Making Your Demo
Preparing Your Media
We can use most formats of tape but we cannot use HD, Digital8, D2, or Digibeta. We can rent any of those decks but the you're gonna have to pay for it. If you happen to have a camera that can play a tape you need, feel free to bring it in and we'll hook it up. We'd be more than happy to recommend a place to have these formats transferred if you're interested, just give us a call.
Prepare your material like this:
TAPE: Cue your tape to the start of your scene. Simple as that. If there is more than one scene on the same tape, rewind to 0:00:00 then find your first scene and notate the time code. If it's ten minutes and seventeen seconds into the tape, your counter will read 0:10:17. Do the same with the next scene. If you have four scenes on a tape, bring in a list that looks like this example:
* 0:10:17 - I kick Robert DeNiro in the nuts then do a monologue.
* 0:35:15 - I slap a trained monkey. He slaps me back. I do a monologue.
* 0:55:12 - I take a pull on a cigar and scowl. Good for a montage shot.
* 1:22:13 - I pour a milkshake over Clint Eastwood's head. Monologue.
After you've made the list, rewind your tape to 0:00:00.
DVD: DVD functions much the same as tape as far as the time code goes. Find your scenes and notate the time. The main difference is that you cannot cue a DVD so don't even try. It will only lead to heartbreak. Also, if your DVD comes from a home DVD recorder, make sure your disks have been "finalized." If you don't know what that means - just make sure that you can play the DVD on a plain old dvd machine. One that did NOT do the recording. If you can play it, then we probably can too.
TIVO OR DVR: If you have something recorded on a TiVO or other DVR, bring in the box - yes, the whole box - and we can transfer your scenes directly from your unit into our computer. Just cue up your scenes basically as described above. DVRs are usually very good about providing time code so making your list will be easy.
• MAKE SURE YOU BRING IN YOUR POWER CABLE AND REMOTE CONTROL as these boxes are useless without the remote.
• We can work with almost all DVRs but we have had some trouble with Comcast boxes so please keep that in mind and have a secondary source for your material if your DVR comes from Comcast.
iPOD: If you have video on your iPod - whether a show purchased on iTunes, a podcast, or a DIY distribution - we can use it. Just note your time code as with the DVDs. If you have an off-brand MP3/video player, you'll have to bring in your own TV connectors too.
DIGITAL FILES SUCH AS QUICKTIME, AVI, MPEG: While it feels like bringing in digital files will make things move faster, that's very rarely the case. Most digital files must be transcoded into an edit friendly form - that's often time consuming and sometimes it doesn't work at all. Usually the fastest medium is the good ol' DVD.
• If you MUST use digital files try to use Quicktime, it's the easiest to transcode. If you want to get all technical and stuff, create a Quicktime with a DV/DVCPRO codec or AVID DV codec.
• Not recommended: raw MPEG, .WMV (Windows Media), or Flash. If you have a file in one of these disfavored formats and you absolutely can't get it any other way, we can try to work with it but results won't be guaranteed and you'll have to pay for the time spent figuring it out. We're super smart like robots from the future, but even the Terminator had trouble finding Sarah Conner.