There’s a Severe Degeneration of Basic Business Social Courtesies in the World Today…

[Kylee Pena]

I’ve seen this mentioned a couple times, and it’s almost always in this context mentioned by industry vets rather than newer people to the industry because we’ve just come to expect this from the response of our entry INTO the industry. In my current role, I see this at the highest levels. It’s not rudeness or lack of “cajones” — ain’t nobody in these parts lacking cojones, at least.

In my experience, it’s a combination of things, in no small part due to the overall devaluing of people in general (not just our industry, but the workforce in general) combined with so much more noise in our lives thanks to the internet. A lot of us are doing a lot more work with a lot fewer resources because it’s possible to have email notifications in our pockets nonstop. There reaches a point where a person must prioritize, whether they’re doing it subconsciously or not.

You seem to imply this is a generational problem and that’s very frustrating because while it may be slightly generational for younger people to rely on text messages over phone calls*, it’s certainly not because of all these damn kids and their phones at the dinner table. When I was leaving college and trying to get into the industry, I applied for literally hundreds of jobs. I got responses from maybe 3-5% of them. After I was experienced, same thing. All of my peers experienced the same thing — even going to interviews and not hearing back at all! — so in a way, the older generation very well may have planted this seed themselves. We’ve all been strung along, even after firm offers. It’s maddening but we just let it go.

I came up in a relatively small media community, so it was important to maintain good relationships with people even if you weren’t going to work with them right then. You probably would one day. Now things have become exponentially more global and the feeling of immediacy has left many of us even if the actual NEED for immediacy hasn’t changed. But I see plenty of emails going unanswered from the top down as I do from the bottom up.

“But it only takes a second to call someone or send a reply.” Yeah, but if I have 5 vendors I’m getting bids from, that adds up. And on a larger project, like a television series, multiply all that by 100. I have to say though, I’m so busy myself as a vendor that I don’t really notice when people aren’t following up. I just move on.

I’m not saying it’s right, or that it’s not always someone who hates confrontation or has poor time management. I just don’t really think it’s society’s politeness breaking down around us, or these kids that clearly need to get off your lawn. It’s a change in our world’s communication methods and volume. It’s a symptom of our globalized, largely faceless industry and the incredibly amount of STUFF in our lives.

(*I personally rely on email and messages more than phone calls due to this volume of necessary communication. I will of course call people often. But for something that can be answered with a sentence, I don’t want to be stuck on the phone, unable to multitask, for a half hour! I want to go home and cook dinner eventually, dangit!)

blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t

[Ned Miller]

due to the overall devaluing of people in general…

Well, that says it all. Couldn’t have said it better myself. There is a difference between the HR department not getting back to an applicant versus a prospect asking a vendor to take half their day, either morning or afternoon, get gussied up, drive in, do their dog ‘n pony show and pitch, then drive home and work an hour or more to send in a proposal, and then not respond when they follow up. You asked them to donate to you half of a work day to help you figure out which way to go with an upcoming video project, right? To me, it’s simply a matter of manners. And it does only take 10 seconds to respond. And it is generational. If I was to do a spreadsheet on this I’d say the below 31 or 32 crowd, give or take a year or so, are the ones who feel no guilt no getting back after asking you for half a day and picking your mind for free.

So…after I posted this around 10AM today I sent an acerbic, jocular email to one of the above mentioned people that said, “Was it something I said?”, realizing full well I would never work with her. That was her tipping point and she wrote back:

“It was great meeting you but after reviewing your pricing I am looking for more affordable solutions. My budget stinks!”

Now, was that so hard? Couldn’t she have written that eight weeks and several emails of mine ago? Maybe she wanted to avoid delivering bad news? Who knows. I referred her to Thumbtack.com My cheapest rate was above her maximum.

Being an old timer I have watched this decline in manners, where people in our biz will request something of others, in our case it’s holding out the carrot of possible work, ask us for our time (and often expertise with free consulting) and then feel no compunction to have the basic social courtesy of sending a reply to their inquiry. I can see my 29 and 30 year old not responding, but not my brother or sister. And going forward, I will be the Manners Police. If you ask me for a meeting and/or cost estimate, and you never respond, I’ll let you know you were not raised properly.

