[Tim Wilson]

We’ve just posted a complete overview, including some interviews with Adobe peeps. I think you’ll find it very interesting indeed.

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “It’s hard to give budget-type advice with so little info because every budget is unique. I think this goes double for documentaries because you never know what might happen during filming.”

Which is my advice is to — whatever you think you SHOULD charge — DOUBLE it.

My second bit of advice: when asking for advice, be a little more gracious about taking advice.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Rich Rubasch] “Just a business card and a positive attitude?”

I thought positive attitude was optional. If not, I was definitely doing it wrong. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

This is a no-brainer. One event has Zelin, the other does NOT have Zelin.

I say this as one of the two guys who STARTED the other event (which had a different name then) — the first of which we explicitly set on Tuesday. I have no comment on any of those events since then, but because I’m feeling generous, I’ll give you two guesses why we decided to make it on Tuesday that first year.

My math isn’t that great, but if there’s such a thing as a no-brainer squared, this is it. Zelin. Easiest question I’ll be asked maybe all year.

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Kenny] “I think Media Composer really needs to succeed if Avid is going to have a significant future in pro video.”

Agreed…but this still doesn’t have anything to do with stock.

The “scandal” at the heart of the delayed 10K filing is whether specific “bug fix” releases meet the definition of post-contract customer support under the rules of US GAAP. If so, Avid can re-classify these costs and any associated revenue as customer support.

And yeah, the delay in filing means an automatic notice of possible de-listing. Nobody at either Avid or NASDAQ is surprised by this.. But, as much as I hate sports metaphors, sometimes it’s better to take a delay of game penalty than run the play before you have all the players on the field.

In the meantime, the company has cash on hand and no debt….

…which still doesn’t say anything at all about Media Composer.

One of you business whizzes can tell me if it would be worth Avid taking the company private so that they can focus more on fixing the business than spending cycles talking about stock. There’s a cheap punchline and a rimshot in here somewhere about it meaning we could spend less time talking about Avid’s stock in this forum, but I’m not quite putting my fingers on it. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

Avid stock today is right about where it was in November 2011….which is right about where Apple stock was at the beginning of April 2003, $6-ish, give or take. Avid stock at the time was at $10.

By the beginning of October 2004, now 3 years after the introduction of the iPod, Apple was all the way up to $10. Avid was at $57.

What would you have learned about the relative value of FCP to Media Composer over those 18 months? What a ridiculous question. To Michael’s point above, you might as well ask, what would you have learned about the relative value of Avid’s MIDI keyboards or Bomb Factory plug-ins vs. Apple’s slot-loading Xserve or iPod Photo, all of which were hot products introduced during this span?

The answer: absolutely nothing.

[Tim Wilson]

We’re veering into what should be another thread I think, but Ima weigh in anyway.

I’ve shot sports one camera, and Mark’s right – it’s brutal. But I’ve never done a whole game. That’s inconceivable to me. I used my knowledge of the sports to set up where I hoped a highlight play might occur — easier in baseball and basketball than soccer, where you might go tens of minutes without a score, and no obvious place to have been set up the rest of the time.

For all that a baseball diamond is bigger, the action on the whole tends to go inward toward the diamond. Not the case with soccer, where, no matter where you position yourself, you could find yourself in full zoom for all but a few seconds of the game…and running as hard as any of the players to keep a usefully framed shot the rest of the time. A tripod for single-camera shooting is out of the question.

Do note Mark’s point about a camera in the bleachers AND on the light pole. You HAVE to be above the field to see movement around the ball with any perspective. A zoomed-in shot will shorten the distance between objects in the scene. From the ground, zoomed in, you (or the coach) won’t be able to tell how far apart the players are, how far the ball is moving toward you or away from you, etc.

With some of these logistics in mind, you can start to build up a collection of gear along the lines Mark suggests. No matter what you decide you’re willing to spend on all this, you HAVE to put that number in one pile, with your time in the other.

I’m going to bring this around to the same point that several of us have suggested to Patrick: chase market rates at your peril. You HAVE to cover your costs at the very least. If you can’t afford to do the job at the rates the market (or client) will bear, DON’T DO IT.

So be careful laying out your costs. Be honest. Then tell the client how much it will cost, no negotiating, this is what it’s going to take. If he doesn’t want to pay that much, wish him well and move on with your day.

Unless you decide that you’re okay with giving away your time, which is also a perfectly valid choice that all of us have made at one time or another. But you start by KNOWING your costs. Everything else follows from that.

