Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
-
[Bill Davis] “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.”
Maybe it was just quicker/easier for the station to go with their bird in the air as opposed to approving, paying for, and licensing your footage? I still see stringer courtesy bugs on the local news so if your footage had been the only footage available they probably would’ve taken it.
But on the general topic of quality… news and other shows that rely on real life footage tend to be less concerned about quality the more unique the footage is. From the Zapruder film to grainy, 15fps convenience store security cameras to World’s Scariest Police Chases to America’s Funniest Home Videos, there have always been exceptions to the ‘broadcast quality’ barrier.
[Bill Davis] “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? “
Any time someone pays for a subscription service (Netflix, cable/sat, Amazon, HBO GO, etc.,) they are paying for old movies and TV shows (and probably not watching the vast majority of them).
Discovery and monetization are certainly the problems of the day which is why inexpensive tools and free self-distribution options aren’t as much of a boon as they seem to be at first blush.
-
[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.”
-
[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.
-
[Tony West] “Or in most states in our country. “
That’s part of my point, geography plays a large role in what ‘industry trends’ people are seeing. IMO it’s why talking about industry trends in broad strokes is difficult. Even in the same city, LA for example, the trends in the broadcast world won’t necessarily mirror the trends in the new media/digital world, and those trends won’t necessarily mirror what’s happening in the corporate/event world.
I think the only real industry wide trend is that for the last 15-20yrs technological advancements have made gear more powerful and less expensive and self distribution is easier than ever. The ramifications of that trend aren’t uniform though across the industry though.
[Tony West] “Those are likely the same jobs that would have been in LA or NY. They are not just looking for tax incentives down there but also that healthy anti union lower wage workforce. A trend that’s not new. It’s the south.”
The possibility of lower wages might play a small role in it, but I think it’s primarily the tax incentives. Wherever tax incentives pop up (Vancouver, Toronto, New Mexico, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, Los Angeles, etc.,) productions will follow. And once those tax incentives are no longer big enough then productions will leave for greener monetary pastures. Ex. North Carolina was hot until they capped/reduced their tax incentives, Los Angeles addressed it’s ‘run away productions’ problem by boosting tax incentives, and House of Cards pitted Maryland against Virginia to see which one would pay the most for the privilege of having House of Cards shoot in their state.
Thanks for the link, Tony.
[Tony West] “”FREELANCERS: Freelancers were the big winners in 2016.”
*** “Freelance workforce: We’ll all soon be freelance” ***
I didn’t really need to read this guy’s article to know this. It’s been what I have seen for a while now. I”
In my experience this has been the status quo since I got into the industry in 2001. Maybe it’s a big market norm that is continuing to filter across all markets? Even in my early years though, when I worked more production than post in Indiana, there really weren’t many staff production jobs unless you worked for a local TV station. My gigs were mainly working as a temporary employee for a production company or for the in-house production wing of the client itself. Some companies even hired freelancers to work staff positions (aka permalance) because freelancers don’t get all benefits that staff do (Viacom got major blowback over this about a decade ago).
[Tony West] “”BRANDS: Large brands such as Unilever, Starbucks and BMW have already set up in-house production capabilities”
****”bypassing both the agencies and production companies by going direct to freelancers.”****”
Starbucks and BMW in his example, Mattel and Riot Games in mine. Multi-person productions are still happening (and happening more often than they used to in some areas), it’s just that instead of the crew working for a production company that works for the client the crew is working for the client’s in-house production company.
[Tony West] “The take away for me is that things are being scaled down to independent individuals with multi talents.
I see more producers generating their own products here by pitching TV shows that they will cut in their house but hire freelance folks to shoot.”
I see all this as more of an expansion and growth of the visual story telling arena as opposed to one part replacing another. Movies didn’t replace live theater, tv shows didn’t replace movies, YouTube videos didn’t replace TV shows… Is there disruption? Of course.
Again, I think it depends on geography and types of work being talked about. For example, in the past there used to be a bit more of a one-size-fits-all approach in that the cost, size, and complexity of the gear required a large capital investment so even small projects had to use this big, expensive gear because only big, expensive gear existed. Now there is obviously a much broader range of gear as well as a broader range of distribution options. I think a big struggle for some of the older, larger facilities is that many of them based their business model around being a gatekeeper to big, expensive gear and the requirement to use for big, expensive gear has been declining for the last 20yrs. A production might still need a large crew, but the capital investment in gear and dedicated workspaces (assuming dedicated workspaces are even required) is significantly reduced.
Related anecdote:
A while back I was occasionally filling in part time at a company (covering for people taking vacation, crunch times, etc.,) that kicked out a couple dozen Internet videos each day (lots of topical/timely stuff like current events, pop culture, sports, video games, etc.,). I’d guess their video department had 15-20 in it. After a while they were looking for a full time shooter/editor in one of their divisions I was interested in. I interviewed, but didn’t get the job because while I have shot, I wasn’t a shooter/editor (I’m just an editor). I continued to do fill in work for them and the stints started getting longer and longer (from a few days here and there to a week or two at a time). Then they started adding longer, more involved prestige/feature pieces to the mix and I would work on those for weeks at a time.Finally one of the producers asked me if I was interested in editing full time with them. They had convinced the hirer-ups that having a good, full time editor would increase the quality as well as the quality of the videos getting out the door. They were trying to craft a team that better played to their strengths as opposed to stretching everyone too thin. The producer/editors got to spend more time producing, the shooter/editors got to spend more shooting, and I just got to cut.
