FCP-X and IMAG

[Bill Davis]

[Bob Zelin] “Hi Bill –
at the risk of getting “beaten” by this entire forum (I see that you have only very positive comments in response to your thread), I can only say one thing (which will be negative, and probably offend you and the rest of the group). (SNIP FOR BREVITY) the cameras, the staging, the sound reinforcement (PA), etc. is making as much money on this ONE GIG, as you will make in all of 2014.
Is this something to be proud of, because you brought in your laptop with FCP-X, and ingested their capture files, and uploaded everything they wanted to this companies website in record time, at a record low price ? I know that you are a very smart guy, with a lot of experience. Are you making as much money as you made just a few years ago ?

Maybe I am wrong. It’s a strange perspective. I have no problem making less money, but when everyone else around me is making more (the rental facility), then I feel like must be doing something very wrong.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com
“

Bob,

I completely understand your POV. And I hope you understand mine.

Yes, the staging company makes much more. And in order to do that somebody has to INVEST much more. And that somebody will expect to take the lions share of the profits.

But that’s business, Profits follow capital.

Capital is a huge issue these days in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s pretty darn concentrated in nearly every industry out there. (On a personal note, I had a really nice cash stash for many years, but one sick kid in crisis and one bad insurance policy and that was that. No regrets, he’s better now – and I can easily live with the trade off!)

The staging company at that level plays a different game that I can. Let them spend significant time managing depreciation, labor issues, transportation and shipping hassles. In those and a hundred other areas, their business model and mine share little in common. They have to create and support a vast infrastructure and work relentlessly to support that. Which is laudable. And I’m glad companies like their are around to enable these shows. But that is NOT the same as believing that running, or even participating as a stakeholder in an enterprise of their scale is the ultimate point of doing what we do for a living.

Sure given the grit and business acumen (AND THE CAPITAL!!!), a company like that can do VERY well. And yes, much better than a sole operator with a laptop – IF the primary measurement metric is gross profit.

But I do wonder what the chart would look like if we could factor in the amount of effort verses the actual return?

I made in my modest 2 days on site, more than enough to replace every bit of gear I used in the gig with equivalent new models and I was comfortably in profit on top of that. That means I can now earn the “tools of my trade” in a single gig. And let them work for me the other 362 days of the year.

I sincerely doubt that the staging company can say the same. Heck, a couple of Barcos or Christies take a while to amortize, right? In their business model, they probably have to book a dozen similar “big dollar dates” in order to meet the costs of equipment and the crew labor necessary to maintain their scale of production. Of course, after the break even point, they have precisely what you imply – the potential for much, MUCH greater profits. Which is totally fair, commensurate with the capital investment the effort and risks they have to incur. In fact, since capital flows toward profits, if they ever can’t generate rich returns, they’ll be out of business cuz the money will simply flow somewhere else.

That’s business 101. And I’m fine with it.

There will be guys who want to paint mailboxes, those who want to paint houses, and enterprises who are set up to paint whole office complexes.

Scalability is a fine metric, but it’s not the only one, and is it the ultimate one? Maybe. But also, maybe not.

I just really enjoyed this gig. It was personally satisfying. I suspect that if it was my 35th straight week on the road working out of my briefcase, I would feel differently.

I once shot a piece for a former University of New Orleans Professor who wrote a book called “The Perfect Business.” If I recall his point correctly, the perfect business is the one that fits what you want to accomplish – with the LEAST stress and hassle, combined with what you feel is a fair reward for the effort involved.

This gig simply met that criteria in spades.

It needs no more defense than that, really.

Running a large enterprise is NOT my passion these days. Doing interesting work is. Sure I hope I can robustly profit from that work. But I’m already surrounded by a studio full of older gear rapidly losing value. I’m loath to do it again.

Gigs like that one in the picture are driven by two words. Capital Access. I did my years making finance companies and lease agents and office owners richer and richer. I think I mentioned years ago here, the story of one year long ago where ONE of my vendors gave me a magnum of Champagne for Christmas – and after the delight wore off, sure enough, checking my books I realized that I’d paid his company a good bit MORE than I’d taken home that entire year.

Lesson learned.

As to the money questions, actually, finally, yes. More. But it took a while. What I used to do (traditional video production” got seriously devalued. So I had to re-train myself into something different. I picked FCP-X. It’s been fun and after nearly 3 years, It’s actually finally starting to truly pay off. January was by far my best month in some years. And February is looking darn good as well. But my work is different now. Less of the big stuff where I grossed more but often netted less – unless I was willing to screw my crews and partners to the point of pain.. Now I’m more about targeted creative driven by my continuing fascination for FCP-X. It seems to be working and it’s sure a lot more fun.

Finally, one more anecdote. I did a gig abut 18 months ago where I got asked (much to my surprise) to rent out my old SD Sony DSR series camera with it’s Spider Pod rig for a similar financial convention. But this was a much LARGER firm. One of the big global consultant firms. Instead of the big IMAG rigs and 50 Road cases, they had two SD cameras feeding an array of three laptops transcoding to multiple T1 lines – and from that, they fed the proceedings to a global audience in real time.

No video village. No switcher. Two SD cameras, plus three guys who traveled to Phoenix from San Francisco with laptops. Period. 100 in the room, but perhaps 100,000 watching globally.

I sat having lunch on day two of the gig I pictured in this post – looking at all the wooden shipping crates on the loading dock – and my brain said NOPE. This is NOT the future. It’s the past. But hopefully not too soon. I know as well as anyone just how painful disruptive this type of change can be.

These dog and pony shows will continue. But they will change. They always have.

Peace.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Scott Witthaus]

[Bob Zelin] “And in the past, when you had to schlep your Mac Pro and Cinema display, and before that, even MORE equipment (possibly cases that required a truck) – you made a HELL of a lot more than you make today.”

I look at this statement differently. I may have issued a much larger invoice back in the “schlep” days, but my net-out is as much or more today on far lower invoices.

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter