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Signs of the Apocalypse
In the last 6-12 months we’ve experienced some things that we believe are signs of a coming Apocalypse.
1. At major corporations, people are being transferred from previous careers in IT, Human Resources and Customer Service…to positions as Marketing Directors, Brand Managers and VPs of Advertising. Never mind they don’t know a rating point from a pressure point. Experienced (and smart) VPs are getting kicked to the curb in droves.
2. “Senior” Producers at Ad Agencies are younger than my son, and greener than the Chicago River on St. Patty’s day. One of them recently cast a college student to play the part of….wait for it….an elderly lady! Another cast a “how to” video with actors but had nobody on set who actually knew “how to” perform the task needed for the video.
3. These same green Marketing Directors ask for bids on video projects based on written specs, then once the contract is inked, present revised scripts that are impossible to shoot on the agreed upon budget. In fact, they’d be impossible to shoot on Herculean budgets! They’re upset about that fact because they’ve already told their boss it can be done without asking us first.
4. Producers who’ve NEVER been on a shoot before argue about how we schedule the shoot, complaining “we don’t need that much time to do four setups because the shoot is in one location.” Never mind we’ve been doing this for 25 years, have scheduling down to a near science….and most importantly… the location is an industrial complex the size of a small city and it takes 30-60 minutes just to move from one location to the next…NOT including lighting, blocking and shooting the scene.
These are just 4 of MANY trends we’ve seen since the economic bust two years ago. Are we just that “unlucky” or are others experiencing similar trends?
I should also point out that this isn’t a complaint, just a fact that has frankly shocked us. We’ll do whatever the client wants…in fact, our internal motto is from Caddy Shack Greens Keeper Carl Spackler: “we can do that…we don’t even need a reason!”
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
45 Replies
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Apocalypse, ‘eh? I think you’re onto something.
Has been pretty strange around here too. Lots of oddball shifting around in the industry and not the usual players anymore. Lots of newbies, who in some cases, are actually pretty talented on their own. How they will fit into the community of professionals who want to push the buttons is hard to say, but many of the up and comers have put out some clever, good looking stuff. But usually they don’t have an agency creative over their shoulder.
On the production side we do see more corners being cut at least in our realm of work.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production and Post
Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Chris,
I’ve seen EXACTLY the same thing out here in AZ.
What I witnessed over the past two years is that in a headlong rush to cut LABOR COSTS (the single largest fixed ongoing costs of ANY business enterprise) corporate execs would do something that, on first analysis, looks sensible…
If you have, say, 30 folks in a department – and you want to generate significant savings – you cut the MIDDLE personnel out. In other words, to get down to TEN associates, you’d protect the seven lowest salaries of the admins or new folks at the bottom – because they do the bulk of the paper shuffling and phone answering and keep things actually RUNNING. AND you’d cut down to two supervisor types at the TOP of the department, plus a Department Manager or VP cuz you’ve got to have someone to liaise with the suits in the executive suite. And so you cut out the MIDDLE of the department to generate the largest savings while still keeping just enough bodies around to make it seem like you’ve still GOT a department.
BUT…
While yes, you GUT the people who COST you the most – sadly these happen to be the experienced middle and upper middle folks who’ve put in time learning their crafts and who actually know how to PRODUCED QUALITY for the department. These are the folks who’ve risen from the ranks and typically after learning the game, have become what I call the “smart heart” of the business.
The problem is that when you dump these folks, the ONLY people you have left above the FUNCTIONARY level are the upper managers and VP types. And suddenly THESE FOLKS have to do the actual WORK of the department. They’re typically smart enough, and if they came up through the ranks, they also may even have had writing and/or creative chops at some point, but now they’re suddenly having to cover for ALL that lost talent in the middle.
Over the past year, I’ve worked side by side with VPs and Senior VPs trying to write video scripts. They’re educated and intelligent – but the are NOT scriptwriters. And in other businesses, just as your note describes, I’ve worked with rank amateurs who have been tasked with “supervising” work they have NO CLUE about.
These companies will, someday I believe, look back and realize that while the brain might be at the top of the organism – it’s HEART is in the mid-levels. And you can’t create anything lasting and wonderful when you cut the heart out of any enterprise.
A\And someday those same companies will wonder why they can’t DO STUFF like they used to.
And the answer will be that they LET GO of their companies institutional wisdom in the headlong rush to keep profits up. And it’s going to be a LONG TIME before these companies can build that back.
Such is life.
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I just related this story yesterday, and was going to keep it quiet, but now that you guys started……………
This is nothing complex, it’s the usual “how can we get it done cheaper – I don’t care if they are qualified or not” –
A client at Universal (independent production company) had a young, bright editor – so bright, they built their last edit system without me (to my dismay), but this guy did it – so you would think that he was valuable to them – BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !. I was called by them two days ago to do some minor work (I was surprised, because this young guy built the new edit room by himself, why did they need me), and there was this nice young lady who I recognized as AN INTERN from another company in town, who was now editing there. In making small talk, I said “so where is XYZ”, to which she replied “oh he comes in once in a while, but I am now editing here every day”. Which means boys and girls, that even though he was young, but very qualified in both editing and technical skills (enough to not have to even use me) – he was STILL too expensive, when they can get this girl to “edit” for what someone earns in McDonnalds. THAT is how it is done today.Repent – the end is near.
