Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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I can second the “golden rule” idea. We have a large national client that’s probably going to file bankruptcy. In late summer and early fall they got way behind on payments…one of which was for a large weeklong shoot where we incurred a lot of sub-contract fees for grip trucks, make-up artists and the like.
We got on the phone and used email to keep all these folks updated as to why their payments were late. None accessed us any late charges, and only one even called regularly to check up on the invoices. It helps that we work with this same group of people almost exclusively on large shoots and they’ve always been paid very quickly. But by keeping them updated, they realized we too were getting stiffed and they cut us some slack.
As to the original posts creative solutions at collecting…I wish I had a woman on staff with that much gumption!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
To add to what others have said…video is also a great way to save money and time and guarantee a consistent repeatable message in a training video. For instance, if a company has a corporate trainer in XYX city, but their stores are all across the country. It could get VERY expensive to send either the trainer on-site, or conversely, send employees to the corporate office to be trained. Enter the corporate training video. It can be produced for anywhere from $15 to $50k, then duplicated and sent all over the country for a couple dollars a pop, then viewed repeatedly for several years by employees. Your corporate trainer is freed to do other things, your message is identical over and over, you save tons of money on travel, lost productivity etc. on both sides.
Another great use for corporate video is “how to” videos. We produce a bunch of these for a large Kitchen Cabinet manufacturer. They’ve proven wildly popular among their sales reps out in the field, as well as interior designers, who use them for ideas as well as instruction. The reps report the videos have made it MUCH easier to convince designers to choose their cabinets (because they understand them better) AND more importantly, learn new design techniques from the videos. The spent probably $50k on the series of videos (which are VERY basic, no “fluff” at all), but sales among those product lines are way up over their product lines that don’t have the videos. So guess what…the cabinet company is now producing the same type of videos for ALL their lines of cabinets, which number in the teens. We even tried to tell them they could produce one installation video since cabinet installation is almost identical from one brand to the other, but they insist on producing custom install videos for each brand. Who are we to argue!!
We do a lot of medical and weight related video work, and those industries are heavily influenced by emotion. What I mean is when people make decisions about weight loss or medical procedures, it’s an emotional and psychological experience. You can’t tell me a brochure, even the most well-written one, conveys the emotion and power of a well-produced video.
What about industries where sound is important, like the music industry. Are you going to tell me a brochure tells a story better than a video or audio presentation??
Lastly, I believe that video, dollar for dollar, is a much better investment than print. How likely is a client to read or even skim a brochure more than once? But I bet videos get watched over and over. And a really well produced video will get watched many times by many different people. Video can also be delivered intact via DVD, online, satellite, at trade shows, at presentations etc. (meaning it doesn’t have to be reformatted the way print often does). Try looking at a print piece online. Even as a PDF it just becomes cumbersome and sometimes unreadable.
I’ve gone on long enough. But hopefully this gives you some ammunition.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Just don’t let chasing the award drive all your creative choices and material. Meaning, don’t throw a bunch of extraneous and unrelated eye candy into a client’s project in hopes of winning an award; the first goal, and what the project should really be judged on, is how effective a communications tool it is. Did it do the job it was designed to do. I will always grade functional over flashy.
Mark…excellent advice…Thankfully…we’ve always let this philosophy guide us. I’ve never been one to care much about awards because I know when a project is well done or not.
I’ve always told both clients and employees that our job is to communicate and persuade viewers. Virtually everything we do is marketing related, so for me, the work’s creativity and effectiveness is judged by whether it gets people to pick up the phone, walk in the door, or log onto a website.
I’ve even told clients that it doesn’t matter if they like what we produce for them…all that matters is if it get’s people to respond the way the client wants. Of course…a lot of clients disagree with me on that one!
But I agree the awards gigs are good to get involved in and we did “our time” early on. I just don’t think they’re as important as you become more established.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We also used to be heavily involved in the show’s production. Helping with just about any and everything, from designing and creating show graphics, to producing show reels and vignettes, and often helping at the judging however we were needed.