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

[Ned Miller]

due to the overall devaluing of people in general…

Well, that says it all. Couldn’t have said it better myself. There is a difference between the HR department not getting back to an applicant versus a prospect asking a vendor to take half their day, either morning or afternoon, get gussied up, drive in, do their dog ‘n pony show and pitch, then drive home and work an hour or more to send in a proposal, and then not respond when they follow up. You asked them to donate to you half of a work day to help you figure out which way to go with an upcoming video project, right? To me, it’s simply a matter of manners. And it does only take 10 seconds to respond. And it is generational. If I was to do a spreadsheet on this I’d say the below 31 or 32 crowd, give or take a year or so, are the ones who feel no guilt not getting back after asking you for half a day and picking your mind for free.

So…after I posted this around 10AM today I sent an acerbic, jocular email to one of the above mentioned people that said, “Was it something I said?”, realizing full well I would never work with her. That was her tipping point and she wrote back:

“It was great meeting you but after reviewing your pricing I am looking for more affordable solutions. My budget stinks!”

Now, was that so hard? Couldn’t she have written that eight weeks and several emails of mine ago? Maybe she wanted to avoid delivering bad news? Who knows. I referred her to Thumbtack.com My cheapest rate was above her maximum.

Being an old timer I have watched this decline in manners, where people in our biz will request something of others, in our case it’s holding out the carrot of possible work, ask us for our time (and often expertise with free consulting) and then feel no compunction to have the basic social courtesy of sending a reply to their inquiry. I can see my 29 and 30 year old not responding, but not my brother or sister.

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

[Kylee Pena]

Hm. Well, if I were short-sighted, I would say this is almost entirely an old-timer problem. Because the extent of MY experience with getting the cold shoulder or needing to drag a response out of someone is almost entirely 50+ guys, because they are in most of the high level decision-making roles I interact with.

However, I’m not and I know there’s a lot more nuance here beyond my own bubble so I’m not gonna say that.

It’s interesting you dismiss everything I say, include job applicants, as though that doesn’t also require a significant time investment of rewriting a cover letter, reshaping a resume, and a dog-and-pony show of its own. One might wager to say you’re a bit out of touch with the challenges other generations face. Or they might not, who knows.

But hey, good luck to you. I hope you can find a way to adjust your business to react to the changing world around you. As my email inbox has received 8 new messages about the 4 projects I’m currently managing in the 2 minutes I took to type this, I don’t have any further insight.

blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t

[Bob Zelin]

My budget stinks!

ding ding ding ding ! There it is Ned. It’s not you. It’s your budget. And not just your budget – it’s everyone’s budget. Today, NO ONE (and I work for big companies) wants to spend any money. Everything is too expensive. The idea of any company buying a Sony HD Cam deck in 2017 is simply inconceivable to me. How companies like EVS and Quantum continue to find customers is a complete mystery to me.
I send 4 emails back and forth today to some poor AVID assistant editor in LA today, because he wants to find out why his 6 drive shared storage system is stuttering playback with 4 editors, and I said “you have a 12 bay chassis – just add the rest of the drives, but at least add two drives” – and instead of spending a few hundred bucks for 2 drives to resolve this problem, his BOSS (not this poor kid) was pressuring him to find out exactly why they needed to justify the cost of TWO SATA drives to resolve this problem – is this expense really necessary ? !!!!!!!!

Now, others who read this will say “well, Bob, you are an idiot, why are you dealing with customers like this”. But as time goes on, this is becoming ALL the customers. This is why Blackmagic is so wildly successful. They understand the #1 rule – people want everything, and they want to pay nothing for it.
So it’s not you Ned – just say you will work for free, and you will buy the entire crew lunch as well, and everyone will be nice to you and return your phone calls instantly.

