Ned Miller
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Hello Dennis,
It is very difficult for someone to negotiate for their first time with a party who has done this many dozens of times for a living. Perhaps my advice is for your next documentary since it seems you have almost finished with the negotiations on this one, but here’s my .02¢.
I’m mainly a DP and have done many feature length docs so I have worked for lots of different types of producers and picked up tid bits about that arcane distribution end of the biz, which is the realm of lawyers. Many producers who I have worked for self financed, which I think is dangerous if you are not wealthy so they are at the end of their tether and need financial pay back. One thing the astute ones had in common was that they had a pro between themselves and the network, someone who does this for a living and knows the ropes. Also, they didn’t post their doc until they received some feedback from these intermediary pros who have done it many times before. Issues such as length, closed captioning, rights clearance, etc. I have also worked on great projects that got no traction because they merely submitted to festivals and didn’t use a pro.
One woman who comes to mind who distributed an award winning doc I shot is:
https://www.louiserosenltd.com/aboutus.html
She specializes and has done for many years what you are trying to do yourself, it’s very complex, maybe next time talk with someone like her first? Perhaps she can phone consult for an hourly fee? Also, there’s a great resource called the IDA for filmmakers like yourself who are trying to get the widest exposure and hopefully your investment back:
Lastly, this org is a good place for you although they are more series centric rather than one offs like yours:
Good luck,
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
I have been DP recently on several episodes of an Animal Planet show on dogs, I don’t want to mention the name of the specific show here. I also am a Field Producer for them. I am in very good with the production company in LA and they produce for AP, Leaning Channel, Travel Channel, etc. Contact me privately and I will give you their contact info.
You need to go through an established production company like them to be seriously considered by Animal Planet. No one likes to take a chance on a newbie stranger so you have to pitch your idea to the established prod co and they will team with you and pitch AP.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Hey Mark, it was me but then I thought, “Why tell the world how my biz is doing?”. But in sum, to all who didn’t see my Merlot infused rant: ONE YEAR HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ADJACENT YEARS. Period. I can say that after 33 years…Last year was one of my best ever: 2 weeks vacation in Paris, 2 weeks vacation in Australia, bought a new camera & lenses, went car shopping, then POOF! 2014’s 1st quarter sucked. Probably the worst ever. Fortunately I didn’t buy the new car.
And Walter, is this business coach a member of our universe? Does he or she come from a video/broadcast/content creator background? Just curious. I once considered them but then I thought we are in such a unique situation that their expertise didn’t pertain to us. So, how did you choose this person?
Best regards,
Ned
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Stephen,
Many things. I have been on several shoots where an ambulance had to come, others where we whisked a crew member to an ER (thank you Leatherman), set curtains on fire, spilled coffee on priceless oriental rugs, etc. So I have had big claims and small claims. Like your homeowners and auto insurance, the companies pay small claims with no problems, it’s the larger claims that they “push back” and will try to weasel out of. To me the words Insurance Company mean: Weaseling Out Of. That’s where your agent comes in, he or she must be a fighter, your “champion”. My method is to only use an Independent Agent so they will fight for me when the time comes and if the agent is with just one company they can only push the home office’s claim dept so hard, after all, they sign his paycheck. That’s why price should not be the deciding factor. Everyone thinks they are well covered until they have a large claim and have to hassle the carrier. As an exercise in your business education, ask an attorney how much they would charge you to go up against an insurance company to collect your claim.
First, are you incorporated? If not, a party suing you will be able to go after your personal assets such as your house, IRA, etc. If you are incorporated they can only go after you by “piercing the corporate veil” by proving gross negligence or fraud.
Second, no one can afford E&O insurance. That’s for folks with big budgets and what you and I do doesn’t need that unless you start producing programming for broadcast, theatrical distribution, etc. Way too expensive.