Out of about 5 years of doing this (at a great investment of time by all involved), there were 2 years where we were left off the credit list (printed and spoken at the end of the show). It was incredible. Each year we bit our lips and convinved ourselves it was still helpful, that we were helping the advertising community…yada yada.
But at some point, we just decided it wasn’t worth the huge investment in time and energy. It’s doubtful any piece of business ever came from the work we did (which was very good by the way, acknowledged by the fact that the Ad Club would get letters and emails directly complimenting the work we contributed).
Despite all that, what soured me on the whole process was watching the judges do the actual judging. There was NO protocol, NO criteria to follow, and NO scoring sheets. Each year, five years in a row, they’d walk around, spend 30 seconds looking at a print piece, video or website…one judge would dominate the discussion, and like Todd said, their biases would determine the winners and losers. One year, a judge gave a PSA for an AIDS Walk an addy because he said, “I’ve got a soft spot for people with AIDS.” It was a crappy PSA.
I’ve been asked to judge for the New York Festivals TV Programming & Promotion competition twice. They have a very strict protocol for the judging, with clear, concise criteria and easy to follow scoring sheets. The process involves watching up to 5 minutes of each entry (more if the lead judge believes it warrants it). Then 3 minutes of discussion among a panel of 5. Then each judge has 2 minutes to score the entry. At the end of the night, the lead judge tallies scores, then sorts entries according to the numbers and categories. These are sent back to the Festival. As judges, you don’t even know which ones will win because they don’t tell you what determines a winning score. Then a second group of judges in New York determines winners from your pool of high-scoring selections. Now this is a well thought out and fair judging system.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’d second Dan’s recommendation. We’re a post company with 4 edit stations editing primarily DVCPro50 quality SD video, the occasional HD project and a few uncompressed SD projects. We have an Apace vStor with 4TB of storage, and it works beautifully. Our 3 VelocityQ systems and one Blackmagic Decklink HD with Premiere CS3 can handle 4 streams of real-time video at uncompressed resolution…although as mentioned, most video we work with is captured & stored at DVCPro50 resolutions.
That said, we can have all 4 edit systems running simultaneously, each editing fast-paced TV spots or long-form videos, and there’s nary a hiccup. We use 2 suites as capture stations, and each can capture uncompressed. One of the suites only has a single processor and 1GB of RAM, so it’s unable to capture long clips uncompressed. Again..not a big issue with us since we rarely do anything uncompressed. But it’s the PC’s fault, not the vStor’s, and the other suite has a dual-processor, 2GB RAM workstation which can capture uncompressed clips of any length, anytime. So…the power of your workstations DOES contribute to their ability to process incoming and outgoing requests for data. Both of these suites report the exact same data rates reading and writing to the vStor…but because one has less horsepower so to speak, it will drop a frame when doing uncompressed after 15-20 seconds.
Lastly…DON’T try to do this yourself using off-the-shelf components. It won’t work, you’ll waste money and time, and you’ll drive yourself batty with esoteric networking jargon and settings. Worse…you’ll figure out after reading 100 different opinions, that NO-ONE agrees on the best DIY method for setting up a shared video editing hard drive array.
It is possible to do it yourself, but follow the advice of people who have DONE the trial and error, like Bob Zelin on this list. And lastly…if you do it yourself and it breaks, YOU have to fix it. If you buy from a company like Apace and it breaks or doesn’t work…they have TRAINED engineers that work on these things all day every day. They’ll help you…and I can attest that Apace’s service is the best I’ve ever seen.
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We’ve found that the longer we’re in business, the less important awards have become…either winning them or displaying them for folks to see.
The only one that impressed people was an Emmy award…and unfortunately, I dropped it and broke it when we moved to our current facility in 2003. As an aside…the Academy of Television Arts and Scienes will replace it for just $175…and NO-ONE will repair it. We checked.
