[Neil Myers]

Bill:

Excellent advice. I would definitely love to continue this via email. As a newbie I am having trouble figuring out how to get your email address, though.

Feel free to drop me a line at neilm@connectpr.com.

Thanks!

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Jason:

Thanks! That works perfectly. Now I will go find some tutorials on track mattes so I fully understand for future projects.

Also, great eyes on the typo. This was a stock video, so I will return for a refund and find a better option.

I love Creative Cow. What a great resource.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Thanks for your kind comments. This was an interesting job in a couple of ways. First, the premises were straight from the 1960s. Extremely drab. Worse, they constrained us to shooting in a HUGE section of the building that was abandoned. Nothing but old carpet, walls and blinds.

Second, the spokesperson my client wanted me to interview was, in fact, very energetic and knowledgeable. We set him up first and used an adjacent conference room as a backdrop. It looked good to my eye. When then shot a second guy (the one you see in the video) as “protection”. Good thing, because the first fellow’s accent was ultimately too much for us to use.

What I should have done was keep the first framing with the second interview — it was much better. But I wasn’t sure if we would be using both shots or just one and I wanted to mix it up just in case. Mistake.

Here is the first guy’s framing and lighting.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

The $6,000 is what we were paid. So our costs had to be less than that. We operate on about a 11% profit margin at the moment. That is too low … I would prefer 15% to 20%, but I cannot complain because many of my competitors are losing money at the moment.

We are pretty lean. We have no choice to be otherwise in this environment!

Thank you for your comments. I’ll take the criticism regarding the deadness of the interview to heart and work on that in future videos.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Funny you should say that, because “story-telling” is our core competency. That has not changed since we started our business 21 years ago. What has changed is the medium.

Taken in a much broader context I believe that is still true. In the 1800’s pitchmen and traveling salesmen created intricate stories. Their medium was a group of people gathered on a street corner, so they then implemented that story as a pitch.

The industrial revolution, combined with railroads lead to national distribution. National magazines sprung up and advertising (and PR by the way) was born. Advertisers crafted intricate stories, but now implemented those stories through printed advertisements.

Radio, and then TV changed the medium once again. Now people who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) read a magazine were including in the fray.

And now, the Internet is changing everything once again. People such as myself are still doing what people have been doing for the past 150 years — crafting stories. But our medium has changed, so the way we implement the story has as well.

The interesting part? The medium has come full circle. We’re now back to marketing to “communities”.

I am not as experienced or as talented as you guys when it comes to lighting, videography, sound, etc. That’s why I am here, trying to improve my craft. But I do feel pretty competent as a story-teller. That’s what I have done my whole career. Ultimately, that’s what my clients hire me to do.

If you are interested, here is an example of what we do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D0XMGVouuU

The budget for this video was $6,000. That included:

1. Script
2. Videography
3. Stock footage
4. 3D animation (we used a free-lancer for that)
5. 2D AE work (we did that)
6. Voice-over
7. Music
8. Editing and mastering

That budget is at the high-end of what clients in our industry pay for YouTube videos. But it is by no means a “large” budget. We had to be very efficient to get all of that done and still make a profit.

Feel free to critique the video … I am sure there are many things we could have done better. I am also happy to learn.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Just so that there are no misunderstandings, we did not produce the GMA segment … that was done by GMA in-house. We pitched the story on behalf of our client and got them to do the story. GMA then produced the segment.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Mark:

Thank you for your response … I really appreciate your advice.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

John:

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I understand. If you don’t mind I would like to expand on this, because I think it is an important issue and bears a little more introspection. This will be long … sorry for that … but I want to be clear.

First, I own a marketing firm. It used to be a PR firm. In fact, we still do a lot of PR, but we had to expand in order to survive. Why? Because traditional PR depends on the existence of traditional media, and the Internet is pretty much killing traditional media. Look at this forum, for example. 10 years ago one would read a magazine for this kind of information. Now we cut out the middleman and get it for free.

So, I too have experienced the discomfort of having your base market change on you.

Second, the kind of videos we are doing today are videos that nobody did 10 or even 5 years ago. Our clients want 5 minute video customer case studies to put up on YouTube. In the old days a video case study was a low volume, high ticket business. The YouTube business is a high volume, low ticket business. The budget for these videos are 7 or 8 times less than what we used to do.

What to do? We could just say “No way … we don’t do YouTube”. But that makes no sense. YouTube and the Internet in general is the main medium for our clients. If we are going to be relevant, we have to figure out how to do this. Which means we need to change our cost model to one that works for our clients.

Most companies adapted by just putting crap up. A cheap camera, no lighting, audio from the camera-mounted microphone, and bad editing. That’s stupid. We stubbornly wanted to find a way to produce a quality product at the new, lower price point.

The first thing we tried was cheaper videographers. I knew they would not be as good as our pro — who we loved and used for 20 years. But WOW! I was amazed at just how bad they cheaper guys were. Some examples:

– One guy was busy so he sent his wife. She had never shot video. She didn’t have a microphone, lights or a tripod.

– One guy had no idea how to give us media that would work on a PC. It took two weeks after the shoot to get the media worked out.

– One guy didn’t have a field monitor (too expensive), instead just using the eyepiece for framing. When we got the raw footage we found that we could see his reflection in a window behind the subject. Clear as day! For 45 minutes straight.

Ultimately we decided that the only solution would be to buy the equipment and do it ourselves. There will be times where our old pro would have been able to do better than we will. But that is a moot point because these kind of videos just don’t have the budget to use a pro with his experience and talent. I wish they did, but they don’t.

By the way, the pro to which I refer is a friend. I have known him for 20 years. I paid him well for his help in training our guy. I also spent time over dinner brainstorming ideas on how he could morph his business model to gain more business.

We still do get higher end jobs and when we do I use him. We had a shoot for a major client a few months ago in New York. Locations all around the City — both interiors and exteriors. Sure, we have our own gear and a guy who can shoot talking heads. But the pro was clearly the better option and we had no trouble pulling the trigger in that.

It isn’t just videography, by the way. The cost-crunch applies to all aspects of video production. Voice-overs used to cost $2,000 or more with talent and studio and now cost $500 or less. Obviously stock footage and music is a fraction of what it once was.

Anyway, sorry this is a sore point. I understand your comments. I am not trying to cause trouble.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

We are not second guessing him. It is just that he has a ton of lighting equipment and while he gave us his best advice, it was not very specific.

It isn’t that he wasn’t willing to give us advice, it is just that what he does is much more general purpose than what we do and he had a hard time coming up with a list of equipment that wouldn’t require a moving van to transport.

So, I took pieces of what he recommended and combined it with pieces of threads I have read here at CC. I rolled my own list. I then posted it in the hopes that those with more experience than I would be willing to offer a reality check. This will cost use a fair amount and it seems prudent to check.

I am somewhat new to this forum, so help me understand if I am making a forum faux pas with this approach.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Neil Myers]

Andy:

I, too use Premiere Pro with a similar rig. I used to crash a lot but once I upgraded to 12GB ram I stopped crashing almost completely. That may or may not be what is happening with you, but if you have 6GB or less of RAM that is one idea. FWIW.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS