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How is the market out there?
Hello everyone,
I am trying to get a feeling for what the market situation is like out there. I run a for a Production/Post house full time for the DoD as a federal employee and have my own shop where I do the same.Every now and then I travel to NY or LA to work on a feature but they are far apart due to my “day job”. Due to our proximity to Washington DC and returning clients, I do not have any downtime in my private shop either.
But this also creates a bubble where I cannot gauge the real market. I wanted to hear from other people how the economic downturn has affected their business and how they are dealing with it.
Cheers,
Emre Tufekci
http://www.productionpit.com -
19 Replies
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If you cater to corporate clients, you are feeling the burn. If you are a creator of original content, you are most-likely very busy.
They key in this up-coming depression, is to pitch and create original content for the corporate intities so use to overspending for video. It’s a habbit they held from the 80s and most think they cannot afford video services today as a result of having huge crews milk huge clocks for so long. The folks who can grab a camera, shoot a concept and post ot on their own as a one-man-band are the ones that will survive and thrive as budgets continue to be pulled. This is a trand that will not change once the economy starts turning around. They will have learned the reckless spending is just not something they have to go back to and will have grown use to the easy workflows that allow them to avoid the overhead of their own media departments. We will not see the old “video costs $2k per finished minute” mentality again. It’s been gone a long time… it’s just some didn’t know it.
In a nutshell, if you are not evolving with the changing times, you are taking steps toward leaving the industry.
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Business has been / is GREAT here in Utah. I would like to think that is because the company I work for is so good at what we do but I imagine a lot of our competitors have gone under and Utah has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. As for my freelance friends that I talk to, they say things have slowed down big time. Hope this helps.
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I’m in Atlanta working on broadcast and documentary work. We’re still busy as ever and planning a new facility to hopefully open towards the end of 2010 as we’ve outgrown our current space.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
Our business seems to be very good, we are fortunate enough to live in an area and a city that is really quite booming despite the economy elsewhere.
Our usual product is broadcast commercials, and we have seen a couple of the older and well established advertising agencies in our area shuttered within the last year. Initially we bemoaned their loss (because they were our clients), but found that their clients were now suddenly coming to us directly after the demise of their agencies.
We have noticed a bit of change in the type of work we do. We are doing slightly fewer broadcast commercials these days and quite a bit more corporate work than in the past. It will eventually probably swing back the other way again.
We have also seen a slight change in the size/scope of our projects, whether they be commercials, industrials, or whatever. I think we are probably doing slightly fewer total projects than in years’ past… but the ones we are doing are much more ambitious and of higher budgets.
We’re growing, slowly and slightly. We’ve just added another edit suite and are in the process of looking for another editor now.
I wouldn’t mind having a little more work, but frankly we are about at capacity now and I don’t particularly want to get bigger. A couple of years ago a colleague with a similar business had things really take off… and went from a two-person shop to one with 40 employees. He was bemoaning that he spent his entire day managing people now, and never got to personally do anything creative (and he’s a very creative guy). And personally making no more money in the end. That’s the kind of thing I’ve always been wary of. We try to stay as busy as we can, but not let things spiral out of control.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I can speak to our industry, which is healthcare communications publishing and continuing education. Our clientele ranges from pharmaceutical type companies to medical societies. And as elucidated in my blogs, we also have our own product lines, though sales of individual products are certainly subject to overall economic conditions.
Our rate of producing our product lines (books and videos) is at a continuous level. Outside work varies by client – some up some down, some flat. In general, clients that are publicly funded by their members are down or flat, clients that are funded by product sales are flat or up.We are starting to see signs of recovery however, based upon 2010 planning by some of our customers.
Never take a bad economy as a sign that you should stop promoting yourself. As has been discussed in earlier threads on this board, if your business is slow, take the time to improve your skill sets, upgrade facilities or develop new marketing strategies, so when the market is ready, you will be ready too.
Mike Cohen
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I can speak to our industry, which is healthcare communications publishing and continuing education. Our clientele ranges from pharmaceutical type companies to medical societies. And as elucidated in my blogs, we also have our own product lines, though sales of individual products are certainly subject to overall economic conditions.
Our rate of producing our product lines (books and videos) is at a continuous level. Outside work varies by client – some up some down, some flat. In general, clients that are publicly funded by their members are down or flat, clients that are funded by product sales are flat or up.We are starting to see signs of recovery however, based upon 2010 planning by some of our customers.
Never take a bad economy as a sign that you should stop promoting yourself. As has been discussed in earlier threads on this board, if your business is slow, take the time to improve your skill sets, upgrade facilities or develop new marketing strategies, so when the market is ready, you will be ready too.
Mike Cohen
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Thank you everybody for your input. It’s great to hear from such a wide spectrum of production houses. I think the business models people have suggested are very valid in today’s economy.
I am trying to structure my company (as the federal side is unaffected) to be modular enough to adapt to any changes we might have to face. We are also investing in a lot of upgrades and adding edit suites.
I guess I just don’t want to be caught in a unrealistic expectation of the market. Especially with our planned re-location back to Los Angeles next year. I will be relocating my federal position as well, so there is no risk of loss of income but if my shop is not making money; I still have to pay for the equipment I own personally.
Emre Tufekci
http://www.productionpit.com -
I work in NYC. We’ve been pretty busy the last few months. We do a lot of corporate stuff(sales vids, web content, b-roll,few tv spots) Granted the budgets are little tighter but they are still spending.
Tommy D’Angelo
Editor
Punk Rock Kid
NYC by way of Westchester -
In LA things are rough. Commercial editors not working and many shops shutting down. TV shows are scaling back too…I know a LOT of out of work TV editors. I was for 3 months until I took a job at less than my going rate. Times are tough out here. Plus NBC cuts out 5 hours of weekly programming for Leno…that’s a LOT of jobs.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I’m based in the UK, London….and for me the demand for video is the same as it was before this recession. If anything the demand continues to grow. But I guess it depends on what video field you’re in. I use to shoot a fair number of music videos about a year or 2 ago. Now I’ve moved more towards the corporate world not necessarily by choice but probably more so because there’s a growing demand for my services. Perhaps all the rock bands and rappers are just all broke now because of the economic climate? Who knows.
Mike
Michael Folorunsho
Clicktone Media
http://www.youtube.com/clicktonemedia
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