Third, always use a local insurance resource that is the largest in your town who you can get some recommendations on. The reason is a lot of what they do, besides selling you, is learning about your services so you can be prepared and covered ahead of time. Local also means they will know your state’s law which is extremely important. Since insurance people are 90% salesmen and 10% navigators the out-of-staters will tell you that there’s “no problem” writing you insurance but always remember their incentive is to make money on you and they hope you won’t have a claim. So stay local with a company that wants your referrals and has a home town reputation to protect. Also, you need a place to go and slam your fist on the receptionist’s desk and demand to see the president, which I have had to do. So stay local.
Forth, don’t start a relationship with an agent who can’t email you a Certificate of Insurance by EOD. The reason is you will have to with large companies provide one, also with rental companies. When you go with the cheapest, and your $300 mentioned above is laughable, you don’t get services like certificate turn arounds. If you got a gig in Milwaukee and had to unload in a downtown building’s loading dock, a lot of them now want a certificate. Many places you need to rent such as a grocery store where there are professional slip and fall scam artists, they want certificates. Etc.
Fifth, as with your homeowners and auto, think of the worst case scenario, which in our biz is a crew member gets injured (can’t even think about killed), member of the public gets injured due to us or locations get destroyed or damaged. I have a $1000 deductible so the pain isn’t so great when there is a claim.
Sixth, you want to get in bed with an insurance agent who you will stick with for years, maybe someone you will run into often at chamber of commerce functions, etc. The reason is if you are with the same carrier for years, then have a nasty sizable claim, they don’t look at you as a deal hopper and are more willing to pay the claim. I can’t emphasize enough how important the agent is when the claims dept doesn’t want to pay so them being a golf buddy, etc., is a good business tactic.
When you are interviewing agents face-to-face, ask them about these various scenarios keeping in mind that at the end of the meeting they need to “close”. I have done many insurance sales training videos and that is all they are thinking about when you are speaking so run the scenarios regarding liability by them. You will hear the expression “Three C’s”, that’s Care, Custody & Control, meaning when you are filming in any location that is under your Care, Custody & Control that is when you are most vulnerable. Lawyers tend to name everyone involved in their lawsuit and figure out who has the deepest pockets later. If this agent does not bring up the 3 C’s then you should, judge their expression, if they are unfamiliar with the term you need to then RUN. Our biz is unique and the average small town insurance agent may not know the ins and outs like the 3 C’s.
I could go on and on but it’s too nice outside. Call me if you’d like. But remember, it’s not just about having a GREAT policy so you won’t be destroyed financially, it’s also about PREVENTION, which I could write a book on. And here’s two valuable free tips regarding liability:
1) Never send a crew member in their own personal vehicle on any kind of chore or delivery for you or your company that is business (production) related, ever, ever, ever. Especially as a shoot out of vehicle.
2) The vehicle you use for your business needs to be on a BUSINESS policy or if something bad happens on a shoot day you are screwed, often forever. Your auto policy carrier will usually try to weasel out of a claim they deem is business related but was on your personal policy. They investigate the larger claims and that’s one of the things they look for. So the car you are using for production get a biz policy and some states require business license plates. Also, if you are audited it looks better to the IRS that it is under biz and you were writing it off.
Good luck. Just consider your monthly insurance cost to be a very important part of your doing business budget. I use it as a marketing tool, when I create an estimate/proposal I say that “We Are Fully Insured”. That gives the prospect ease of mind and if I am competing against unisured competiitors it really helps me win the gig. Don’t be cheap when it comes to liability insurance.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Ahhh! This is what I mean. I am going to try to cultivate a 100% stock style video and market for home pages:
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
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Hey Matt, that was great! Haven’t seen it in awhile.
As to Shutterstock, same story: Search Office Workers, etc., and it’s all models pantomiming. Blue collar not much better.
Hi Bill: I think everything is derivative. I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve seen many styles and trends come and go. One thing Apple started was a Scandinavian Design clean look, white background, simplicity. Ala Crate & Barrel, who were my longest running client until the Germans bought them, but I digress… I shoot and sometimes produce training videos and Apple is the standard, including the screen grab software and also the age range of the voice. It’s mimicry, jumping on the band wagon but there’s the old expression: You Can’t Argue With Success”.
