jlames
Well-known member
Well, here we are. 2:00pm on Friday and it's the end of the week. No, I mean really the end of the week for me because I thought I was shooting tomorrow in the desert...but not without power. You see we had a scheduled shoot day tomorrow so I took everyone's advice and called IDX to see what could be done about getting us up and running. Remember yesterday when I said we'd be on location about a mile from EVS so I'd stop in and see them and ask their opinion on this whole fill-in-the-other-B&H-form idea you all came up with? Well, I did. In fact, I left the location about noon today while they were striking and headed right over. Rush was out so, with Randy, Tommy and the ever-present / ever-helpful, ever-faithful Toby sitting with me...and the place full of customers...I placed a call to IDX. Michelle, however was out so, really needing power tomorrow, I was switched to Andrea, allegedly Michelle's boss whereupon I attempted to explain that I had a $10,000/day payroll shoot tomorrow, no power and... Well that was about all I got our before she curtly interrupted me, told me to calm down and stop yelling. Here's the problem though; I was at EVS with conservatively 15 customers and three employees sitting there to see what was going to happen!!! Now would you raises your voice in that crowd??? Neither would I...nor did I. To make a long story short, she told me either to calm down or to call her back when I did and hung up. HUNG UP!. On ME! Well, not ME but me.
Not getting her name, I called back to discover it was Andrea who promptly told me she was not going to talk to me until I calmed down. I didn't even get the words out of my mouth to explain to her I was in the middle of a crowd at EVS and couldn't raise my voice before she hung up on me again. AGAIN!!! Tommy, Randy, Toby all sat there in complete amazement that a corporation...a major corporation supposedly at that... would treat a customer this way when all I wanted to do was explain to her that I was going to have to buy at least 2 battery backs that EVS didn't have in stock from EVS and drive myself down to Torrance, about an hour away, to pick them up. Apparently IDX not only doesn't want to give their battery deal to consumers, they don't want to sell them to us either!
So, with all of that said, with an entire company in my presence vouching 1) I'm not a volatile person anyway (producers can't be...we leave that up to Directors!!! We just figure a way to get the job done no matter what the job) and 2) I never raised my voice at all, I'm done with IDX and probably with JVC. With no way to power $25,000 worth of cameras in the desert tomorrow that are now sitting idly on a shelf collecting dust, I've had to cancel the call for 17 cast and crew and spend the weekend figuring out how I'm going to shoot this show. Generators? No. No way to muffle the sound. We're out in the middle of what is supposed to be a western setting with gunfighters. Oh, I could spring for the full quite-power rig but why would I expend $8,000 with TST and the generator company when a few bucks in batteries would do the trick. (Gee, Andrea, I only wanted to buy a couple of battery adapter plates from you. I already bought the batteries from EVS a $400 a crack!!!) Or maybe I'll just pull the motorcoach a hundred feet from the scene and string Home Depot extension cords from the on-board inverter system to each of the cameras. Yeah, that's the ticket! Actually, that's not a bad idea...completely unprofessional (Excuse me, Mr. Juicer, will Local 728 allow you to rig a Home Depot extension cord from my motor coach to my cameras...or is that a Local 600 request???) No, actually, I'm just going to give whomever asks the straight story and simply restate the facts of the JVC / IDX debacle.
Anyway, this is the last rant and rave. I promise. But this soap opera needed closure. Thank you to all of you who either posted replies and recommendations or PM'd me literally in the dozens and dozens. Bottom line: There's no way on God's Green Earth I'm going to deal with IDX anymore.
As for JVC...well, that remains to be seen. It's still one of the best cameras I have found (OK OK, I hear you HVX guys and girls... and Barry, I know the issue!!!) and, except for their batteries and their Focus Firestore issues which, by the way, isn't JVC's problem (in fact, kudos to JVC for sending the units they've received from Focus back to Focus because they didn't meet JVC standards and that benefits ALL of us who are in the field or on stage and really want to relegate tape to archive backup) if JVC will just get their program together AND, from my experience with Andrea and the whole, "Let's just hang up on this guy...twice deal!) find a better partner like Anton Bauer whom we never should have left in the first place except for the "killer deal", we'll stick with JVC. But jeeze JVC, you've got a great product AND a great deal. Just craft the deal as carefully in favor of the consumer as you did with your camera AND pick a better partner and I for one will stick with you. And I',m still mad at having to cancel and re-schedule our shoot tomorrow so you know as mad as I am right now, if I say I'll stick with you, I'll stick with you. Just get your act together and get that guy in New Jersey...you know, the one who hand-writes the certificates (yes, I've been talking to Rosenberg's assistant and know about the guy in New Jersey!!!) a computer...or at least another couple of Monks who can help him copy!
