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Posted by Mr. Tapeguy on 06/25/06 18:53
doc wrote:
> 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.
In fairness, while you allude to a number of business segments and
various markets you still don't say who you are. Listen, I don't think
anyone is going to send you a ticking package and I don't think you're
going to get sued. But Bill asked and if there's no reason to hide,
why do it?
> 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.
You don't have to name a specific show - you can do a list of shows
you've worked on that is general enough to not necessarily refer to
these posts. Surely your company has a website.
So you're saying that you get a lot of work from other post houses who
simply can't get the job done on a Mac and if their bosses who
recommended Macs find out the shit will hit the fan?
> 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.
That's interesting. In our area most of the TV stations use Avid or
Pinnacle setups. Macs and/or FCS have made some inroads of late but in
reality, Apple does not have broadcast or news-specific solutions -
certainly an area of weakness for them.
>
> 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)
Okay, your experience, once again, does not equate to that of others.
I think the best use of your time is advising people how to get the
most out of their Avid and Avid Liquid systems rather than
extrapolating your experience with Apple to mean that no one should
ever buy anything Apple. I know that I heard Avid houses say they
thought the HD render time on FCP 4.5 was too slow but the machines and
software are a lot faster now so I don't even think that's much of an
issue anymore.
I am glad your solution works for you and that you didn't go belly up.
I'm sure we'd all like to know more about your business if ya know what
I mean : > .
Craig
http://www.pro-tape.com
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