For they will do themselves in without your help.
Long story so I will keep it as short as possible, a number of months back I was contacted by an existing client to provide them with a proposal for video coverage of a “major” event, this would be a multi-camera switched on the fly, then up-loaded for live a streaming gig.
We would be responsible for providing all the equipment necessary, and the internet connection required to upload the content to “their” provider for streaming,
A proposal was drawn up and submitted and then comes the wait, I have worked with this client before and they always seem to push everything to the last minute, but we plan for that and work around it.
However, as the window needed to stage the logistics to pull this off was getting close to being closed, and not hearing back from the client, I made the “phone call,” now anyone in the business knows how this goes, you want a commitment and a good faith deposit but don’t want to come off as “begging for the business.”
I received a call back from the Administrative Assistant of the person who was in charge of coordinating the event (he was of course out of the office and not answering his cell for either of us), and was advised they decided to go with another contractor.
Oh well win some, lose some, and life goes on, hate to lose a long time account, but chit happens.
Fast forward to now, being inquisitive and having nothing scheduled that weekend I figured why not go and see just what did they buy into.
What I found was interesting, they had a four camera setup feeding a box connected to a Mac which was being used as a switcher, unfortunately for the guy doing the switching, he didn’t have monitors for his feeds, and the views of the cameras on his Mac’s screen failed to show minor problems such as a camera being focused at 12 feet when the subject was at 150 feet.
But that shouldn’t be a problem as he could get on the IFB and make sure his cameramen had a nice sharp focus, oh but he didn’t have IFB, as that crew was using hiking two-way radios such as found at Wallmart and nobody was answering his calls.
So sorry...
Their Internet connection was via a WiFi connection from the motel.
Wondering what their upload looked like, I contacted my son and requested he give me some feedback on its quality, luckily for me he was at home where he has a nice high speed connection to view their HD broadcast of the event.
His reply was something like “you have to be “bleeped” kidding me,” “based on the audio the event is happening, but the video they are streaming is a camera aimed at nothing,” “what the “bleeped” are they doing?
He captured the video stream and I viewed it later, and while I will never critique an amateurs work unless they ask of it, however, once you go pro your fair game and after reviewing the video the only thing I can say about them is Five Stooges…
Oh well, at least the client saved a thousand or so, which sadly, is about twenty percent of what I proposed to do the work properly.
By the way, I received a voice mail on my cell last night from the AA whom I spoke to earlier, and she advised me her boss was pulled into the “upper offices” and summarily fired, turns out his “video guys” not only blew the job up, the caterers he hired (another cost cutting idea) never showed up at all…
Oops.
Wayne
