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Posted by doc on 06/25/06 07:14
William D: What you say is definately good verbage and definately worth
consideration. I could be just some guy off the street with nothing to do
or some vietnam veteran who is disabled and mad at the world and doing
everything in my power to create animosity to others - - AND - - my not
stating all this helps to support such claim.
The truth however, is that my position is my position and not that of my
clients. That is, were I to state the network show, then someone would
surely call the network, report our cliams, say that the cliams were
inferred as the networks position and . . . well you get the picture.
Moreover, many of the people we bail out are apple/mac users themselves (TV
Stations) and were that information to get back to their respective bosses
who made the purchases of the apple/mac's then . . well, I think you see
would really be cumbersome for us to maintain a relationship with that or
those clients.
At first you might say, BS. Well, we used to post in the Avid slots and did
post everything as you say we should, and sure enough a client of ours
called and said that someone had called him complaining about our comments
about macintosh computers wherein he said that the caller said we were
saying that it was HIM making the claims. A lie of course but nonetheless,
some upset mac user using our website to learn of our client and then trying
to create conflicts between our clients and us.
Our objective is to learn and to help. We produce TV production,
commercials, event production, and a lot of work for national organizations
who just want a quick camera crew and they do the editing. We also do a lot
of contract editing, much of which is work for apple/mac clients most of
whom are TV Stations who grab a piece of late morning or early afternoon
footage and need something quick and dirty for the 5 or 6 o'clock news . .
or . . late afternoon and early evening material for the late edition. they
choose us for two reasons: 1) they're short staffed or don't want to or
can't hold someone over and 2) they don't have a lot of time for rendering
and know that we can pop it in an hour or two at the most. As I say we
started with one machine and now have two identical machines and in the next
days or weeks will add a third to which the machines are networked and thus
we can edit content on one, transition on another, title on another, add
effects on another, etc. back and forth piggie backing to speed up the
output. We have four editors at our disposal and can turn out one of our TV
shows in about 8-10 hours from 3 camera miniDV tapes in our hand to ouput
media in envelopes for delivery. Moreover with the simplicity of the
software to the ease of Windows genre keyboard shortcuts, we have
standardized most of the operations to a SOP (standard operating procedure)
so that anyone who has ever operated any NLE could edit one of our programs
so long as they could identify the equipment (not software - cause the
latter is defined in the SOP write up however equipment rack location
requires some foreknowledge. When we have the third machine we will be able
to turn a tv project in 6 - 8 hours thus allowing us to turn two shows a day
for our normal 9a to 9p work schedules. Currently we shoot 3 to 6 shows in
a grouping session and then edit them over the next 5 to 10 workdays
depending on other workloads. With the new config we'll turn all the shows
out in one week while maintaining other workloads.
We're in the mid atlantic region but our clientlist covers 92+% east of the
Mississippi and mostly in the thirteen original colonies; however, 65+% of
our business comes from a couple handfuls of repeat clients not to include
our two largest tv production clients. That is, when we do our sales
figures we never include our TV clients in our financial discussions because
their by contract and at a moments notice we could receive a 90 day
cancellation notice with an early cancellation check and that business would
be gone. Thus, we never focus on that money as part of our "real" picture
as we call it internally. Our "real market" is everyone else, although the
revenue from the TV clients are equal in value to nearly half our revenue.
Thus if you read this right, you will see that we don't use the TV clients
as part of our budget or cash flow, their revenue is bonus.
I dreamed this three market business up in 2000 when I was sitting in a cold
cheap motel having been evicted from my home when my company had severed me
as VP of Sales when they closed and I vowed not to make the same mistakes
they did in my business by focusing on the biggie client who I instead will
tell off in a heartbeat (see why I don't want our website or name known, I
want people to hear the truth without prejudice or fear of restitution from
our clients) and thus when I started the business the first of 2002 my
first objective was to get a biggie for marketability but focused on much
smaller clients using the biggie merely as a reference. Now, we don't need
either of the two biggie's and lossing them would just mean we'd have a lot
more time to focus on things we want to do but wouldn't have a single affect
on our operations or budget other than free up machine time. Why do we keep
them? Because without them in the budget, their bonus money buys gear. We
paid for our business with cash because we had to. As I began this
paragraph, that cheap cold motel on 12/31/2000 was an awakening. I had lost
my home and my car to banks and I vowed they wouldn't take away anything
ever again in my life.
