Need advice for a student-run videography company

[Randall Raymond]

[tangentidea] “how can we effectively market this suite of services to companies or individuals?”

Not with your existing web-site – it truly sucks. Too much copy and not enough show me. And when you do attempt to show me – you’ve encoded for what? Dial-up? The video is horrible to watch. Why not shoot yourself in the foot and call that marketing?

My advice is to reduce your site to one perfect page expressing what you better than anyone. One page – no scrolling. When you have done that – then a month later – add another perfect page. With all that talent – produce a 2 minute reel on the first perfect page and get (and hold) their attention.

[Ryan Mast]

Yes, I did encode for dialup and bad DSL… unfortunately, Lancaster DOES tend to lag behind the rest of the country in tech adoption. I’d love to post higher quality videos, but I don’t want to lose users’ attention to load times. What would you recommend?

And what should we put on the “perfect page?” Should we list what we do, post a demo reel and portfolio, and ask people to contact us? Should we post a rate sheet? Is there anything specifically that we should get rid of?

[Randall Raymond]

[Ryan Mast] “Yes, I did encode for dialup and bad DSL… unfortunately, Lancaster DOES tend to lag behind the rest of the country in tech adoption. I’d love to post higher quality videos, but I don’t want to lose users’ attention to load times. What would you recommend?”

I would recommend catering to potential clients with a broadband connection – that’s your market. Forget dial-up cheapees.

“And what should we put on the “perfect page?”

Anything that won’t bore the piss out of me in 4 seconds. Shock me, astonish me, challenge me, but don’t bore me. i.e. do something brave and outrageous. Try it. All your copy now is trite and expected = boring.

Can’t reduce your message down to a ‘perfect page’ then you don’t know your message.

[Ryan Mast]

Can’t reduce your message down to a ‘perfect page’ then you don’t know your message.

That IS part of the problem — I don’t know what exactly we should focus on. In our position, what do you think we should promote the most?

[Nick Griffin]

First of all – lighten up Raymond. I don’t know how honed your skill set was at 17 or 18, but for high school kids these guys appear to be well on their way. Yes the web design is just OK, but Ryan isn’t representing himself as a cutting edge Silicon Valley design firm.

That said, yes, you should simplify your website and if video is what you primarily want to sell it should be on your home page. It should also be able to speak for itself and not need a lot of ad copy. Also, and not to be overly blunt, are these your real prices or where you start out before you cut a deal? I’m not in your market but these prices seem a bit on the high side for students.

It’s been discussed here, but bears repeating, SEPARATE the consumer (wedding video biz) from the B2B (business) and ad spots part of your business. Different websites, a different name, a different entity. Business people could care less that you can handle weddings — in fact it really will give them the feeling that you’re not the right choice for them. Of course corporate video can be a very hard nut to crack because of the “Catch 22” of experience. You can’t get the gig because you don’t have the experience and you can’t get the experience because you can’t get the gig. So find somewhere to start, even if it means working cheap or for costs just to get something to put on your reel.

YMI could go on a reel showing that you know what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t lead with it and wouldn’t have it in its entirety.

As to commercial spots, that’s an even tougher door to open. You might find some cable advertisers looking for something new. Some of that may even lead to advertisers on local on-air broadcast outlets. Maybe. What you may not realize is that at the low end a lot of TV production is done free by the cable operator or station just to get the time buy. Very hard to compete with free, isn’t it? The low end, combined with your ages, is also a fairly strong magnet for grinders. OK, let’s just say that it’s a 99% probability that you’ll run into mostly grinders at the beginning. Be careful and be sure you collect deposits, not promises. Be prepared to WALK AWAY from these people no matter how good their bull sounds at the time.

In closing let me advise you that there’s only a small chance that what you’re doing now is what you’ll end up doing for a living. You could end up as the Exec Producer of the first Tri-Continental, all HD holographic, 15.1 surround sound, 100th year reunion of The Rolling Stones. Or you could be a doctor. The point is to learn as much as you can, explore as many options as are given and be sure to grow. Even if your career path takes you somewhere completely different from where you think you’re headed now, the more experience and skill you develop along the way the better off you’ll be.

[Bruce Bennett]

Hi Ryan,

My advice

[Ron Lindeboom]

As with others here, I feel that your website needs focus. It is too disjointed and there is too much happening for your message to be clearly understood by potential audiences.

First off, again echoing what others have said, break it into two totally separate sites. One is for your event work, the other is for commercial and more corporate work.

There is also a third company hiding in there from what I can see and that is worship and ministry related video. While many churches are quite poor, there are many others who are not and have budgets. If you and the team you work with have that as one of the areas that you like to work in, make that the focus of another site. Do not make it part of your event or corporate sites. Specialize.