Welcome to the modern “pro” video business.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Mark Suszko]

Not the complete answer, but a portion of the answer, perhaps, is that old-timey guys did everything by face to face or phone, back when phones had real audio quality and real duplex communication. not this glorified CB radio junk today. Texting and emailing turns the live person you were speaking to and with into an anonymous metal candy bar in your hand. it’s easy to de–personalize in that format, and then to drop more formal manners.

My wife occasionally chides me in the fast food drive-through if I don’t give the order-taker’s squawk box a clear salutation as well as a loud “please and thank-you”. I AM polite and do that stuff when I get to the window, but not always so when just addressing just the intercom speaker.

The impersonal candy-bar-shaped box lets people who are lazy or shy avoid the stress of politeness. Perhaps if texts and emails always came with a clear, large picon of the sender’s face, it might help, but that’s not a standardized thing across all platforms.

Zelin also makes a great point, as usual. Everything is commoditized, even things that should not be so. Ordering thru interfaces instead of people has desensitized individuals who hate trying to deal with salespeople. I get the impression that users are much more interested in getting the opinions of non-salesperson users than in talking to a sales expert. Isn’t that one reason forums like the COW do well? Or, in a similar vein, the user reviews on any Amazon catalog page? We trust the average guys with nothing to gain from the conversation, more than the experts themselves.

Ned, maybe this is something you can turn to your advantage, by getting “rated” by various related prosumer or consumer sites, letting them speak on your behalf. Wedding/event shooters have third-party raters like The Knot but aside from something like ITVA, (whatever their new name is) which people outside our biz never head of, where is the similar trusted third-party rating system for commercial/industrial producers?

[Ned Miller]

Kylee wrote: It’s interesting you dismiss everything I say, include job applicants, as though that doesn’t also require a significant time investment of rewriting a cover letter, reshaping a resume, and a dog-and-pony show of its own.
I didn’t mean to sound dismissive but I think HR is an entirely different animal. Young people like my daughter are actually applying to a faceless computer. Meaningless. If they do get an interview the interviewers may not give a response due to having dozens of applicants and as a “committee” may not feel the responsibility. Networking is Everything! But if you’re a marketing exec and ask a self employed vendor like me, to blow half a day, and oh yeah, get free advice, you do need to send a Thank You at least. At minimum an email saying, Thanks but No Thanks. I notice that most of the major papers still have advice columnists.

As a sidenote, a couple of weeks ago I shot and edited twenty social media videos on exactly this topic for the job hunting guru Liz Ryan, who is LinkedIn’s most liked blogger and she needed to promote her book. Her take away was: Never Send Your Resume Into a Computer! Ever! I got her to autograph and write that in the book for my daughter. I would have zero expectation of HR getting back to me, but someone who asked me to polish my shoes, get a haircut and drive round trip two hours? Yes.

Yeah Bob, I had an epiphany yesterday and the phrase “My budget stinks!” resonated in that, I believe it’s the economy plus the decline of using video for B2B is less. Just opened my Fidelity statement yesterday for January and I made thousands more in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, due to the Trump Effect, than I did as profit (not gross) on shooting and editing. I’m no financial wizard, just lucky and slow! So my insight now is that it is the economy sucks, although the stock market is hot. There’s not the budgets for outside video as there used to be. I talk with a lot of people and anyone who says it’s Unicorns & Rainbows, I don’t believe them, unless they have lucked into some great clients.

I too am getting lots of requests, mainly due to my high SEO, but invariably when we start to communicate back and forth about costs, they don’t “have the budget”. An inquiry is irrelevant to profit, in that there has to be a profitable job that comes from it and God knows the internet brings in mainly tire kickers. I have to cover my butt because the description of the parameters of the projects are so vague, it’s hard to tell if it will be a one or four camera shoot, a one or two day shoot, a one or three day edit, so I tend to bid high to CYA so I don’t lose money, which occasionally happens. If I was willing to lower my prices I could accept all of them, but why would I want to do that? Now I’m basically competing against bachelor renters with roommates, who will work for peanuts, and unfortunately for us old folks, they aren’t “half bad” and are usually half my price. My bad for living on a golf course and buying two new cars last year.

