Overwhelmed and a little Scared

[Alan Okey]

[Rick Brown] “I am sitting here with ONE computer station, some editing and effects software, a couple of DV cameras, some audio and lighting bits and a scanner.”

[Rick Brown] “If I want to do some videos and tv commercials, edit some movies/ programs for broadcast, how much STUFF do I really need?”

I would be less concerned with how much “stuff” you need and more concerned with in which area you would prefer to concentrate. The odds that you have the time, money, skill and talent to be a first-class salesman, producer, director, DP, audio field recording engineer, editor, colorist, motion graphics artist and audio mix engineer are incredibly slim. If you want to produce television commericals of any real quality, I would highly recommend partnering with some other talented people in your area with whom you can work. Before you even talk about gear, you should first decide in which aspect of the business you would most like to specialize.

As for the gear, many of the respective jobs listed above have a wide gamut of tools required for various levels of production, ranging from just-adequate bare bones setups to comprehensive packages. Since you are posting to the Final Cut Pro forum, I will assume that editing is your intended niche.

Forget about lights and cameras and production gear – hire talented specialists in those areas and rent the gear. As for your editing system, if you are planning on doing broadcast-quality commerical work, you may want to invest in a good set of hardware scopes, or at least a dedicated PC with realtime scope software (the name of which eludes me at the moment). You can’t risk delivering an out of spec product to a client if you want to get hired again. You already mentioned the broadcast monitor, but you should also consider a good set of nearfield or midfield audio monitors. Even if you aren’t planning on doing final audio sweetening/mixing yourself, you will need a decent client monitoring system in order to best represent your work for client approvals.

I’m not sure if video editing is currently a hobby for you or if you aspire to be doing it full-time professionally, but in either case the bad news is that there aren’t many other hobbies/career paths that call for a greater financial investment in setting yourself up. Airplane pilot, race car driver, yacht captain and corporate robber baron come to mind, but it’s a relatively short list compared with other occupations. The good news is, the equipment is all much cheaper than it was 10 or even 5 years ago, especially in postproduction.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Rick Brown] “If I want to do some videos and tv commercials, edit some movies/ programs for broadcast, how much STUFF do I really need? I know I need a broadcast monitor, tape deck and some heavy duty storage.
Whats all that other stuff I’m looking at?”

Depends on what you’re doing. We’re doing a lot of HD broadcast and HD museum type of work. Our workload was outgrowing our two suites, so we decided to integrate all three suites to a central “nervous system” to make the entire place more efficient. Any project in any room.

Just remember, we started in 2001 with one computer, one workstation so we’ve been building to this point for almost 7 years. I never imagined I would have this much equipment.

If you’re doing all DV work, then get yourself a good Broadcast Monitor and a good quality set of audio speakers like the KRK Rokit 5’s. NEVER purchase more than what you need to get the job done. We purchase equipment as we need it for projects or as we see a trend develop in our workload.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Hamish Boyd]

Walter is spot on, you scale up as needed. its always a bad idea to over capitalise.

I would say I’m where Walter was about 6years ago.
It started out by me doing graphical after effects TVCs from my imac. in between my freelance editing gigs. No broadcast monitor, just After effects and a g5 imac in my living room.

Pretty dodgy, but I have had the experience to know a few tricks to make it all broadcast safe. No commercials were ever rejected.
But it certainly wasn’t ideal. That said, the client was well aware of it all so it wasn’t a problem.
but things get busier, you need to accommodate for more varied jobs and slowly, very slowly you accumulate gear as required so you can do the best job for the budget and the requirements of the client.

Now I am just in the process of moving out of home and setting up my little edit suite with the gear I have accumulated. Not much more than you have now, but its all about being smart, knowing what is achievable, working within your limits (but always pushing them) and things grow.

Bottom line, treat your clients like gold dust and things will happen.

But you don’t have to go out and buy all that gear now if your business doesn’t require it.
Any extra gear I have bought has been paid by a gig that has come through the door. (simplistic accounting I know, and not quite reality but a good yardstick to go by)

[Rick Brown]

Thank you guys.
I feel better now.
So, I don’t have to grab all this stuff at once … and part of Walter’s necessity was with running multiple work stations and tieing them togeher, right?

I got hooked on this FCP thing a couple of years ago (version 3 or 4). It was slow learning at first because I knew nobody who was working with it. Once I found some sites like COW, my understanding and abilities with it have shifted into 5th gear and I have started thinking about using it in a professional capacity.
I am still learning FCP capabilities thanks to the good tutorials and forum helps here.

