Mike Smith
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Would you have more control and maybe keep post costs down if you had a suitable size prop logo made ..?
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I had it over here in the UK from a local government agency.
22 pages including many clauses quite out of the credible.
These included one giving them the right to require “the entire service [production of a 15-minute training video, with actors] be re-performed free of charge, at their sole discretion, any time within eighteen months of completion”.
This beautiful set of terms came after invitation to tender, offer of services (from me), their acceptance, and a month’s work.
When I pointed out that they could not put additional terms into our contract without my consent, I was told to “consider them hidden terms”.
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You might want to point your client towards one or more of
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/open_new_windows.html
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html
and
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html -
Hi Eric
For you, if you haven’t already, I’d guess one good move might be to bring in the person in question and ask what s/he wants from the deal. See if it’s in range for you.
On the London company story, that 10% was on total turnover. More, the salesmen-producers supplemented that with additional fees for work on the productions, as production manager, producer and sometimes script consultant (all supported through the company’s core staff). But that was on top of no salary at all.
The deal worked quite well for both parties. A number of people tried it and it didn’t work out, but for the few who did well, they got to make a living from selling and then producing video, learning on the job, and with a welcome strong client focus.
In the sales process, they had the support of a company generating a few million pounds a year in television series and corporate sales, and a core staff of eight or nine, including a permanent producer and two permanent writer-directors, a couple of good pa / production coordinators and two edit suites with editors. Plus a good showreel. And of course many clients in larger organisations prefer to buy from a producer who manages and can bring a large team to bear, rather than from one-man-bands.
For the production company, they found that the few who did well each were soon bringing in a few hundred thousand pounds worth of business a year – profitable additional business, along with some good customer names and valuable diversification into new business areas.
Of course the company had to absorb the sales costs into their production budget mark-up. But since their business was as producers rather than as shooters or editors, they had long since realised they needed budgets that covered all bought-in services at cost with a fair admin and contingency mark-up, along with a mark-up for office, overhead, staff, equipment, liability and other insurance, sales, accountancy and admin. So giving up a slice of that in return for turnover and no-salary extra producers seemed like a good deal to the three principals.
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It appears fully legitimate to pay commission on sales, and perhaps on introductions that lead to sales or sales meetings where the introduction is picked up, entirely negotiated and closed by the producer. In your budget, it would be a “sales costs” line item in overheads or operating expenses.
If you don’t motivate your people to get out and sell, particularly when that wasn’t their original job, they probably won’t be fully committed to it, and won’t be very good at it.
Your staff will watch carefully the way you treat whoever brings in the first intro, and take a view on how fair or motivating that is.
Leaving out the middle man: it will happen. Be sure your service is excellent, and you have the skills and resources to be an excellent supplier, a tough competitor and hard act to follow. But sales people, and clients, will move.
One London based production company I once knew well offered salesman – producers a choice of a low basic salary and 5% of all turnover brought in, or 10% and no salary, along with an “exec producer” role or credit on any corporate or commercial business resulting from their efforts.
For several years they managed a stable of salespeople/producers on that basis. They grew very fast. Some of those sales people left and went on to become (successful) producers elsewhere. Some of those might have stayed, if that firm had treated them more fairly, though some would have wanted to be the number one whatever.
Wasn’t it David Ogilvie, on his way to building a giant global agency, who wrote:
“First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.”And of course Ronnie Reagan, love him or hate him, offered:
“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.” -
Flash …
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For my part, if you know and are set on the look you want, I think there’s every reason to do it in camera and not rely on “fixing it in post.” But it does reduced your flexibility later. And you’ll need excellent monitoring on set.
Early days as a cameraman, working with an experienced DoP, we found that editors often defaulted to using the standard cover we shot as safety, rather than the more interesting takes … prompting a consideration of when and whether to shoot safety cover at all.
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Or even try a direct include – pull the html into a php variable and echo it, using something like
ob_start();
include(‘file.php’);
$content = ob_get_clean();
from
https://www.codingforums.com/archive/index.php/t-124537.html
orob_start(); // start buffer
include (“file-to-include.php”);
$content = ob_get_contents(); // assign buffer contents to variable
ob_end_clean(); // end buffer and remove buffer contents
echo $content; -
Why couldn’t you use the html as formatted in dreamweaver in your php – maybe using an echo – three left angle brackets – EOT type construction ?
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Much (but far from all) standard definition analogue PAL in the UK has been broadcast widescreen (or sort-of widescreen) for the last several years by all of the major broadcasters over here, and there have been many widescreen PAL (standard definition) TVs on the market here for a similarly long time.
The UK is in the process of dropping analogue broadcasts. The problem will remain for a while, though, that there’s a mix of TV sets in use, with many (mostly newer) 16×9 screens but still a sizeable number of (mainly older) 4×3 screens. So broadcasters have to find a way to make their output look OK on either type.
To cope with the legacy of lots of 4×3 TV sets, the BBC introduced a policy of originating in 16×9 and passing programmes through an aspect ratio converter to produce a 14×9 programme (with thin black bars top and bottom). A widescreen standard definition TV may need manually setting to 14×9 to view the pictures as intended. Other channels have followed this 14×9 lead.
It took me a while with one US customer to realise he was using “standard definition” to mean “4×3” – not at all a synonym over here!