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Fast and cheap business plan
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20 Replies
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Lots of work with very little pay makes for a bad business model for most, most of the time. If you already happen to be a stringer for broadcast news, maybe this model makes sense, but it seems like a sure ticket to the poor farm to me.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Unfortunately there seem to be thousands of kids with video cameras willing to work for very little money, because it is better than making no money. But if Demand is spending $17million to make $200million, maybe it should pay a bit more for its content.
Or not.Maybe they will read this thread.
Mike
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What’s the point? This videographer busts his ass to make haff-assed throw away videos that he barely breaks even on? He’d be better off staying home playing computer games and drinking beer. OK, he’d really be better off working on his reel and looking for a better gig.
[Mike Cohen] “Unfortunately there seem to be thousands of kids with video cameras willing to work for very little money, because it is better than making no money.”
Let them. I’m not so sure, though, that it’s better than making no money. They could be shooting a personal project that would make them better film makers in the long run. They could be working as stringers for the local news outlet. They could be shooting weddings.
Nobody wins in a race to the bottom, except maybe the person who sponsors the race. First one to the bottom gets the least for working the hardest. It’s a no-win game that we’d all be better off not playing.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
Online content is not worth very much. This may be a truism, but Rosenblatt has the hard, mathematical proof. It’s right there in black and white, in the Demand Media database — the lifetime value of every story, algorithmically derived, and very, very small. Most media companies are trying hard to increase those numbers, to boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.
I don’t think it’s even up for debate. For this kind of content, sinking money into production isn’t worth it right now — the market won’t sustain it.
Do you think there’s value in professionally-produced online content? How do you sell that to your clients, considering competition like this? Or is this an area where pros can’t be competitive?
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[Arnie Schlissel] “Nobody wins in a race to the bottom, except maybe the person who sponsors the race. First one to the bottom gets the least for working the hardest. It’s a no-win game that we’d all be better off not playing. “
Arnie,
You should write that epic now, your words are really on target these days. I’m giving you another unofficial moo of the year award for the best single paragraph of 2009.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Disgusting. Talk about a sweatshop.
It’s almost the video equivalent of children in India making soccer balls for 5¢ an hour. Ok, not nearly as tragic as that, but sad nonetheless.
And apparently out of the $200 that Christian Muñoz-Donoso will make for producing ten videos in a day… he’s also having to pay an assistant.
I couldn’t read past page two, corporate greed is too nauseating. I come from a mindset where you regard people as your most valuable resource. I’m our company’s Creative Director… but I’m also the president and principal shareholder. Usually I’m the corporation’s highest-paid employee… but not always. Some months I’m the least-paid. Everyone else gets it first. I may not be a good businessman (fortunately my junior partner is), but I’d rather be a good person.
Slave-masters get no respect from me.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I think it can be looked at another way, and there IS an upside to all of this.
First of all, we saw this coming – it’s a logical consequence and benefit of the low-cost video revolution which has taken place over the past 10 years. It’s how we handle the paradigm shift that matters. One thing that should be clear – none of us can or will survive simply because we offer video/multimedia production. It’s no longer a black art, and that’s just the way it is. Survival will require more than offering “quality” services, as well. As the budget revolution rolls on, full HD production quality will be a given within a few years, and will serve as the great equalizer among shops and freelancers alike. Adding to this, we’re seeing a lot of high quality, extremely creative and insightful work coming from younger and less experienced folks every day. Some of the smartest creative I’ve seen in years is coming from people with just a few years of experience. We’re lying to ourselves if we think our experience gives us some inherent advantage in creativity or quality. In fact, our experience really only benefits us when those hard lessons and insights are directly applied to our business model and approach. This, in my opinion, is the arena in which the survivors will be decided.
I think the only way to stay on top of this game is to specialize, offer something unique and think beyond the traditional offerings we’ve all leaned on for so long. It requires a fundamental rewrite of the standard production company model, and it requires that we all start being better, more tactical, more engaged businesspeople.
