Mike Cohen
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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David,
You have now gotten some great advice from some of the great minds of Creative COW. I will add the following:1. Think of the big picture. Sure, knowledge of Final Cut or After Effects is great, but how can you apply these skills to actual business?
2. Don’t sell yourself short and likewise, learn to sell yourself.
3. Find something you are good at and immediately look for something else to also be good at – don’t rest on your laurels.
4. If you are not already engaged in a sport or leisure activity that you are passionate about, find something. Once you get into the working world, you will need an outlet for relaxation, stress reduction and in terms of athletics (even walking or casual biking) ensuring your longevity.
5. Find mentors – one of my mentors in college was the tv studio engineer. He did not teach classes and generally did not teach anyone anything unless asked. But I took an interest in learning some of the technical stuff and he helped. At the time, you needed some rudimentary technical knowledge to run an edit bay, such as setting up a waveform and vectorscope and timing decks. This knowledge was instrumental in my getting the job I have now.
6. You never know what you will one day need to know.
7. Knowledge is power, but so is knowing what to do with knowledge once you get it.
8. Take some business classes – accounting, marketing, statistics – I wish I had.
9. Become well-rounded. Art, music, lit, philosophy may seem like they have little to do with post-production or shooting HD video, but if you want to be counted as a business person rather than just a technician, you need to be able to relate to people you meet. My clients generally don’t want to talk about Adobe Premiere during down time – they talk about sports, movies, politics and non-video geek subjects.
You came to the COW for advice, so this tells me you are on the right track. Best of luck and don’t be a stranger.
Mike Cohen
Medical Education / Multimedia Producer
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I will go further than Grinner:
Cost for the shoot – make your price so that it is good for the client but also good for you. We don’t talk about hours of work – we talk about projects. If the project is the shoot – we give a set price, making sure we account for whatever time we will spend on it. Events at convention centers or hotels always vary.
On the flip side, we were once shooting a roundtable session in a hotel meeting room at Disneyworld. The group ahead of us ended an hour late – we got all our gear setup in the hall so we could setup quickly when they wrapped. Then we were interrupted by the next group. You gotta roll with it and tell your clients to expect the same – overall you need to be in agreement as to what happens when what happens might happen.
Mike Cohen
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What do you want to do with the miniatures? Animate them with stop motion? Do camera moves around a static object?
Provide more details or a sample video of what you are going forMike Cohen
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Just today I was visiting a surgeon for a project – on-cam interview and voice over. He almost immediately said nice things about the company, ie “Cine-Med is pretty well known as the best in the business. Every surgeon I know knows about you guys…”
Sometimes a nice compliment like that is worth its weight in gold.
But gold is nice too! Over the years we have had a few clients that became great clients, even awesome ones – return business, money paid either in advance or on a timely basis and word of mouth referrals within their organization leading to more work and more happiness all around.
With so many threads about Grinders, it’s nice that you can change one letter and get a Grinner!
Mike Cohen
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Realtors tend to not spend much money on their listings if they don’t have to, although they have no problem parking their BMW in the driveway!
That being said, my last realtor who sold me my condo was very generous of his time and even attends the semi-annual condo meetings so he stays engaged with the owners.
I laugh when I look at realtor.com – a big ticket house will have a picture of the house and no other pictures. Buyer beware, if you get a picture of the side of the house and only one angle of the kitchen, run away.
Mike Cohen
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Sounds like a great way to work your tail off and not make very much money. There is a homes showcase on one of our local channels on Sunday morning at like 5am – basically it is paid programming by a real estate franchise in the area. No doubt realtor websites are doing videos – likely on the cheap. But if you look at realtor.com – the publicly accessible way to view MLS listings, there are no videos.
I would talk to local realtors and see what their interests are. But don’t ask them if they are interested in video because you are giving them a simple yes or no question and you know what the answer is going to be. Rather, tell them what they can get and how you can do it for them.
Having looked at some houses for sale a few years ago, about 60% were an absolute disaster, and video would only make them look worse. So only the higher-end houses that look like a museum inside would be conducive to video. In other words, not all sellers are truly motivated to sell.
My two cents – which is about what your average realtor will likely be willing to pay.
Mike Cohen
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How about some video shot with the iPad?
Anyone have a Fischer Price video camera?
Mike Cohen
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Our employees are salaried – if you work 10 hours or 100 hours you get your same paycheck. We just hope that no one works 10 hours and everyone works somewhere between 40 and 100!
As far as billing out the time to a client, that is by the shoot, not by the hour. The client pays us for a video shoot, or likely for a whole project, which is priced to cover the travel and setup. Most of my clients don’t want a breakdown by hour, lunch breaks, setup etc – they want to know what they need to pay to get the job done.
If you get nitpicky down to the part-hour of time actually spent, you can make yourself crazy. If your bean counters want you to account for every minute spent, then you need to tell them that it doesn’t work this way.
If I hire a freelance crew, I pay them by the shoot, which should be priced to include their travel time to get to and fro. That charge is up to the vendor.
Mike Cohen
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We still occupy a suite in the building our founder built 20 years ago. Last year we gutted the place and rebuilt the interior, 16 offices, storage rooms, conference room and a much needed kitchen area.
Next time I’m in Atlanta I know where I’m going to visit!
Mike Cohen -
Media workers tend to be either storytellers or technicians or a combination. Murch is a master storyteller who uses whatever technical tools are required to make his magic. The guy who switches the 6pm news obviously has some technical skill if he is driving a multi-bus switcher every night.
I work outside broadcast, and wear many hats – shooter, editor, photoshop artist, designer, audio editor, voice over artist. Any or all of these skills help me get the job done.
So don’t get hung up on X skill or Y skill – you probably need them all, but they are a means to an end to become a master storyteller, rather than a technician.
I am obviously simplifying things.
Some years ago I trained a new employee in on-line tape-based editing in our gradually dying Ampex bay. But he grasped the concepts of both storytelling (the Cine-Med version) and enough of the technical aspects to be effective. He had come from freelancing in news, doing studio camera, teleprompter, Chyron. After a couple of years he went back to news to be a TD, so clearly the technical side was his forte.
Fast forward to the present, and he has his dream job – he switches SportsCenter on ESPN.So figure out what you are good at. If you are really good at technical things, learn what you need to learn and get jobs that will move your career forward. Likewise if you are really good at telling stories, learn what you need in order to not only do the job you are currently doing, but to do the job you want to be doing.
And follow whatever Bob Zelin says.
Mike Cohen