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Tips for becoming a full time videographer?
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Please elaborate. How can you shoot and edit, something that lasts 30 minutes, and includes graphics for $300? Especially you, Walt B., who has massive overhead. Dying to know. Also, why would you want to?
Thanks.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
[Ned Miller] “Please elaborate. How can you shoot and edit, something that lasts 30 minutes, and includes graphics for $300? Especially you, Walt B., who has massive overhead. Dying to know. Also, why would you want to?”
In my case, we don’t have massive overhead, we run a very lean operation, always have. That’s always a big misconception folks have about my operation. Our overhead is quite minimal.
In this case, I reached out to her before I knew what her budget was. We came to an agreement that was still below our rate but higher than what she originally said. By shooting enough videos at once, made it cost effective for us and we can edit all of her videos in just two days.
The upshot of all of this is we may have opened the door to larger work through her connections.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaCraft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals
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Thanks for the elaboration Walt. I have a home office, all gear is now paid for so I only have minimal expenses like insurance, advertising, repairs, etc. yet I can’t accept making $300 a day. I’d soon go broke. Plus from my experience with the kind of prospects who use Thumbtack I wouldn’t assume they represent future biz, after all, why did they use Thumbtack? My track record of doing a great job cheaply as an entre for better future work has been very eye opening, it hasn’t worked well.
Every now and then when biz is dead I will peruse those sites and I find the posters to be incredibly cheap. Mark S. doesn’t think video has become a commodity but I see otherwise, every day. Think of what you’d have charged ten years ago. Twenty years ago.
Well, I don’t want to get the blues on such a great weekend. My fault for visiting CC lately, usually when I get my tires rotated or waiting for a plane. If the OP is offering to shoot for free, and you are editing for $300 a day, and people are asking me to shoot for about half of what I charged in 1993, what kind of business is this? How can the OP make a real living as a full time videographer?
I have a gaggle of clients who pay very well but they don’t have the demand I need. I just have to find more of them because 70% of the market has plummeted, based on what they want to pay or expect a video to cost, to cheapskates or freebies. Thumbtack is for finding plumbers. How did we end up on it? We used to be a highly respected occupation that people were envious of and now everyone’s nephew is doing videos for free or slave wages. Go figure…
One of my few super well paying clients, a giant consulting firm, has been flying me around the country interviewing CEOs about how “disruptive economies” are effecting their industry. Airbnb vs. Hyatt, Uber vs the cab companies, etc. BTW, the only reason I am flying around is for the videos to look the same. We were totally disrupted by the DSLR movement and prices have never been the same, also with iMovie. A client called the other day and asked me about changing duration in FCP Express, as a favor.
We are in a biz where prices have actually declined. How did we get into a position where we even need to look at the postings from these crowd sourcing sites? Circumstances largely out of our control but they are there. And that’s why I told the OP to forget full time shooting, unless he’s from a wealthy family?
Enjoy the weekend!
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
[Ned Miller] “Mark S. doesn’t think video has become a commodity but I see otherwise, every day.”
100% a commodity today. Projects are driven by cost first and foremost. As long as it’s “good enough” the client is happy. I’ve been working on an educational campaign with potential clients on why you pay me vs. paying other folks. And quite honestly we’re figuring out how to make things work at lower budgets. Just cutting into other areas where we used to hire out, now we bring it all internal.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaCraft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals
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I come from a long line on my father’s side of small business owners in a service sector. In fact, no one on my father’s side has had a “job”, they always had a small service business. So I have absorbed through osmosis this axiom of cost charging:
All clients may be divided into one of two categories: Those who are using their own money and those who are using the company’s money. You ALWAYS want to work for the latter.
And I always follow that rule.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Company money or personal money, everyone is spending a lot less and looking at video production as simply a commodity.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaCraft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals
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Yeah I know. About ten years ago I started to refine how I describe what “I do” to strangers. Often I would BS and say I did something else so I wouldn’t get the same 10 questions, so at a party or bar, etc. I’d say I was “in construction” or something. That would end that chit chat thread. However, at a social function with the wife, etc. I would say I “produce video”, or something similar, but in the last ten years I’d get a response similar to: “My kid (or nephew, neighbor, cousin…) does that.” Meaning, every mother’s son is now in video and it’s seen as “nothing unique” anymore, meaning a commodity.
