CompuServe Thread

Harry, Geez, I can't believe it actually took me almost a month to reply to your questions. I've been working a lot lately (gotta pay this darn CIS bill you know). I have found a market in small to medium sized manufacturing firms. Firms who can see the advantages of video marketing but ordinarily could not consider it due to the high cost. I find them in the Yellow Pages! I write them a letter. I send a brochure along with the letter. I call them in a few days. I send a demo tape to those who are interested. I close a few sales. I make some money (which makes my wife happy). I pay for some gear. I do it all over again! What a way to make a living. Actually, I'm just getting started myself. I spent a lot of time last year building a studio in a 100 year old carriage house behind my home. (No you don't need to do this and No I don't recommend it as a good way to start. But I was leaving a 10 year commercial bank job and it was therapeutic for me. Besides, I've got a real neat studio now!). Still, in all, the business is growing and it basically works as above! I also produce and market special interest videos, tape an occasional special event and produce a photo/movie/slide transfer. (Made $5,000.00 in December doing transfers!). I get leads from newspaper articles and give the subjects a call. Then we work out a 50/50 deal on the profits. This way the video production doesn't cost them anything, and we both can make a lot of money. Or we both make very little money. It's risky but there's this risk/reward thing that attracts me. Regarding your second question; 3rd and 4th generation VHS dubs are not of adequate quality for industrial videos. IMHO. If you must work with VHS to begin your business, use a high quality camera, light your shots correctly, use pro-grade edit decks with TBCs and hand the client the edited master. (Keep a dub for your files). If your client wants several copies, you really should consider using at least SVHS or HI8mm throughout the acquisition and editing steps. I use SVHS. I use an Panasonic AG460 camera (which is for sale along with a Panasonic edit system btw.). I edit on the JVC Edit Desk system and dub from the edited master to VHS. Thus, my clients get a 3rd generation dub. The image quality of a 3rd generation dub for this use is o.k. Occasionally, for certain shots or effects you might (underscored and bold) get away with a 4th generation segment, but you'd really want a tuned up system to pull it off. 4th generation stuff is pretty ragged. Oh, btw, I usually interview several persons to gather info about whatever widget the client builds, then write a rough draft script myself. (I'm no Hemmingway but I can usually write a fairly clear technical treatise.) After the client hacks away a couple of times a usable script appears. After the client signs off on the script, I create a shot list from it and video happens! Good luck with your new venture, let me know how you do! Martin

Hi Martin, Thanks for the very informative reply – more than I expected. It sounds like you are doing quite well. I am in my 2nd year of business but do this only part time so I am not as aggresive as you. I am currently working on my scriptwriting skills – I feel that this is the most critical and difficult (for me anyway) part of producing a video. So far I have read "Corporate Scriptwriting – A Professional's Guide" by Ray DiZazza and "Scriptwriting for High-Impact Videos" by John Morley – both excellent books. I may decide to hire out for this job though. I have also read "Industrial Video Production" by Mitch Lang. In this book, Mitch describes how to produce industrial videos for small companies with low cost gear. I guess this sounds like the type of work that you do. I shoot in Hi-8 on my Sony VX3 and edit from a computer controlled Vdeck to a Sony Hi-8 deck. I like to use Hi-8 as a edit master since I can dub high quality audio onto the PCM tracks. The quality of the resulting 3rd generation VHS is OK. That is whay I asked you about your 3rd generation quality – I wanted to know how good the JVC decks were. I advertise in our neighbourhood Yellow Pages at a very reasonable rate and it gets me a steady stream of business without me having to run around drumming up customers. I shoot events and do a lot of editing. Also do film/stills/ foreign transfers and dupes. I am very interested in making a SIV but have not come up with any real good ideas yet. I started to produce a SIV on how to buy a used car but lost interest after it became too complicated and not really knowing how to market it. How do you sell them? What SIV's have you done? Maybe I will buy one of yours.

(I'm Gary Meyer with TAO Media Systems) TAO has begun shipping a JVC direct 12-pin interface with our Editizer AB roll controller. You can dial into JVC's ProFax system and request document #366–it will send you a fax of all the details in a few minutes. The ProFax number is 201-794-3238. I agree–I love the S-VHS format and this is the greatest breakthrough for S-VHS editing we've seen. This interface has really struck a chord with a lot of folks looking at editing systems right now. Gary

Zeddock, Sorry about my delay in replying to your question. It looks like Gary Meyer helped you (and me) out with a reply. A big thanks to him! As for myself, I haven't seen any 3rd party hardware advertised yet, but I expect it will happen. This CTL time code thing is just too cool for developers to ignore. It's very fast and easy to use. Martin