Nick Griffin
Forum Replies Created
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Frank –
Before spending any money on a consultant you should spend a serious amount of time researching this here and on other web resources. You should also try to get as much free, person to person advice as you can from people who have done something similar.
I would expect that “seasoned (video) professional(s) who can relate to small market business challenges” might be hard to come by. Frankly I think that the best ideas will come from within and it may be unrealistic to think that you can hire advice any better than you can get for free.
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We’re not talking lots of money at this point so if I had to pay the taxes it’d be okay.
Well, technically, Mark if you’re earnings are over $600 on this moonlighting work I believe you already ARE supposed to be declaring this income and paying taxes on it. (NOTE I’m NOT an accountant — along with NOT being a lawyer, so the $600 figure may be off.)
An LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) or straight incorporation can do more for you than protect you from lawsuits. It can make not paying taxes on expenses much simpler and less likely to be challenged by the tax authorities. It can also be a way of showing prospective clients that by virtue of being a company instead of just an individual you are somewhat more serious. OK, mostly it’s the not paying taxes on expenses thing.
The long and the short of it is only a good, small business-oriented CPA can advise if this makes sense for you or not. Because there are legal and filing fees in the beginning, extra tax forms to file each year and therefore accounting fees which you might not otherwise have, making this decision is NOT a no-brainer.
For additional perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of going in business for yourself you might want to check out the article “To Be or Not To Be (self employed)” in the current issue of CreativeCOW Magazine. And while I know for a fact that the author has done some really stupid things over his career, some of what he has to say is valid. (The rest is pure nonsense, but perhaps amusing.)
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Yes, Todd, you highjacked the thread. But you are completely correct. The tough thing here, for someone starting out and just getting into providing production for an outside client, is to not make it so complicated (and therefore expensive) that the client goes elsewhere.
Mark, Tim and Craig are also correct in the things they say and, getting back to the original thread, there are a couple of major problems here to confront.
The biggest is, as discussed, you’ve relegated yourself to living pretty much in the price range where you’ve started — at least with THIS client. Hence the importance of building a reel and using it to branch out.
In the growth phase of a new business often the smartest tactic you can employ is to add clients at the top end and cut from the bottom. Often cutting involves saying that your rates have gone up and the old clients walk on their own. This is where it is critically important to communicate in a polite and business like manner. Be humble and apologize for the increases, just be sure to firmly state that given the expansion of your business and the costs of equipment, it’s necessary to raise the rates. Sometimes you can keep the existing clients, usually not. But surprisingly, sometimes you can get them back further down the road when they’ve had a chance to look around and realize that even your new rates aren’t that bad.
Getting back to what things cost… unless your clients are experienced television professionals, most won’t have a damn clue as to what things costs, what’s do-able and waht’s not. Everyone has a television and gets to see elaborate spots, prime time TV shows, 60 Minutes-style interviews, complex motion graphics, etc., etc., etc. — and NONE of it has a price tag supered into the corner giving the public the slightest hint as to what it costs to do.
It’s up to you, in the initial sales phase, to walk them through what their options are. If you have a fairly broad reel or collection of past work not even in reel format, it becomes all the easier. The key is to treat this kind of situation as an education opportunity, one where you are helping them to “get the most they can out of their budget.” The more you are the coach and nurturing teacher rather than salesman, the better this will go.
Oh, and yes. You probably did lowball. But everybody’s got to start out somewhere.
Hope this is of some help for you Rrotz. And say… this is the EXACT sort of thing we discuss all the time over on the Business & Marketing COW. Be sure to check us out and read back into the archives for a wealth of this kind of discussion. (Talk about HIGHJACKING!)
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Dear Michelle:
I’ve come across an amazing opportunity and I’m hoping that the folks here can give me enough information that I’ll be able to immediately know what I’m doing and become fabulously successful in the process. Seems I’ve made some new friends who have a Proton Accelerator and a complete Nuclear Physics lab that they want me to run so we can discover the meaning of the Universe. I’m no scientest, but I’m thinking the whole Unified Theory thing can be cracked in a month, maybe two. All I need to get started is to know what it is that I don’t yet know.
Sorry, Michelle. Don’t mean to be brutal but perhaps the silence is so deafening to your post because:
a) It seems highly improbable (at best) that you’ll be able to create a production as complex as the Neutrogena show (the only one of the three examples that I could get to play) without AT LEAST six to ten exceptional people, most with YEARS of experience. (The Neutrogena show credits list 27 people!)
b) There are so many questions, covering so much territory, that your post is at the same time intimidating and wearisome.
c) “…i’ve been in this industry for years as a producer…” Then stick around a few more years, ask a lot of questions, study everything you can and perhaps you’ll have most of these answers and be in a much better position to succeed.
