[Scott Sheriff]

[Sam Cornelis] “And yes, many professionals say that good work can only be produced by experienced people with expensive equipment. This is something I read in a lot of places in this forum.

In my opinion, this is not true. One reason is: it is not the equipment, that makes a video that people love to see. It is the idea and the creativity that is important.”

Thanks for reading my other post. I realize it’s TL;DR. This one is too.

I’m afraid I have to disagree that creativity is more important than standards.
If you are living in a house, flying a plane, or driving a car made by someone else, would you prefer it to be built creatively, or with standards?
Not everything in this business is done to entertain. In fact the majority of it is not, and there are many, many jobs that there is no premium placed on the entertainment value.
So do you like to shoot sans lighting and mics, and go au naturale and avoid all that expensive gear? I actually hope you don’t because using an on-camera mic sucks, and most people fail miserably at using available light. Who wants to spend time doing things that suck? I don’t.
Maybe we should just start doing in-camera edits too. NO, let’s not. That would suck too.
The newbies just don’t want to invest the time, or money into doing it the right way. Instead it’s a lot easier and cheaper to just not have any standards, and say that those that have some are snobs. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that crap.
That’s OK for some folks, but I’m never going to be an advocate for lowering production values. Even if it is the current rage. I learned to use, and own what you would call “expensive equipment”. I want things to be lit, have good audio, be shot with the sticks and have B-roll to cover the edits, etc. I know having standards makes me somewhat of a dinosaur, or a snob, I’m OK with that.
This reminds me of the demonetization of the rich, and the people that want to tax them ‘just because’. This make the assumption you will never get rich, or don’t aspire to be rich.
To advocate for, or even just accept the lowering of standards as being OK, is the same thing. It is saying that you have no interest in moving your career to any level above entry level, or having knowledge of intermediate, or advanced skills. Whats the point of getting in this business if all you want to do is schlock work?
Look, you may think that shooting some 60 year old CEO’s annual speech to the stockholders isn’t creative enough for you, or isn’t interesting enough to do more than a half-ass job. But that guy is a paying client and deserves the best.
He deserves to be lit, mic’d and made-up properly. He deserves to have his camera on a tripod, and have a well composed frame. He deserves to have the people doing the lighting, shooting, audio, and editing to have skills in their jobs he is paying for. It may seem quaint to do all that for something that isn’t very interesting, or very creative. But he is a paying client, and it is interesting to him, and that is what professionals do. Anything less than this falls below the threshold of what ‘professional’ is. And believe it or not, that type of work is a lot of what video production is.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Sam Cornelis] “Don’t worry about it. It is not because Scott and Tom want to protect their business”

You have got that all wrong. I’m not trying to protect my business, I’m trying to protect your business by not reaching across the globe from another market via the internet helping your competitor get work. The “your” being the working professionals that have major investments in time and equipment. And the competitor being the guy with no overhead, and no experience that is bringing everyone’s rates down.
As I said, if you want to take the time writing an A to Z guide to video production for every newbie that comes along, that’s your business. Tom and I were trying to point out that you may be hurting fellow colleagues in your effort to help the newbies. And you may not be helping them at all, because some will get in over their heads based on your initial help.
I think these are all valid considerations, and worth discussing. And it doesn’t make us evil because some of us will draw the line on how much free help we are willing to hand out, and to whom. You will see plenty of posts where we have helped out colleagues that are our direct competition.

[Sam Cornelis] “And if the boss doesn’t want to pay for your experience, you don’t loose any business here – because he wasn’t going to give you the order in the first place.”

That is not always true. Sometimes people just are unaware of the costs, and how it is done. Armed with that information, people like Andrea can often go back to their boss with the facts and get the budget to do it right and hire professionals And often in doing that they will gain valuable experience, with much less career risk.
Everyone on this forum has at least one story of doing repair jobs for clients that tried to go the DIY route, and in the end it cost them a lot more than if they would have hired experience over low cost in the first place.

