the “sad” state of our industry

[Ned Miller]

Aha! I knew my post would get you to resurface. It’s like whale watching, not knowing when you will resurface again…

Us old farts rode the Golden Wave. I don’t see how these young guns will make a good living like we did. In fact, for my DP work, many of my young competitors have roommates. It’s so hard in production to make a steady living, I see so many young DPs come from money (at lunch I ask them what their parents do). Who else could make a living at this now?

To me it’s all a matter of pivoting, as in my above post about finding where your cheese went. You must figure out how to find clients who appreciate your experience. I’m sure you’re super competent in what you do but you must be a great salesman when estimating to get them to pay more. Or maybe your specialty is getting stale and more of a commodity? I don’t know. I only really know production, I don’t know your end of the biz.

Here’s what I do to avoid competing with the kids, hobbyists, in-house tech geeks, competitors from wealthy families and DPs who married well, I do the following:

• Grey Hair Marketing: I combat ageism and me being a higher fee vendor than the kids by hammering home: “I have done this many times before. Don’t Worry”. This works when it’s higher stakes and live events. IBM had a sales tactic called F.U.D. which stood for Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. Google it. I may not be the best cameraman or video producer in the world but I tell them I am 100% reliable. For example, in the fall in Chicago it’s Conference Season, lots of companies wanting me to film their seminars, take shows, symposiums, etc. I ask them a couple of dozen more questions than a 25 year old. With me, you have no fear of a screw up.

• B2B: I figured out that B2C worships youth, adores social media and is addicted to mobile so…I market ONLY to B2B. That’s where the adults are, they respect experience. Also, B2C tends to rely on their agencies for much of their creative and marketing needs, thus cutting us out or taking a big cut when they hire us.

• The Marketing Folks: I ONLY market to the marketing department, although if I am close to the point of dumpster diving I may hit up HR, Corp Comm, Safety, PR, etc. but I have figured out the marketing people are the folks with crush deadlines and throw money at the problem. Also, they have to spend down their annual budget by the end of their FY to be awarded at least the same amount for their next FY. They tend to be the partiers of the corporation and are easier to get along with and get money out of.

• Growing Industries: For the third time I shot yesterday at the IMTS Show (International Machine Tool). This is what we used to call automation but now it’s more accurate to say Robots. Few people know that robotics manufacturing is an extremely hot biz since hiring a human is now frowned upon plus it’s the only way for us to compete against China. In sum, I ONLY market to 4 growing industries which LOVE video and are marketing driven: Healthcare, Financial Services, Software & Robotics Manufacturing. Just those 4, except I am doing a side line of litigation support (for my extreme old age).

So cheer up! It’s all a matter of proper marketing. Stay away from those areas that lend themselves to DIY.

Later,

Ned

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Ryan Early]

It always amazes me when people who spend a lot of money branding their businesses, fitting out their offices so they look professional, sign writing their vehicles etc etc are then content to have a video online representing their business that looks completely unprofessional. Kind of like spending a fortune building a great office and hanging a sign out front that is written in texta pen, it’s crazy. I tell clients that it’s better to have no video representing your business than one that undermines your credibility with poor production values.

[Todd Terry]

[ryan early] “It always amazes me when people who spend a lot of money branding their businesses… then have a video online representing their business that looks completely unprofessional. “

And among the worst offenders of that? Vendors of production equipment.

You’ll see it time and time again, companies that sell grip, lighting, or camera support equipment… who have promo or demo videos that are just positively awful. Of course there are some like Zacuto, DJI, Edelkrone, etc., that do have very good and polished videos, but many many of them do not.

You’d think that people in our industry would have killer videos. They should. The fact that they often don’t I used to sort of attribute to the “cobbler with shabby shoes” theory, that they just didn’t have time or energy to promote themselves right… but more and more I think that’s not the case, that they simply don’t know any better. One case… a rep for a very cool and innovative (and very expensive) piece of lighting gear stopped by our studio a few years ago, to demo their new product. I enjoyed the demo, and knowing that their own website was populated with videos that looked like a drunk and nearsighted toddler wagging around a 1992 handycam (except not quite that good), I suggested that we buy one of their pieces of gear at a bargain price, and we’d give them a short super-polished demo. The rep (who was also a partner in the company) looked at me fairly glassy-eyed and finally said “Huh? We have videos. A bunch of them. Ummm… something wrong with them?”

And I’ve had that exact scenario happen two following times. And probably will again.

Sad.

T2

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

[Mark Suszko]

Another kind of business where the signage is usually awful is the local tattoo parlor. When I want to put something permanent in my skin I’ll have to look at every day of my life, it does not inspire confidence to see shabby signage.

But back to the central point of the thread: this is an ever-evolving game, and to stay with it, we have to evolve as well, leveraging the talent and skills we’ve gathered, while mastering new tools and techniques as they appear. Nobody promised it would be easy. And if that’s too much work, or if you can’t make a good living at it any more, well, it might be time to transition into something else.

Watching the political speeches in coal-mining country, I see both candidates afraid to tell their audiences:
“Hey, have you not been paying attention to the world? Pollution regulations and natural gas/oil fracking has made coal un-economical. It doesn’t matter that you’ve dug coal for three generations: nobody’s buying it any more, mines are closing, and you need to retire or get into a new line of work to survive. That may require you to go back to school, and to do things that are new and unfamiliar. But you’re sitting in a burning building, and you need to get your family out of it. Anybody who promises that in exchange for your votes, your jobs are coming back, is not only lying to you – they’re using your fear and nostalgia to hold you back from moving on, moving AHEAD into some other kind of business that your family can depend on for your futures.” I think this parallels our industry to a point.