WOW, that feels better but on one final serious note. I hope, with all my heart, that these rants serve to straighten things out for all of us. None of us can afford a camera ... or five... that sit on a shelf until a decent power supply arrives. We make our living with these things, all of us, and no matter how great the picture quality is, if the tape never rolls...if the signal never gets processed, they're no better than a lawn ornament...wait, lawn ornaments include Gnomes...I love Gnomes...Gnomes are way better than cameras with no power!!!
Not getting her name, I called back to discover it was Andrea who promptly told me she was not going to talk to me until I calmed down. I didn't even get the words out of my mouth to explain to her I was in the middle of a crowd at EVS and couldn't raise my voice before she hung up on me again. AGAIN!!! Tommy, Randy, Toby all sat there in complete amazement that a corporation...a major corporation supposedly at that... would treat a customer this way when all I wanted to do was explain to her that I was going to have to buy at least 2 battery backs that EVS didn't have in stock from EVS and drive myself down to Torrance, about an hour away, to pick them up. Apparently IDX not only doesn't want to give their battery deal to consumers, they don't want to sell them to us either!
So, with all of that said, with an entire company in my presence vouching 1) I'm not a volatile person anyway (producers can't be...we leave that up to Directors!!! We just figure a way to get the job done no matter what the job) and 2) I never raised my voice at all, I'm done with IDX and probably with JVC. With no way to power $25,000 worth of cameras in the desert tomorrow that are now sitting idly on a shelf collecting dust, I've had to cancel the call for 17 cast and crew and spend the weekend figuring out how I'm going to shoot this show. Generators? No. No way to muffle the sound. We're out in the middle of what is supposed to be a western setting with gunfighters. Oh, I could spring for the full quite-power rig but why would I expend $8,000 with TST and the generator company when a few bucks in batteries would do the trick. (Gee, Andrea, I only wanted to buy a couple of battery adapter plates from you. I already bought the batteries from EVS a $400 a crack!!!) Or maybe I'll just pull the motorcoach a hundred feet from the scene and string Home Depot extension cords from the on-board inverter system to each of the cameras. Yeah, that's the ticket! Actually, that's not a bad idea...completely unprofessional (Excuse me, Mr. Juicer, will Local 728 allow you to rig a Home Depot extension cord from my motor coach to my cameras...or is that a Local 600 request???) No, actually, I'm just going to give whomever asks the straight story and simply restate the facts of the JVC / IDX debacle.
Anyway, this is the last rant and rave. I promise. But this soap opera needed closure. Thank you to all of you who either posted replies and recommendations or PM'd me literally in the dozens and dozens. Bottom line: There's no way on God's Green Earth I'm going to deal with IDX anymore.
As for JVC...well, that remains to be seen. It's still one of the best cameras I have found (OK OK, I hear you HVX guys and girls... and Barry, I know the issue!!!) and, except for their batteries and their Focus Firestore issues which, by the way, isn't JVC's problem (in fact, kudos to JVC for sending the units they've received from Focus back to Focus because they didn't meet JVC standards and that benefits ALL of us who are in the field or on stage and really want to relegate tape to archive backup) if JVC will just get their program together AND, from my experience with Andrea and the whole, "Let's just hang up on this guy...twice deal!) find a better partner like Anton Bauer whom we never should have left in the first place except for the "killer deal", we'll stick with JVC. But jeeze JVC, you've got a great product AND a great deal. Just craft the deal as carefully in favor of the consumer as you did with your camera AND pick a better partner and I for one will stick with you. And I',m still mad at having to cancel and re-schedule our shoot tomorrow so you know as mad as I am right now, if I say I'll stick with you, I'll stick with you. Just get your act together and get that guy in New Jersey...you know, the one who hand-writes the certificates (yes, I've been talking to Rosenberg's assistant and know about the guy in New Jersey!!!) a computer...or at least another couple of Monks who can help him copy!
WOW, that feels better but on one final serious note. I hope, with all my heart, that these rants serve to straighten things out for all of us. None of us can afford a camera ... or five... that sit on a shelf until a decent power supply arrives. We make our living with these things, all of us, and no matter how great the picture quality is, if the tape never rolls...if the signal never gets processed, they're no better than a lawn ornament...wait, lawn ornaments include Gnomes...I love Gnomes...Gnomes are way better than cameras with no power!!!