There’s a sign in the service waiting room at my car dealer, which says:
Service Rates
$50 per hour
$100 per hour if you watch
$200 per hour if you help
$500 per hour if you started the job yourself, and need us to fix it.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Andrea Woogerd] “I apologize for having sparked such a debate. I was given this project by my boss and have no idea how to go about it. A friend of mine who is in the business suggested that I post a general message on this site to get ideas on where to begin. It appears he was mistaken on the purpose of these forums or perhaps he had a different idea on what I should have said in my request. Apologies if I have offended anyone. It was unintended.”

No apologies are needed. Your posts simply brought up a common occurrence that generate a spirited discussion. In a ‘room’ full of creative people, that is going to happen.
Also don’t forget that a lot of us are sitting at our desks working while we are doing this, so there is a tendency to get straight to the point, which can seem abrupt. Don’t take it personal. It’s not.

We have spent some time talking about if/why we should help the nouveau-cinema folks, but lets talk about your situation for a minute and get back OT.

As far as your project, I would use caution. What we do isn’t brain surgery, but yet there are a lot of things you learn over the years. Video/film projects of any length have hundreds of failure points. The less experience you have, the more of these that will jump out and bite you. If enough of those happen it will create a cascade failure and the entire project falls apart.
Even those of us that have done this a lot have things happen occasionally. So avoiding problems, and how you deal with them before they get out of control is part of the job. No book can possibly detail every problem you might encounter, this is where experience comes in to play.
In your case you first posted asking for advice on buying a camera. Your main criteria was that it should be relatively cheap, and easy enough for a beginning student to operate. So you don’t really have any producing experience, and no knowledge about cameras either. The plan is to hire someone to shoot your footage that doesn’t have any directing/lighting/shooting experience, and use a camera that is new to everyone involved. This scenario is creating lots of unnecessary failure points, because there is no experience in the project at any level.
Someone mentioned that everyone has to start somewhere, which is true. But this sounds like two student pilots teaching each other how to fly, and far from an ideal situation.
And what about editing and finishing what you shoot? Who will do that, and on what equipment? This may all seem very easy when looking in from the outside, but if you spend a few minutes looking at various other forums on the Cows you will see people pulling their hair out because they are trying to edit footage that was either improperly shot, the format doesn’t work with their editor, or maybe both.
So there are lots of places this can go wrong and make you look bad, and cause the company to spend a lot more time and money than necessary. It is also possible it will all work out OK, but sometimes even that is not as it seems.
I don’t know what to call it, except ‘expectation disappointment’. Lets say you get this all done without any major problems, and show it to your boss and his reaction is lukewarm. How does this happen?
Cogswell Cogs puts out a great demo and marketing video on their website, and runs it in their booth at every trade show. It’s the buzz at every event they show it at. Cogswell spent 50,000 dollars on it. They hired an experienced producer, an experienced crew from LA to light and shoot it with top quality gear. Post production editing, graphics, sound and color correction are all also handled by experienced professionals, all hired by the experienced producer who knew the quality, and type of work they all did.
Cogswell’s competitor, Spacely Sprockets sees this video and asks his factory manager George Jetson to make a similar marketing video. Mr. Spacely knows anyone can make a video and put it on Youtube, so it must be pretty easy. He gives George a budget of 5,000 dollars, which should be more than enough considering you can buy a HD Flipcam for a couple of hundred bucks, and get Final Cut X for $300. With that budget, George buys a pro-sumer camera, and hires a first year film student to run it. They don’t do any lighting, and there is no sound-person. George also buys a computer to run Final Cut, and teaches himself how to edit. The only post production work that is done, is what George can do himself. With only a few minor problems, all goes well. The video is done, and it is exactly what the boss asked for, and came in a little under budget. George thinks he has a winner, and shows it to Mr. Spacely, who is underwhelmed. There is no glaring problem he can point to, and it is exactly what he asked for. But Cogswell’s video is just better. George cannot help but feel the disappointment of his boss, but doesn’t understand where he went wrong. Mr. Spacely doesn’t have a specific criticism, he just keeps showing George the Cogswell video, and asks why his video “doesn’t look like that”. George defends himself by saying it came in under budget, and is exactly what the boss asked for. In the end George’s boss agrees it is what he asked for, and decides to just accept it for what it is.
The boss won’t say it to his face but it is a mission failure, reputation damaged.
George knows it, and Mr. Spacely knows it. It’s just no one has the experience to know why or how it happened.
In the end it is quite simple.
The experienced producer knew what to budget in order to get what the client wanted, and was able to justify the cost. The the experienced producer hires other professionals that not only used high quality equipment, but added all the nuances of their craft they have learned over the years to make the video stand out from the pack. George knew none of this. If he had, he could have pointed out the budget gap to his boss at the outset, and avoided the disappointment and unrealistic expectations.
This scenario is an all too common occurrence, and one that is best avoided if at all possible.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Chris Stevens] “Did film editors in the 30s argue over what brand of razor-blade they used to splice the celluloid?”

