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Budgeting a 10 hour lecture series of six DVDs
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Does the client ever pick the “A” quote? Assuming that’s the most expensive of course…
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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[Noah Kadner] “Does the client ever pick the “A” quote?”
Noah, you know better. The vast majority pick the “C” quote and then expect the features they clearly understood when you were discussing the features contained in the “A” quote. That’s when the real selling begins.
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Yes, they do, many times.
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Its all a question of the relationship of trust you have with your client. Its an opportunity to determine if this is a relationship you want to develop or let fall by the wayside. I have always kept my budgets transparent and warned client’s up front that if the project goes over the contracted length or more days are required than originally budgeted than they will be billed extra. I deal with them in a way I would like to be dealt with and it has worked.
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Boy, you nailed that one Nick. You present them the three bears options and they always wind up wanting to pay the price of the cheapest option while retaining the features of the grandest one.
I’ve done long boring lectures plenty of times, single cam and 2-cam and fake 2-cam. Here are my opinions.
1 Content and audience: if the source of the content is compelling enough, the production values can be poor and it will still be eaten up by the audience. I could watch Jessica Alba read the phone book for hours,(even silently) for example. More practically, I would sit in rapt attention to Walter Murch standing at a podium for three hours, even with a bad shot, as long as I could hear him clearly. But if you want my attention for 1.5 hours of information about dung beetles, for example, or something less interesting like a deep dive into heavy math, you’ve lost me, even if you did shoot it in 3-d with Jim Cameron directing it. So, the very first question is not *can* we do this, but *should* we do this? Is there a real audience for this information in this format? Is there a better way to communicate this information to the intended audience?
2 Formatting: My hell is people that stand in front of a camera reading off powerpoint slides to an audience that can read just fine by themselves, and calling it a “video”. That’s not a video. That is radio, with pictures. What I’m getting at is, maybe this guy is a good lecturer, maybe not. The format of a presentation given in an auditorium is not necesarily or even usually the best format in which to present something for TV viewing. The audience viewing process, expectations and experience is very different in those two environments, and you’re not leveraging the full power of your medium if you don’t take that into consideration. Single-camera for 90 minutes without a cutaway is hard to watch under any circumstances, generally. Depends on the lecturer, content, and the talent, obviously, but man, you are not making it easy on yourself here.
Generaly, when clients ask me to tape an existing presentation, I advise they re-write it specifically for video, to shorten it, to add visuals and effects that help make the points, reduce redundancies, make the data more easily navigable, to tighten things up generally. I find most powerpoint-based lectures that run an hour live can really be re-written and boiled down to 20 minutes on tape, if you know what you’re doing.
Now, they don’t always take my advice for one reason or another, one good reason being that re-writing the presentation to customize it takes time they don’t have, and that it is WORK, the kind of work they are not usually experienced in, and having me do that work for them costs money they don’t have. They often just hope for the best and have me do it the way they are already comfortable with it. If I’m lucky, I can tighten it up a bit in the edit afterwards, jazz it up with graphics and effects and etc as appropriate, but this is far from the optimal way of approaching such projects.
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Much wisdom in this thread.
During the years I was the main videographer for the National Speakers Association, I did a LOT of convention work like this.
I’ll just say a couple of things.
This business is VERY tricky. Not the kind of tricky that involves dishonesty – but rather tricky because there are so many competing levels of justification for making this kind of video in the first place.
Most often, these programs are a mixture of pure profit motive and ego stroking. The conference management wants to take advantage of extending profit on their event. They know that a certain number of the presenters will create a “Buzz” and that attendees will want to take home a copy. Some presentations will also “bomb” and FAIL to attract the same interest. (There’s even a small market in people who sign up for the conference – go to VEGAS instead (or the like) and wish to get the conference tapes so that they can CLAIM that they were in attendance!)
That puts pressure on the producer to get the tapes out FAST. As time goes by and the power of the presentations fade into memory – so does demand for the discs/tapes/whatever.
As to production, the EASIEST thing to promise is simply “wall to wall” coverage with no editing. And yes, that’s generally a poor product. (Except for the Vegas runners who don’t really care – they’ll just listen to the soundtrack while they drive to work and fast forward if they hit a patch where the audience gets lost in 10 minutes of passing out notes or doing an activity.)
To really edit a TIGHT program takes a LOT of work. I’d estimate that a 1.5 hour program will take at LEAST 6-8 hours to processs properly. 1.5 digitation, 2-3 hours stop and go editing. 1.5 encode. 1.5 master, label, etc. Equipment can compress time on many of those steps, but often less than you think. Some steps (rendering) can be done overnight, but others require you to BE THERE to finish a process or actively engage the next process.
I think your time estimates are pretty short of reality. But that’s a guess. What I CAN tell you is that the client will have NO IDEA of the time it takes you. They will always think that 1.5 hours of tape means it will take 1/5 hours to record and TEN minutes for everything in POST. (Really, that’s what they’ll think. The typical client has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER of the process – and if you asked them to stay and watch the first step, they’ll IMMEDIATELY come up with an excuse to leave the edit suite after no more than 2 hours with their eyes glazed over and complaining of imaginary meetings with people so high up in the company that they simply can’t be ignored.)
Your only choice here, is A) how much do you need the work. B) how much pain can you tolerate. And C) How much do you like and/or respect the clients.
Nobody I’ve EVER met that’s done this type of work wishes they could do MORE of it. It’s usually the kind of work you do when you’re younger and move on from. But perhaps that’s just me.
YMMV.
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[Bill Davis] “Nobody I’ve EVER met that’s done this type of work wishes they could do MORE of it. It’s usually the kind of work you do when you’re younger and move on from. But perhaps that’s just me.”
No, Bill. It’s not just you. You have hit the nail on the head with this post, especially this last paragraph.
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[Nick Griffin] “Respectfully, Cory, I disagree. An in-person lecturer has the benefit of eye contact and, as such more of a connection to the recipient. A lecturer via video does not. As corporate producers even though we are not making “entertainment,” we should be making content which retains viewers, keeps them awake and succeeds at relaying information. A single camera view for 90 continuous minutes — especially in this age of shortening attention spans — is far less likely to accomplish these objectives. (IMHO.)”
Obviously Nick. My point as stated is that the cutaways are not necessary. You are free to chose to only work with clients who want lecture DVDs produced with them in. For some clients production value is not relevant, such things are a luxury, and the end user will purchase the DVDs for the value of the content regardless of if the production value is high class or cell phone.
I’m positive you already know this so I don’t know why you would even bring up my point to nitpick it. The op specifically stated “no cutaways” in bold and underline.
You said, “we should be making content which retains viewers, keeps them awake and succeeds at relaying information” and for the most part I agree. However I’m in business first and a content creator second. Necessities (and you mentioned objectives) are therefore defined by my client and budget, not by my philosophy.
Cory
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Cory Petkovsek
Corporate Video -
[Cory Petkovsek] ” Necessities (and you mentioned objectives) are therefore defined by my client and budget, not by my philosophy.”
In business we are defined by the work we do, what we bring to the party that the next guy doesn’t. In this case moving the client towards a better end product rather than blindly accept the specifications as given.
[Cory Petkovsek] “I’m positive you already know this so I don’t know why you would even bring up my point to nitpick it.”
Cory, dude! No nitpick intended, just a discussion of making a better product than what was initially described. Try the de-caf next time.
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a- it’s corporate video not philosophy, no job is ever exactly perfection. b- this is a tough economy and not everyone can afford to risk a job by rocking the boat. Cut the guy some slack. Get the gig first and firm up the stuff that’s iffy later.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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