For more details on shooting, please fire up a thread in the Field Production forum. A lot of clever folks there who have done an awful lot of this kind of thing.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Patrick Reagan] ” I’m a 23 year old student”

I didn’t mean offense with my post. I said 20s, and indeed, you’re in your 20s. I know it’s different now, but I was in my 30s when I tried this, and in my town, that was considered crazy young to start a business.

I’m just saying that if you can get into something corporate, maybe you could get benefits, maybe matching contributions to an IRA — set yourself up not only for starting your business but for RETIREMENT. Check other threads — that’s really really hard if you start late.

I also read you saying your skills are moderately advanced. I take that for granted in the COW, even if you hadn’t said it.

You asked about rates for a non-existent market (your words). My overly long reply simply suggested that you take your own advice and admit there’s no market. 🙂

[Patrick Reagan] ” I’m afraid that even starting with a base hourly rate of FIFTEEN dollars would scare off essentially everyone.”

That’s a long hard road, Patrick. Can you get by on $10-12/hr without putting yourself into indentured servitude? If the answer is yes, there’s your rate. But take care not to lock yourself into a rate that will leave you unable to move even if you wanted to. Or unable to stay in your town and start a family.

Maybe you can do that on $10-12/hr. But there’s your question. Can you live on the rate you’d need to charge? Not often you get to raise your rates these days, so how long can you charge $10-12/hr before your market pushes you even further down?

I’m also assuming that you can get $10-12/hr. What if it’s less?

Note when I did this in the 90s that my entire county had 80,000 people in it — a quarter the size of yours. I know what it’s like to set up business in a small town that you love, and I get why you want to. I did it…but if I couldn’t have, I wouldn’t have. The market decides these things…and you may not even have one.

You’re right that you won’t know until you try…

…so I’m sorry if I sounded condescending. But I see some flashing yellow lights ahead for you, and a good-sized handful of red ones.

[Tim Wilson]

I’ll never know the real condition of the market until I just jump into it.

Uhm, yeah you do. LOL Your market doesn’t like paying $30 for a detailing.

It’s really amazing that we live in a time where 20 year olds think they can go into business for themselves, and even more remarkable that they actually DO, and can succeed. 1990, in the days before NLEs were practical, was a different time — but Bob and I were in our 30s before we tried this. And like Bob, I moved to chase opportunities. A couple of times.

So Bob’s got your first solution. Move to a place where you can charge what you need to in order to survive. Austin is one of the most energetic cities in the world, with some of the most exciting opportunities for creative people. Other successful people operating there shouldn’t keep you away. They should tell you that there’s a lot of room for people to succeed.

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere — with the bonus that it’s an affordable, livable city relative to nearly any other major market in the country.

The other solution: work for The Man. You could even wind up with benefits. You can DEFINITELY get other people to pay you to get better at what you do. You can maybe even learn some things about actually running a business, even a one-person business like Bob’s, or a 2-person business like the one my wife and I had.

But your subject line lays out the impossibility of making it where you currently. There IS NO MARKET there. No need to sweat what rates you should charge, because you already know that people won’t want to pay it — the definition of no market.

Not that I know anything about where you live besides what you told us..but you really might consider starting to collect boxes. Move away to work for yourself, or move away to work for The Man.

[Tim Wilson]

I’m going to come at this much more directly.

The transaction as I understand it: somebody pays you to shoot. You shoot. They pay.

If I have this right, then the answer is simple: once you have 100% of the money, they get 100% of the footage.

Imagine that a guy paints your house, then wants to take the unused paint away. He says, “You paid me to paint the house. I painted the house. I’m taking the paint.” You say, “Wait! What if it needs a touch-up? Or what if I want to paint another room the same color?” He says, “You can pay me to do the work at that time. But I’m taking the paint.”

That’s ridiculous. Yes, you paid for him to paint the house, but you also paid for the paint. He has to leave all the extra paint with you. IT’S YOUR PAINT.

Now, you might have signed a contract that said, “Painter gets to keep unused paint. Client must pay for any additional work performed with previously-purchased paint” — but you wouldn’t sign a contract like that. Nobody would.

Don’t ask your clients to sign a contract like that with YOU. They paid for the finished job, but they also paid for the raw materials.

Projects, now that’s a different story. I’d ride into the gates of hell, reins between my teeth, saber in one hand, a shotgun in the other, bandoleers across my chest, to keep a client away from a project file. That’s MINE.

But the footage? The client paid you to shoot it. It belongs to them.

The only need for lawyers is if you want to create some clever dodge to work around this basic fact of business, or fight off clients who challenge your plan to keep footage that they paid for.

Seriously. Don’t ask them to sign a contract that you never would.