I don’t know about the 30’s.
But in the 70’s & 80’s they did argue over their favorite splice block. Tape vs cement. And then, what brand of tape, or cement is best. What filmstock is best. Blah, blah, blah.
And I’ll tell you a little secret, if you’ll promise not to tell anyone else. Some of the editors based their opinion of the other editors work on which supplies and tools they preferred to work with. They also had an opinion on your worth as an editor based on what formats you had previously edited with.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Craig Seeman] “Keep in mind we don’t know the circumstances. For all we know she’d an underling with an oppressive bean counting department head who stuck her with this job. She didn’t ask us to manage the project for her. She asked about classes and tutorials. It’s also possible that this isn’t going to be a mass distributed marketing video. It may be that a small group is coming by for a meeting and the company just wants a basic no budget presentation.”

I know that the threads stack up here out of order sometimes, and I know that not everyone reads every forum. But I’m not basing my entire opinion on just this one posting in this forum. You may have only seen this one posting.

[Craig Seeman] “It may not be her behavior at issue. It may be her boss who put her in this situation.”

That may be entirely true, but I don’t think it is all that relevant. For example, I don’t think the bean counter excuse would be a defense for software piracy. If the accountants are to cheap to go buy an NLE app, and your boss demands you start editing, does that make it OK to make bootleg copies from a friends set of discs?
I’m not really questioning Andrea’s motives. I’m just saying she’s asking a lot of other people that do this for a living, for whatever reason. And may be setting herself up for failure in the process.
A lot of us had parents that let us drive the car on back roads long before we were old enough for a learners permit. But they wouldn’t let a underage learning driver loose on the 405 in LA. Recipe for disaster.

[Craig Seeman] “Or maybe she’s just asking where to find one of those DIY how to fix my engine books because the boss doesn’t want to pay for a mechanic.”

My above two answers combined cover my thoughts on this, and I would add that helping Andrea could be taking work from other fellow COW types, in her area. Because there is a big difference between helping a colleague that already has a gig, but may have hit a minor road block. And making it possible for the gate crashers to land work that they are not really ready for yet, that should really go to someone that is ready.
Did you see the thread above about invoice issues? In that thread Michael Hancock posted a talk by Mike Monteiro gave on getting paid:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/874262
If you haven’t seen, or watched it, I would highly recommend it. It relates to this because some of the possible ‘outs’ you give Andrea, or her boss are a lot like some of the excuses clients use to try and weasel out of paying.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Tom Sefton] “I’m not surprised at what other professionals have done here in any way. It just shows what generous and well meaning people they are. I’m not. I want my business and all of the people’s who post on this fine forum to remain secret, sacred and difficult to learn. Because then we will start making money again. I’m not advocating greed is good but our industry is facing some big problems-highlighted most recently by apple’s willingness to stick 2 fingers up at the creative video industry to gain more sales with consumers and the dreaded prosumer with its release of fcpx and dropping of fcp7. Andreas question was well meaning and naive, that’s all; I just don’t like giving up secrets about our trade so that someone can do the job on the cheap and a video pro brother or sister in the USA or wherever in the world misses out. Andrea, for the record I wish you all the best with this job, and any others you get. If this is going to be your chosen career I hope it’s a successful one.”

