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How to price a car dealership commercial
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.[Steve Wargo] “Our cable company says “BetaSP Only” so before suggesting the above, it might be wise to have him check with whoever will be broadcasting the piece.”
Both my local cable companies told me BetaSP too. After a local dub house delivered 3 bad BetaSP dubs to both cable companies, I asked both companies, “is there another way?” They both said DGFastchannel. They had no idea a local spot producer would have the ability to use them. They were getting spots from DGFastchannel from their big regional advertisers. I looked into the price and found it was no more expensive than using any overnight shipper. Only one didn’t have to dub to tape and neither go to a shipping office, wait for a pickup, hand deliver a tape to the local cable office. In short, it saved both money and time.
Simply ask the cable company. They might be saying BetaSP simply because they have no idea you have access to DGFastchannel (or some of their smaller competitors).
BTW DGFastchannel will tell you who accepts their method of delivery even if the cable company is reluctant to say.
[Steve Wargo] “The local channel that brags about being all HD cannot take an HDCAM tape while all of their news room is HDCAM.”
News room and advertising have little to do with each-other at many cable station. We have one that shoots all DVCPro but advertising insisted on BetaSP . . . until my prodding which resulted in finding out they accept DGFastchannel MPEG2 Program Streams.
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[Craig Seeman] “Simply ask the cable company.”
I just did that again and same answer, but, I am going to head down there shortly and we’ll see what they actually say in the tech department.
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Given what you’re finding I’d thought I’d add detail to my story. Important to note that my area is divided between two cable companies.
One company INSISTED BetaSP and the OTHER told me about DGFastchannel. I spoke to DGFastchannel and confirmed the info told to me by the one that acknowldged it as a delivery solution. I said it was odd that other didn’t accept it as a delivery method. DGFastchannel told me they BOTH accepted it.
The short story is that you might simply ask DGFastchannel themselves. They know exactly who accepts their delivery.
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If you upload a full-resolution mpeg-2 to DGFastChannel, they can deliver a BetaSP to the station next day for a little more than digital delivery. Or a DVD, DVCPro, DBeta, whatever format you need. I have all of these decks in house and sometimes in a time crunch I’ll have DG make the dubs anyway.
Joe Murray
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Thanks Craig. I pressured them and they accept Vivx, Telestream and DGF. Well I’ll be darned. This will save us on our deadlines.
Did I say thanks?
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Joe
I found them on the web but how about if you give a short piece on the process and what we should expect to pay.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut Pro systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck -
Basically, encode to mpeg-2 using DG’s specs, upload to their ftp site, then place an order to send the spot through their online order system. You have to go through a testing period with DG to make sure your files are encoded properly to work with your system. This was the biggest hassle of the whole process but once we got it working everything else has been fairly simple. Price will depend on how much you use the service. We sometimes send as many as 10 spots to 50 stations, so we get a pretty good rate, at least I hope we do. A good way to go is to get pricing from their competitors as a point of comparison.
Joe
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What a wealth of information! You guys are great. This by far is the best forum here. One can learn so much from the contribution.
I guess I feel some what humbled and maybe a bit ignorant on how this business works. I have been given this opportunity because I made a demo reel of the work I have done and they like what the saw. As far as equipment goes, I have just a Canon XH A1 HDV camera, basic light kit, tri-pod and a whole lot of passion. I know have another question; Do you believe my equipment is not up to snuff for this job? Will I have to rent?
Thanks.
Joe
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I learned some things here too, never heard of FastChannel before this, will check them out.
Joe, The interesting thing about car commercials is there are so many ways to do them, so your gear question is hard to answer until you pick a style and type of spot to do. For example, you could do spots all day and never use a camera once: just a lot of (and I mean a LOT) of graphics flying around and flashing and whatnot, from images supplied by the client or the co-op they belong to that furnishes great pre-shot still and motion images from the manufacturers. My friend who lives in Texas does this kind of stuff almost exclusively, it’s mostly Aftereffects work from what I can tell.
