The Mentoring Room - Ask the Working Pros

Hey Mark! We are planning to "fair use" some of these assets. Not yet sure if there will be a cost involved or not – you should check out Bigger, Stronger, Faster at Midtown Art and see how much archival stuff they used! I was surprised at all they used, but I'm guessing they spent some pretty good money on it, because of their producers.

I'm probably going to get an HD DVR to capture more on my own in the meantime! Thanks for your suggestions...

Hi, I am new to the D-Word and relatively new to film making. I do have a multi-media background in experiential marketing – business theater mostly. I am looking for a relatively inexpensive video camera to take onsite to Peru to do some B-roll filming. Any suggestions?

Hi everyone, sorry I have been out of the loop for a while. In response to Darla, I had to deal with the time code issues too. I am not sure the semantics of all languages as I had to deal with Korean, but let me just suggest again that the fastest, cheapest way I found to do subtitling is buy getting a foreign exchange student in that language and teach them how to subtitle. Use them as an intern (sometimes you can get them for free if they are interested in your project) or pay 10-$20 and hour. That is way less than paying someone to translate, then pick what you want to use as clips. I felt I got to know my "Characters" better this way because I would watch the whole interviews on dvd. It is just a suggestion, but after I spent six months doing it the way you are doing it(on paper), I spent the rest of the time right to dvd and the project ran better.

Hello everyone,

I haven't posted for a while. I'm currently working on my trailer for www.knowingevil.com. Is there any way to gather high quality images for free? I'm looking for art from the Enlightenment era in Western history, also footage from WWI & II and the Holocaust. Thanks again to Len, for helping with September 11th a while back :) Any help will be most appreciated.

Rights are a huge minefield, as I'm sure you've gathered. The slight advantage here is that you're putting together a trailer which will not be broadcast – or is it for your website?

There was a similar request here a while back – see hidden section for suggestions on WWII material

I am wondering if anyone might have any recommendations for a tech problem that I am having. It has come to pass that the audio jack in my Canon GL1 camera is not working anymore. I tried to get it fixed once, to know avail. The camera has a little life in it left for fun projects, and we have decent mics.... thus, I am considering venturing into the secondary audio recording unit audio as a match up for the camera. I don't know much about field audio. Does anyone have any recommendations for a hard disk recorder in the reasonably affordable range?

In reply to Mari Heavey's post on Wed 18 Jun 2008 :

Mari – Take a look at the Canon HV20 with a Beachtek audio adapter...should be able to get one pretty reasonably these days. Not like the pro gear, but the picture quality is pretty amazing for an inexpensive camera. Look at BHPhoto.com Buydig.com, or even at Circuit City...

Good luck!

-Steve

In reply to Katinka Kraft's post on Wed 18 Jun 2008 :

I recommend the Zoom for secondary recording. Don't forget the slate slap.

In reply to Katinka Kraft's post on Wed 18 Jun 2008 :

The expanding mini-plug jack is an easy fix. Whoever tried to do it didn't know what they were doing. I would send it to an official repair shop.

In reply to John Burgan's post on Wed 18 Jun 2008 :

Thanks very much John. And it is not for the website, only for funding, so I am lucky to avoid the minefield for now :-)

I am making a trailer to privately raise money with. If I use this trailer to apply for grants, will I get in trouble if I don't have all of the rights to the material used? I'm not sure if I need to consult a lawyer for this one, but any help will be most appreciated.

you won't get in any legal trouble, monica, and people do this ALL the time... the only "trouble" you might get into is if the clips you are using are well-known and absolutely indispensable to your film. The grant agency may question whether you can raise enough money to use such clips. for instance, if you wanted to use MLK's "Dream" speech... but if you use a photo of an old Model-T car, no one's going to blink an eye.

Another thing to consider is how the owner of the rights to the clips would feel about you using their material to raise money for your film. If it were some corporate newscast or promo film of some mega-bucks rock band, I'd say don't worry about it. <puts on flame-retardant suit> On the other hand, friends of mine—starving documentary filmmakers who risked life and limb to get dramatic footage—have had people cherry-pick their films to make fundraising trailers for their own films, sort of conveniently forgetting to mention to funders that they haven't shot an inch of tape themselves. It really sucks to find out that others are using your work for their fundraising while you yourself are living below the poverty line.

The point is that even if you intend to license the footage at market rates later, if you're using footage owned by a real person who is not a multi-millionaire or faceless corporation, you should have some arrangement with them. Yes, you can probably get away with it, but it's not ethical.

Yes, but hardly relevant here as Monica's looking for historical images – see her original post & project website.

Oops, I did read the original post, but forgot since it was a couple days ago and never got around to taking a look at the site.

