Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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I know many others will have differing and diverse opinions on this, so here’s mine for what it’s worth:
Asking prospects to come to your web site is not only tough, but it might not matter much. That is, you want people to come to you when they are ready to buy, not just because you ask them to. Even if they fall in love with your site, demo reel and your company, timing is everything and by the time they are ready to buy, they very well might have forgotten your offer. Current customers probably won’t forget you, but getting them to come to your web site just because you put one up is a tough sell as you pointed out.
Also (again, just my opinion here) spending a lot of money on mailers asking prospects to come to your web site might not be the best use of your web marketing budget AT FIRST. If it were me, I might first spend that money getting good rankings on the search engines (Google is all that matters, period) and perhaps buy some Google Adwords for the keywords that are impossible to rank high in organically. The reason is simple – people searching for what you sell are usually ready to buy, making it money well spent.
My studio gets a surprisingly large chunk of our leads from our web site, but only because we spent the time and money to achieve decent rankings in a select set of keywords, and spent a decent amount on adwords every month. From there, doing typical SEO activities such as getting good links to our site, improving the text and layout for search engines, etc. has given us high enough rankings that we are almost ready to ditch Adwords altogether since our organic rankings are doing so well. I assure you, this is time and money well spent since it acts as a salesman for you, provided that the site is well built and appeals to visitors enough that they convert into real leads.
All in all, my advice would be to use your money for SEO and other efforts that will bring NEW leads to your site, and find a more compelling reason to contact current clients and those targeted prospects. Mailers are okay, but typically require repeated (as in 4-8) mailings before the prospect even reads them, much less responds. From everything I’ve experienced doing them, and the word from other marketing people I know, mailers have a very low response/action rate since, like email spam, they are a very common item for decision makers to receive daily.
Again, I’m sure others will have vastly different views on the subject, this is just based on my own personal past marketing experience and current role as the “marketing guy” for our studio. Some people might get no action at all from Adwords, and great response from their mailers. Either way, good luck and here’s to hoping your studio succeeds!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
“Sometimes they want to cover for their lack of knowledge. Sometimes the people the company uses are beyond the budget for a given project. Sometimes their job entails so much other work that craigslist is easier for them then spending time doing research.”
And these are all good indicators of a potentially bad client experience:
1. Covering for lack of knowledge – You don’t have to know video production inside and out to know how to type “video production company” or similar into Google. What it DOES indicate is that they might lack general knowledge of best business practices, research, obtaining information, evaluating video related work etc. All of these mean they might also be slow to provide information needed to complete the project, need things explained over and over again and probably won’t be very appreciative of your work since they have no clue what it entails. For example, the old “why does the edit take 3 days? After all, I could do it in Windows Movie Maker in 2 hours!”
2. Beyond the budget – Enough said.
3. Job entails so much work they can’t properly seek out a vendor – This also might mean that they will be so busy with the “other work” involved in the job that they will leave you hanging for days, weeks or more, not responding to voicemail or email.
4. Easier than doing research – If they are too lazy to do any level of research, as my previous post lays out, that does not bode very well for the type of client they will end up being.
You sound plenty happy with the jobs you have received from CL, and that’s all that really matters. By the tone of your post, it DOES sound like you realize you aren’t getting ideal clients and probably aren’t getting very good budgets out of the deal either. While that may very well be untrue, many of the studio owners I speak with echo my sentiments on the general quality of CL leads. Not true for everyone, without a doubt, but more often than not they are more work than they are worth.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Rendering out to the Animation codec from AE is fine, however you said your comp is widescreen square pixel aspect ratio, and HD size. I don’t personally use Encore, but most video apps are expecting standard 0.9 pixel aspect ratio. Also, the DVD spec (which is mandatory) absolutely requires 720×480 video UNLESS you have an HD-DVD burner. so maybe Encore is freaking out on the square pixel file (shouldn’t be a problem as I use them in DVD Studio Pro), or the fact that the file is a huge HD file it doesn’t know how to handle, so it just squeezes and compresses it to death.
You should try nesting your comp in a standard NTSC DV Widescreen 0.9 aspect ratio comp (again, DVD spec calls for 720×480 files) and output that, then feed the resulting file into Encore.
Also, all the various settings for DVD output via Encore (or any other decent DVD authoring app) don’t need to be tweaked really. They are mostly there for control when your source material is longer than will fit on a standard DVD.
That said, I would get your settings back to some default (I don’t use Encore so I’m not sure how you would do this) and then only adjust one setting – the bitrate. This should almost always be around 6Mbps average, with a max bitrate of around 7Mbps. If it is an option (again I don’t use Encore) use 2 pass Variable Bit Rate. This will give good quality and will ensure the file isn’t too bitrate heavy, which will cause some DVD players to skip and freak out.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Death and taxes, death and taxes…
Working for a non-profit or tax-exempt organization does not exempt its employees or contractors from paying taxes. You will always, for the rest of your life, pay taxes on what you earn (unless consumption taxes replace the current system).
