Here is a an ad and reply I got today…

[Todd Terry]

Well this kind of “want sumthin’ for nuthin'” crap has been going on since the beginning of the production business, and probably since the beginning of time. And probably always will.

It’s definitely not the way I like to work. I pay my senior editior probably $15,000 or so more a year than I have to. But I do it for a variety of reasons. It keeps him happy. It keeps him from looking for another job (and creating a headache for me). But mostly because he simply deserves it.

But you know what? I don’t really mind it where I hear of the “other guys” soliciting “free labor.” Because I know they get what they pay for, and it’s just one of the reasons that our work looks so much better than theirs… that we stay booked up months in advance while their place is a ghost town. When you get right down to it the amount that we pay our editor for an hour of his time is a small fraction of what we charge a client for that same hour… so it really would be false economy to hire someone “young and hungry” who would work for peanuts.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Dean Sensui]

IMHO there are producers out there who have little or no respect for editors. They don’t know — and don’t care to know — about the art and craft of editing and what it is that editors contribute to a show.

In their limited understanding of the process, they believe that editors are there only to cut out the junk stuff. They don’t see how good editors can build a compelling story out of a pile of raw material.

Since they don’t understand the value of the work, that affects how much they’re willing to pay for it. I just had first-hand experience of that in our small company where one of our former partners (and show host) expressed zero respect for what it is his partners did as editors. He felt it was a purely mechanical process. We were trying to get him to appreciate the importance of good editing in making an entertaining product but never got very far. This guy had his opinions set in stone.

This individual never spent a single moment with either of us to see what it is that we did. And we spent thousands of hours over the past couple of years building episodes for our show. It’s not exactly Emmy material, but it still gets its fair share of an audience and is, in fact, the highest-rated show for that channel.

In the end, this former partner went his own merry way and created his own show on another channel. After watching a few episodes, what we expected is being confirmed: His new show has no sense of anticipation. There’s no buildup. And when the fun begins, it doesn’t provide the viewer with a sense of vicarious participation. And comments from viewers on other public forums agree with our own private assessment. It’s dry.

This guy had to hire cheap, inexperienced labor. The technical and aesthetic shortfalls proved it.

That’s the kind of producer that specifically seeks out inexperienced people who have their own gear. They can’t afford to build up a well-equipped suite — even if they knew how. And they certainly can’t afford to hire skilled editors. All they think they need is someone to chop out the junk stuff. And, sadly, they can’t see the difference between a compelling segment and a lifeless one.

In the long run, and in a market like ours here, sponsors are less likely to support a program like that because it presents their product to a diminishing audience. Cheap begets cheap and, soon enough, it brings about its own demise.

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Brendan Coots]

Yes, this is getting more common these days and I find it repulsive to “bait and switch” for free talent. If you don’t want to pay artists, then don’t charge clients.

As a partner in a studio and someone who deals with hiring creatives all the time, I will say this – It cuts both ways and there is a bit of a pricing war going on. Sure there are some studios that want free labor, but the flip side is that there are a lot of artists out there who are still clinging to the old days when anyone who could do computer-based creative work was able to command an extremely high salary. These individuals are completely put off by the notion that pay rates are going down, and act as if the studios are trying to rob everyone blind. But there is downward price pressure from the top down. The investors want the company to trim marketing costs, so the company wants the ad agency to bid lower, who then want the studios to deliver the work for less, who then lower their pay rates. That downward pressure affects us all, especially as new technologies lower the bar of entry and thousands of new artists flood the market each day.

My hope is that the downward movement will stop. It will require the studios/agencies to put their collective foot down and say ENOUGH, because most of this downward pressure comes from large companies with more than enough money, they just want to squeeze everyone dry in the name of a .02% profit increase. They too might need to tell their investors enough is enough.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com