New forum suggestion: one-person crews

[Chris Hurd]

One of our members, Philip Fass, has made a suggestion via email about the
viability of a dedicated forum for operators who do it all themselves -- in other words,
one-person crews. From Philip: "...a place to share suggestions for people who have
to do everything themselves...running the camera, lights, mics, mixer, etc. Lots of
unique challenges that need innovative solutions."

The idea here is to seek alternative answers to the standard reply of "just hire an
audio person," which we get a lot around here but isn't always do-able. Thoughts?

[David Rice]

Makes sense. Start it.....

[Charles Higham]

Sounds like a very good idea to me. Bearing in mind it's perfectly possible for one person to operate alone with compact but still excellent equipment any suggestions and recommendations would be useful.

[Jerry Porter]

Most of my work for the past 20 years has been one-man-band from news to industiral and I still find myself finding and learning better ways to do stuff. That and the equipment use to weigh a lot more.... I think its a good idea.

[Andrew Maclaurin]

i'd love a forum for one man crews. almost all my work is done alone. sharing tips would be fantastic

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

I chip in wholeheartedly.

[Burk Webb]

Great idea! A one man band forum would be sweet!

[Chris Hurd]

Do we have any existing discussion threads that would qualify for such a forum?

I'd suss them out myself, but am currently neck-deep in newsletter prep...

[Rob Katz]

philip-

thank you for making a suggestion i thoroughly support and would look to as a resource.

chris-

thank you for being open to suggestions that make dvinfo.net a site that only gets better and better.

be well

rob
smalltalk productions

[Dave Mercer]

Yup. I'm up for it as well!

[Michael Wisniewski]

My 2 cents, no need for a separate forum. Just mention that you're a 1-person crew in your post.

With a separate 1-person forum, I think people will feel the need to duplicate the same posts in multiple forums Here's a quick thought experiment - imagine you're a 1-person crew who needs advice on microphones. Would you be satisfied with just posting in the 1-person crew forum? Wouldn't you also want to post in the audio forum ... just to be safe? And wouldn't you rather just post in the audio forum anyway, since you might get advice you didn't get in the 1-person forum? Apply that same experiment to advice on lighting, editing, cameras, weddings etc. and I think there will be a lot of unnecessary duplicate posts.

With the current setup, a single post in the right forum keeps the process practical and the answers more effective.

[Chris Soucy]

I'm tending towards Michaels' view.

If anyone can give me an example of something a 1 man band would ONLY find in such a thread, as opposed to the numerous distinctly seperate components of such work as are liberally spread throughout DVinfo, I could be persuaded, but it would need to be real good.

The possibilities for the "belt and braces" approach by posters seems high to me as well.


CS

[Allan Black]

From my experience on the Panasonic3CCDuser site, too many sub forums makes it hard for visitors, and we found the majority only have limited time on the boards .. and this was before Facebook and Twitter.

New camera owners study 'NEW POSTS' in general and evaluate the quality of, not only the information but the general attitude and promptness of the members with their replies.

If they 'like' what they read, they'll come back a few times .. then maybe join up, otherwise we're all only talking to ourselves.

The wedding sub forum is the one that works very well, from all points of view.

Cheers.

[Philip Fass]

MIchael, to use your example. If I wanted advice on the best $1000 shotgun microphone for outdoor shooting in exteme weather, I'd post in the audio forum. If I wanted to know how single shooters have used the microphone in a shoot when they don't have a "sound guy" I'd post in the new forum. (If I were King, the rule would be, no answers of "hire someone" or "don't even try it." It's all about being resourceful and self-reliant.)

Just a suggestion based on my own needs. At least a few others seem to want it, too.

[Shem Kerr]

I'm very much into the one-person crew thing. I'm right now planning a shoot where I am both crew and cast: where I carry and or operate camera and sound equipment while acting.
However, when I look for information, I'm going to be looking all over dvinfo. So, when I want audio info, I'll go to the audio forum, and look at the appropriate threads. If I need info on one-person-crew-and-cast audio situations, then I would prefer to join in or start such a thread in the audio forum, as against going over to the one-person-crew-and-cast forum [ if or when Chris starts one! ]. I will look in the various forums because that is where the people with experience and expertise post.