DON’T FORGET – as a freelancer, if your employer issues you a 1099 that means they are not withholding payroll taxes for you. This means that you will also owe self-employment taxes (i.e. medicare and social security) on top of your regular federal taxes. Many freelancers forget this and either get pinched by the IRS or end up owing thousands more than they expected. For more on Self employment taxes, check this out:
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98846,00.html
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
This is pretty good advice, but I would disagree on the point of being “like” your client. Certainly you want to form a relationship with them based on commonalities, but no one respects a person who trades their identity for cash. At some point, those little “lies,” pretending to be just like them, will catch up to you at the slightest hint they weren’t true. Your integrity and honesty will be called into question, two vital components in any successful business relationship.
It has also been said that when two people agree on everything, one of them is no longer necessary. Sure, find common ground and exploit it, but just about everyone can appreciate and respect your unique differences, it’s what makes any form of relationship interesting and worthwhile. If they can’t respect your differences, you probably don’t want anything to do with them, at any price.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Think like a SERIOUS prospective client for a moment. If you truly need a professional (or even medium quality) video produced, you probably already have a good idea of what you need and why, and would want to find a studio that specializes in or at least does a good job with that specific type of work. As a serious buyer with real money on the line, you comparison shop and, at the very least, you would want to look through demo reels and check out people’s credentials. After looking around in your local market and comparing, you reach out to the 3-4 companies that seem most capable within your budget range and choose from there.
Now, compare that to the Craigslist strategy, which tells me the following:
1. That they are even posting such an important, costly need on CL tells me they are too lazy to actively seek out a production company, much less one that specializes in their needs. That laziness probably isn’t limited to their search method.
2. It also says that they probably don’t even KNOW what they need or they would likely be more selective, rather than soliciting bids from a free classified ads message board.
3. They don’t know enough about purchasing professional services to properly find and evaluate a production company on their own. This makes it very likely they are first-timers, NOT working for a company with any kind of budget, and a likely grinder in the making.
4. Such a casual approach might tell you something about their budget. If you were looking to buy a new $400,000 home, would you just throw up a classified ad saying “hey, I need a house. Send price and maybe a photo to lazylou@grinder.com.” No, you would actively seek out a home that fits your needs and put a little effort into it. If, however, you were looking to buy a $20 used fax machine, your strategy would probably be more akin to these prospective clients.
5. The “come to me” approach does not bode well for your new relationship with these clients. They won’t respect you because they didn’t contact you based on your hard-earned skills and credentials. The bargain power is all theirs. In the end, they simply throw up all the bids they received and choose on price. Congrats, you’re the lowest bidder, now get to work. Sure, respect doesn’t put food on your table, but it sure can take food OFF of your table if they work you to death, expecting endless freebies and chopping your bid to pieces. They call them Grinders for a reason…
6. Because it can’t be overstated, the fact that they are floating it in a message board hoping to get bids thrown at them, with no effort on their part, says they are probably looking to compare responses based on ONE SINGLE CRITERIA – COST. Have fun competing against the hundreds of desperate students and amateurs who are willing, no EAGER, to do full-day video shoots for a pizza lunch and a “credit.”
Ultimately the bottom line is simple – if you can make a comfortable living from CL postings that’s great, and our negative experiences should not discourage you. A time may come, however, that you realize you are working much harder for the same money than if you buckled down, learned the basics of marketing, and pursue clients outside of the grinders-gone-wild Craigslist scene.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
That extra RAM is not going to help much with most common apps since they can only use the amount of RAM XP can see. But After Effects definitely will consume most of it if you set it up properly. AE CS3 has a multiprocessor option (in your preferences) that must be turned on manually. When you select “Render Multiple Frames” it will use as many CPUs as possible to render both previews and final output. The number of CPU cores it will use is dependent on how much RAM you have – it is recommended to have 1-2GB RAM (depending on who you ask) per CPU core or they simply will not be used in MP. Obviously you have that covered, you just need to set it up!
This is all a separate issue from XP’s ability to address more than 2GB RAM, since the multiprocessing option silently launches multiple instances of AE in the background, each using up to that 2GB limit regardless of what Windowz “sees.”
Also, I should mention that you don’t necessarily need a cross-platform license unless you really want to use it in both platforms. You can call Adobe and get a cross-grade, turning your Windows license into a mac one. It’s easy and you only pay like $10 for them to ship a new package out.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I understand where you are coming from, but compare the price tag of all those fancy applications you listed above to that of After Effects. I find little annoyances in AE all the time, but we all need to bear in mind that it is a broad-use app that caters to many different needs, and at a very attractive price tag.
Just my 2 cents
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
For starters, you may be able to optimize your comps. Make sure motion blur is disabled (as well as 3d) for any layers that do not explicitly need those features. Also, make sure that your disk cache settings are adequate (usually 2-4GB of disk cache is good).
Beyond optimization, you probably need to flush the cache during the render. You do this by accessing the secret After Effects menu. Hold down CTRL>SHIFT>ALT> while selecting Edit>Preferences>General. In the preferences window that opens, select the pulldown and there is a new Secret menu. Tell it to purge frames every 100 frames or so, depending on the length of the animation.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
The problem you are experiencing has nothing to do with the codec, except that it is a very high datarate, uncompressed file type. If it is playing back oddly in FCP, try tweaking your RT settings (on the left side of the timeline). Usually setting RT options to Dynamic or Low will allow high datarate files like this to play back smoothly.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com