I think this is a good discussion to have in a forum like this.
I completely agree that many here are well meaning.
I also agree we must stop cutting our own throats. To stand in line for twenty years, and let people that just showed up get in the front of the line is self-defeating.
I’m sure the well meaning guys that have all the work they could use, and are getting the best rates, don’t really ever stop to think that handing out the easy answer advice from halfway across the globe to someone that hasn’t paid their dues could be taking food off the table of those that have worked hard to learn their craft, but do not have all the work they could use.
We need to stop doing that 100% across the board.
And it isn’t really helping the newcomers either, at least in the long term. It would be better for many of them to be forced into some type of basic learning of the craft to build their skills on as they progress. If all we are going to do is put out every little fire they have without any effort on their part, they will never be as good as they could have been.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Sam Cornelis] “Everybody has to start somewhere.”

I agree, everyone does have to start somewhere.
But setting yourself up for failure is not the best way to get started.
Normally you go to school, get an internship, and get some OTJ training as an assistant. Or some combination of the above. The OP just wants to go from the start line, to the finish line, without running the race in-between. Look at what is required here, and how many specialty disciplines are involved.

Writing and Scripting
Producing
Audience and Demographics
Equipment Acquisition
Camera Operation
Lighting
Sound Recording
Graphics
Editing
Finish and Distribution.

Sure lots of one man band guys do this stuff all the time. But they have Experience.
Seems like a lot to learn in order to accomplish the stated goal of making a marketing piece for a high-end product. Especially since the OP seems to be starting from ground zero as far as experience, is committed to buying cheap equipment, and hiring beginning students as crew.

The ‘Good‘, ‘Fast‘, ‘Cheap‘, rule of thumb triangle never lies. You can only have any two, of these three things in your project.
If it is applied to this problem, it points out the obvious.
The OP wants ‘Good‘-Marketing video for a high-end product.
The OP wants ‘Fast‘-Condense years of experience into reading a couple of help posts.
The OP wants ‘Cheap‘-DIY by an inexperienced person, or persons learning OTJ, using cheap gear.

Nowhere in the known universe can you have Good, Fast and Cheap all in the same project. Since this is the Marketing and Business forum, I think it is quite proper to point this out.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

[Tom Sefton] “If I was out of line, please can other Cow members let me know directly and I will stop responding to posts on here and go back to being a lurker.”

Tom,
IMO, you hit the nail on the head, and I applaud you for standing up and telling it like it is.
Because if anyone is out of line, it’s the OP. I doubt the OP meant any harm, but requests like that are basically rude, and demeaning. They show there is a huge disconnect in reality when someone thinks they can just buy a “cheap camera” and get a “beginning student” (Andrea’s words, not mine) to shoot their footage, and thats all it takes to make a marketing video for a “high end” product. Or maybe whats even more surprising is that there are other professionals on the forum jumping up to not only help, but to even defend this behavior.
This would be like asking a mechanic to post the entire process for removing, rebuilding and reinstalling the engine in your car because the kid down the street could do it for free if he just knew how it was done, and had a cheap wrench or two.
If anyone thinks that is a reasonable request, or it’s the purpose of these forums. I would suggest they call up some other trade professionals and try to go down that road with them and see how far they get.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

You need an I/O card, and of course a deck. Not sure if FCE supports I/O cards, or any kind of video breakout box.
You may have to ship your footage to someone with FCP and an I/O and have them do it for you.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Scott Sheriff]

You might want to play around with altering the frame rate to help sell the look.
Part of the silent film look comes from the slower frame rate (often around 16fps) and the inconsistent speed due many of the cameras being hand cranked.

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?