[John Murphy]

Hi Ned,

We have been shooting news for 20 years this year and I don’t entirely agree with your comments. News CAN pay. If you know how to play the game.

We have made some obscene amounts of money in the past (1990’s) doing freelance news ONLY and have made a very good income from it in the last 5 years, but nowhere near the amounts as in the ’90’s because of the changes.

If I go out for 1 hour and shoot a quick interview for five networks, I get $2000. But admittedly that doesn’t happen as much as it used to. But if you look at it that way, it certainly pays.

It used to be our only form of income, but now we could not survive on doing News alone. We mix it with corporate and web videos.

One thing I do know, however, is that when I DO do news, it will normally be for at least three networks and, for a short job, will equate to around $1500 in sales. Not bad for up to four hours work. Full day? $3000. Not bad money for shoot only and no edit.

But the problem is, you have to get the work and you have to play the game so you don’t get ripped off by the “Trickies” in this world.

[John Murphy]

Mark, an interesting comment.

There are no “agreed rates” and no agreements. Here in Australia, there appears to be no normality when it comes to freelance ENG, or perhaps that in itself is normality. No time for formulating agreements/distributing them on the way to shooting and then feeding out “the big one”. No network would tolerate that.

it is all very slap-happy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of stuff.

I don’t understand how there ever could be an agreed rate before going on such big breaking news stories, because you don’t know how long it is going to take to get the job done. I started on this particular story at 5.30 in the morning and finished 11pm the following night. No one would have guessed it would have taken that long.

Shoot, feed, go home and invoice. Final rate dependent on time spent there and associated costs.

There is no COD with any vision when it comes to news here. You are lucky to be paid in 90 days for your efforts.

I have since learned from another freelancer that, if he shoots and sells to all networks, he charges full rate to each and applies a discount of 20% to each because of the multiple sales. That is when he KNOWS it is going to those networks.

That said, I understand that once one network gets the vision, they can do whatever they want with it…just not real keen on the games played/networks working in cahoots so they get the vision “cheap” when it is us on the front line.

As I said, three of the 5 networks don’t care. Two of them are starting to develop a pattern.

It’s a shame we really only have 5 client opportunities here for news.

[John Murphy]

The thing is there are no rules (apart from the ones the networks make up) and, if there were any rules, they would be manipulated to suit the networks anyway.

I actually made an error. We have 5 major players here, not 4. Three of those never question my invoices, but Tricky 1 and 2 regularly do so and are becoming increasingly creative in their ways to reduce their cost of hiring us.

[John Murphy]

Yeah, I agree with your recommendations, however I guess if you want to tie-up the local area’s big players such as Councils and the likes, you have to play the game (as long as it is worth your while, that is of course!!).

Is this the normal way organisations such as this request quotes? I thought it was a little old-fashioned.

Ron, if you steer clear of these kinds of people, wouldn’t you be (possibly) missing out on work (that is if large-ish organisations do indeed use this method regularly of requesting quotes these days)?

But no doubt playing the cloak-and-dagger method adds to the mystery of it all and assists in getting the vendors to cut to the bone as much as possible.

Cheers,

JM

[John Murphy]

Thanks folks, this is our first “Tendering” quote, so the whole process is quite alien to us.

Another thing they said to us which was strange (or it might be common, don’t know) was that the budget would be revealed to the successful bidder.

What does this mean? Does it mean that, if you come in under budget and are the successful bidder, that you will be able to charge the budgeted amount, or does it mean you get the “boy, you really could have charged more than that” comment?

The cloak-and-dagger stuff is really quite off-putting, but obviously something we will have to get used to if dealing with councils.

JM

[John Murphy]

Actually his has turned into an interesting one.

I requested a more detailed explanation of the different on-location shoots; there are various days, some with one shoot and others with multiple shoots, but they can’t clarify how long each will take or whether the shoots will all be on one day or split over several days.

Very hard to quote when there are so many unknown variables.

JM