But I have never seen it like this where people will actually ask you to come in for a meeting, ask you to work up prices, and then never respond. Inexplicable to me but society is now so different, although to Kylee this seems normal because she didn’t experience the previous times. On Netflix, Season 3 of Black Mirror, watch “Nosedive”, to me that sums up that generation. That’s what has happened. When I was in the two meetings I mentioned yesterday, I got the vibe they were getting a free consultation, as in: “If you keep half the frame open for text, how would you compensate for vertical Japanese text yet have enough room for Arabic?” “If we shoot in the warehouse here, how can you hang seamless paper with these pipes sticking out?” You get my point. Twenty years ago that would have been a $200 consult.

Another epiphany yesterday was my view of the marketing function in corporations and as how it relates to contracting video. My three legged stool was always Non-Fiction TV shows, Documentaries and Corporate Videos. The common wisdom for decades was: Hit up the B2B marketing departments because they are the ones who LOVE to use video, they have the money, they have crush deadlines so will pay more. These are the gregarious party animals of a company, the golfers, the Good Ole Boys, Jocks and Homecoming Queens, they love swag and (used to) love the “glamour” of video and celebrity endorsements, and schmoozing in the bar after work. These are the ones who have to spend their entire budget by the end of their FY or their budget isn’t approved for the next FY. This was my bread and butter and put two kids through college (of course they had to do 5 years each out-of-state, but that’s another story). So here’s my epiphany:

As I saw when I did the documentary style marketing video shoot M&T in a special ed school for a (very successful) software company, the use of video has lost its sheen as a sales tool. In other words: No Big Deal. No need for pros to come in. They do 95% of the videos themselves! I was only called in as a DP because the audio was complex and I had to do cinema verite of kids who are all over, and doc is my forte. Yesterday they called asking how to import AVCHD into FCP7. An indicator that even the post process is now seen as DIY. They are younger, meaning they grew up with video and computers so they don’t see the need to pay big bucks for an outsider, unless it’s something complex. Thankfully they don’t know how to light or do good audio because that has to be taught, but any techy can make it through a camera manual. A lot of my shooting is CEO level because they don’t want anything to screw up, so they’re forced to bring someone like me in, but I don’t get the post on that type of gig. Besides the larger TV shows, the CEO type shoots are the only times I now get my higher day rate that is comparable to (inflation adjusted) shooting rates of the 80s, 90s and pre-Crash 2000s.

The two prospects I shamed yesterday for never getting back, perhaps their budgets are cut not only because the economy hasn’t been growing but the money earmarked for video is less a proportion than before? In other words, in the B2B realm, video ain’t no big deal anymore, it’s something to do yourself or get as cheaply as possible, hence the Thumbtack type sites. Meaning, hire the young kids because they will definitely be cheaper. When I am filming at giant trade shows and I take a break to walk the aisles (looking for freebies and food), I always study the booth videos to spot trends. I now see a trend towards videos which are not dependent on audio (due to noise and foreigners) they’re text heavy, possibly for the purpose of re-editing for foreign languages and no one can hear in a noisy trade show. But very disconcerting is… these videos, which often look great, are made up of 100% good and cheap stock from places like iStock, Pond5, etc. My theory is the in-house graphics people, who are very familiar with Premiere, have stepped into that function, easily. One of my best clients is a hospital and if you are unfortunate enough to be in one lately, digital signage is now a big thing. I discovered it is the responsibility of the graphics people, using Premiere, and these people often ask me for ProRes to re-cut my footage for their signage. So I definitely see, what used to have to be farmed out, is now in-house, and that really hurts my share of the communications pie.

Judging by the inquiries I get the B2C sector is hot to use short, cheap as possible, quantity is everything, videos, but there’s no money in it for someone like myself. I get emails and calls wanting to do one step above a blogger quality so they can pepper them all over social media, and naturally they want these around $50 a video.