The company in that article has found a very unique way to capitalize on the reality of where video production currently stands, rather than where we wish it was. While it may offend us to see what they’re paying people and their sausage factory approach, bear in mind that they aren’t hiring people like us, and their product doesn’t rely on quality to be effective. They are hiring people who are fresh out of school or otherwise cannot find work, which is a GOOD THING. While it sounds pompous, you could liken them to McDonald’s, while traditional quality-focused studios are Ruth’s Chris. Does the latter fret over the practices of the former, or vice versa? Not one bit – they are different models, serving totally different customers and their employees represent two ends of the spectrum. There are so many new artists coming into the industry every day that we can’t hope to absorb them all, especially since many of them will require years of additional training before they can perform at the quality level you or I expect. Working for a company like the one in the article could serve as an excellent boot camp for those people, get them some experience and, most important of all, provide them with some much-needed perspective. More and more “green” artists are popping onto the scene with a horrific entitlement attitude, and having to start their career in video-mills may very well provide that much needed perspective that will make them more deserving, appreciative and effective artists.
Of much more significance, their business model perfectly captures a previously unaddressed market need (topically broad, video-based training that is free to the viewer) using a unique and clever model while perfectly harnessing the low-cost revolution. They are embracing the realities of modern video production and they are going to make a lot of money as a result.While we don’t have to race to the bottom, or even embrace low-cost video at all, we DO have to accept that new models are required to stay profitable and that the “video production company” is DEAD. Survival will almost certainly require adopting more complex, targeted and clever business models.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
[Brendan Coots] “There are so many new artists coming into the industry every day that we can’t hope to absorb them all”
No way around it: a surplus in supply (of employees) creates downward pressure on wages.
For those of you who have been in business for a long time, I also hope you consider adding “marketing analysis” to your rate card.
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A friend of mine worked for a time in the salt mines of an editing/production company specializing in car spots for used car dealers and such. The daily volume of work he had to churn out of his edit bay, at a brutal pace, helped him build his compositing skills quickly, and develop a fast and efficient approach to workflow, out of sheer self-defense, but the human toll in hours and stress was just not sustainable. And while it made him efficient, it was also unrewarding creatively. The spots were all made to a formula, and experimenting to go outside the bounds of the formula was not rewarded, in fact, it was usually punished, because it reduced billable thruput. The production house had tremendous turnover, but didn’t care; where post houses traditionally try to find and retain key editing talent and market it as part of their branding, this place had totally commoditized the work, and would have been just as happy with one editor as another, long as the work got done and the pay was low. At their rates, that’s what they did get.
Such places may be good for paying your dues on an accelerated schedule, but they don’t pay the bills very well.
My take on things is that I have to also get some of my Maslovian Hierarchy fed by the work, be fulfilled, or the job becomes joyless and if that becomes the case, might as well go flip burgers for the same money instead, a job I can forget about the minute I take off the apron and head out the door, and just do the video work as a home hobby where it’s something I do for self-actualization instead of a check.
When I point out the price someone’s put on an old nerdy collectible on ebay, my wife usually retorts that the insanely high price is only a real value if they can find someone crazy enough to pay it, otherwise the object has little intrinsic value. Like paper money not backed by any hard wealth, it is really only worth what two people negotiate it to be worth, if that. When I came across this thread, a reverse version of her saying sprang to my mind: that maybe these commoditizers are trying to get us to think and bill as if the work is only worth what they say it is worth, and not what we know it is worth…
My old boss always used to complain to me that I was trying to cook steaks in a hot dog stand; that our key was high volume output at acceptible quality, not low-volume output at high quality… I would always answer him that people know you can get a hotdog anywhere and you can make them at home, but they still dress up and go out someplace nice to eat a real good steak, cooked to order. If all our clients learned to make their own hotdogs (with the new cheaper desktop video tools) we would have no other cutomer base to survive on.
I still don’t know which of us was ultimately right.
I do know I don’t want to eat hot dogs every night, even those really good Chicago ones. But that’s all these kids can afford, working for Demand Media.
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[Mark Suszko] “I do know I don’t want to eat hot dogs every night, even those really good Chicago ones. But that’s all these kids can afford, working for Demand Media.”
Yeah, and they can only afford those really cheap chicken hot dogs in this case…and they are an insult to cheap yellow mustard.
😉
Ron Lindeboom
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