Good technical tips and encouragement too.
Great site.

Thanks again,
Rick Brown
Memphis TN

[Walter Biscardi]

[Seamus] “No broadcast monitor, just After effects and a g5 imac in my living room.”

You know, you just reminded me to go back and look at my photos of my first office back in 2001. I did not have a broadcast monitor. It was a 25″ Philips TV with S-Video input. I was doing all corporate at the time and with my years of broadcast experience, I trusted my eye to keep everything clean and legal.

I think I got the first Sony PVM monitor in 2002 or 2003.

[Seamus] “Now I am just in the process of moving out of home and setting up my little edit suite with the gear I have accumulated. Not much more than you have now, but its all about being smart, knowing what is achievable, working within your limits (but always pushing them) and things grow.”

Congratulations and good luck with the new office!

[Seamus] “Bottom line, treat your clients like gold dust and things will happen.

But you don’t have to go out and buy all that gear now if your business doesn’t require it.
Any extra gear I have bought has been paid by a gig that has come through the door. (simplistic accounting I know, and not quite reality but a good yardstick to go by)”

Two things I like here.

Treat your clients well. Yes, treat your clients well when they are in the suite with you. I have always had coffee, drinks and snacks available during sessions and I always pay for lunch or dinner during sessions from day one. And keep your suite and everything around it clean and neat, especially the first time the client walks in the door. Old adage says, “you only get one chance to make a good first impression.” Absolutely true. When that client walks through the front door they first time, they’re going to see you and how you keep the office.

But treating your clients well, at least in my mind, also means keeping your office up to date and efficient. One of my big pet peeves on these forums is people who are looking for the absolute cheapest solution for everything. Yes we all want to save money, but save money wisely. Spend $200 on a decent console you will edit off of for a year or two so you can spent $2,500 on a good quality broadcast monitor. I always ask on these forums, “why should clients spend money on you if you’re not willing to spend money on your suite?” The cheapest of everything will make your office look cheap.

Heck I built all of my first edit consoles. Probably $250 for two consoles for all the supplies from Home Depot. A couple of weekends of work and I had nice edit desks. Get a comfortable chair for yourself and the client,but don’t go overboard. I still get my chairs and most of our furniture at Costco or IKEA because they’re comfortable and reasonably priced. The edit consoles are now from Anthro, but that took 5 years before we got those.

Let the job pay for the gear Be prepared to lose your entire profit on one job in order to purchase something either for that job or for something that you know will be very useful in the office. Especially in the beginning, you let the job pay for the gear. $3,500 for a new broadcast monitor? Then take $3,500 from the first or first two jobs and make that purchase. $2,500 for a DVCAM deck to edit the next corporate gig? You might need to swallow that one at first, but hopefully the corporate client comes back.

Sometimes you have to jump out on a limb and look forward. My biggest corporate client when I started out was the marketing arm for a national religious organization. They were shooting DigiBeta and all I had was a Sony UVW-1800 BetaSP machine. They went through a lot of trouble to dub all their raw tapes for each job onto BetaSP because they really liked working with me. When the Sony J3 Multi-Format player came out with DigiBeta playback capability, it was $12,500. I called the client and discussed my current situation with them and whether or not they would still be working with me 18 months in the future. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but he said yes and I purchased the deck to save them all those dubbing hours and preserve the quality of the original DigiBeta footage. That was in 2002-2003 and that one deck has led to more work than any other piece of equipment in the shop. The ability to play back any format of Beta, especially SX, was something that not many small shops had in the area. A lot of guys I worked with were stunned I figured out a way to work with DigiBeta material without having to spend $65,000 on a DigiBeta deck or rent one.

Same thing happened to me with the Panasonic 1200A DVCPro HD deck. I purchased it as Good Eats was testing out the HD workflow to assist them with those tests. I happened to have only one of two machines in Atlanta at the time and the darn thing earned a ton of rental income for me for about the first two years that I never anticipated. Today I’m still one of the few small shops with a DVCPro HD deck and I get a lot of work because I have it and folks know I’m very experienced with the format. I was very lucky with that purchase and I’m the first to admit it.