We do have a couple of walls lined with Addy certificates, and each year we submit a few things to the Addy’s…but always on client request. We’ve found the addy’s (in our area at least)to be poorly juried and judged…and the TV categories make no sense. For instance…there’s a category for TV spots “under $1500,” then there’s a 2nd category for TV spots “over $1500.” Kind of absurd when a spot that cost $3000 has to compete against a spot that cost $50,000.
Same with corporate works, there are no budget categories, just one “catch all” TV category for corporate video. Same deal with animation and compositing. I’ve written letters to the national chapter of the American Advertising Federation…our local chapter…and even had LONG telephone conversations with representatives on the local and national level. They agree with me but nothing ever changes. So we just stopped entering on our own and leave to clients to decide if they want to enter. We make the dubs or DVD’s for them free of charge, fill out the paperwork, get the entry and tape/DVD submitted, and they appreciate the service. If it wins..it’s a bonus.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Hey guys…I agree with all of you. I’m just trying to give the client what they asked for. Thanks for the suggestions on copy…and yes…we’ve advised them of everything everyone has mentioned in the thread.
They realize they can’t stop anyone from sharing info they readily provide…but the websites the video is going on are restricted. You have to be approved for access and be given a password by the manufacturer.
Like every other company out there…their orders for 2009 are down 50% from the same time last year. So they’re looking for anything that gives them an edge over the competition.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
That’s pretty much what we told them, but they insisted we give them something to “start with.” So I’m just trying to give them some examples. I already sent them excerpts from several web sites, one of which is a company that’s part of their larger conglomerate. The parent company owns several large companies in different industries, from entertainment to sporting goods to food and beverage.
So just thought somebody might have something they regularly use that they could copy/paste as additional reference.
What the company is concerned about is their dealers divulging proprietary information to competitors, but that very information is what usually persuades these dealers to recommend the client’s products to consumers.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
As someone else noted…I’m also assuming you’re not kidding. First, don’t view clients as “small or big fish.” The client paying you $2000 for a job should be just as important as the one paying you $50,000. You never know when a small business will grow into a Fortune 500 company.
Second, don’t refer to getting work as “scoring deals…” unless of course it involves exchanging a baggie of something for an envelope full of cash in a dark alley.
Third, why is the time it takes relevant? If a small business has the budget to support a project that takes you two months of Sundays…why would that influence your decision to take it on? When you’re starting out, you need to take EVERY opportunity that comes your way and treat it like it’s “Gone with the Wind.”
That typically means you’ll end up spending more time working on projects than you can actually bill. You may ask: “why would I do that?” The answer: to MAKE SURE the work you’re doing exceeds your clients’ expectations. That assures they’ll come back…and also encourages them to pass along good word of mouth about you and your services.
We’re in our 12th year in business and are at a stage where we can occasionally turn down a low ball project, but on all the projects we DO work on, our mantra is “give the client MORE than they expect.” It’s a philosophy that some people disagree with, but it’s one that has served us well.
Lastly…listen to the others on this list. Don’t abandon your dream of starting a business…but perhaps right now isn’t the best time to do it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Have any of you seen director Kevin Smith’s series of campus talks about filmmaking that aired on HBO a year or two ago? He has a long segment about a job he did for Prince. I don’t remember the gig, something like taping Prince talking to a group of students. The story is very funny and Prince sounds like a very odd fellow to say the least.
Smith talks about how Prince came to him about doing the project, and Smith was so excited about doing it, he didn’t discuss budget or contracts. He just assumed that “hey, Prince has made movies and music videos, he knows what stuff like this costs.” But at the very end of it, after a crazy 3 or 4 days or prep and shooting, Prince refused to discuss money and in the end expected Smith to do it for FREE! Smith didn’t pursue it because he didn’t want the bad publicity, and he was never paid.
He ended the segment by saying his payment was NEVER working with Prince again because the guy is plain nuts.
Genius is hell I guess.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com