Again, I don’t mean to be unkind and with net start-ups success can sometimes be accidental. But if you run into this without a serious amount of know-how and knowledge behind you, you’re likely to run into a wall. Hard.
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There comes a time when you have to decide what you want to be in life.
“…25 interviewees, many speaking a foreign language, hours of archive and pictures to be rostrumed.”
“The script is very much in the rough stage – new interviewees have been added, and some of the existing ones are not as lucid as would be hoped…”
Do you want to be the editor (with a small e) THE Editor (with the capital e and ‘THE’ up front ? Do you want to be the Producer/Editor? Or do you want to be Superman and fly in and save they day?
So if you’re the editor or Editor why isn’t this the job of the project’s Producer, or his or her designated producer(s)?? Seems to me like they are asking one hell of a lot and YOU, my friend, have made the mistake of letting them think that this is realistic and do-able in a very small number of man hours.
What you need to do NOW is write out on one piece of paper what you expected the project to be and on another piece (or as many as it takes) write out what you can now see it has become. Sit down with your client and go through this comparison. Offer politely to resign now, being paid only for the time you have spent organizing it for the next sucker (ooh! I mean Editor), but attempt to re-negotiate based on the new reality. Perhaps show them how with window burns (uggg!!) or a 2nd smaller system, they can do much of the work that gets you back to the project you thought you had booked in the first place.
Good luck, Jaymags. We feel your pain.
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As I have stated here before, I have both and now use Media 100 v. 11.5.1 for everything I’m starting new. It’s simpler, requires fewer key strokes & steps and is therefore — speaking for myself and my workflow — faster.
If you have Media 100i you already know 95% of Media 100 HD and, for legacy projects you can simply open them in the new version rather than spend a ton of time re-digitizing and re-building programs. If you have to choose one or the other stay with Media 100. You will be a LOT happier in the long run. Not to mention more productive.
BUT, as I have also discussed here, software is cheap. Why not get the new Media 100 with its AJA card then set-up a second drive or partition where you can install the non-Media 100 AJA drivers and Final Cut Pro? Then you can have months, if not years to decide which program suits you best. Frankly the other programs that come in the FCP suite are well worth its $1,300 price tag.
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Bluestupa –
Mark, as usual, is dead-on in what he writes. I don’t know the answer either, but I’m probably a little closer to the world of your competitor.
Some basic facts:
Big agencies work on big budgets.
Most of the big agencies sub-contract production to outside companies and mark it up. Some, generally not the biggest, own their own production companies so that they can show an invoice from a supposedly outside entity. (Which they ALSO mark-up.)
The big agency is going to show a reel that will blow away the client’s review committee. It doesn’t matter that the job being bid / pitched is supposed to be location shot using a three person video crew. The big agency reel is going to have spots shot on a soundstage, using a crew of 60, shot on 35mm, color corrected after a carefully managed flying spot transfer, with Flame CGI elements added… (you get the idea). And here’s the rub: the client committee won’t understand the difference because they’re looking at it on the same screen (presumably) that they’ll be using to view your stuff. The big agency stuff simply looks phenomenal – big time, glamorous stuff. The big agency spots will also have crisp and clever writing and sparkling design. (That you can counter. See below)
Your reel, in contrast, will be a reflection of what you actually do, not what you’ve hired others to do.
So how do you effectively go to battle against this? First you make it clear that you and your company are the ones actually DOING the work. Point out that you are often hired by ad agencies, but in this case, they are speaking with the source of the work – you.
Second, and here’s the hard part, you have to form a relationship with the people making the choice and coach them through the process of understanding what you will actually be doing and what their options are. What, for example, will it cost to shoot the spots in HD… on Super 16… on 35mm. You have to get them understanding the process enough to compare apples to apples. It’s your best defense against the mind boggling big agency reel. Perhaps your most effective argument could be that you can do so many MORE spots (or more takes, more shoot days, more on-camera talents to select from) for the same amount of money as another provider might charge.
One other thought on being competitive: big agencies generally have extremely talented writers and art directors. Add at least one of each to your budget as freelancers. Consider adding one or more examples of their work to your pitch, IDENTIFYING it as such. Again, this is part of the coaching process.
