-
What would really make you excited …
-
[Neil Goodman] “The know thier getting a editor at the top of the game, but also music supervision, graphics, finishing all from people who specialize it each profession.”
Exactly and this is what many freelancers, including myself, do. Back in the old days, I would handle all post after dailies (now it’s cards backed up twice!) and supervise through color. I would pay each of these specialists too. But I am still a one man shop who happens to manage the post process. I think mid-size post houses feel obligated to keep their employees busy (and the work in-house), so the client might not get the best person for a particular job, rather the person that is available.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
A single-person “team” is self-limiting for two reasons: 1) it’s very hard to be a legitimate specialist in all the many disciplines that work in our industries, and 2) there are only so many hours in a day in which one person can work.
I say the best opportunity is in the middle because a small team has many of the same advantages described elsewhere for freelancers, but they have significantly more capacity for work. That opens up a broad range of interesting projects with interesting budgets that are simply not available to sole proprietors.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “A single-person “team” is self-limiting for two reasons: 1) it’s very hard to be a legitimate specialist in all the many disciplines that work in our industries, and 2) there are only so many hours in a day in which one person can work.
I say the best opportunity is in the middle because a small team has many of the same advantages described elsewhere for freelancers, but they have significantly more capacity for work. That opens up a broad range of interesting projects with interesting budgets that are simply not available to sole proprietors.
“Not to state the obvious, but not all projects require specialist-level work at each (if any) position, and while there are only so many hours in a day there are also only so many dollars in a budget. If the client/customer is only willing to spend X on the final product then having costs that meet or exceed X doesn’t pan out in the long run.
Look at the iOS app store, for instance. The average price for an app is $0.89.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267346/average-apple-app-store-price-app/
As a software dev how do you work backwards from $0.89? You could make a better app, but generally people won’t pay for it. This is how we get into the world of freemuim, ad based, and subscriptions taking over the software business.
I’ve worked with online companies that face similar problems with videos. For example, a video that takes a day to make might get 50,000 views, but a much better video that takes a week to make might only get 100,000. Sure, it’s twice the views but it took you 5 times as long to make it. Maybe you could hire two crew people so you could get it done in two days, but it’s still just 100,000 views and now you have to split the ad revenue three ways instead of keeping it all yourself. It’s a weird feeling where you need to do sub-par work in order to survive because you audience is okay with sub-par and won’t support anything better.
Large companies can bridge these gaps by having diversified revenue streams while very small companies can survive by keeping extreme low overhead. It’s the middle of the road companies that start getting squeezed out because they are too big to be small and too small to be big.
Obviously these are just a couple of broad examples, and maybe we’ll see a swing back in the other direction in the future as companies that are very small now learn how to navigate the new playing field and grow into medium sized companies.
-
It’s a weird feeling where you need to do sub-par work in order to survive because you audience is okay with sub-par and won’t support anything better.
This. All day.
-
Sounds like Premiere would make you happy! Most of your wish list, Premiere already does
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
[Walter Soyka] “I say the best opportunity is in the middle because a small team has many of the same advantages described elsewhere for freelancers, but they have significantly more capacity for work. “
What sort of numbers constitute “a small team” in your view?
In my experience of a number of different size configurations, the “small” solution that seems to work best is when each member of the team is a strong player in their own right.
Above a certain size, this is rarely possible as other business considerations begin to dilute the ideal mix.
The “middle” often suffers from a weight of management considerations which are inimical to a healthy business.
Beyond a certain scale, however, other factors come into play that mitigate the downsides.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Shane Ross] “It’s close, but yeah, it takes a lot of metadata management to do it right. I’ve had it done wrong too, and man, 80% of the film didn’t relink properly. AVCHD formats and ANY camera that will repeat tapeless media naming when you change cards is a BIG issue.”
That hasn’t been my experience since v11. Photos, yes those are a huge pain and are just now working in the v14 beta, somewhat anyway.
As long as the media managed drive that the FCPXML is pointing to is used when importing into Resolve it’s seamless (except stills).
Whenever the finishing place copies it from that drive to their storage first is where the problems happen. As long as they media manage to their system from Resolve after the timeline is imported it works without issue.
-
[Mark Suszko] “This. All day.”
I’ll never forget when a producer came in while we were editing some event coverage (so speed was paramount) and said, “I know you guys take pride in your work, but this just needs to be D+ work. We’ve got to get it out.”
-
I know this runs counter to the prevailing sentiment – but it’s there result of something that happened just a week ago.
There was a pretty big fire in my neighborhood. One street over a house had an electrical fire.
The smoke was seen all over the area.
My son ran in and told us there was a fire – so I went to look. Had my iPhone 7+ and since I was able to get there close, fast – I shot some fire coverage.
Came home and rough edited it. And called a friend who up to a year ago, was a news producer at a local network affiliate and presuming she’d like to turn her station mates onto some decent fire coverage – gave her the link: She popped back with a “i’ll alert the station” email.
I did a package of raw footage for the station to use and a :30 highlights thing – expecting an email.
Crickets. At 5 and 6pm the stations in the area ran 10 seconds with helicopter broad shots and that was it.
Yes, nobody died.
But I realized looking back that there are circumstances where quality SIMPLY doesn’t matter any more. What matters is businesses working in their EXPECTED pre-set system. Fire? Is Helicopter available? Can we get a clip? Write a blurb for the anchor – roll it – and move on.
THAT is where we are today.
Nobody has time for perfection for anything but VERY long tail – long value content crafted and presumed to create a return over years, not months or days. And IMO, that’s getting tougher and tougher. When was the last time you paid to watch a Movie that was popular more than 2-3 years ago? And put another way – how many OPTIONS did you REJECT and not pay – along the way towards any of those that you actually watched?
Content is churning at a blistering pace. Finding a reason for someone to click on YOUR content is crazy difficult already – and willl be more and more so as every day passes.
It’s a new era. And the old rules work less and less.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Neil Goodman] “Wow Bill, if some of those features that Oliver listed were implemented, more people might take X a little more seriously and more people might use X. Good thing no? A lot of those things, like timecode views and UI customizations and dupe detections are basic and would go a loooooong way.
There’s gotta be something you wish X could do or did differently.”
Neil,
Of COURSE there are.
The issue for me is that there are 100 voices all asking for 5,000 things that are important to each of them. And I totally understand that there are many on that list that whole consituencies are looking for. And I truly hope they get them over time.
What I can’t abide is thinking that Apple will start chasing all those things the “experienced” editors are focused on – and start trying to nibble away at those – and in doing so diminish the REAL potential progress that it represented by NEW THINKING and CREATIVITY. I don’t want them to play SMALL BALL here. I want them to dream big.
THAT’s the voice I want to be.
An advocate for Apple keeping focus on the BIG ideas. Lets be clear here – I’m the FIRST to admit I’m not qualified nor bright enough to conceive what that would be. I have the same exact constraints that I see in ALL the people arguing for dup detection or better keyframing – EVERYONE can see that. It’s NOT transformational enough to be interesting. Plus, I don’t have enough fundamental understanding of what’s practical nor possible and what’s imaginary and more trouble than it’s worth. So I LEAVE that up to the people on the X team – because it’s a team bespoke assembled to figure those types of things out.
I just argue for a constant focus on the MAGIC. In the midst of these lists of the prosaic.
There’s NOTHING wrong with these sorts of lists. Just when they’re posted, expect one voice over here in the corner arguing for something MORE than just what it’s easy to identify and bitch about.
That’s all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up