projects sandbox

[poita]

I don't know. I'd say there's enough professionals in the industry whose skills probably far surpass ours. The reason major releases are often lacking, I think, has more to do with them simply not caring about approaching their projects from a similar perspective we do, or being explicitly paid/instructed to do it differently. Even if we made a company, who would hire us and what would set us apart aside from our philosophy? Talking about sound restoration, do we even do that? For the most part we just capture and sync tracks. Again, if that was their goal, they wouldn't need us to do it for them, because it's a relatively simple task.

However for spreading awareness I think some kind of nicely designed and organized website might serve the same purpose. But making and maintaining that would involve continuous work and hosting/domain cost and I'm not sure anyone here wants to commit to something like that.

With that said, how about expanding on this already existing website with a wiki or something like that? I know that's 3 steps down from your suggestion, but I think it's more realistic.

Just my 2 cents, maybe I'm completely wrong.

Yes, often the releases are bad due to explicit instructions from the company requesting the restoration, or time constraints that are very tight, and the copyright owner wanting it done on time, rather than done to a particular quality level.

We have had clients give 3 weeks total for a full restoration of a 2 hour movie. We have had others refuse to let us do grain management (when it was really, really required) on a *big* name movie, because it was going to take an extra two days, even when we showed them that the result was orders of magnitude better, they chose the worse version.

Forming a company from people on the forums is certainly possible. I worked for companies that started the same way, a group of friends, who wanted to work in restoration. A few tips for anyone starting out, that I have learned along the way.

1) Time is usually the enemy, rather than money
2) Miss a deadline with a big client and they will not use you again, and will probably let other companies know
3) It is a *full-time* job to get work done to suit most client schedules
4) The pay is terrible generally as it always takes more hours than you think it will when starting out
5) You will need to have some kind of demo-reel/portfolio to show potential clients. 
6) You spend a lot of unpaid hours marketing, making and taking calls, meeting with clients either online or in person, packing and unpacking. 
7) Budget time for ingest, backup, and generally moving files around. It takes so much longer than you would think.
8) Budget time for equipment failures, Windows being stupid, file corruptions and other problems beyond your control.
9) Be realistic with the amount of hours the job will take, and then decide if the money you are quoting for the job is worthwhile.
10) Be realistic with how much time you can really apply to this job, if you have other work, family, friends etc.
11) Any work for libraries or government entities usually requires you to jump through government approval hoops that are near impossible when starting out.

Many companies have started out as a group of friends that get together and it can be a rewarding profession. Just keep in mind that once you are a company, you have to think about tax, business registration, and the expectations of clients are that you are a *real* company, that can meet the demands of their clients.
Even if you are half the price of the competition, they won't care if you don't deliver to their expectations, especially time expectations, and when starting out you don't usually have much in the way of backup equipment, or extra people to use if things go wrong.

I'd recommend getting to know some indie film-makers who have more flexible time budgets and doing some work for them at first, where the deadlines might be more flexible, or doing some volunteer level work with an amateur film archive, like a local history society, or group that have sound or film or video in need of restoration, and get a feel for working with a client that isn't another 'enthusiast'.

Just my 2c, there are a million different ways to tackle the work and handle clients etc. If you have a passion for it, and can allocate the time and money required, you could be the next hot restoration company