As to your comment about decks, well…lots of TV clients actually still prefer their old workflow, not just for speed and archiving, but confidentiality. I shot a new crime series (had to have an armed off duty cop because it was a door knock of a murderer), and they shipped in two very heavy, old, battle axes: Panasonic HDX900s. They had to hire two of us old guys because the younger shooters would not know them and could not do hand held all day with a beast like this without a day or two of practice. The reason they wanted tape was two fold: No time for transfers and they did not want the DPs to maintain a safety copy due to litigation paranoia. Same with Dr. Phil and that ilk. Often there’s a messenger waiting for the last shot to race to the airport. I shot the NFL Draft in Chicago a couple of years ago and a team wanted Sony XDCam. When I watched the scrum around Brady at the end of the Super Bowl, there were many large ENG cameras, such as XDCam and P2. So there still are companies with a closed loop post workflow that cringe when different codecs and formats are brought in because they are editing under severe deadlines with a gun to their heads. At least that’s how it has been explained to me.

So I am just a few months from retiring! Then I will only do freebie fund raising videos for local charities, where I can see the benefit of my contribution. I am so disgusted with these chicken feed budgets, might as well work on doing the things I never had time for. I’m passing the leads onto young shooters I know for wine and theatre tickets, and I have stopped all marketing. The type of money to be made nowadays, compared to “The Good Old Days” is nothing, so I am preparing my new chapter!

Well, that’s my .02¢ observations.

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

[Mark Suszko]

I wish you all the best in “working retirement”, Ned! You’ve certainly earned it! Somehow I picture you a year from now as the tribal Shaman for a local production Collective, a bunch of active, earnest and tech-savvy kids doing social concern Docs because you can’t sit around all day without getting into something.

[Ned Miller]

Thanks Mark. My wife is retiring from teaching special ed for 27 years in June so that got me thinking, I’m 63, how many good years do I have left? I’ve had an excellent run as far as DPing goes. I am looking at having to spend $12K-$17K for either a Sony FS7 or Canon C300 Mark II with a Canon 18-80 servo zoom just to be competitive, yet the clients won’t pay a dime more, in fact, they are getting so much cheaper it’s crazy. So… it has become a perfect storm of bad indicators and I feel now is the time to get out. From slow payers, lower rates as a DP, crowd sourcing, rich kids underbidding, having to buy new cameras, build a new website…there’s not enough big money in this occupation anymore. It’s easier to grow old in this biz if you are editing, but I can not imagine life sitting in front of a computer all day. Recipe for suicide.

The Holy Grail of video work in Chicago has always been to be the preferred person for the Fortune 100s such as Allstate, Boeing, Abbott, Kraft, etc. That’s how I made my base salary. But now these giant companies are the slowest of payers. So why bother? Many are now outsourcing their back office functions to India, so the clients have no idea where my check is and when I may be paid.

And I am constantly doing bids, they want me, but they all want me to come way down in price. What I consider my half day rate for shooting is now what the clients want to pay for a full day. My plan is to dial it way down, just work for existing clients, and do freebie videos for small charities. There seems to be no true formula for retiring in this biz, people just fade away. I have trained many a young person in the art of shooting, some became my competitors, but I would not recommend it as a career path now unless they are from, or married into, wealth. I don’t see it as a middle class existence anymore. Do you?

P.S. I am on the list as a volunteer diver for the Shedd Aquarium! Need to get some more hours of dive time, it’s my idea of retirement. I plan to stay very busy, I just don’t want to compete for chump change and then fight to get my check within 90 days!

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

[Rich Rubasch]

Very interesting read because it covers two subjects in one! The new modes of communication and the new age of budgets! Our local MCAI chapter is having its meeting next week and the topic is budgeting for projects and maintaining a livable hourly rate for our skill sets. Should be an interesting discussion. And we’ll have a mix of old timers who are familiar with a $450/hour room rate, to the newbies who will shoot on a DSLR for a full 10 hour day for $250.

Interesting times, these.

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