So what will the big agency charge? Hard to say with PSAs. They may even designate this as a “pro bono” project, meaning that they will donate their time and only ask for “out of pocket” expenses. With that in mind, here’s some perspective on what they may view as expenses:
Several years ago I asked one of my big agency friends, “How is it that your agency can take even the simplest of spots and have it cost $200,000? I can add up all of the elements and can’t for the life of me see how even the most ‘creative’ account manager could have this simple spot cost more than $60,000 to maybe $80,000.” His answer stuck: “Spots cost that much because EVERYONE in the process WANTS them to cost that much.”
The ageny has a mark-up on all costs so they don’t think having two sushi chefs at the craft services table is excessive, nor are the bowls of extra large macadamia nuts and imported waters that are costing $8 a bottle. And of course all of that is needed because the agency is going to have a dozen or more people on the set: a writer (or two), a couple of art directors, a creative director, the account manager, the account exec, his assistant, the odd vice president or two to schmooze the client, his department heads, their assistants, etc., etc., etc. And notice that we haven’t even begun to discuss the crew.
But what ABOUT the people in the client organization? Wouldn’t THEY want the spot to cost less? Which sounds better on the golf course: a)”Wait until you see the new TV spot I had the agency do this month, we really pulled out all the stops.” or b)”Even though we used to pay $200,000 for our TV spots, I figured out how to get a spot for less than $38,000. Want to see my bargain spot?”
Let me repeat so it can sink in: “Spots cost that much because EVERYONE in the process WANTS them to cost that much.”
Given this mentality your actual cost of production may be far lower than the big agency’s “out of pocket” expenses. So don’t be shy. Budget for everything, add a contingency line item of (pick a number) 7% of the total costs and, above all else, do whatever you can to form a relationship with the client to insulate yourself against the glamor projected by the big agency.
Or… the fix could already be in and the big agency already has the gig locked up. That’s why we have more than one pitch going all the time.
Oh, and the “hourly rate?” Develop the day rate discussed above. Charge half price for travel days. Then take your costs and apply a mark-up to them. Think of everything and then add in the contingency percentage.
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Spleeschhhh!!! (That’s the sound of the Danny Thomas ‘spit take’ I just did all over my laptop with my Saturday morning coffee.)
I’m not the expert, just the first here to start using the phrase “I’m not a lawyer… but…”
Seems to me, oh Ronnie Won Kenobi, aren’t you the guy who just put:
*LEGAL STATEMENT: All information in CreativeCOW.net is offered without guarantee as to its accuracy and applicability in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney, business advisor, accountant or other professional to discuss your individual circumstances. Use of the information in CreativeCOW.net, Creative COW Magazine, the COWblogs, etc., is not intended to replace professional counsel. Use of this information is at your own risk and we assume no liability for its use.
at the bottom of a post??
Now THAT’S someone attuned to the times in which we live. And I might add: Your mileage may vary.
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Getting back to the original question:
“Where can one I get advice on what software to buy so I can be competitive and not buy a bunch of incompatible applications?
Here on the COW is one of the best places to start, as evidenced by the lively discussion above. Almost as good, and sometimes more comforting, is to have someone else who does this work a phone call away. Get what he (or she!! – Clara) has, knowing that at least you’ll have someone to talk you through the beginning stages.
As to a “…bunch of incompatible applications…”, can’t most things today inter-operate on some level? Granted it’s nice to have the integration inside the suites, but I’m still using FCStudio’s Compressor application even though I’m cutting in the latest M100. And even though it’s nice to have other tools like FCStudio’s Motion and Live Type on hand, I’m not giving up After Effects.
The biggest issue that Frank has to face is the learning curve. IMHO, the cost of the software is inconsequential when compared to the time one will spend learning how to truly get everything you need from it.
And yes, as stated above, good shooting technique is far more likely to provide a superior end result than is just about any tool you could use to post produce the project.
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Over the years I’v worked with art directors and I’ve worked with ART DIRECTORS. They come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of talent.
What an art director is supposed to be is the individual who implants projects with his or her own visual touch and style. A good art director leaves the project for the better. In small settings the art director can be responsible for physically doing everything. In big projects the art director may be the one telling others what to do: “make that wall blue… move that plant six feet to the left… use this object for the foreground… use this typeface, not that one… etc.”
Also, I agree with Grinner. Be a Creative Director. It’s an even broader job title.