And thus, the readers herein can take this or leave it as they see fit but I
post our experience because other folks like those in here helped me and my
family climb out of a very deep and dark hole by helping me change careers
after age 50 through networking information and ideas on video production,
and to date I appreciate that still and pay that back where I get the chance
by doing exactly what I'm doing in these paragraphs, by telling the story so
that others can see the light and find the path that works best for them.
Moreover, if I can help someone avoid the mistakes I made through our
blunders, perhaps they'll have the time to pay me back by posting their real
experiences so that we too can not make additional mistakes.
Your US video producction comrad (hmmm, cold war term)
drd :o)
"William Davis" <davisbill@mac.com> wrote in message
news:davisbill-946C58.16332924062006@news.west.cox.net...
> In article <px1ng.1589$6d1.1354@trndny09>, "doc" <doc@anywhere.com>
> wrote:
>
>> the ball is always in my court and that's why i seek out and get
>> solutions
>> that have tons and tons of applications and benefits, not a box. i try
>> to
>> and do think outside the box and our apple/mac solution put us in a very
>> small box compared to our window/pc solution with tons and tons of
>> archive
>> and user group help.
>
> So you say. But again, we have no way to verify where you're coming from
> because again, you didn't post who you are, where you work, or what you
> do.
>
> The paragraph below remains simply what you purport.
>
> No way for us to judge the veracity of anything simply because it
> appears as a string of usenet text, is there?
>
>>
>> as far as who i am, i'm a tv producer and editing house that uses a
>> gateway
>> custom built computers that were nearly 1/3 the price of one of our g5's
>> and
>> even with out avid software is less than the g5 alone.
>
> Excellent. Here's your chance for a public promo. What TV do you
> produce?
>
> And I assume that instead of meaning that YOU ARE AN EDITING HOUSE, the
> sentence should have read "I *own* or *operate* or *am employed by* an
> editing house" which is also excellent. Which one? Where is it? Who are
> your clients.
>
> Larry Jandro, Myself, Bill Farnsworth, Craig Berlin, Steve King, Mike
> Kujbida, and countless others who have posted here have done so in the
> open. We know who everyone is, where they work, and we all have
> verifiable levels of technical or functional expertise.
>
> You see, at this point you're merely a "handle". So let us know where
> you're coming from.
>
> In point of fact, when I've shot in other US locations, I've flown
> talent from right here on r.v.p. around the country to work on some of
> my corporate gigs.
>
> So if you have this much personal expertise, why not simply let everyone
> openly know who you are?
>
>
> we were told by mac
>> that their solution with fcp was the best on the face of the earth and
>> they
>> lied. not only was one of the units defective out of the box but they
> SOUR GRAPES SNIPPED
>>
> Sorry you had problems, but really, how can we judge if your experience
> is relavent to US unless we understand more than you're telling us.
>
> How big is your market. What level of expertise SHOULD the Mac folks
> there have had. An "authorized repair facility" in, for example,
> Portland Oregon should have excellent resources. One in Portland Maine,
> perhaps not so robust.
> As for one in Hooterville, we'd might expect you'd be lucky if they
> could SPELL "return merchandise authorization" properly every time.
>
> So who you are and where you are IS a reasonable part of the discussion.
> Enlighten us, please.
>
>
>> moreover, fcp rendering times were ridiculous. avid is at least 1/3 the
>> rendering time and we were pleased to learn that could virtually drop any
>> file format on the timeline and it worked. our fcp solution as
>> recommended
>> by apple was a total disaster and crashed every time we did this unlike
>> what
>> apple said. in other words, they lied.
>
> Since you didn't qualify your statement in any way, I assume you purport
> that this is absolute, reproducible fact ALL THE TIME and in all
> situations. Do your REALLY think that this the case? If so, I can see
> why you think that each and every one of us Mac users are absolute
> dunderheaded idiots.
>
> But does that include the men and women who use FCP to cut major movies
> and episodic TV, stuff like the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and right now
> a bunch of the FILA world cup soccer coverage world wide including
> Japan's NHK who are using FCP and Apple stuff to do their High
> Definition World Cup coverage?
>
> It's pretty amazing that ALL of us are so stupid - yet we keep managing
> to muddle by.
>
>
> Or maybe your opinion is the result of an isolated poor experience and
> it's time you got over thinking about it as the universal truth for
> everyone?
>
> Ya think?
>
> Waiting to hear back.
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