Joe Knapp
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry I’m late to the party….
Truth: Corporate in-house video can be both savior and enslaver. What do you really want to do, in your heart? Do you like video for video’s sake, or do you deeply desire to make particular types of content?
Corporate video can be a great source of stability, tends to pay better than peers at production/post companies, and can be a great learning ground where you can sample many different aspects of the video production universe. Depending on the company, you can have a great deal of creative control.
Conversely, it usually is very dry and repetitive, unless 1) you’re in the right company, or 2) you’re in the right mindset. Your ‘ladder-climbing’ options are usually non-existent, your creative direction is often overruled by office politics or whims of an executive, and you tend to get isolated from others in the industry. And how many talking-head and year-in-review videos can one person take, FFS? 😉
Know that it’s pretty important that you decide early in your career which direction you’d like to go in. Otherwise, you get addicted to the corporate teat (corporate & federal government work tend to pay pretty nicely). The other reason is stigma. Broadcast-oriented people want people who have broadcast experience, no matter how great you edit/produce/animate/composite. And it gets harder to jump to the other ship later on. It’s pretty hard to take a sizable pay cut and try to beat out others that have industry experience. Not impossible, but difficult.
TL;DR advice: Give yourself 4-5 years of stability, save your cash, continue to freelance. At the 5 year mark, that’s a great point to decide whether to stay in-house corporate, or jump to other parts of the industry. Good luck, brother.
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LOL, Mark, you dog… I’m sure there was a lot of ‘art’ on display, too. 😉
Seriously though, good perspectives, fellas. Bill, you make some great points about the connotation of the descriptors, particular about the “creative” not wanting to play well with others. I think we all agree that ‘Studio’ sounds physical. Mark is probably right about the distribution connotation of ‘Media’.
The problem my buddy was running into is that the names he wanted were all taken online. So, “XYZ” is already long been registered, so he was considering “XYZ-Creative”, “XYZ-Media”, etc. Brainstorming new GOOD names is much harder than you would think. At the end of the day, you would hope a name wouldn’t matter, but I can see how a decent name might pique a potential customer’s interest, even if slightly.
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Update: I cleaned out every trace of Adobe, and reinstalled it. Created a new project…but still running into the same weirdness.
Even weirder, if I move the clip up a folder level, or copy to desktop and import, it recognizes it. I reuse the same folder template for my projects, so perhaps something became corrupt. Odd that it only affects ProRes.
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Great reply, Mark.
I used the term “ROI,” but really I just mean that there isn’t enough direct use out of the studio to justify the expenditure of nearly $100K/year.
I’m the only video AND photo person, so they have me spread pretty thin, and I work plenty of uncompensated OT. I do a lot of program management (hiring & overseeing crews/post-producers), plenty of hands-on editing, infrequent corporate portraits, and the occasional video interview. Of those interviews, only a few take place in a studio setting. So our management wants to move me into cubes & cart, and use the large conference center downstairs as a ‘free solution’.
I work on image pieces, executive addresses, recruiting videos, explanation videos, and the typical “Year In Review”-type fare. We’re also gearing up for a large footage collection effort. I’ve proposed plenty of ideas, but mostly the direction comes from higher up. We’re so busy, we are turning work away. Could they be winding everything down? Sure. I’ve thought about it. And if so, I have Plans B-F ready to go. 😉
Equipment-wise: My grudging agreement on the One Man Crew. I suppose I can always rent if I’m chomping. The greenscreen fabric looks great; I’ve heard some negative stuff about muslin, so this polyester might do the trick. That Lastolite would make a great background pattern for those shoots not happening in an office setting.
Although we usually get a crew for teleprompter activities, the costs of some of the iPad prompters are making me consider bringing this in-house, too. Any recommendations?
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Not to change the subject, but why can’t I see this thread when I go to the “Corporate Video” category? I stumbled on this discussion somehow, but can’t find it normally. Odd….
Btw, interesting thread. I may have to use that black cinefoil idea myself. 😉
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Thanks, Dennis. Possibly. I had downloaded the trial, before our IT guy switched us to the Enterprise license. Probably best bet is to completely clean & reinstall. I’ll need wait until my workload dies down, and keep using old Premiere CC in the meantime.
I’ll circle back if there’s any resolution. Thx!
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Old thread, but some might find value:
We have three ‘official’ groups under contract that we have negotiated rates with, and a handful of freelance regulars. For the large jobs, we stick to the official groups; otherwise, we’d have to put the project out to bid…which adds on a couple weeks. Bleah. (the freelancers are usually around $1K, and are easier to fund)
How’d we find the official groups? We solicited a handful of local production companies, and had them bid on a ‘proxy’ job. Procurement then balanced all the factors based on cost vs. value, and then our team weighed in on the ‘professionalism’ of the product. In the end, we have those three companies who handle the full range of production efforts.
The freelancers? Word of mouth.
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I used to use subscription music services only. Nowadays, I usually use a combination of “per song” sites like PremiumBeat.com, plus a subscription service (currently Killer Tracks). Because we’re not in need of a high volume of music, I’d rather pay per song, and search many sites to get just the right track(s).
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I’ve seen all kind of random weirdness with Premiere Pro, including this gem. I’m also running on a MBP.
Did you try changing to the Software Renderer? If that doesn’t work, try creating a new project, then import this project into it.
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Thanks, Alex! That’s not a bad workaround. I’m hoping for something a bit more automated, but this might work.
I have a 4-hr piece that is essentially a locked-down camera of a presenter & a screen (yawn). I’m trying to make it less grueling by cutting in the presenter’s Powerpoint slides at certain intervals. I also have another project where the presentation is hours-long that could use the same treatment, but at least there are multiple cameras. The stuff I get handed, I tell ya…
Guess I’m trying to put lipstick on a pig. 😉