As to compressing video for the web, the Sorensen Squeeze product makes the best video I have seen and in sizes that work well even for those who are bandwidth-challenged.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, eh? Say hi to the Innocence Mission for me the next time you bump into them at the coffee shop.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Randall Raymond]

[Ryan Mast] “That IS part of the problem — I don’t know what exactly we should focus on.”

You’ll need weddings for the cash flow until you get some tight, professional work up as examples. Focus on weddings for now and get really good at it!

Why not offer a local business (a banquet hall who will recommend you for weddings?) a freebie 2 minute infommercial for their web site to get that side of your business rolling? If you can nail that one – the rest will follow. But you have to nail it! Keep your script direct and devoid of cliches. If the image tells the story – say nothing.

[Ryan Mast]

Also, and not to be overly blunt, are these your real prices or where you start out before you cut a deal? I’m not in your market but these prices seem a bit on the high side for students.

That’s the rates I’d like to be at, Nick, but I don’t think I’ve booked a job yet for anything more than $75/hr. Is it better to start at $90 and offer $75, or just set it at $75 (or lower)? What do you think is a fair wage?

I run my display at 1280×800 and have to scroll side-to-side to see your whole pages (I personally don

[Mark Suszko]

I like Ron ‘s idea regarding you doing more worship related video. What if you could do this on a “co-op” basis the same way local car dealers get pre-made packages of spots from a central source, with the costs shared between several churches? Structure a meeting with three or four ministers and see if you can find enough common demand where you can make the same or very similar packages for each of them, and they can split the costs. Imagine making some very nice pieces for Easter and Christmas as a start, Illustrating a scene out of scripture, but perhaps acted-out in modern dress and language, to show that these precepts remain universal. Bring one of their previous sermons “to life” for them. If you are clever in how you structure these, you can make them modular enough that each one can still be “customized” to an extent, without raising production costs. These would be to play on local access cable as well as to show in the church. Retain some rights and maybe you can re-sell them in other regions with an exclusive for each region or parish.

It is hard to beat the local cable production rates on price, but, the other side of that is, you can afford to buy some time yourself. Think about making an infomercial on leased access time, but something really trendy and eye-grabbing. You sell local merchants on the concept and they pay you to run this on local cable. I’ll give you a freebie as a sort of guide to what I’m talking about.

“Tales from the Hardware Store”
A three-minute vignette set in two adjacent back yards. Two guys are mowing, and wave at each other as they pass, calmly going back and forth, nothing special. We jump to their internal monologues and find out they act all normal and neighborly, but in fact yard care is a personal gladiatorial arena for these guys, it turns out they are in a constant state of one-upmanship and the grass is their battlefield. In their heads they are having all these Walter Mitty type competitions, they could be pretending they are NASCAR racers, top-gun jet jockeys, WW II desert tank commanders, etc. – In search of a competitive edge, one or both (you probably alternate one each week) wind up at the hardware store in a 5-minute segment where they get tips on how to make their current mower work better, plus accessories for the yard… you get the idea. You can take something as pedestrian as putting fresh oil and a new $2 spark plug in, (BTW, need a spark plug wrench? On sale this week, $4! Blade sharpening service special this week, makes the cut lawn not look brown!) …and make it like an homage to the engine-starting scene from “Flight of the Phoenix”. Dramatic angles, stirring , tension-building music…. WILL he start on the first pull???? It sputters, catches, but will it clear a winter’s worth of soot out and keep turning over??? Bob next door is WATCHING!!!!!!

You play this on the leased-access sales channel but you also make a kiosk in the hardware store itself, and you make a big deal out of sneak-previews and “premieres” to be held at the hardware store before the things go on air or you-tube. You also take out print ads locally to promote the premieres.

It’s an informercial that attracts and rewards the viewer with some actual entertainment, while working as a springboard to sales and building a local brand. This is something few producers actually take the trouble to provide any more.

This will probably work best with a local mom-and pop type business, because chain stores typically have too many restrictions set by the head office… but you never know. Locally, an Ace hardware used to do live remotes on broadcast TV every Saturday morning for 30 minutes, with some sales talks and how-to’s. The results were not great but that was due to execution and lack of quality talent at the store Plus lack of a script or producer… And live is hard work. You can do it cheaper yet better with the tricks you can supply in post, some tight writing/editing, and well-directed local talent willing to work for cheap. Keep it to ten minutes or less and when you get enough made, rotate them in a half-hour format.

If you don’t want to do weddings, making your own opportunities like this and learning to finance them is a way to get your merry band moving in a more commercial direction. You will need some real selling skills to pull this off, but on the technical or creative side, there’s nothing in the way of huge obstacles as long as you don’t step on copyrights. Clever writing will let you skate close in parodies and homages without going over the line.