Thank you Mark! I really appreciate your input. Sadly it was Canon who we sent camera to for repair and it worked for 3 months and then malfunctioned again.

In reply to Katinka Kraft's post on Sat 21 Jun 2008 :

I sent my DVX out for repair once – for a similar problem, actually – and the shop did a lousy job (Repair Specialists in Tennessee). I found the Panasonic service rep for the entire southeast and he agreed with me, told me which shop I should REALLY send it to (on his dime) and chewed out the shop that failed to fix it properly. "Squeak! Squeak!" said the wheel.

make a reel and get busy.
Take the first job offered and never stop looking for better paying gigs.
My first tv job paid a whopping 3.35 per hour. My next one paid 18k a year at 70 hour work weeks. I did not look at it as being exploited. The year before I was paying good money to learn this craft and now I was getting paid to learn much much more.
sweet.
With every addition to the family, I simply had to quit and get rehired at a different level elsewhere. At one point in my career, I moved my family to five states in as many years, salary climbing and dream-chasing. I worked my way into a six figure salary, a bald head and an ulcer or two.
I'm self employed now. Still love what I do. I pay bills by editing and shooting for clients and I still dream chase by making labor of love productions on a constant basis.
Don't stay in one place too long. It'll make ya feel secure.
I think my record for a staff gig was 2.5 years.

Thanks for the valuable advice Christopher, Mikal and John :) This takes some of the pressure off.

Alright: I'm a radio reporter, and I want to buy enough video gear to start making movies next week. These would be short docs for the internet. I want to spend less than $10,000 total on a camera, computer, and software.

I am forming a plan that includes the Canon HV20, an iBook (my apt is too small for a new desktop), and Final Cut. Then I figure I want a wireless lavaliere to supplement my existing "radio" gear. I have a zoom h4.

Keeping in mind that I'd love to upgrade my gear once I pay off this round of credit card debt, where's the best place to cut corners now?

If I'm very proud of a movie that has started life on youtube and then I want to submit it to festivals, what should I know?

Eric:
Before you start making any more movies, there's a secret to filmmaking that we all had to learn the hard way, or in my case, pay thousands of dollars. But since you asked, I will tell you. You always should rghopdjjjjjjjjjjjjjj (chokes on pork rind, keels over dead).

Eric...Speaking as a radio reporter who started making movies a few years ago, I'd say you're on the right track. You can make the move for a lot less than $10,000. More like three thousand.

You could make do with Final Cut Express, rather than Pro. It's still an amazingly powerful app, and you'll get a discount when you upgrade to Pro.

Get a Macbook rather than a Macbook Pro, with the smallest drive and the bare minimum of RAM. Upgrade the RAM and hard drive yourself. You can Get 2gb of RAM and 300 GB internal storage for less than $300. Buy a 30 dollar external case for the extra hard drive, which is now your "traveling" media drive. The Macbook will run a 20 inch monitor. Get a couple of massive firewire drives, one for media and one for backup.

With all the money you save, splurge and buy a great microphone.

You'll still be using it long after the Macbook and the Canon camcorder are a memory.

Equipment-wise, this is a great time to be starting out.

I recently started a blog for a feature documentary I want to develop on trends in American crime reporting as they relate to gender, racial, and economic discrimination. I would like to share my findings and insight with anyone who is doing research for a similar project or is just interested in the topic. Here is the main link.
http://covergirlsthedocumentary.blogspot.com/

You can either set up an RSS feed to your page/Google or have my postings sent to your email. And if you are a member of any of the following sites, the blog also appears there...
LiveJournal – http://syndicated.livejournal.com/covergirlsdoc/
Wordpress – http://leshengliu.wordpress.com/
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/notes.php?id=614752582&ref=wpb

Thank you and let me know if you have any questions!

lesliu@gmail.com

In reply to Eric Klein's post on Mon 23 Jun 2008 :

Joe's pretty much nailed it, especailly about the sound gear. Still using the same mics I bought 12 years ago.

The only thing I'd add is that if you really have $10K, pick up some lights/stands/grip gadgets. A medium sized softbox, a flood fixture and focusable fixer will go a long way to doing good looking talking head interviews. And like sound gear, light gear lasts forever. I've got lights and stands going on 20 years old, still as good as the day I bought them.

Is anyone familiar with the use of European and American art (17th-20th century) in documentary film? If so, I am looking for any information that will be useful as I make preparations for a trip to Europe to gather images. I have talked with The Bridgeman Art Library (a provider of high-res images for a price) but I'm wondering if there are cheaper ways to get rights to use images from museums. Is something older than 200 years, passed its copyright? Do I still need permission to use these older images? Is it fairly easy to obtain permission or a minefield? Any information regarding this area of documentary will be highly valued.