Steve Kownacki
3
COW Coins
2
Premiere Pro Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Well I’ve got some budget for a truck & misc. and will give the “plastic wall” a go during early dusk next week.
[Tim Kolb] “…also a high res photo can be zoomed and panned, so you could still do some movement on it.”
We do have to zoom in from full bldg to the front doors to “lead the viewer”, kinda hokey but that’s what they want. I’m afraid that doing that kind of motion on a still won’t be pulled off well; because of the duration of the zoom, the perspective of the facade won’t un-keystone as in reality. I will take my still rig along and get shots anyway, he’ll need them for print purposes I’m sure.
Plus after reviewing the current shots, they determined we should turn off the parking lot lights, re-decorate the interior window displays (its a furniture store), remove a bunch of unnecessary signage, ensure all cieling lights are on, among other things.
And on a sales and marketing note, not that my original footage was unusable, but it becomes very easy to upsell the “need to do it right” by shooting a few minutes of the exterior and doing this client review process before setting the budget – let them see all the items of concern. Plus, in this case anyway, once I told him this shot would be the opening/closing shot for 24 months of ads, the amortized cost was nothing. He agreed.
More next week after the shoot.
Steve -
Even on a website, still wouldn’t be bad to have the montage-y thing as a separate clip from your longer-context stuff. If you want it as all 1 demo, I’d keep the flashy-edit stuff as a transitional element around :07-:10 with a few text items and cool shots that transition to your longer stuff. Whole demo would only need to be 3-4 minutes and cover lots of ground. Even when we (meaning the industry) edit for clients we’re trying to sell them, a product and service in :30. YOU are the cient/product in this case – sell yourself in :30.
Steve
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[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “get the right permits and police coordination to stop traffic long enough to get your shot.”
Watched ‘Living in Oblivion’ last night and the phrase ‘lock it up’ has been echoing in my head! Thought about this, but probably not feasible.
I wonder if I could use the bucket trucks to string a braided wire and just use cheap black landscape plastic – use that stuff all the time to block off windows inside; plus it light.
[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “pay off the retailer across the street”
Good idea.
[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “shoot in the absolute middle of the night”
Another good idea, but the sky is just so purdy here around 8:30pm.
I’m figuring if the guy really wants the shot he’ll pay as long as I can reasonably explain the costs. He’s a great client who pays on time, I just had no idea taillights would be a problem for him. If I can keep the additional expense +/- $1000. he’ll go for it. I’ll practice my pitch tonight to explain that the 15 minutes of shooting exteriors garnering 2 usable minutes of exteriors is totally worth the 1/2 a day production.
Steve
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As someone who’s edited for many moons and now in the process of interviewing editors, here’s what I like to see:
Your creativity. What did you bring to the picture. Are you a great technician/button pusher that always needs a director or can you be thrown a script and elements and make it all sing? BE HONEST. My new interview process involves showing somebody the edit desk, toss them a tape & script and give them 2 hours to wow me. Seasoned pros will look at a script and tell me what’s possible in a given time before even touching the computer; I can learn alot about file management, interpersonal skills, time management, and their real knowledge of editing.
This is the age when you need to wear many hats, the more skills you have the more marketable you are. I will never hire just an editor – you should know graphics, compositing, some audio manipulation, authoring, compression, shooting, something… not masters of all, but a solid knowledge of how they work together.
That being said, and with the capability of DVD and chapters there’s no reason for a whimpy reel – show me a demo reel with a ‘knock my socks off’ montage as 1st play, then a menu of differing styles of projects – corporate training and sales, spots, sports, whatever. Cater to me/my industry. We don’t have a generic demo used to sell prospective clients, each one is customized to show “we have experience in your type of project.” We produce mostly corporate stuff, so trying to wow me with all music videos tells me you didn’t research what type of company you are applying to.
Way back when my personal demo reel had not only the final versions of projects as guided by a director, but also my “editor’s version” that had my personal versions as I would have done.
Hope this helps.
Steve
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“Hi Guys”… “Dudes”… I hope we’re not discriminating against our female counterparts with these references. 😉
Hmmm…. so much to comment on in this whole thread.
John: “So the lesson is for media pros, don’t get complacent. Don’t assume you’ll have work forever. Constantly learn and expand your education. Invest. Save. Skip the rims. Buy property. Diversify your income and make smart decisions for your life. If you make 30k a year, maybe a lexus is out.”
This is all good advice, but you’re insulting the “pros” because they already know this. It’s the upcoming workforce that might need this direction. I look at the way bigger picture and even buy fairly-traded, organic coffee so as not to exploit workers in other countries. As you age (and more precisely mature which happens at different times for all of us), so should your responsibilities to everything – family, job, world.
This is not a dig at you John, but business is business, not a hobby, that ended way long ago.
More later.