So…when I want to differentiate myself in a social situation, because I am now too embarrassed to just say I “do video” or something similar to that, I say, “I’m a Cameraman on TV shows such as National Geographic, Discovery, History Channel, etc.” because if I say I produce corporate videos that is viewed as nothing special anymore. Even documentaries, which used to have a cache, are considered DIY. Half the time if I am talking to anyone under 30 they will tell me about the documentaries they were involved in even if they are now in healthcare, finance, engineering…something sensible where they will have a realistic financial future and chance for a middle class existence.
That’s why my dander gets up when a young person thinks they can make a “real” living doing this now. Mark S. seems to me to have this glass half full outlook but I do not know what end of the biz he is in and if he has to fight for his next project like we do? This is definitely a commodity business now.
Every now and then when I run out of my A, B and C list of crew members I have to post anonymously on Craigslist and I get this flood of desperation in response. Sometimes I get a great new crew member addition but if you want to see what the real price structure in your area is, post a CL ad for the typical project you do, especially your specialty, and you will see the competition, some rookies, inepts, but also quality providers who are temporarily desperate, and you will get an idea of what the prices are in your zone. Add to that the video virgins who are needing a video but yet have no idea as to what one costs, and they see “halfway decent” samples, wow, us old pros are now screwed, no?
So in sum I am targeting industries I know which are flush with dough, last week I did healthcare and mutual fund clients. They aren’t looking for the best guy in town or the cheapest kid (our OP), rather, no one wants to be the guy who hires the guy “who “f’d” up” and that’s my specialty. I am targeting the ones with money who have a LOT to lose if the guy they hire F’s it up. I now have this technique down, I just need to find more clients like this so I am not competing on Thumbtack or feeling the need to sneak a peek at CL, which gets me depressed.
Hey, don’t ruin my birthday weekend!
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Hai Guyz, what’s goin ‘ on in this thread? 🙂
You know I’m like Betelgeuse, the poltergeist, right? Drop my name often enough and I magically appear.
I’d say it’s not so much I’m a glass half full guy, but rather that the glass was twice as big as it needs to be. But something Walter said about taking a low-paying gig because it got him one on one time with the client he could use to build trust and then upsell to the organization for bigger, more lucrative work: that’s singing out of the same hymnal I’ve been screeching from all this time. If you only wait for the scraps they advertise to the lowballers, that’s all you can get. If you play up your role as media and communications consultant, you find the work they didn’t know they needed, and that stuff pays well. or better, anyway.
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Well, I’ve been the victim DOZENS of times, seems I never learn, of clients taking advantage of me, usually one offs, who say please help us with our low/no budget project this time and we’ll pay you back with bigger jobs next time. One of the first instances occurred when I was right out of film school working as a film AC:
Do the names Piven and Cusack mean anything to you? Dads of Jeremy and Joan? In the late 70’s those two Chicago area producers wanted to do a fund raising documentary for their new arts center. Got me to work for two days free with the promise of getting on a “real” job soon. So after I did that I would call Dick Cusack and he would say in a befuddled manner, “Ned who?” I swear to God. Did I learn? Not for many years because I was, and I say was, a trustworthy sap. 2015? No way. That’s one of the oldest tricks in the book in terms of getting a vendor (hate that word) down in price. It’s a cliche. “Work with us on this one please and we’ll pass your name around”, etc.
Getting back to the OP, since I am a freelance cameraman, and I see what happens to young freelance cameramen, I think I am highly qualified, especially as a dad to two millennials who can’t seem to make good, steady money, to say that you’d have to have a HOLE IN YOUR HEAD to embark on a career as a freelance videographer. Perhaps as a producer/shooter/editor type but to rely solely on shooting, no way. There’s No Money In It, especially Steady Money. Hey, I should know right? I hire them all the time. I send my scraps their way that I can’t afford to shoot as a favor to some clients. I compete against them on the crowd sourcing sites and….lose.
There comes a time, usually in the late twenties, where they will be tired of eating ramen noodles and having just a bike for transport. They need a profession, an occupation or trade they can ply. They can’t follow their dreams or passion, they can’t make a hobby into a living. That’s only for kids from families with money.
There’s a new economic term I’m learning from the project I’m on about Sharing Economies and that’s called the Gig Economy. It’s not pretty. It means that these young people have to cobble together a bunch of low paying things to do, almost as if they had 4 or 5 part time jobs, just to “make it”. So they’ll do a little Uber driving, work at Starbucks a couple of days, do some tutoring, various manual labors or piece work, and hey! A little shooting here and there. Bummer. Is that any way to live? Can’t save up for an engagement ring. Can’t get a place without roommates. And that is what has happened to the young peeps entering the video biz the last few years: They can’t make much money. Some exceptions, like people who know how to hustle or have “connections”.
