Rhythm and Hues

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I live in Mumbai.

I was once offered the job of leading a team of roto-artists to do 2D to 3D conversions – for a couple of major Hollywood movies. The salary offered? About $600 a month.

Somebody mentioned editing. Want to know what the going rate is for an editing room with editor in Mumbai? Less than $10/hr.

The US or Europe cannot win the ‘salary’ war against any Asian country, that’s pretty obvious. But there might be a ‘workaround’.

I was born and raised in Dubai, and have worked there for many years. The salaries in Dubai weren’t that high 20 years ago, but there were still quite a lot of Westerners who were willing to move because they couldn’t find jobs in their own countries.

When I first landed in Mumbai in 2002, there were hardly any ‘Foreigners’ here. Today, they are everywhere. They have bought homes, and raise their children here. I have a friend who runs a VFX facility, a classy one. He has many artists from Western countries.

Think about this: If I were to apply for a job visa in the US or Europe, I wouldn’t be welcome. But a foreigner can easily get a job visa anywhere in Asia easily. So why not take advantage of it? A few thousand dollars can go a long way in this part of the world.

The point of globalization is to fight the ‘battle’ globally. Artists must be willing to travel and display their expertise outside their comfort zones.

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[Rich Rubasch]

I always think there is clear writing on the wall well before a change happens. Just reading the credit roll on highly effected movies over the past ten years you could plainly see the number of foreign countries and their artists plugging in growing rapidly. Why? Cost. Time to revamp the business model. Broaden the scope of your work to more than just features…don’t just sell to the movie industry, but pay some of the bills selling high end services to corporate clients or ad agencies.

Diversify. With so many talented artists and even programmers, they could have spent some resources on developing a custom effects app and sell it at NAB. Could have kept them afloat perhaps a bit longer.

Purchase equipment wisely. Technology costs have come down…find ways to save on gear and networking…drive arrays and the like.

Advice for us all, really.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Neil Hurwitz]

“Revamp the Business Model”

In my opinion this is much easier said then done.
Further more, I see no real viable business model on the horizon.
Soon all of what we know of as “Post Production” will change dramatically.
There is no barrier to entry, Distance will become meaningless,
The schools (now there’s a profitable part of this biz) are pumping out way more graduates then there will ever be jobs for. I recently read of a new expression
In the NY Times about companies looking for employees that are
22x22x22, Which turns out to be recent grads that are 22 years old
willing to work 22 hours a day for 22,000.00 a year. Jingle Bells

Schemes like the one being put together by Companies like AFRAME
will eat everybody’s lunch. Some will say the bandwidth just isn’t there
I say
I got a 55” LED TV, No more 19” B&W Zenith
I got my communicator er: IPhone
I got some 9 gig drives that I bought for 5,000.00
I lost my Dial Up Modem and got a cable modem
I threw my 80,000.00 Media Composers in the dumpster
And you don’t need a Kscope to do nothing no more.

Just Wait and everything in your shop will be worthless, everything.
No matter what you buy it’s going to be worthless in a year or two.
The only thing left to sell is creativity and the ability to get something done on time.
So the question becomes,
How much can you sell that for?
Will it be enough to cover overhead and turn a profit?
Do your clients really value it?

So you say revamp the business model, I’m not buying
It’s just nice-speak for a Doo Doo business.
And I would do absolutely everything I could to prevent my children
from entering this industry.

Sad but true coming from the former owner of a post house and rental company
who made a good living for 30 years at it.

[Rich Rubasch]

Knock it off…you’re scaring me!

Depreciation of gear is astoundingly short. It really is not an investment anymore because it changes so fast. but I have gotten 5-6 years of good work out of a small army of MacPros so they were worth every penny.

One big difference is that there are so many players and so many ways to connect with a particular video project. Used to be the big production companies were the only game and they were in the white pages. Now we are bombarded by solicitations on Facebook, Twitter and more.

Establishing and maintaining a solid base of good clients is still the key to all this chaos..and a little reinvention once in a while can’t hurt.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com