[John Davidson]

Great comments guys. Thank you.

I should note, my previous post on advice was meant for the under 30 crowd, not the over 30 crowd, hence the “skip the rims” comment :-). Although, grandpa’s caddie might look nice when pimped out with some 20″ low-profile razors….:-).

[John Davidson]

That all makes sense. It’s more about the folks wanting free work than age disparities. The byproduct is that working for free decreases the overall wages of the entire industry, resulting in those with more experience (and age) being outmoded and/or considered irrelevant.

I think that by saying I’m only 33 and could never understand your logic is flawed. How do you know that the original poster is not 33 as well? If that’s the case, how you can get annoyed with him? By your own logic he could never understand. Furthermore, isn’t that the kind of mindset that you’re trying to work against? It’s the same philosophy that says “oh, don’t hire anybody over 50, they won’t understand the newest programs, design trends, etc”.

So how does one prevent themselves from being one of the 8 million middle aged “kids” without work? We don’t all have Nick Griffin’s amazing pipes to keep us employed (I’m not saying you’re old Nick, I’m saying you have a great voice that will always make you money no matter where you are 🙂

Perhaps, unless you’re in management, no one should take this industry on for more than 20 years. I was at Turner/CNN when the big bad layoffs came. I watched people who had stayed with the company for 20 years get fired because they were making 90k for beta news package editing. The landscape had changed – ratings were down, heads rolled. In came the new kids with Avid Newscutter experience getting paid 24k a year. Out went the guys who had built the network in 1980. It was a sad time and many of my friends were suddenly thrust into a world that didn’t want them. I saw the writing on the wall and changed tracks. I did not want that to happen to me. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve seen producers get meteoric promotions so fast that within 10 years they had promoted themselves into obscurity. Where exactly do you go once you’re been a SVP at a major network? There aren’t that many jobs out there like that, so unless the position is tenured, it won’t last and then where will you be?

In the end, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. That is why I went into business for myself. I will ALWAYS be a writer/producer/director and will not assume a title greater than that, even for my own company. I want more money, raise my rates. A new title is irrelevant, I can’t be promoted into obscurity, and I won’t get fired.

So the lesson is for media pros, don’t get complacent. Don’t assume you’ll have work forever. Constantly learn and expand your education. Invest. Save. Skip the rims. Buy property. Diversify your income and make smart decisions for your life. If you make 30k a year, maybe a lexus is out.

Ultimately, there may not be an adequate resolution to the problem. There will always be kids willing to work for free, jerks willing to let them, and good people feeling like leftovers. This industry is volitile. Heads roll, ratings plummet, turnover is high. It is the side effect for working with such great people and having (in many cases) what everyone considers to be dream jobs.

Dude, I watched cartoons for a living for 4 years. There’s gotta be a downside somewhere.

Cheers,
John (a producer who plans on retiring at 40).

[John Davidson]

aaaaaand it just arrived 5 minutes ago.

Finally I can start shooting now! I just need something to shoot….DOH!

[John Davidson]

You can try recompressing through sorenson squeeze, but I seriously doubt you’ll be able to fit that down to 20 without some serious compression artifacts and/or loss of quality.

Try this:

Drop your frame rate down to 15fps,
Make sure your audio is AAC, and unless you have lots of fx, switch it to mono, 32khz
Use H264, low-medium setting

That might get you close….

[John Davidson]

Thanks Frank.

For the first section, we added a color glow in FCP with a green hue and some simple color correction (the talent was very pale). The second section was just 80% desaturation and cranked up contrast. The crowd section was all bluescreen composited in AE 3D with moving cameras built to simulate a real concert wire camera rig. Add a few AE color glows and volumetric lights panning around (using particular’s lux) and voila, you have a low budget redneck music video :-).

It was a fun chance for us to expand into other areas besides promos/commercials. The ultimate goal was to make it seem like these guys have a huge fanbase (hence the big fake concert) so that corporate fatcats in Nashville would take notice and sign them. It’s sort of a reverse of what corporations due to viewers when they fake product shots, etc.
Nothing execs like more than the bandwagon sell. 🙂

John

[John Davidson]

Check out midphase.com

Sites are cheap and there’s no magic “video” package needed. Get yourself a copy of MS Frontpage, do a little research into how to post videos or make a template like the one I use.

For example:
https://www.magicfeatherinc.com/DS/PrettyLove1.html

Typically I use a format for qt’s set a 400×300, but you define video size. I seriously doubt you’ll be using more than your alotted bandwidth.

The benefits to this are, you can password protect sites, your qt videos load gradually, as opposed to forcing you to wait until the whole thing downloads, which is what happens when you reference a .mov file instead of a .htm (web page) file. Your clients will be happier and so will you. Literally dozens of clients have remarked at how easy it is for them to view my qt’s because I don’t force them to FTP or anything annoying like that.

You could even add a “post comments” box at the bottom so that Clients can all see each other’s notes. How cool is that?

Hope that helps,
Best,
John

[John Davidson]

Sounds like maybe you’re a little excited/flustered. It happens to all of us, especially when such opportunities offer a major increase in status/work/quality of life.

I’d break it down to a few simple questions and then formulate your plan based on the answers to these questions.

Who will be your clients?
What services will your clients need?
What expenses will you incur providing these services?
Will you outsource to other vendors?
How will you generate more work? Salesforce?
What type of staffing will you have? Freelance, fulltime, or a combination of both?
What hardware/software will you be investing in?

Depending on the full range of your plan, you may also need to provide a realistic overview of how long the new division will be profitless. Typically, 6 months to hit the blue is realistic, but it really depends on contacts, market size, and talent.

Hope that helps. Best of Luck.

[John Davidson]

Michelle, get yourself a good DP, and if you must, direct it yourself, but don’t shoot it. Also, find out what your client can afford before you lowball yourself. If you need greenscreen, lighting will be more difficult and expensive. Also, people around the office might not be as effective as actual talent.

Cheap is good, but as Nick said, the Neutro thing had 27 people on it (none of which seemed to have a wireless mic handy!!). Maybe all that money was spent on the hottie from Heroes. Well spent if you ask me!

Alot of the production decisions (like shooting HVX100 24p vs video), need to be based on the product. For example, makeup type products want a softer, glowy look to hide wrinkles. Technology products wants your visuals to be crisp and cool for better detailed viewing.

There’s just way too much here to think about without knowing alot more, which would then borderline on folks doing the work for you.

Talk to your producer friends. You’ll be able to disclose more and get better feedback.

Good luck!

[John Davidson]

Drives are really cheap now. Last week I got a 500g seagate for $175. It’s great because at that price you bill the client for the drive, which is negligible, get the whole thing off your system, which is creatively cathartic, and when they show up the next week wanting a change because the janitor in their german bureau wants you to trim 2 frames off of a shot, bam, it’s a grand to reload the whole thing and make that change. Because there’s actual physical coordinating involved (sending drives back, etc), clients tend to have more realistic expectations for additional charges, at least in my experience. In other words, they feel more comfortable trying to get a free ‘hey i know it’s an easy tweak so can you do me a free favor’ edit when they know you have it loaded in the system. When they have to ship the drives/data, they recognize the logistics and pay accordingly.

This is more in relation to agencies and smaller corporate clients. With larger clients you tend to have to cater to what they want. The upside is bigger pays much better so as to avoid the whole nickel/dime thing.

My 2 cents.

[John Davidson]

oh, and they gave me the Barry Green’s “The HVX Book”.

Pretty cool…