One more thing I’m going to throw in here. The biggest word I learned in my own business is No. As in “No, I’m sorry I can’t fit your project into my current production schedule.” When you’re starting out you will grab every single job that calls you and you’ll swing all kinds of discounts just to get the work. This is a good thing in the beginning because you can expose yourself to a bunch of different clients, different projects and the like.

But eventually you will start to see who you like to work with and who pays you on time. If you have some clients who are late with payments, keep pressing you for discount after discount, understand that you do NOT have to work with them. When I started saying No, my profits actually increased because I had more time for my good clients and word of mouth drove referrals to my office. There are some clients I continue to work with even though I know they’re budgets are quite low, but I really enjoy having them in the shop. And wouldn’t you know it, they help me out by referring more and higher paying work.

Oh and be polite when you say No. It should just be that your schedule is too busy to take on that job or something like that. Always keep things positive because if you’re too busy to take on the job, then you must be doing pretty well. 🙂

And limit your freebies. We all like to help out folks from time to time. I try to do at least two Pro-Bono projects per year, usually for a non-profit fundraiser or something like that because I enjoy them and they’re good for business. But do not let that work overwhelm your time and start cutting into your paying work.

So bottom line, do NOT try to build what I or anyone else like me have built at once. Remember, every single VTR on the planet is rentable. I still don’t own a DigiBeta Recorder or HDCAM Recorder because they’re too expensive. I’ll just rent them and put my money towards the permanent stuff like the new racks, wires, patch panels and the storage. If you start using one format predominately, then consider a purchase.

I’m extremely fortunate to be in the position that I am in and quite honestly a lot of my growth is due to the Cow. Most of my biggest clients today found me or heard of me through my years of participating in these forums. I subscribe to the theory that if you’re good to people, help them out when you can, eventually good things come back to you. Sure takes longer to make money that way than if I simply squeezed every last dollar out of everyone or use immoral tactics to land jobs. But at the end of the day, I feel good about myself and know that I’m doing the right thing.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Walter Biscardi]

[Rick Brown] “So, I don’t have to grab all this stuff at once … and part of Walter’s necessity was with running multiple work stations and tieing them togeher, right?”

You got it. We were literally walking decks from room to room and doing a magical wire cable ballet behind the decks each time we had to send anything to anywhere. Really got to be tedious.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Steve Covello]

I want to reiterate what was said before about forming a complimentary work relationship with another specialist or producer.

This is the best policy not only for your own sanity, but for clients as well.

I ran into a problem where the same person who was the “happy face” producer to the client also happened to be the one who made the collection calls to the same persons for payment. My clients determined that they hated her method of collection so much that it superseded her “happy face”, and my client gave me an ultimatum to either leave the company I was working for, or lose them as a client. I ended up leaving.

You could apply this to other disciplines as well, since I, too, believe no one person can be Willie Mays at all the tools of production and post.

One thing I have taken as pure gold gospel is to work with people who are smarter and better than you at as many things as possible.

steve covello

[Motionfx]

Great advice Walter!

It was a little overwhelming but I see the light. I have been building an idea and shooting for a pilot of my TV show concept for three years. So, I wear all the hats, I always feel better when I hire a pro in his/her specific field to help me out.

Great advice on hiring people that you think are better/ smarter than you, you can learn from them on the job.

I plan to buy a pretty good editing system this year and put in in an office so when I am not using it I can rent out the station to others.

Brian

[Hamish Boyd]

Great post Walter!
You know its funny, I was looking at your photo blog the other day seeing all the new toys and what I like following your story with your business is that we have been able to watch it grow here at the cow from humble beginnings and watch how these things can happen for anyone with the passion to make it happen.

I also like how your business has been shaped around the realities of modern tv production, that is, if you know what your doing, if you know what to look for, you can produce top notch broadcast quality TV on very little equipment. (compared to yester-year that is) and grow slowly and carefully and not exposing yourself to huge amounts of expensive redundant equipment (a big hello to those paying off their AVIDS hehe)

And finally seeing where you are now with a wizz bang set up with everything talking to each other.

Its been a very inspirational story so far Walter, especially for someone like me making my baby steps into building a production company similar to yours down here in Australia.

[Walter Biscardi]

Thanks for all the kind words! Very nice to know that I can be inspirational for others. It’s a lot of work, but owning my business has definitely been rewarding. Owe most of my success to the Cow, honestly! 🙂

This entire thread has actually inspired me to create a 4 part blog series about starting and running your own business. I wrote Part 1 today.

https://blogs.creativecow.net/node/273

Enjoy!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi