it right?
Steve