Movie Film Project

lynn1102 wrote on 4/6/2010, 2:14 PM

I know some of you guys do film transfers. I do lots of film and slide work but have a project coming today that could be very lucrative or a pain in the butt or both.

A man is bringing 4800 ft of 8 and super 8 film plus about 1000 35mm slides and a "boxful" of photos. These go back to 1953 when his first child was born and continues thru 5 more children. They are all grown now.

He wants to do a video history for each child, using only the portions of film and pictures that pertains to them. He would like me do the film in such a way that he could go thru it and the pictures and pick out the shots and pictures he wants for each child. He would then want me to put these six separate shows on dvd's for the kids, and "maybe" add narration.

I've considered burning them to dvd with timecode overlaid, but editing those files could be a pain. I would make sure to keep the original files separately. I've also considered putting everything on a hard drive for him, but not sure if he would have the smarts to use it that way. This was his suggestions - he has an internal 500gig drive with nothing on it which he is bringing along.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks
Lynn

Comments

farss wrote on 4/6/2010, 2:55 PM

I've done this kind of project but with 5,000 slides and some 8mm that was already transferred. We scanned all the slides ourselves. He can still buy a slide viewer.
Get him to review and sort them unless he wants to pay for your time. Get the 8mm transferred and give him a DVD of it with burnt in source timecode, NOT project timecode.
We supplied the original files from the scanned slides and neg on a set of data DVDs. The video DVDs had one subtitle track that displayed the file names of the slides so that future generations could find them view them / get prints made at full resolution.
Client was very happy with the outcome but to be honest we really didn't make much on the job and it was a lot of work. We still have the 4K res Nikon slide scanner though :)

Bob.

RalphM wrote on 4/7/2010, 7:50 AM

My approach to providing a method for film editing decisions is similar to what farss describes above.

I would personally divide this project into two billable segments. For the first part, the cost of prepping/repairing/capturing the film to hard drive and the provision of an "editing proof" with a time reference as Bob describes.

If your customer dicides to do his own editing, he's got what he needs. If he wants you to do the editing, then my advice would be to make the second section billable by the hour. The fact that he wants to arrange the footage in three ways would indicate a lot of rearrangement of sections.

Your customer will probably see the cheap rates on the internet, but he needs to understand that almost all of those assume he puts the film reels in order and they are transferred and put to DVD without further editing decisions. I once had a customer who came up with over 300 instructions (for 4 hours of film) to rearrange footage in segments as short as seven seconds. You don't want to go there on a flat rate....

BTW, (for the slides) IRFANView allows the easy production of an image index that will play as a slide show with the file numbers shown. That can be helpful for the customer to make editing decisions.

RalphM

lynn1102 wrote on 4/7/2010, 8:10 AM

This customer had decided to sort the slides himself and only use the ones needed for each show.
I got the film and a usb drive to put them on. Once he decides what he wants, I get to put it all together. He does understand that this is a separate and billable project.

Lynn