Some local dealers are more vain than others and always need to be seen IN their spots. Until we know the context of the shot, again, hard to say if you have enough gear to do it. You probably don’t have a jib for example, and to show the splendor of a car lot, the high angle jib shot is very often just the ticket. You can rent a jib if you live near a large city with a rental place. Or if this is going to be a long series of spots with a good portion pre-paid, you might build the cost of purhasing one into your rate up front and pay it off in six or so jobs. From there on out, YOU rent it out:-)
Here is a little cheap trick you can use in place of a jib: get a hi-hat, which is a mount for your tripod’s pan head that looks vaguely like Abe Lincoln’s hat. Often used to shoot very low angles like a bug’s eye view of a hot sportscar. Bolt the hi hat to a small piece of plywood, and c-clamp the board and hi hat to a 10- foot stepladder. Instant stable crane shot, looks great.
Of course it can’t do the sweeping moves of a real jib or crane, just pans and zooms, but often that’s enough. I’ve worked with real Matthews jibs on a dolly and with the stepladder, you really can’t tell the difference when the shot is just static. The hi-hat can also be adapted to ride on, say, the hood of a moving car, so it’s a flexible kind of purchase capable of multiple use, unlike a jib that only does one thing. A beanbag can be used on the ladder instead of the hi hat but is less stable and more dangerous.
Another piece of gear that will be handy for car spots is a rotateable polarizer for your lens, to remove glare from car windows and let you see people and details inside the car.
You’re probably going to need a good wireless mic if the guy wants to do standups.
The things I see wrong the most in low-budget car dealer spots are:
Bad lighting or just exisiting light, usually with a bad background choice that’s too busy or off-message. Lighting a car to look the best is a skill all by itself. There are tricks to doing it on a budget.
Too MUCH light: too much backlight from windows, or the wrong color temperature, or the light hits everything in the frame inclusing useless things, instead of being mostly on the things you want to emphasize.
Crummy audio with wind noise or off-mic. Long mic wires in the shot.
Shaky handheld camerawork with bad framing.
No extra shots at different focal lengths to allow for better editing. Do more takes.
Cue card reading that look off axis to the lens. Memorize the lines or invest in a real thru the lens prompter.
Horrific scripts written by the client. No real solution to this if he insists, since he’s paying. Try to first beat the easy to fix problems and save client relations for last in this case, because the better you make them look, the more they will start to take your opinion about other matters.
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Good stuff so far…
You’ll learn a lot by talking to the client. Some dealers have done TV spots for eons and the guy on camera will know (or at least think they know) exactly what they want. This is not always a bad thing, if you figure out the reasons why they ask for certain things. For instance, I’ve had dealers that wanted to tape a new spot every week UNLESS it rained the day before but WASN’T raining during the shoot. Why? Because puddles underneath the cars give the subliminal impression that all the cars leaked oil. 😉
The funny thing was that they didn’t mind doing the spot if it had been raining for several days and it was still raining WHILE they taped, since they didn’t worry about people mistaking what was clearly rain for oil. Since they did a new spot each and every week, they knew that once sunny skies were there again, the customers would also show up again, and they would rather update the spots than air one that was two weeks old.
Other dealership clients we had focused on the affluent market, so they wanted a broader campaign, with more longevity. This meant that we couldn’t get specific with current deals, but focused instead on building the dealerships image of high-end quality. So we shot on film, used the jibs and dollys, and spent WAY more time on lighting and audio etc. etc.
I guess what I’m saying is that even though there might be a typical “car-spot”, it’s still good to really find out what image your client wants to project. What differentiates them form the competition? If you can make your spots stand out, SOME clients will keep you for that reason. Then again, others just want quantity at “decent” broadcast standards rather than high art. There are good business cases for both types of campaigns. Just make sure you understand the requests, so you don’t get frustrated.
By the way, the gear that you listed gear is most likely fine as long as you know how to use it well. If you find out they want shots that you need more gear to pull off, simply rent that gear and charge them enough to cover the overhead.
We had one client that always wanted to shoot at night, since the talent was the general sales manager and he was always very busy during the daylight. We rented HMIs and all was well…
(Although our audio tech strongly suspected that the sales manager only wanted to shoot at night because “salesmen are technically vampires”… Seems the audio guy didn’t get the discount on the new vehicle he thought he’s get from working on their spots. 😉
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