[Ryan Early]

I agree the only way to stay in this business is to constantly learn and improve because things keep changing. Technology is changing for the better and when I look back twenty years I’d rather the technology of today than what I used back then. The reason many in this industry are finding it difficult however isn’t because we aren’t improving our skills it’s because ideas about the value of those skills have changed. Learning more and improving your skills won’t change the mindset of a client base that thinks all you need is an app. How we challenge those misconceptions and sell the value of talent experience and ability now that the technical barriers are gone is the real battle we face.

[Bob Cole]

See the New York Times story today about how IBM Watson has automated the compilation of daily highlights from the U.S. Open tennis tournament. What used to take 80+ people now takes IBM Watson, and 2 people.

The computer “reads” crowd noise, player gestures, the score during which a shot occurs, and comes up with a list of highlights which tests very very well, compared to the old product.

Just thought I’d try to cheer everybody up.

Bob C

[Ned Miller]

Hi Bob,

You’re giving me PTSD! I retired in March, or at least I tried to, I work perhaps two days a month to keep my tax write offs open. I unsubscribed to The Cow, DVXuser, and all the others. Trying to forget this business! I get lots of inquiries and turn them over to the young shooters who are OK with these low rates for the fee of upscale restaurant gift cards.

I heard another news story on Watson today, it will soon replace oncologists! Since Watson does Deep Learning it can advise a cancer patient as to what course of treatment and meds will have the best outcome, so who needs an old grey haired doctor who reads and remembers only some of the studies? Watson also now reads biopsy slides much better than humans, and AI is now used in Europe for slide reading and the pathologists are fighting it from coming here. Lots of big McMansions will be for sale soon in the suburbs I think.

So nice to not have to deal with this anymore. I have kept a couple of fun, fast paying clients but otherwise all my video work is for small charities.Never going 4K. Off the hamster wheel.

Good luck to all of you still here!

Ned

[Bob Cole]

sorry – I was wrong about 80+ people – it was more like 40 people whom Watson replaced.

[Drew Lahat]

This is a fun thread… and one that could likely stay active for as long as CreativeCow exists. ☺

Bob started it as the state of “our industry”, which is an umbrella for everyone’s experiences. Mind you, he’s a post-production systems integrator. I understand his experience, and that of others in this thread – my career path has included systems integration engineering, cinematography, and editing, among a few other niches. I saw up-close the demise of a system integration firm and a post house, rendered irrelevant by those market changes.

Rich, you mentioned the racks full of terminal gear. I agree with Bob on that – what racks? Who needs all that SDI anymore? (Let alone the audio and RS422 runs.) Bob runs some Ethernet, throws a 10GigE switch and a (carefully-chosen) NAS and calls it a day. And still half the clients balk at the cost so they make do with sneakernet and external drives. That’s about 80% of Bob’s CreativeCow threads right there. ☺

I remember hearing an accomplished, top-notch editor at a discussion panel saying “what we do [editing] is not really that hard”. When I was in my teens and fell in love with video & filmmaking, there was still a significant technical barrier to entry: the equipment was expensive. I think we never realized the role this fact had in structuring the business. If the camera or editing room cost $150,000 you were gonna have less of them around, need a smaller cadre of operators (or artists); those people would be career professionals; and it’d make sense to compensate them proportionally. (That said, apparently we had fared better than regional airline pilots. Hmm.)

We all saw how producers lowered their labor budgets in tandem with falling equipment costs. Now, as others in the thread have said, we only have ourselves to market. People mentioned writers – no one (I hope) has gotten into writing, painting or acting expecting a stable career with solid pay. What us pre-millennial hacks didn’t expect, is that same would come to apply to the craftsman and artisan roles of editing, camera operating, production tech support, etc.

In the grander scheme of things, this is part of a global trend of automation and ever-improving market efficiency. The supply side of the Western World’s industries is cutting down labor costs at a rate that exceeds the consumers’ ability to afford what those industries make. Many think we’ll have to reconsider capitalism; one futurist suggested being compensated for profits corporations make from collecting and analyzing our personal data.

For now, all we can do in our own turf is adapt but also hold our ground. I hope that enough of us leave the industry if it can’t afford us – in order to save the industry – and avoid this race to zero that oversupply creates. Personally, I set my own minimum rate which allows me to afford rent, health insurance etc. and if I can make a living in the industry, great. But I gave up DP’ing partly because of what Ned Miller said, and I do a larger share of online editing and tech support, because it’s harder to fake the required expertise in those fields. And the top of the market still exists if you can get to it.

If Watson displaced 40 production jobs, become one of the 2 employees left, the robotic cameras operator, one of the engineers developing Watson, or one of the technicians maintaining its data centers. Or go work in construction, because I’m remodeling my kitchen and I’m repeatedly shocked by the supply/demand curve in that market. I have to sign off now, because my contractor messed up again and I’ve gotta go pay him more and beg him to please do his job. Hey, he was the best “talent” available.

[Grinner Hester]

I think all we have ever sold is ourselves. I instill into my students that it has nothing to do with the tools, but the artist. Fine art is still made with a chisel and stone.
Has my rate become a fraction of what it use to be? Sure but that is because I still like creating for others. When I create my own products, that is when I get to name my price. I have let my students know they are not going to have staff jobs in this industry… but can easily make six figures a year on youtube by the time they are 17.