When I first saw Bill’s rant (at a red light) I thought it was someone flaming me, reacting to my Craigslist ad from a few days ago asking for a VO talent who is an Actor, not a Voice of God, but then I saw it was from Creative Cow and not CL (phew!) and then the light turned green. I have a stable of VO Peeps, perhaps a dozen males and five or so females that I ask the clients to choose from. They actually enjoy that task. I tell them to give me their 1st, 2nd & 3rd choice. Naturally only the ones in their price range are sent. Since all my peeps are Voices of God with Velvet Pipes, because I specialize in straight corporate and my documentaries tend to be of the fund raising genre where I need the Voice of Dripping Sincerity, I knew the players on my bench would not satisfy my client who sent me Richard Dreyfus to emulate. Also, they have only $400 for the narrator of their one minute video.
As you can imagine, 90%, even though my CL ad says I do NOT want a traditional narrator, that I need someone who sounds like he is a “real” character actor, perhaps from a working class background meaning: a Regular Joe, the raspy voice of a former Plant Superintendent, a Fellow Fireman, Someone With Gravitas, A Lower Register, etc., even though the ad states what I need, naturally pros feel they can reach for that and I get a tsunami of inappropriate responses and the samples that sound like the Voice of God trying to be a Regular Joe.
But! Then one VO guy from California, and if you PM me I will give you his contact info, this guy sounds like a Peter Coyote type, that was exactly what I had in mind but have a problem finding here. He was kind enough to lay down two paragraphs, which was about half the script. So I put some perfect music under it and I downloaded watermarked placeholders from the various stock places. I cut together a very nice sequence and sent it as a teaser to the client. I was extremely frustrated by my inability to find a couple of shots that weren’t phoney looking model types and that’s when I posted.
So…it’s been 24 hours and I haven’t heard if I got the gig but…I think I found a new niche market. If I do get this gig for a 1 minute, home page, 100% stock footage, Apple imitator, poetic image piece, I think I can shop it around and do this for lots of companies. It’s not meant to sell a client’s services or products per se, rather it’s to establish a vibe as to who they are and hopefully the visitor will click through, drill down and request a contact. The reason I am loving this idea is you can create these videos without leaving the house! Without shaving! Stay in your sweats all day! With a narrator and 20 stock shots averaging $100 each, you can stay under the budget pain point of medium size companies. You can appeal to the ego of the owner/founder/CEO. They appreciate this genre even if we know it’s derivative. After all, it’s new to them!
BTW, I got this inquiry from sending my brochure to the president of this company. Then the Director of Marketing emailed me saying the prez gave my brochure to him saying they want to do something like the Apple spot they sent me, which they probably saw watching the Super Bowl. I responded that if I live to 100 I will never achieve that level of greatness and they replied: Relax, we will do it with stock.
I may be onto something. Stay tuned.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Thanks Mark, but I am a cameraman so I could easily do it myself. It’s just that their budget wouldn’t allow that. I have $150 average for each of 20 shots and no decent cameraman would go out for that.
I do wish there was an aggregator site where I could put in the search term and it searches ALL the decent stock footage companies for me. I have a 27″ and 22″ monitors up and about 10 browser windows open trying to compare. My main problem is their look of fake models pretending to be doing the work at hand. Perhaps it’s my documentary background I see the shots as phony.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Yes looks high quality but still has the same problem: Models, Models, Models. If only they would hire some real looking folks. Lots of pantomime.
However, their non-people stock looks great.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Getty bought iStock so I believe they are now one and the same. Here is what I am emulating, at 10000th of the cost of course, this is the style I am going for:
https://www.apple.com/your-verse/#video-your-verse
Searching takes much longer than planned but I am enjoying it. Very frustrating wading through all this fake, pretty people material.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
OK, I’ll bring in an hourly Apple pro to do it. I suppose I have to find every serial number of whatever I have bought and downloaded? Or, could I do a Time Machine back up and it all re-install? When I did a Time Machine re-install on my laptop the only issues I had were with MS software like Word, Excel.
Thanks,
P.S. Why didn’t Apple suggest this “clean install” when I purchased it? Or perhaps it’s my aversion to reading manuals?
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com