Ron Gerber
Forum Replies Created
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I’m in “wait and see” mode at the moment on the MojoDX. If the cost comes down and people are using it with success (and Bob gives it his thumbs up) maybe I’ll jump into the fire one more time.
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I’m not sure if we have any confirmation of liability. For our freelancers, if they are not going through the agency that we are using, they must have their own business – for example if I am hiring Joe as a grip, he has a business license and is doing business as Joe’s Grip, Inc. and invoices us as the business or as any vendor would. They would be treated the same as the guy we buy tape stock from or the guy who fixes the AC when it breaks. I’m not sure what paperwork we are requiring from them to set them up as vendors. I think it was just and I-9.
Of course all of this started last year right after we had an audit.
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I should also add that if any of our freelancers had their own business or tax id number, they didn’t have to go through the agency.
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I think what they were looking at that made freelancers different than other vendors was that the vendors actually had a business license or tax id number of some sort. In the past there had been some problems with the timeliness of paying freelancers and who was in charge of tracking down checks and invoices. There was a local agency that deals in production employment so they handle a majority of the bookkeeping (including all the taxes and paperwork).
Of course we had to raise our pay rate to compensate for the agency fee and a few of our freelancers weren’t happy about the agency taking taxes out of their checks.
The other issue that was brought up was liability, basically the “freelancers” are employees of the agency and we are hiring the agency not the “freelancers” so if anything bad happens, they don’t work for us.
I’m not sure how true that could be but that’s the way it was presented to me. It’s a long way around to do something very simple and it costs more but that’s the way the bosses want it done.
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About 6 months ago our HR department, on advice from the company attorneys, mandated that we no longer use freelances unless they come through an employment agency. The general understanding was it was going to simplify payroll (1 check to the agency instead of a bunch of checks to everyone) and to help insulate the company against insurance issues. So far, none of the freelancers we use have had any problems with it. After reading your post, I think I now understand a little better why they wanted us to do that.
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My memory might be a little fuzzy but I think Media Composers were going somewhere between $85,000 – $105,000 back then. We had a few of them that were finally taken out of service about a year ago. The Avid Express systems back then were running in the ball park of $45,000 – $55,000. I’m not sure about your deck, but I do remember that nothing Sony sold was cheap.
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My memory might be a little fuzzy but I think Media Composers were going somewhere between $85,000 – $105,000 back then. We had a few of them that were finally taken out of service about a year ago. The Avid Express systems back then were running in the ball park of $45,000 – $55,000. I’m not sure about your deck, but I do remember that nothing Sony sold was cheap.
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I’d love to take credit for the demo reel but its made up of commercials from our 9 different creative services departments. For some reason they didn’t want to put any of my work on there – I guess the used car salesmen jumping on the hood and kicking tires wasn’t what we were shooting for.
Thanks,
Ron
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Most of what Ron said is accurate however the business model is changing in my market (and the other markets serviced by the company I work for). The suits higher up decided that you get what you pay and a client that pays for a commercial tends to have a more vested interest in making sure it works (by spending more money on airtime). Basically getting out of the cookie cutter mode and creating better commercials means better results for the client thus less churn. Yes we still do a large share of cookie cutter type spots but generally the clients are paying us for them and believe it or not, we loose out on a lot of the smaller ones because we charge too much. Someone always has a brother or neighbor with a video camera and a computer that can do it for less. Of course we don’t turn away the airtime buy. Oddly enough, our local broadcast stations are the ones giving away the “free” production (if you spend the right amount for airtime). It’s an uphill battle because in the end, my boss answers to a boss who answers to the big boss and they don’t like to give anything away for free. Here’s a link to a demo of some of the work our offices have doing last year.
https://brighthouseadvertising.com/man_sec/video/web%20video%20montage-web%20video.mov
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All fun aside… I’d estimate between $450 and $750 for those cable spots in a market your size. The hard thing about local cable is there’s always someone that will do it for less. And your local cable company probably isn’t worried about how much the spots cost only about how much the airtime buy is. In the local cable world, the local commercial is just a vehicle to get to the media buy. Focus on creating a quality product that works for the client at a fair price (for you and the client).