Media Communications Association - International
San Diego Chapter
1999 Meeting Recaps

Over 30 people finally sat down to listen to Maria Piscopo, who brings years of teaching experience to creative professionals, present tips and techniques that could change the way you run your business. Maria customized a couple of her existing seminars for our meeting and the result was "Real World Marketing". Maria started with her 4 point selling strategy that includes: Qualify, Approach, Present and Follow-up. 

The first step is qualifying potential clients. You must know that the people you are trying to sell your services to actually need them or you are wasting your time. So have some specific questions ready as you start to dial that phone. "Who is the person responsible for buying scriptwriting services -- duplication services -- multimedia design services -- graphics and animation? You fill in the blanks, BUT be specific. Don't try to sell everything. In fact, this is NOT the time to be selling. Just get the contact.

The next step is the approach -- getting more information, or an appointment or an agreement to receive your sales materials, demo tape, etc. Treat this a matter of fact step -- after all, you did pre-qualify this person, didn't you? You should have some scripts ready for some of the responses you will be getting from the people screening the calls. There are basically three things that can happen. 1) Someone will ask you "What this is regarding?" Have your responses ready. 2) Someone will tell you that the person you want to talk to is in a meeting, or doesn't take appointments, or even that there is no need for your services. Be ready with your who, what, when, how questions. And 3) Someone will say "Sounds interesting." So close the deal already! Book an appointment to see this person.

Your presentation comes next. The simplest advice is to present the benefits of working with you, not necessarily the work itself. And explain the process. The client want to know how you work. 

Follow-up is actually part of this first meeting. Don't wait until a week later to follow-up -- do it right then as you are shaking hands. You have 3 options here as well. 1) Set up a visit. 2) Find out when to call back. 3) See if it is OK to send them more or updated information.

Solar Turbines Video Department's  ITVA (now MCA-I) members John Gray III, Jim Larime and Dempsey Copeland opened their doors this month to a group of around 30 people for this meeting that featured two presenters and a Vendor's Corner.

Broadcast Rentals is the new kid on the equipment rental block. Ozzie Oslund, from the Phoenix office , dropped by for this month's Vendor's Corner to say hello and let us know that Paul Hopfensperger will be the Broadcast Rentals rep here in San Diego . Ozzie and his wife Deborah Smith, who is the owner of Broadcast Rentals, gave away two great Broadcast Rentals black T-Shirts and promised us that Paul will transfer his ITVA (now MCA-I) membership to the San Diego local. Welcome to San Diego ! 

First up on the official professional development program was Ron Hyatt, Hyatt Audio Interactive who kept the group entertained with his insight on how to get better field audio faster and easier. The challenge is to get good sound in unpredictable, noisy environments, working around the camera. And do it when sound is not really given the same consideration as lighting until the producer gets into edit. The difference between good and bad sound is about 5 minutes.

Key Audio Insights

• Check with the sound op after important takes. Better -- have the producer listening in on headsets
• Recognize that the best audio is hard-wired and every day the problems with RF increase with the increase in wireless
• Be able to tell the sound op what you want --  what you will settle for -- and how the take will be used in the final edit
• If there is more than one talent -- how do you want it mixed
• Shoot b-roll before you shoot the interview -- helps relax the talent
• Get room tone with and without AC
• Use booms whenever possible
• Consider the wardrobe before the shoot. Avoid T-shirts, turtlenecks, jewelry, satin

Bottom line is to talk things over with your sound op and set the ground rules. Then, you won't have to fix it in post!

SteadiCam owner and operator Carl Perkins rounded out the program with some SteadiCam tips. When you know you want camera movement, but don't have all the moves exactly planned out, SteadiCam can be very useful. The body mounted camera stabilizing system allows the camera the freedom to go wherever the operator can safely walk or be carried by a vehicle or crane arm.

Good Times to Use SteadiCam

• When you want to move through doorways, around corners, up/down stairs, over outdoor terrain or shooting from a vehicle.
• POV moves through rooms or past props or objects, giving the viewer the feeling they are moving through the scene.
• Tie elements of a scene together with one exciting shot.
• Move with talent as they move through the scene (following or leading)

Time & Money Saving in the Long Run

• Set up and light for longer SteadiCam moves
• Less equipment and crew than alternate choices
• Make quick and easy adjustments to the camera positioning
• When the camera needs to be instantly adjusted in relation to the subject.

Misconceptions

• It can't pass directly over the heads of people sitting - use a crane or jib.
• Can't move from ground level to head high
• It doesn't work in a helicopter. Use a mount for helicopters!
• Won't work on steep, slippery or unstable surfaces

About 30 people gathered at the Ayres Group downtown to learn some of the newest techniques in computer animation. 

First up was John Munoa, Creative Director at the Ayres Group, who gave us some general background on the company. Their specialties include architectural and legal animation. Their best-known recent work is the animation of the new ballpark downtown that has been shown by all the local news outlets. 

Every computer in their office is part of their render farm, so when they’re not being used by the primary user, they’re rendering animation for someone else. This has cut their turnaround time to as little as 24 hours for small projects or fixes. 

He showed a program they produced for the new mall at Farmers’ Market in Los Angeles . The program featured 3D renderings done with 3D Studio Max, historical montages and diagrams of the new layout. The budget was around $150K and included a custom song performed by Frank Sinatra’s former band. The program was so successful the mall was 100% leased before ground had even been broken, and the logo they designed for the video has been adopted for the mall itself. 

Curt Peck from the Ayres Group then showed excerpts from a feature film produced by Four Square Productions called "Black Dawn," starring Lorenzo Lamas. Curt used Photoshop to remove wires from special effects scenes. For film output, you need to work in a resolution of at least 1K by 1K, and usually 2K by 2K. 

Gerald Hines then showed a Metabolife commercial the Ayres Group worked on for Four Square . Using a combination of 3D Studio Max, Elastic Reality and Photoshop, they were able to make a Chihuahua talk, kiss and roll his eyes. They also did animated effects on other dogs in the spot. The budget for this animation was about $20K. 

Gerald also showed a piece they did to showcase the expansion of the Convention Center. This 3-4 minute program had a budget around $90K. Gerald pointed out parts of the animation that helped the client visualize the final product and make subsequent changes to the design based on how it looked in the animation. Gerald mentioned this as an often-overlooked benefit of 3D animation. 

Even though most of the projects shown were high-budget, Munoa emphasized that it really depends on the project. They recently completed about five minutes of animation for 24-Hour Fitness that only cost about $5K. Rather than thinking in terms of cost per finished minute, deal with how many days it’s going to take the animator to complete the work, at a cost of $500-1,000 per day. 

Cam McMillan from Subito Studio closed out the evening’s presentations. He showed one of his demo reels and talked about how the initial costs of setting up a computer animation workstation has plummeted to the point that just about anyone who wants to get involved in the field can. (Which is not always a good thing - obviously if you’re selecting an animator, you want to see previous work and make sure you’re getting what you pay for.) 

One of the last points Cam covered was that he finds projects almost always go more smoothly if an art director is involved. 

At the end of the presentations, John Munoa gave all who were interested a tour of the Ayres Group’s facility. ITVA (now MCA-I) would like to thank our hosts and presenters for a great meeting!