Malcolm R.

Disclaimer: Covid-19 travel restrictions have wrecked my ability to travel and earn. It could be worse as I am stuck on a beach at end of Africa, but there is only so much surfing and not earning one can do. Now that I have got that off my chest, feel free to read on as I wax lyrical about my adventures in broadcasting. I have over 36 years of broadcast media experience and have been privileged to see television go from film (the stuff with sprockets) to the cloud. I have 500 TV commercials and 2500 hours live TV to my credit and have worked on feature films. I have have done virtually every job in television from installing satellite dishes to producing the TV programs received. It has been a wild ride. My experience has given me a well rounded industry capability from concept to final production. On small and low budget productions, I can do it all (Script, Storyboard, Direct, Shoot, Edit & Mix). That said, video is a creative team sport and I am happy to collaborate. Currently, I am editing with DaVinci Resolve on an Apple M1 Mac. I also have a legacy iMac with Final Cut Pro, which I use for clients with older archive material needing to be re packaged. I also use it to give newer projects some classic effects that give a point of difference, as todays effects are all starting to look like bad Betacam edits. My shoot equipment consists of 2 HD Prosumer Camera Kits (small and aircraft friendly). I have a gimbal which works well with smartphones and 2 Rode SmartLav + lapel mics. I had to diversify my skill sets when video went from analogue to digital and have good IT & web skills (WordPress, CPanel and know how to copy & paste HTML code), plus I am not half bad at reading the manual. I can work with most Adobe and other software platforms (the beauty of being freelance since the dinosaurs walked the earth). For the record, I prefer native Apple software such as FCP and in spite of Blackmagic Design's product personality, I am kinda getting quite fond of DaVinci Resolve and their cameras, which do a very good job. As a journalist I have access to EPKs (Electronic Press Kits), which I can let Vloggers use as part of their editorial content, in order to add that #trending media edge to their posts. I am happy to put the same effort into your wedding video as I would for a Jerry Bruckheimer block buster or BBC News ENG shoot. The wedding probably gets more of me for a lot less than Jerry would pay. I have had my Pfizer, but due to Covid-19 restrictions, I have been stuck in a red list country for over 500 days with my only earning opportunity being either cloud-based or stringer work here in Africa or in a war zone where Covid-19 protocols are not strictly enforced. Perhaps Freelancer and you can change that.