Starting up a professional productiong company. How do i best spend my money?

[Al Bergstein]

While all these are great ideas that you should seriously listen to, my thoughts were more along the line of Francis above. I have taken to getting low cost leasing, from Canon, to lease my cameras (C100 for example). This, along with the monthly Adobe licensing, is a way to keep the money in your pocket for other uses, like marketing, and smaller disposables. Credit might work, but is very expensive, unless you have immediate work and can pay down the credit charges quickly.

We have no idea what type of business you are thinking of getting into with video, but let me tell you from some experience earlier in my life, under capitalized small businesses are the number one reason that they fail. You aren’t even half way to what you likely will spend. How do I know? Because I got back into it in 2010 and I had to spend much more than you are, just to get the *right* equipment. (a couple of matched cameras for live perfomances and docs work, a set of battery driven lights I could work with,a full complement of lenses needed, etc.). I live far away from any rental centers, so it’s almost impossible to rent cost effectively.

You also didn’t mention whether you anticipate that the $9k is for actually running the business or just what you have budgeted for equipment. Let’s assume that you have some kind of clients or money to fall back on for living expenses while you start up, and the 9k is just for gear. Stretch that budget! Buy used, question every purchase. Will it really get you more work? And yes, Kinos are great, but there are a lot of nice cheaper lights out there. I’ve found that my most used lighting is 1x1s from Light Panels. But that’s me. And what happens when the $9k is gone?

So if you want more advice than what we have given you, it might help to explain why you feel you need this stuff, and what kind of work you intend to do with it.

Al

[Todd Terry]

[Al Bergstein] “I have taken to getting low cost leasing, from Canon, to lease my cameras (C100 for example).”

We do, too.

I normally not a big fan of leasing much of anything (except we do lease our vehicles, which makes sense for tax and depreciation reasons). However we do lease our primary camera.

When I was about to pull trigger and buy a C300 almost two years ago, Canon had a 24-month lease deal, with the payments totaling exactly what the purchase price would be (with a $1 buyout at the end). Since that was basically free money, the equivalent of a 0% loan, we did that (and woohoo in a couple of months it will be paid off). There was no compelling reason not to lease it instead of buy it.

Canon doesn’t always have deals like that going, but they often do.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

Only slightly tangential to the topic, and I promise to bring it back around.

“I live far away from any rental centers, so it’s almost impossible to rent cost effectively.”

Whenever I hear this concern by someone wanting to do production, it always makes me wonder if maybe that person could *become* the local rental person and serve a small but loyal user base. And thus become the nexus for the local production community, the “connector” that makes it possible for a production community to grow and expand. You know, in the California Gold Rush of 1849, generally, the guys making the big money were NOT the ones digging the gold or panning it out of the rivers. Oh, a few did. But… It was the store owners and shop keepers selling the mining SUPPLIES and associated gear that got rich.

Now back to the thread, but you can guess what comes next…

9 grand is not a lot of money to set up a production company. It might be the start of enough money to buy some key bits of kit that most producers would rather rent than own, however. Like a slider, dolly, or jib, extra lights and a quiet generator or battery bank. Or P2/ SDHC cards, readers, and external drive arrays for storage and transfer… VERY useful! Or TelePrompTers or ear prompters. Grip gear like scrims, butterflies, etc. Rentable cameras or specialty mounting devices. A process trailer for car driving shots. Or a respectable green screen space… whatever the film makers in your area want most, and can’t afford to buy, just for one gig.

I would suggest you poll as many people in your local production circle as possible, see what they all need in common, go buy that stuff, (and buy a spare because customers have to depend on gear being available as contracted for), and start renting it out. Typical rule of thumb for pricing is ten rentals should be enough to buy the item. You also will be discounting for multiple days, and usually a cheaper weekend rate. I used to offer a super-cheap 3-day weekend, with either Monday of Friday as the “free” day for the rental, because a lot of low-budget productions can only afford to get actors and crew on weekends. Get insurance for everything.

The more you facilitate local productions, the more business they generate, creating a positive feedback loop. That, plus, you become the nexus of all the local production chatter and socializing, which brings in intelligence about who might need what next. You get to meet all the local talent and the people that HIRE that talent. You can make money off this kind of intelligence. The internet hasn’t made this area quite obsolete yet: in fact, you might leverage the power of the net to make it easier to book rentals, and to promote using your gear to encourage more garage-based auteurs to up their game.

“Producers” these days are a dime a dozen. Don’t you rather want to be the guy that’s handing out the dimes?