This si the same mantra as the thread the other week about commencement addresses at film school graduation but those implied working in various areas. This OP said full time videographer. Would you want your daughter to marry one?
Oh well, that’s it! Tomorrow is suppose to be beautiful weather and the kayak is on top of my new 2015 Pilot.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Well, if there’s ever a quote on this site you can attribute to me, it is to never fall for that dumb “Give us a break on the first one” line. There are two proper retorts to that: one is to counter offer: “I’ll give you the price break on the SECOND one; but the rate today is the rate, take it or leave it.” The second alternative is to smile, silently get up and leave the meeting and go to the nearest bar or place that serves good cherry pie. Because nothing will get better from that point if you stay in the meeting. Or they might be testing if you’re a rube, to see if you’ll accept that proposal or walk. If you say you’ve fallen for that line a dozen times, you might want to get tested for head trauma; it usually only takes me once to get burned:-)
I have three proto-millennials, all paying their own way thru college with part-time jobs right now, so I dig where you’re coming from. Their lives are not nearly as easy as our generation had it, in terms of job prospects, expenses and relative wage levels. They all still live with me (though I charge modest rent) and I put about 150 miles on the car every weekend, just shuttling them each to and from school and/or their far-flung workplaces (my town has no bus service after six or on weekends). The eldest is now a security guard, which pays double what he made as a salesman for Kmart, and he gets benefits and etc. but he works graveyard shifts from midnight to eight AM six days a week. He walks home 3.4 miles some nights after those overnight shifts, along a highway with no sidewalks, or thru a tough part of downtown. He’s young, eager, tough, he’ll survive, meanwhile he’s saving up for a beater car to enhance his after-hours mobility and let him take on a more lucrative security gig out by the airport, guarding G-6’s. All my kids work pretty hard for their meager wages. They have all had the speech from me that people like them will go thru several entire careers in a lifetime, that there is no long-term stability to be had, that they have to hit the ground running and adapt constantly. This generation will be a generation of Jack-of-all-trades people. Able to envision and act on new opportunities when they see them. A nation of young Bob Zelins, maybe.
Why would you expect them to make it in video the way we did? The world and market conditions that made that possible in our younger days is long gone, disrupted, as you point out. I’d never try to sell my kids on taking up dad’s line of work. IN TERMS OF BEING A FREELANCE VIDEOGRAPHER, that is. The career of being a professional communications specialist, on the other hand, is going to remain lucrative for the right people for a long time yet to come.
The other quote I’ve laid down for years here goes along the lines of: we’re not here to make videos, specifically. We’re here to SOLVE the client’s COMMUNICATION PROBLEM in some way, and often but not always, that is done WITH a video of some sort, but there is so much more to it than just that.
If you can no longer make a living as a printer because desktop printing and the internet killed your business model, you could still be doing something that puts printed words in front of reader’s eyes if that’s your passion. You call it something different today, and use different disciplines and tech to do it. Walter figured this out long ago and saw he had to branch out what he was doing, do it a different way, reconfigure the business model but beyond that, he went from purely working FOR clients, to becoming a producer and distributor of his own original content and thus, HIRING HIMSELF, working AS his own client. Doing so, he owns and is invested, not just financially, but emotionally, in much more of what he does than many of us can hope for. For pure job satisfaction, even though I’m positive he’ll tell you it’s a lot more work, you can’t beat that. It’s the same rush sailors enjoy, when sailing a boat they’ve also built themselves, to it’s limits, or private pilots with homebuilt aircraft, who feel the thrill of flight on an even deeper level because they tightened every nut and bolt themselves.
I’m sorry to sound so much like a Don Draper ad pitch here. But I’m by nature a generally positive person, ever hopeful and interested in what’s new, where things are going, and how to be a part of that. Hell, I’m a Cubs fan; that will show you the extent of the optimism. (Hey, with a Wild Card spot, the way they’re playing lately, *It* Could Happen!) Every day’s a new chance to learn something new, try a new way, test an old boundary. Overcome the past to shape your destiny. Don’t let the past be the only thing that defines you. You are alive TODAY. Today, you could do something amazing. What might it be? I can’t wait to find out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuHfVn_cfHU
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