[Todd Terry]

Well just don’t go in with high expectations that you are going to get very much. You didn’t say what models they were, but describing them as “point and shoot” lets me know they were probably fairly inexpensive cameras. If those were water damaged they would likely be good for parts only, as most people wouldn’t attempt to repair them… as the repairs would likely cost far more than the cameras are worth. But they might be good “for parts” cameras.

As for venue and what to charge… yes, I would suggest eBay. You’ll definitely get more eyeballs on them there than more anywhere else. As to what to charge, well, with eBay you won’t have to decide… the market will decide for you what they are worth. Just set a low but reasonable starting price (or even a Buy-it-now price), whatever the lowest you are willing to let them go for. In a case/condition like that, I’d guess something in the neighborhood of 1/10th of the original price (maybe a little more) would be a good starting point.

If they are identical cameras I’d probably sell them together, someone scrounging for parts would find it more attractive to get two piles of parts rather than one. If they are different models, I’d probably list them separately.

And of course, give an accurate description of the condition/damage, you might include “For parts” in the subject heading.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks… will pass all this along.

FORTUNATELY I’m just the go-between messenger and otherwise completely uninvolved with this project. The more I hear about it, the happier I am that I’m not in on it. It does indeed sound like one of the Clients from Hell stories.

Thanks all, and for those of us here in The Colonies, have a great July 4th. Remember… sparklers burn at 2,000°! Safety first!

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “I try to archive everything. But it requires a lot of unbilled time”

We too save everything.

Unless a client would specifically ask me not to (and no one ever has), every estimate and subsequent invoice includes a line item, “Archival.” It’s not much, less than a hundred bucks, but enough to cover the cost of the drive space for the external drives that we back project up to.

I’m probably luckier than some because we do mostly very short-form stuff (there’s few things shorter than broadcast commercials, which is our primary work). Ergo, our project files are not gigantic… probably on average less than 200GB for everything. It’d likely be a different story if each project was several terabytes big.

But yes… the older a project is, the far more likely it is to be challenging to jump right in and start editing on it.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

At minimum it should transition with star wipes.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Betting you won’t hear back from this guy, Bob.

He joined the COW the day he first posted this, and hasn’t been back except for two responses.

I have a feeling he’s one of those guys who was looking for validation of his opinion, even though he was clearly in the wrong… and when he didn’t get it (quite the opposite, in fact), he took his ball and went home.

Just my guess.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Scroll back up and re-read Mads’ advice. It’s right on the money.

Although I would be a little surprised that if you went into the job with the couple wanting the super-simple-n-cheap package that you would have shot enough to later create the blockbuster-extravaganza version. I know I personally don’t really overshoot… I shoot what I need for a job, and that’s about it (but I shoot scripts, not events). Maybe you did.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I’ll pass them along and suggest they give BrightSign a look.

[Mark Suszko] “build all the animation and timing using the editing and compositing tools you already know and have, in the shop, on your NLE system.”

That’s actually probably what we will do, we ran a test of doing that over the weekend. What’s supposed to happen is that you build this signage in the EZsign software, and then the central computer broadcasts the various screens to the various monitors…in beautiful standard def, no less!… (“Why does that look so crappy?).

But each monitor does have a USB port, and we discovered that if you stick a thumb drive in it with an .mp4 or .wmv file, it will autoplay it and they look beautiful, and loop. Sadly, not seamlessly loop though… it does have to think about it for a few seconds and reload when the file completes.

That’s not what they want though… they want signage that the staff can go in and change (prices, items) at will, long after this job is over… which they can’t do with pre-produced video files. But we don’t always get what we want, now do we?

I’m also not really a vendor to them… with the exception of doing the food photography. They already think my schweetie’s graphic artist rates are high (and they are extremely reasonable)… I’m sure they will crap the proverbial brick when they find out what edit suite time goes for in comparison.

Thanks again all…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Rick Wise] “That’s because a smaller-chip camera needs a wider lens to achieve the same field of view.”

Yes technically I should have said equivalent focal length, but Rick is absolutely correct in that it is really the field of view.

I’ve actually seen some lenses on small sensor cameras where the focal lengths were actually marked as if they were 35mm-format focal lengths, when I know they were actually not. I’m thinking “There’s no way that medium-shot is really a 50mm on a tiny-sensor camera”… in actuality it was probably more like 10mm or less… but the lens barrel was marked with what people expected to see, not what it really was.

And yes, the dance goes on…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Obviously the wider the lens the easier it is to achieve deep focus… but you can increase the depth of field on any lens simply by closing the iris (shooting at a higher f-stop).

At something really high like f/22 you’ll get a reasonably deep depth of field, even with a longish lens.

Of course that will radically affect exposure, and might limit you to sunny exteriors, or high ISOs.

Also your choice of camera (or rather, imaging size) will affect the appearance of the DoF. A tiny-sensor camera (like a little HDV camera with a 1/3″ sensor) will have a much much deeper DoF, even at long focal lengths, than a 35mm-sized sensor camera.

The easiest/best/usual way of increasing depth of field is simply pouring on enough light that you are able to stop the lens way down. That might not be the answer you’re looking for (or what would work well in a verité environment), but that’s just the way lenses work. They are rules of optics and physics that you just can’t easily break.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Rich Rubasch] “Can’t stress enough how important audio is in this business while we all are focused on shallow depth of field, aerial shots and gimbal shots.”

Indeed.

Especially for small companies like ours where we usually go on location shoots with a tiny crew where there’s no single person dedicated to monitoring and recording sound (maybe just a boom op)… that makes it doubly important to get the sound right. In those kinds of setups audio can really become a neglected stepchild, so we try to work extra hard to make sure the sound we capture is good. Fortunately a great deal of our work is MOS so we don’t always have to worry about it.

As people have pointed out before… for some reason viewers will forgive bad images to a degree, but they will not suffer through bad sound at all.

The sad thing is though that Steve did what he could and did have a professional sound crew that was supposed to be taking care of that one-and-only thing… and they let him down.

Sadly he is a bit up the proverbial creek on this one….

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com