With all that being said, I’ve obviously made a pointed effort to be more of a specialist and part of that is working in a part of the industry that can support specialists. If I moved to a small market then I’d probably have to dawn more hats out of necessity than I do now.
-
[Walter Soyka] “A single-person “team” is self-limiting, and truly large organizations sacrifice flexibility. I think the biggest opportunities lie in the middle.”
I hear what yer saying, but things just don’t appear to be panning out like that. The people holding the purse strings either want something that’s too big to fail or so small that failure doesn’t cost them much.
“Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Four More Directors on the Decline of “Middle-Class Films,” Facing Retirement”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/quentin-tarantino-ridley-scott-four-846682“Gaming’s Middle Class is Dead: Here’s Why That’s Sad”
https://www.craveonline.com/site/497509-gamings-middle-class-is-dead-heres-why-thats-sad“Life and Death in the App Store”
https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11140928/app-store-economy-apple-android-pixite-bankruptcy“Napster, Spotify and the Fall of the ‘Middle-Class Musician”
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/move-fast-and-break-things-book-excerpt-w480401 -
[Scott Witthaus] “I see the mid-level sized shops having more difficulty going forward, precisely because the 1-man/woman shop can compete on so many levels at an efficient cost and the large facilities can handle large jobs at an efficient cost. The squeeze is in the middle.”
Agreed. The middle getting squeezed is happening in many other areas too like music, publishing, software, video games, etc,..
-
What Brent said, plus the other things you mention (loading projects, rendering, exporting, etc.,) are more dependent on your CPU, RAM, and GPU than on your storage.
-
[Tony West] “To me it just seems impossible to ignore where the trend is going in our biz, and it’s to one person productions.
.
.
.
I know with NETFlix and others there is more high quality production than ever, but none of those shows are being shot in my town.”I think that’s the crux of the topic in that ‘industry trends’ depend a lot on geographical local and which segment of the industry is being discussed. Not much scripted film/TV in St. Louis, but there has been a growing amount of it in Atlanta and New Orleans thanks to tax incentives. Studios are even building sound stages in Atlanta (I don’t think it’s stable over the long term because of the aforementioned tax incentives, but that’s another discussion…).
There are solo practitioners on YouTube that kill it with a webcam and a white wall, but there are also enough that want to go bigger that YouTube built it’s own production studios in nine major cities across the globe. The YouTube Space in LA was so booked up late last year that when I worked on a show produced by YouTube itself we couldn’t even use their facilities. They had to rent an off-campus office space and broadcast studio for us to work out of.
I agree that there are probably more one person productions happening now than ever before, but I think the industry is, as a whole, is expanding so it’s not a zero sum situation. It’s also cheaper now than ever before to run a multi-person production company or in-house video team so a new unit starting up won’t be saddled by the same overhead (film scanners, tape decks, tape stock, video-specific routers, cabling, broadcast monitors, etc.,) that a older production company might have had.
Sure, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc., are the big name streaming contenders battling it out with more established cable and broadcast entities for legitimacy at the top, but down market from that we have companies like Yahoo, YouTube, Verizon, WWE, UFC, Vox, Viceland, DirecTV, Ski Channel, Riot Games (League of Legends), Rockstar Games (GTA series), Mattel (toys), Fabletics (clothing), PopSugar, Blizzard (WarCraft), Maker Studios, Ars Technica, The Verge, etc., all producing more and more video content in house. And at least in LA and NYC there seem to be a lot of new boutique facilities popping up headed by 30-somethings that create media content targeted at teens and 20-somethings. That reminds me, a few years ago I worked on a pretty cool web series and out of maybe a dozen post and production crew members (including producers) I think I was the only crew member over thirty.
-
[Tim Wilson] “So I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to give them enough benefit of the doubt that, if it sounds like they’re talking about something you’ve seen before to, to recognize that in fact, it isn’t. ???? “
Jannard says he thinks he can make a difference in the cell phone market, and I’m just trying to figure out how a $1200 (introductory, pre-order price) cell phone with an amaze balls screen and amazing camera add-ons makes a difference in the cell phone market. It runs Android so it’s not like it offers a new/unique software experience (hopefully it’s full Android and not a proprietary fork) and, like I said before, the add-ons needed for the camera and for VR don’t jive with the “one device in your pocket” bullet point.
Sure RED has tweaked the big companies into action a few times, but once moving the old guard have the ways had means to get quality products to market at a speed and scale RED can’t match. The Red ONE got put out to pasture early because RED learned a lot of things from their first ‘never gonna be obsolete camera’. The Redray barely made it out the door, and the 3K for $3K DSMC never saw the light of day because of DSRLs.
Is RED making a better cell phone? Is RED making a better media consumption device? Is RED making a better pocket camera? Is RED making all three with at a price point thats destined to fail?
I’m not dissing anyone for trying, I’m just skeptical (in part because of RED’s history of over reaching).
-
[Michael Gissing] “The Resolve collaboration is based on the ability to lock parts of a project so multiple users are working within the one project and changes are flagged to the other users to update. It has the capacity to rival Avid and Adobe with true multi users within single project. The fact that the tasks are organised on pages means that the editor may never need the grade page and the sound post people never have to worry about ugly reconforms for versioning.”
I’ve only seen videos of Adobe and Resolves collaboration ability, but none of them have made me excited about their implementation. And Adobe needing a conflict resolution feature just throws up a red flag for me. I’d love to get actual time on them and put them through their paces.