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please explain the new business model to me
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[Oliver Peters] “As long as you are using a tool for commercial work, then an argument can be made for the rental model. But when your work is a labor of love or pro bono or for some possible return way down the road, then you really have to decide whether staying with a subscription makes any sense at all.”
Agreed. The rental model only makes sense for companies that would rather have their software be an immediate expense instead of capital that gets amortized across years. For independent freelance editors, it only works while money is coming in. As soon as you fall on hard times, you loose your ability to get work because you can’t afford to rent the tools to get the work you need. That’s why I don’t use Adobe tools anymore.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
[John Rofrano] “As soon as you fall on hard times, you loose your ability to get work because you can’t afford to rent the tools to get the work you need. That’s why I don’t use Adobe tools anymore.
“Which is why I use FCPX and Motion as well as Adobe tools, I like to have options. I do understand why people like you and Jim don’t want to subscribe though.
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While watching render bars, I thought about what the most appropriate metaphors might be.
We could talk about the shoe salesmen in the wilderness analogy.
We could go with the goldrush analogy: the guys making the big money were seldom the actual miners,but instead, the guys selling the miners their shovels and supplies. Today, the equivalent might be those people who teach the new, unwashed bottom-feeding hordes the intricacies of how to use their newfangled skateboard video software. The folks writing effects plug-ins and things that people buy to simplify, streamline, or automate a task.
The standard analogy I and many others have turned to again and again is the desktop publishing revolution, where after an initial bloodletting where designers and print press businesses took massive hits, the wave of badly done work resulted in a lot of those early adopters dropping out again, but the old pros took on the new tools and found ways to use the new tools to make their old work more efficient.
Now usually the analysis ends there. But I think we have to go deeper, in order to learn anything.
When DTP disrupted the old printing paradigm, it also opened up unforeseen new sectors. There was a so-called “‘Zine” movement of self-published semi-pro niche magazines before computerized DTP came along, but nothing like afterwards: the “Zine” scene flared up and sent waves thru pop culture as well as professional communication industries, film, etc. all by democratizing the process and opening up access beyond a small number of “gatekeepers”. The ‘Zine movement informed the growth of the early web; they sort of grew up together and cross-pollinated. Some ‘zines faded away as physical products but found new life as web sites, where the interactivity with the audience was nearly immediate an often addictive. People who had been in contact with that movement transferred their points of view and ways of working to other endeavors, spread out over the tech and business sectors.
How does all that connect to making your mortgage payment next Wednesday?
Flexibility. Being like liquid water; taking on the shape of whatever contains you, without losing the essence of what you are, what you like to do. I am fatalistic but also optimistic at the same time. I’m fatalistic about the continued commoditization of our *processes*, thanks to corporatism, globalization, and an internet that means cutters in Michigan now compete with those in Mumbai, or Romania, or wherever… around the clock, for the terrible wages the Mumbai guy or gal is happy to take. hard to blame the Mumbai guy who just wants to feed his family and lives and sleeps on a doorstoop when he’s not in a cybercafe editing.
Rates will continue to race to the bottom, thanks to the greed of clients, and ever-cheaper baseline technology access. So we have literal hordes of competitors out there, beating us on rates every day. That’s the gold-diggers. Where’s our equivalent of the shovel-sellers? Is it in managing people and assets to do this work? Is it in literally selling them more and better tools and training?
Maybe the analogy is sports, and older pros, needing to stay connected to the Game, moving out of playing into coaching or the front office?
The part I’m optimistic about is that there is more and better Television being made now than arguably any other era in the history of the medium. Experimentalism is up, new shows are designed around smaller niche audiences, but also, their very structure is informed by an internet audience versus a broadcast one. LA has always attracted too many actors, but now, more people have the potential to become their own producers. I think we’re talking about a perceptual shift here, and some of us are unwilling to make it because change is deeply terrifying and uncertain. I like certainty. I like security. Nothing wrong with it.
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[Mark Suszko] “Flexibility. Being like liquid water; taking on the shape of whatever contains you, without losing the essence of what you are, what you like to do. I am fatalistic but also optimistic at the same time. I’m fatalistic about the continued commoditization of our *processes*, thanks to corporatism, globalization, and an internet that means cutters in Michigan now compete with those in Mumbai, or Romania, or wherever… around the clock, for the terrible wages the Mumbai guy or gal is happy to take. hard to blame the Mumbai guy who just wants to feed his family and lives and sleeps on a doorstoop when he’s not in a cybercafe editing.
Rates will continue to race to the bottom, thanks to the greed of clients, and ever-cheaper baseline technology access. So we have literal hordes of competitors out there, beating us on rates every day. That’s the gold-diggers. Where’s our equivalent of the shovel-sellers? Is it in managing people and assets to do this work? Is it in literally selling them more and better tools and training?
