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Video job on a d7000 niko

T

trjwv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 24, 2010
201
0
kentucky...Go Cats
I have been offered a job videoing a safety training commercial for a local corporation. I' m a photographer, not a videographer, but hate to turn down the job. I have a d3s but think I will use my d7000. The script is four scenes, 1. Employee having a heart attack and what to do.
2. Calling 911 and ambulance arriving.
3. Arriving at hospital
4. Post checkup at doctors office.
Their script not mine. I think I will purchase a bode mic, but will use the d7000 and my RRS tripod. Is iMovie good enough to put together?
What should one charge, I think at least two takes of each scene should take me four to six hours total time, including setup and travel. How many hours should it take to setup in iMovie. Any suggestions I should be aware of and how much to charge? I was thinking about 75.00 per hour. Maybe if this goes well, this could be another service I could offer. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks...
 
Allow me to step into the minefield with you...

Are you expected to shoot, direct, edit and deliver this to the TV station?
 
martinX said:
Allow me to step into the minefield with you...

Are you expected to shoot, direct, edit and deliver this to the TV station?
Click to expand...

I think Just shoot, edit and deliver. The only directing would be positioning for the correct lighting. But good matter to verify before quoting.
 
trjwv said:
I think...
Click to expand...
I'd say this is a tricky thing for a first timer, especially someone who doesn't describe themselves as a videographer and has no experience in delivering to television.

Rather than give you a simple list of things to do, I'd like to ask some rhetorical questions which will point out the pitfalls to avoid.
  • have you established who is doing what? who is actually the "producer"? will they be at the shoot? It is their vision that you are shooting so they have to be able to tell you what is in their head and you have to be able to capture that.
  • has someone made a shotlist?
  • has someone arranged the location and the actors? do you have exclusive access to the location or is it being shared while people try to work? Has someone got releases from all the actors?
  • will anyone be speaking on camera? have you checked the Røde mic (I assume you meant Røde) for how well it will perform under the circumstances. Will it be mounted on the camera (picking up all the camera noises) or will it be boomed?
  • you mentioned an ambulance. has it been arranged for the day. you may need it for longer than you think - is that OK. has the ambulance company agreed to have their ambulance in the ad? In writing? have the ambos signed model releases?
  • you mentioned a hospital. has the hospital agreed to be in the shoot? In writing? Has someone let the security department know. Security guys can be very twitchy around video cameras.
  • who has public liability insurance for the project? if someone, for example, trips over your equipment because you've placed it on a footpath, you may be liable for any damages.
  • what does the TV station want out of this? what format? what medium? can you deliver broadcast safe material or will they be doing that? What happens if your material doesn't meet their specs? Is this prime-time TV or local community TV. Different audiences will have different expectations.

These are rhetorical questions, so I don't want you answers. They are questions you should ask of yourself and of the people wanting the ad. Have the people wanting the ad put a dollar figure on what they think the ad will do for their business?

Is iMovie good enough to put together?
Click to expand...
While iMovie can put a sequence together, but (IMO) it lacks the fine control I like plus it doesn't have all the tools necessary for producing a broadcast legal sequence. iMovie's forté is making home movies. I'd put iMovie things on the web, or on an intranet, but I wouldn't dream of sending one to a TV station. Having no training or experience in this area, I wouldn't send anything to a TV station but I know enough to know it's a whole different ballgame.

Short answer: no.

Quick anecdote: I make stuff for direct delivery to customers, for our intranet and for presentations. I have basic equipment, helpful colleagues and do OK (IMO). An ad was recently shot here at the direction of Head Office. The ad was of (I think) 30 seconds duration, it may be longer and/or they may recut to create several ads. My boss asked me to shepherd them around the place to avoid annoying people.

They had:
  • 4 trucks full of stuff (including catering)
  • 10 cars
  • a director, an AD who yelled a lot (she was really good - I've never seen an AD and I was most impressed)
  • two reps from head office
  • a rep from the creative agency
  • a DP using an Arri Alexa on a motorised dolly and a dolly operator
  • lighting guys, sound guy, one stills photographer (Canon 5D Mk II), one B-roll cameraman (Canon 5D Mk II)
  • people people people
 
Don't you just hate it when someone trivializes what it takes to do a successful professional job? I think the OP is getting in way over his head and it could have a negative affect his photography reputation. Here's what I think he should do. Sub it out and then tag along as producer. He can take credit and get paid without having to deal with all the issues he knows little about. Then, after he's subbed out a few jobs, he can make an informed decision on whether he should be doing this type of work. But anyway, to say that he's doing the edit in iMovie shows that he really doesn't have a clue. Heck, he didn't even know the name of the mic he was thinking of using. I shudder to think of the quality he's going to get when he's clueless about what he's doing. The audio you get on DSLR sucks even with a decent mic! It's usually only good enough for synching. There is a HUGE difference between shooting stills and video.
 
THX1139 said:
Sub it out and then tag along as producer. He can take credit and get paid without having to deal with all the issues he knows little about.
Click to expand...
Good advice. I'd change it to : "tag along as assistant". Take the opportunity to learn. Also, take stills at the time of the shoot. Great for web use or printed material. You can't use frame grabs.

This also builds contacts in the industry.
 
I definitely agree with the advice given so far on this. If you try to tackle this yourself without ever having done anything like it before, odds are 99.4% sure to be disastrous. There are too many pitfalls in this project for someone with no experience, even with martinX's guidance to alert you to many of them.

Sound is 50% of any production. Most people will notice bad sound, yet not be able to comprehend what's bad about it. Using one mic on a production like this is guaranteed to fail, seriously. There's always the chance that the client won't know any better and be fine with it (based on some awful commercials I've seen on TV,) but don't be that guy if you can help it. I've never used iMovie, but I'm sure it will only make the job several measures more difficult to finish in post-production.

I believe people can do anything they set their mind to, but the right path here is to take the opportunity to learn how to do it right before you charge someone for it. Many clients don't have any idea what goes into a production (which could be true of yourself as well,) and will blindly trust you to make it work. The result of everyone being inexperienced here is a product that nobody is happy with. Avoid that by finding a crew that has proven experience, and have them do it for you. Learn as much as you can in all three phases of production (pre-production, the shoot, and post-production) and decide then how far you have to go before you can set up a successful production yourself. I think you'll be surprised how much there is to learn, and how many things will go wrong.

Some say that is what film school is for, but you have been offered a job here, and there must be a reason they offered it to you. You'll be a hero if you pull it off and everyone is happy, so arm yourself with a good team and walk forward.
 
wonderspark said:
Sound is 50% of any production. Most people will notice bad sound, yet not be able to comprehend what's bad about it. Using one mic on a production like this is guaranteed to fail, seriously.
Click to expand...
Just on the subject of on-camera mics ... my professional Sony cameras came with Sony "shotgun" mics that sit on the camera (anyone who has used a Sony "shotgun" mic knows why I have put it in inverted commas). I would never use them for anything unless there was absolutely nothing else I could do. At most I use one on Camera 2 for syncing purposes. I always use my wireless lapels. If I had a boom mic setup (and someone to hold it) I'd use that as well.
 
martinX said:
Just on the subject of on-camera mics ... my professional Sony cameras came with Sony "shotgun" mics that sit on the camera (anyone who has used a Sony "shotgun" mic knows why I have put it in inverted commas). I would never use them for anything unless there was absolutely nothing else I could do. At most I use one on Camera 2 for syncing purposes. I always use my wireless lapels. If I had a boom mic setup (and someone to hold it) I'd use that as well.
Click to expand...

Yep, maybe a nice ME67 boom (with an EXPERIENCED boom operator so you don't get wonderful boom noise) and some ECM-77B lav mics properly applied on each talent.
 
