Timothy J. allen
Forum Replies Created
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There are generally two schools of thought on this.
Some production companies list many line items and some list few. If you list a lot of line items, you run a risk of clients “nickel and diming” you to get a better rate by second guessing your line item charges. It also can make it easier for a client to figure out your profit margin. For that and other reasons, some production companies tend to be vague about specific breakdown and go with a “blanket” rate.
On the other hand, with blanket rates, you may not have enough details in the contract to spell out clear responsibilities and deliverables. (And that is a good portion of what a contract is for.)
While I’m used to preparing a specific breakdown of services, I generally keep those numbers to myself and give the client a “bottom line” number. If they want specifics, I can easily break it down a bit further (since I already did that homework when preparing the budget), but I tend to start with the “big picture” first. Most of my clients like to keep billing as simple as possible.
It’s a very good question and I’d like to hear other opinions on this.
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Brant, I just sent you an email.
And Mick, I think you are right on target when you say “Bottom line, you can market all you want, have great commercials, broadcast your service on Sunday morning, have great graphics and such during the service. All will be for nothing without honesty, transparency and substance.”
But isn’t that also true about other businesses? For example, I can build great spots for a local restaurant that will bring people in, but if the restaurant serves lousy food, or have a dirty kitchen, people won’t come back. They will tell their friends not to go there – and personal stories from trusted personal friends ALWAYS carries more weight than any video ever could.
-Tim
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Good point on the potential negative connotations regarding the term “marketing”. At my organization, I work on “Outreach Campaigns” (as opposed to “Marketing”.) 😉
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The flash animation on your main site looks very nice, but you’ll want to double check the spelling of some text. (for instance…*Endeavor* to create concepts, *Affect* the lives of the lost, etc.)
Typos on your web page can directly affect your business. (Can you hear someone thinking “If he doesn’t even spell his own material correctly, how can I expect him to spell my graphics correctly?)
Sorry to be harsh on that, but spelling has been shown to be one of the top influencers regarding web credibility.
For more on what makes a web site credible, check out the Stanford Web Credibility Project.
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I’m thinking that the same rules apply for the rest of the body as they do for faces. If you want it to look nice, use soft lights with plenty of diffusion. Also… (how can I put this delicately?) um…makeup is not just for faces. Get a professional makeup artist who is familiar with more than just the techniques they would use with your local evening news anchors.
At any rate, Jim said, certain lens filters can help you achieve a certain mood, and you have several options in post to control your “look”.
Check out the book selection in the art photography section at your local Barnes & Noble or online at amazon. I’m sure there are resources there that will help.
Finally…just an observation…I’ve found that the most compelling love scenes in film don’t actually *show* nudity, they just *hint* at it – through silhouettes, diffusion, or strategic framing and cuts. If just showing *everything* was that compelling, the lingerie business would probably not exist. 😉
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I’m with Grinner. Not knowing more about this, I’d say it could take between 1 day to a week, depending on how much color correction and compositing work needs to be done. Three days is a fair compromise.
As Mark said, it all really depends on how much you want (or need) to do with it. Using multi-cam edit, you could have the first rough cut done within 15 minutes. When I’m working on something that needs to be very *creative*, I really like the luxury of sleeping one night between what I think is the final cut and the *real* deadline. Sometimes it’s REALLY worth it to see the cut after you’ve taken your mind off of it for one night.
That’s not always possible, but when it is, I’d take advantage of it. -
Great ideas, Mark. Stripping down everything that isn’t core would be my key goal… and you absolutely have to keep the audience in mind when you do that.
Even though the jumpbacks and graphics suggestion may not actually make it “better”, that may be what the client *thinks* he wants. If that’s the case, the first thing I would look at would be color grading. Some Magic Bullet film filters can do wonders for clients who are looking for cheap and quick ways to “improve” videos. I hope you can tell by my quotation marks that I see the magic bullet filters as band-aids that won’t save a bad script or bad acting, but color grading and a subtle (albeit emulated) film grain does at least show that there was some extra effort that went into the video.
At least it can help get you away from that “cheap soap opera video” look.
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Opinions vary. For what I do, it works fine. I’m not a salesman for them, so I’m glad you can get a balanced opinion here.
I’m using a PC setup and haven’t had a single problem so far. Of course, I tend to use the tower for duplication and have only been using the Bravo II for printing the labels on the discs.
As far as speed goes, the Auto printer isn’t that fast. If someone came in and needed fifty copies of a disc, I’d give it about an hour. It really depends on the resolution of your labels though.
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Yes, the Copymaster II supports all currently available DVD media including Double/Dual layer DVD9.
By the way, I actually use a Bravo Auto Printer in addition to the Copymaster II. I got a deal when I bought both of them together.
The Bravo Autoprinter has been improved over the past few years and is much better than the old one we had. The old one lost the suction capability that it needed to grab the disks, but the new robotics system doesn’t grab them the same way.
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Our edit suites at NASA Johnson are pretty neutral with gray SONEX acoustic panels on the walls, but there is an occasional “It Came From Outer Space” or “Stars Wars” framed poster decorating the walls. I think one editor has a small alien encased in a lava lamp. (Actually that might be a office now that I think about it…)
Since most of our edit suites are also offices for the Editors, they each personalize them to fit their own taste. They all keep it professional and pretty understated.
By the way, I don’t know how the firing room at KSC is, but I once heard Gene Kranz say that there’s probably still an old ham sandwich stuck somewhere in that network of vacuum tubes they used to send messages to each other in the old Apollo Mission Control. (It’s the same type of system used at drive through bank tellers for depositing checks and coins.) The room looks pristine in historic film footage, but in the old days, I heard that it stunk like only that unique mixture of food, electronics and stale cigars can give a room.