Maybe the analogy is sports, and older pros, needing to stay connected to the Game, moving out of playing into coaching or the front office?
The part I’m optimistic about is that there is more and better Television being made now than arguably any other era in the history of the medium. Experimentalism is up, new shows are designed around smaller niche audiences, but also, their very structure is informed by an internet audience versus a broadcast one. LA has always attracted too many actors, but now, more people have the potential to become their own producers. I think we’re talking about a perceptual shift here, and some of us are unwilling to make it because change is deeply terrifying and uncertain. I like certainty. I like security. Nothing wrong with it.
“An excellent post Mark, sums things up nicely
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[Mark Suszko] “I thought about what the most appropriate metaphors might be.
“Cars. Always and only cars. I have no idea what you were thinking.
LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “Cars. Always and only cars.”
No, I think Bill has moved on to tractors. Still motorized, though. 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Cars. Always and only cars. I have no idea what you were thinking.
Well, in the Pixar movie, “Cars”, Lightning McQueen is dropped into a throwback town that was by-passed by a new highway and left to fade away.
Lightning’s appearance re-invigorates the sleepy town, causing a re-evaluation and a burst of renovation in the town occupants. Meanwhile their inherent values rub off on him and change his nature.In the under-rated film, “Gung-Ho”, a small town loses the main employer and the town smartass goes to Japan to recruit a replacement automaker to resume car production and save the town. The townsfolk are moribund and complacent, unwilling to adapt to the new efficiencies and methods of the incoming Japanese, and clashing in their cultures as well. That movie sorta happened in real life a few miles up the road from me, in Normal, Illinois, where Mitsubishi and Chrysler teamed up to build a new state of the art plant called Diamond Star. Much was made at the time of the hybrid relationship of Japanese management partnering with American Union labor. Chrysler bowed out after just a year or so, but Mitsubishi went on making cars there for over a decade, with much success, but also with a few labor management problems, including some incidents of gender-based harassment… but even with some tense times, the plant went on and the local tax base blossomed… until an announcement a month or so back that they were pulling the plug due to sales and other market factors. Now Normal is losing thousands of jobs and the government is looking for a new tenant for the still-modern facility. The movie gave Gedde Watanabe a lot of range to work comedy and drama in one film, and it even starred Toshiro Mifune in a cameo as the company CEO. If you’re looking for themes, there are several, but the pertinent one is to stop fixating on the particular style or method, and think about the ultimate goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8odnFywwp6Q
We now return you to a serious thread, derailed by Tim, not me.
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Dammit, there goes all the late night work I’ve done on my unified “Food Processor Production Analogy”
Stillborn by virtue of pre-ridicule. The Internet is such a harsh mistress.
(Sobbing sounds accompany me down the hall …)
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.
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Steve,
I visit this forum almost every day, (yet seldom post), and I’ve always had you pegged as being firmly in the FCPX camp; has that changed? If so, why? I ask because I am always tempted to move to Premiere, but stay with X because I find it a more enjoyable edit experience, and I find Motion far more intuitive than AE.
don walker
texarkana, texasJohn 3:16
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A collection of loosely-related thoughts:
1) Our industry has historically priced itself based on access to expensive gear. Now that gear and software is cheap, or FREE (personally, I’m holding out for Grant Petty to start writing checks for using BMD software), we find ourselves in a pricing transition.
2) Very few video professionals can clearly articulate their value proposition. “I make videos” was a good reason for someone to give you money 10 years ago, but now a customer needs a more compelling reason to part with their cash. This idea of better understanding our value to our clients was one of the themes I was trying to get across in the project-fee discussion a couple months back. Expanding on that…
3) Video isn’t enough. Video for its own sake used to be special. Now, video is ubiquitous. I think this is what Oliver was getting at: corporate video is worthless when it’s disconnected from a broader strategy.
4) Our industry is sexy. People want to do it so badly, they tweak the supply-demand curve, accepting unreasonably low wages to start in hopes of making it. But don’t worry, this will change, because…
5) Our industry is being generalized. Using the Microsoft Word example, not everyone is a professional writer, but every “knowledge worker” professional writes. Basic video literacy is on its way to being similarly universal.
6) We collectively squeezed out the middle end. High-end facilities have always been in another league, but the middle end were a juicy target for the M100/UVW-1800 set, then the Mac/VX1000 set, now the laptop/FCPX set. We clobbered them with our high capabilities and lower rates, and in so doing, we’ve created a chasm between low end work and high end work with fewer advancement opportunities. Specifically to Bob, the middle end that I assume bought his services barely exists today.
7) Both the high end and the low end consistently underestimate what the other is capable of. This broadens the chasm and confuses the hell out of clients.
8) The middle is poised for a comeback. There are a lot of low-end customers that used to be high-end or middle customers who are horribly underserved today. Agile agencies will fill this void.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
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