Steve
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Why don’t you want to use FedEx? Not fast enough? Too expensive? I just wanted to throw a thought in there to new business people that nearly all shipping/server/internet, etc. is a cost not only of doing business, but something paid for by the clients, not you. This is a factor worked into your hourly rates. You pay for shipping when you order from LL Bean, same applies to the client. I have a line item on my budgeting worksheets to remind me to add in $$ for shipping. How does your client work? High strung, need it yesterday? Budget in for that – First AM delivery is over $50, I don’t care, he’s paying for it (that’s also in your sales pitch of the great service you offer and service has a price). Most of our shipping is now US Mail and the stamps.com account is fairly inexpensive and has great tracking tools. A 2 ounce DVD in cardboard sleeve gets to most of the country for me in 2 days for 80 cents. I guess you weigh in “their oversights (delays) are not always my emergency”.
Back to the topic, as Walter said, FTP is cheap. Our service gives us a simple control panel so I can setup password protected folders for each client and they can grab their movies. Works both ways so client can drop logos and other things we need from them too. We’ve got 384K upload, a few hundred megs will take a while, but it gets there the same day.
Steve
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Agree with the DVD recorder method.
If we need to edit any of it, we use a cheapie dv camera that has analog AV inputs and go right into FCP.
Steve
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We used to get RFPs like this and most of them turned out to be a search for a 2nd or 3rd bidder when the company already had selected a vendor – it was used for checks and balances. In their vagueness, you actually HAVE to give them creative ideas as well. If you are using talent, you must elaborate on why that would be beneficial. If you’re bid includes a jib, you must show them why the budget warrants it. You’ll end up writing a 4-5 page proposal… I’m really surprised they didn’t include the line “all submissions and creative concepts become the property of XX and may be used at our discretion.”
On bids like this, you have to determine how much your time is worth and if you really have a chance at or want the job. If you’re going to spend 2 or 3 days on the phone, in a meeting, collecting demos and writing a proposal, are you going to recoup that on the job? And if you lose that time, can you make it up on the next job? That’s somewhere between $1000 and $1500 of time spent that needs to be compensated for.
Steve
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That guy contradicts himself too much for me. If it were easy to be in business, everyone would be. First he tells the reader they probably don’t have any money, yet goes on to say buy a franchise or hire the best mechanic and business staff while you get started. Um, yeah. And pay them and yourself with what money? The key thing he mentions is relationship-building.
You want to get into this field, but how – self-employed or work for/with someone else? I’ve seen a number of posts on the cow about small shops looking for commission-only salespeople. That may be a great way in, plus you can work your way to the creative stuff. If you make 20-40% on the sale you’ll have your salary (and I assume you’re making at least $50K now).
I think you have a better chance of success if you are a successful salesperson than if you are a great artist. You still have to create credible product, but getting the jobs in the door is the tougher skill.
Steve
Daily affirmation: computers are our friends.
Steve
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It’s been a while since posting, busy is good. First I’ll say I admire and follow Grinner’s words from years ago on what’s important: Husband, father, business. Follow this.
Second is to know what kind of person/business person you are – do what you’re good at and hire people to do or teach you the rest.
My problem is that I like to dabble in all of it and that doesn’t always make money – takes a long time to learn new software for one simple job. From 1991-1999 I built up a nice shop with 6 people, but left home each day quoting “its off to the daycare center”. My wife hated that comment and she pointly said “then change it”. Just so happened that an issue of Industry Week came that day with a story of a company how nobody saw the vision or understood their mission. I was relating. He let 300 people go, hired back the best and was lean and mean and happy again. If he could, I could. I gave everyone 6 months notice about me going solo again and of course the good ones placed themselves quickly, the ones you needed to unload stuck around till the end.
Since ’99 I have a home office of 300 SF with 2 edit stations, a graphics station, a 5-VCR dupe rack and a DVD duplicator and as of 15 months ago, 1 employee (this allows me to get out and do fun stuff!). Have a full van of location gear too. This lower overhead creates a low-stress environment. Clients love coming over and all the animals come to visit too.
My rates are not influenced by my location because I’m selling what’s on the reel not my digs. That kinda lends itself to that other post about the smaller cameras – if somebody questions the size of something, just point them to the monitor. Chances are the image they see they couldn’t create themselves.
I have the freedom to take on freelance shoots, or directing only, or producing only and have a few pet projects/partnerships that I work on too. I would love to just direct live events, but that would require too much travel and away time, so I do it 2-3 times each year and that keeps me happy.
I don’t have (by choice) the workload to hire another full-time director/editor and would love to find a freelancer in my market to work on our gear, but that hasn’t been easy. So I’ll take on enough creative work that I can handle the directing/producing/shooting/ tasks and shoot seminars to keep revenue steady.
Am I off track with the original request? Changes in the business world: yeah, make sure when you feel clients are going to “go it on their own” you charge consulting fees right up front to help them select a camera and microphone – you know your days are numbered. But we do edit most of the schlock the bring to us; we spend so much time fixing things it would’ve probably been cheaper to hire us to shoot it in the first place.
So yeah, things keep changing and you need to bounce around. We have a DSR300 (oldie but a goodie DVCam) that still makes lots of money, but rent whatever the client requests (that’s been stated in alot of posts). I don’t always keep the latest upgrades unless they are guaranteed to work (downtime is tough on a small company).
And so ends my list of random thoughts.
SteveDaily affirmation: computers are our friends.
Steve