A desperate Graduating Student Director in need of a finished product with a deadline hanging over my entire being.
I Googled Post Houses in the L.A. area, and started calling for quotes AND services; the services do affect the price.
Paul De Cham, General Manager/V.P. of Sales picked up my call, and managed to quickly assess my situation and left the door open, and he was honest from the start., " if my Editors tell me that this is a disaster, we will need to re-evaluate the price based on hours worked".
So I drove the two hour one-way trek to Alpha Dogs. I was greeted by Aracely Marmot, their Office Manager, whose exceptional, warming hospitality I wish I could put in my Actresses for the Screen. Matter-of-fact, I will offer her a small part for my next project.
Paul introduced me to his Editor, Sean Stack, who I spent part of the day with.
Sean worked very hard over this tedious project, fixing some of the glaring errors from previous freelance Editors I used. I am not throwing the freelancers under the bus, actually am very happy with the freelance work I paid for, but the truth I learned from this experience is that for a project such as the movie I created, with the special-effects and Greenscreen footage, a Post House is a MUST. A Post Production Facility has the equipment AND personnel specifically trained to economize hours in the Post-production phase of a film. Getting the cheaper rates of a freelancer does NOT necessarily save a Director/Producer money at all.
Back to Paul. Once Sean and he made the brief evaluation, which they invited me to sit in with them DURING the evaluation, Paul made the handshake agreement of a few set hours to be billed. Sure enough, the work was close to the agreement.
However, when I turned in my then-final copy DVD for the Screening manager at my University there were two file-glitches that apparently did not transfer right.
I called Paul, explained what had happened, and he offered to fix everything and anything at no extra cost to me.
Paul called me back within the one hour time he said he would, and arranged another experienced Editor to finish my project. Sean had the day off, thus was unable to complete the project he was now very familiar with.
Paul introduced me to Herrianne, who spent the day with me.
There was more fixing, due to the media storage device of mine that is becoming defective. Paul and his Editors and Audio Mixer Curtis explained to me about different transferring file/media devices that would most likely help me avoid file transfer problems in the future.
Paul even made sure that I received an extra DVD that I could play tonight while I dropped off the first DVD to the University.
So Students, freelancers, if you need a film that has to be edited with a looming deadline, look no further. Alpha Dogs Inc. is the place to go. They won my future business, and that is not an easy feat. read more