Bob Zelin
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This has been going on for several years now, and when pointed out here by many who recognized the changes early on, in almost every instance they were belittled and met by post after post from Walter and Bob telling them that everything in the world was just peachy. Seems the new reality may have sunk in for Bob?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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There are the middle level people that, as you say, know their business… and there are…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUipWNw0new
From the perspective of the grunts who DO the work, to the pooh-bas upstairs, there is often a large disconnect about what the work is, and how best to do it. Pooh-bas look at bottom-line P/L numbers and the human effort that goes into the production process is considered a “sunk cost”. Your level of talent and experience is not something they can easily commoditize like physical equipment. However, they CAN look at an experienced person’s higher salary and benefits costs and decide that replacing the person with a low-cost beginner saves more money than it costs in lost productivity… because productivity is not directly connected to the poobah’s own performance, and it is very hard to quantify the difference between a pro who knocks out a great edit in an hour, versus a newb who may have to slave over it all day to get somethugn *almost* as good. if the deadline was met, to t he pooh-ba, that’s no net difference, you see?. If it were the reality that the top guys’ pay was linked to the bottom guy’s results, we would all be scouted by talent agents as if we were baseball phenoms or rock stars.
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I’ll jump in here and add my story. I was contacted recently for a bid on producing eight 15 second TV ads. No actors needed, but shooting some live elements, stock footage and a fair amount of animation. Turn-around: 4 weeks. Delivery for broadcast and web. I put in a bid of $20k. After a week of no response, I emailed. Their response, “Since we are a public agency, we had to take the lowest bid.” I asked what the other bids were. $15,000 and $12,725. My rates used to be considered very middle-of-the-road. I really can’t complain, though. The last couple of months have been very good, work-wise. It would have been fun to finish off the year with a $20k project though… At least I can hold my head high because I took a stand for decent rates!
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style! -
On this side of the pond, that started in England back in the middle 80’s with Miss Thatcher and is the habitual scene since then.
Students on practices and scholarships covering have of the positions and experienced (well paid and with own ideas) people being changed by beginners (cheaper and easier to manage and squeeze).
This have been happening in every sector and industry no only in the film&video.
rafael -
Thank you David Roth Weiss for vindicating me: “when pointed out here by many who recognized the changes early on, in almost every instance they were belittled and met by post after post from Walter and Bob telling them that everything in the world was just peachy.”
Last year I posted a couple of times about this very trend, specifically how clients were doing video themselves, using Flip cameras, interns producing, etc. and the responses were incredulous. Now I see that this trend has spread out from Chicago and more on this forum are noticing it. There is a fundamental, and I hate to use the cliche: “changing paradigm”, at the bottom, and low middle range. Although us pros don’t care to troll the bottom end, it sure helps pay the bills when times are slow or expenses are high. Perhaps one has kids in college or a boat payment? We could always count on the bottom end and low middle when between high end well paying projects. Alas…no more.
How are others on this board combatting this trend? I for one, on my slow days, market to what I perceive are prospects in growing companies, in hot recession proof industries, based on news stories in local business sections and trade magazines.
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[David Roth Weiss] “This has been going on for several years now, and when pointed out here by many who recognized the changes early on, in almost every instance they were belittled and met by post after post from Walter and Bob telling them that everything in the world was just peachy. Seems the new reality may have sunk in for Bob?”
I don’t presume to speak for Bob, but I’ve never interpreted his posts as if he’s thought everything was just peachy. In fact, I think he’s been saying the opposite for years: the world is changing, the pace of change is accelerating, downward pressure on prices is increased and accelerating, and if you want to stay in the video business, you must constantly evolve and never ever stop learning.
I think that Bob Zelin has one of the best views of the business here. As a video and storage engineer, he provides infrastructure to facilities. His clients are the shops which are busy enough to justify paying him to help them expand their infrastructure and capabilities. Bob’s clients are upgrading from single edit bays to suites with shared storage. Bob’s clients are using innovative, lower-cost engineering and technology to their advantage. Bob’s clients are all growing and investing in their futures, even in the Flip era, which is why I read every post he writes about the industry twice.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[David Roth Weiss] “Walter and Bob telling them that everything in the world was just peachy.”
I’ve been saying the world is peachy? No. I’ve been saying that we are in the fortunate position to be expanding while much of the country is contracting.
In Georgia our film and television business went from around $200 million three years ago to about $1.7 billion last year.
I’m also in a position where I have very good long term clients that have nothing to do with corporations.
I also steered my company away from corporate clients 4 or 5 years ago when the only thing that mattered to them was the bottom line and I could simply not compete at the price level they were asking. The young college kids are better suited for their price points.
And last but not least, we keep our overhead to an absolute minimum and the new building is part of that strategy. Because the economy is so bad, we are building from scratch on almost 2 acres of land for about 60% less per month than if we leased 40% less space than we are building.
Yep, the economy is bad, high school kids with iMovie can do the exact same work we’re doing for pennies on the dollar and I’m now getting resumes from people who used to work in the $85 million production facility in town. But we’re still expanding because we’re in a position to take advantage of everything that’s going on in this state.
Nowhere does this say everything is peachy, nor would I ever say that in this economy. All I’ve said all along is that we’ve built for 10 years to put ourselves in a perfect position to take advantage of this down market.
Call it what you like. I just call it being in the right place at the right time.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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