It looks like we've had a lot of profressionals respond to this thread. When the OP called it a "commercial," I'm pretty sure he didn't mean for it to be on TV. I'm pretty sure it's just a training video for a local corporation. I've seen many safety videos at my job, and they're always pretty lame and not broadcast quality material by any means.

I think he probably could do it with his equipment, it just sounds like he needs a few pointers on the how.

If the company is anything like most, they're not looking to spend thousands of dollars on a pro shoot. Sounds like they want to spend a couple hundred dollars and just use their own employees.

Am I right?
 
Madmic23 said:
Sounds like they want to spend a couple hundred dollars and just use their own employees.

Am I right?
Click to expand...

Guess we'll never know... the OP has disappeared, and that seemed to happen right around the time he started to get advice suggesting it was a bad idea. Most people only want to hear what they want to hear, or in this case, read what they want to read.
 
Madmic23 said:
It looks like we've had a lot of profressionals respond to this thread. When the OP called it a "commercial," I'm pretty sure he didn't mean for it to be on TV. I'm pretty sure it's just a training video for a local corporation. I've seen many safety videos at my job, and they're always pretty lame and not broadcast quality material by any means.

I think he probably could do it with his equipment, it just sounds like he needs a few pointers on the how.

If the company is anything like most, they're not looking to spend thousands of dollars on a pro shoot. Sounds like they want to spend a couple hundred dollars and just use their own employees.

Am I right?
Click to expand...
I am reminded of Winnebago Man... NSFW for language
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQQfBrSUs0
 
Madmic23 said:
I think he probably could do it with his equipment,
Click to expand...
The OP has a DSLR, a tripod and no mic...

it just sounds like he needs a few pointers on the how.
Click to expand...
... and no experience. I don't think a few pointers would cut it for a paying proposition. It may work if an employee is doing the filming etc, but not if he is a contractor. There's only so much that can be achieved discussing equipment on a forum. Maybe the company has unrealistic expectations about what it takes to achieve even a "simple" video. I'd rather the OP not leave here with the same misapprehension.

Case-in-point: 3 minute sequence, single actor looking at the camera and reciting a script. An hour checking the location, 3 hours to shoot (including getting the damn wireless lapel hidden and not rustling, and telling the noisy girls in the room next door to hush...), a couple of hours to edit. Five, six hours for a "simple" 3 minute piece. My clock is a bit more open-ended than a contractor's, but the principle's the same.

The questions I posed are a reflection of my own screwups. :D
 
The Governor of my lovely state certainly had no idea what it took to shoot a "simple" :30 commercial. He waltzed out of the capitol and told me that he only had fifteen minutes to shoot the entire thing. My first question:
"Do you have the script memorized, sir?"
"No, I haven't read it yet."
"Okay, we'll shoot each shot no more than two sentences at a time, starting immediately."

In the end, it ended up taking a madcap twenty-five minutes, but we actually pulled it off by some miracle. Granted, we set up two complete sets hours prior on the capitol lawn, and I just slapped a lav on his black lapel and called it good.

Good times!
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

wonderspark said:
The Governor of my lovely state certainly had no idea what it took to shoot a "simple" :30 commercial. He waltzed out of the capitol and told me that he only had fifteen minutes to shoot the entire thing. My first question:
"Do you have the script memorized, sir?"
"No, I haven't read it yet."
"Okay, we'll shoot each shot no more than two sentences at a time, starting immediately."

In the end, it ended up taking a madcap twenty-five minutes, but we actually pulled it off by some miracle. Granted, we set up two complete sets hours prior on the capitol lawn, and I just slapped a lav on his black lapel and called it good.

Good times!
Click to expand...

LOL, reminds me of the time the marketing director of a large multinational corporation decided to make a short film by the poolside in between two presentations at their annual get together... Shot in 15 minutes of complete improvisation, entirely written on the editing timeline !

It actually turned out really funny, we scored major points with him that day ;)
 
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