[Todd Terry]

Hey Michael…

I’m not sure waving the cookies would work… it might, but I’m a little bit of a skeptic. Would be easy to run some tests on that.

A couple of other options.

If your shoot is MOS and you can get your hands on a film projector (16mm would be ideal I think, but even 8mm would work), you could actually use the projector (running some junk film, even home movies) as your light source. I’d put the projector in front of and facing the talent… pop up a 4×4 Hollywood frame in front of talent (a little out of screen frame) with some diffusion, maybe 250, on it, and project the image onto that.

Or…

Grab a couple of these guys…
https://theflickergenerator.com/
…and connect them to some kind of little small instruments (even little PAR cans would work, something 100w or less). With 500T you should be able to get sufficient illumination.

Good to see someone actually using film….

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Todd Terry] “Anyone know of any other vendors that deep decent used inventories?”

I meant KEEP, not deep…. typo…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Todd Terry] “Anyone know of any other vendors that deep decent used inventories?”

I meant KEEP, not deep…. typo…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Laurie you have really asked a wide-open question there… there are such huge ranges that it’s hard to give you an answer, and there are no real single “industry standards” in any of those categories… but rather a wide range of products, brands, and target prices.

A “video mixer” can be anything from a few-hundred-bucks switcher to a million-dollar board…

A “crane” can be anything from a little $600 jib to a $100,000+ ride-on…

“Lighting” can be anything from a 30-buck PAR can to a $30,000 18K HMI…

…and each being professional and appropriate tools, depending on the application. If you can tell us more about your intended usage (and target budget) we could probably be more helpful…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Some, yes, we have dealt with that before… however in this specific case the grip house does not offer insurance and requires renters to provide it, as well as proof of such.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Hi Brett…

Thanks for sharing your numbers.

I think the $5K+ for the spot was very very fair… for both parties. For you, not enough to get rich off of, but nicely compensated for your time/talent/effort. For the client, a decent bargain but not exactly stealing it either. I think it’s a pretty good balance.

For us, yes, agencies are the way to go. The difficulty is getting your foot in the door with them, especially ones that are out of town. Do whatevever you can to ingratiate yourself to the creative directors in those shops, and get them to see your reel. It is a bit of a domino effect… once you begin working for one agency, it’s easier to begin working for others.

There are of course upsides and downsides to working with agencies. On the upside, although we do work for hundreds of different end clients, we only have a few clients that are actually ours, those being the dozen or so agencies themselves that we work for. It’s much easier to keep track of people, personalities, and billing with a few parties than with countless ones, and not having to deal with clients directly is usually a plus. On the downside, sometimes agencies can be a little stifling. Like you, we are a creative agency not just a production company so we often create spots or entire campaigns (not just TV, but print, outdoor, fleet graphics, radio, etc.)… but often with an agency the CD there will have already mapped out every minutae of all that stuff before we are even called. I much prefer being in on the creative end of the development rather than being handed a script and told “go make this.”

We have found that the sort of mid-sized agencies (say those with mostly local or regional accounts … maybe one or two national accounts… and say, 5-20 employees) are the best for us to work with. They are usually big enough to have great clients and decent budgets… but not so big that hey have any on-staff employees devoted to doing television (their staff is there for mostly print, outdoor, and sometimes radio). In those cases the benefit is that we know a lot more about TV than they do… and those that are smart enough to admit that (and fortunately, most are) will give us creative input and freedom.

I’m betting that Phoenix will be an easier sell than San Diego… I would imagine there would be easier to get in with the “right sized” agencies there than it would in San Diego where agencies/budgets/clients are bigger. Then again, it could easily go the other way as well… if you can get your foot in the door with an agency in San Diego, they might be mighty receptive to getting spots in the $10-$15K range that they were used to paying multiples of that for when using the “big city” production houses.

Another great client to look for are large corporate clients that probably should be using an ad agency, but for whatever reason they aren’t. We have two like that, a gigantic credit union, and a hospital. Both clients have very large in-house advertising and marketing departments (big enough to be recognized as agencies and given agency rates by the media outlets)… and are very good at what they do. Yet they both know bupkus about television, and freely and wisely admit it. They turn to us for not only production but creative as well for their TV, and it’s a great combo.

Good luck!… let us know how it goes….

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Hey Brett…

Decent spot, very clean.

Yes, it is hard to say what it is worth, because of course “your mileage may vary” greatly depending on where you are and what the market will bear..

But I can make some guesses based on our little corner of the world.

Here in our shop, we deal mostly with broadcast commercials (some industrials, but mosty commercials)… that typically range anywhere from about $4K on the very low end to about $14K on the high end. Your particular spot would be about mid-range for us…. probably in the $6-7K neighborhood.

I based that on:
Couple of hours of concepting/writing
Half day shoot on stage
Couple days of edit/motion/animation
4 on-screen talent
1 voiceover talent
Music composition

Actually, my specific total was $6,750. Now, as I said, yours could vary greatly. We are known to be extremely fast for both shooting and editing, which can drive the cost down. However we are also known for paying talent very well (much more than most anyone else in town) which can drive the budgets up.

Also of course, different shops price things in very different ways. We have the reputation as one of the better (I like to think best) production houses around here, but we are also very definitely the most cost effective. One time not too long ago when we went head-to-head with our major competition bidding on a job, our quote was less than half of theirs. And ours was for 35mm production, theirs was for 16mm… so you can’t always go by us.

I personally like to keep rates as low as is comfortable, to keep clients happy and coming back. The downside is that we don’t get to bill as many very big jobs… but the upside is that we stay very very busy. It’s not unusual for us to be booked up quite a few weeks or sometimes even months in advance, whereas you can visit other houses in our region that literally look like ghost towns… with dark rooms and a couple of employees waiting for work to come in. They do good work, but have priced themselves out of the range that the typical client can afford.

Add that on top of the fact that the majority of our clients are advertising agencies (although we do occasionally work directly for a client), and since agencies almost always mark up production costs (sometimes a lot, anywhere from 15%-100%) it’s easy for production costs to skyrocket to the point where the client balks.

It would be interesting to hear what your final production bill is, if you care to share it when the time comes….

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Performing talent (voice over, on screen, musicians etc.) is one thing, production talent is another (I don’t exactly get any residuals for directing or editing… wish I did..ha!).

I think the biggest discrepency is that market size tends to dictate how big a budget a commercial project has. A national spot for a major big-player advertiser shot on 35mm film with a handful of SAG actors, five locations, a set built on stage just for the production, a big shot (and big money) voiceover talent, and custom-composed music is naturally going to result in a much fatter invoice than a DVcam-shot spot of Earl’s Hardware Store airing only on local cable.

BUT… in both of those cases an hour in the edit suite is billed exactly the same… at least in our house.

We had a client actually ask us once in an initial meeting “So, do you charge more for clients that you know have a lot of money?” The answer of course was no… you pay for what you get, and you get what you pay for. But if we know a client does have deep pockets, we are certainly a lot quicker to concept spots for them that do have bigger budgets… whether that means shooting on film, hiring national talent, blowing something up, or whatever.

It would be awfully bad form for clients to ever find out if you have a “regular” rate and a “high roller” rate.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[David Roth Weiss] “Premiere has a huge user base, larger even than FCP, it simply doesn’t draw paying clients to facilities.”

Fairly true, but also a generalization… just depends on who you are and where you are.

Despite what I think is my senior editor’s secret wish that we would go FCP, my little company has had three suites cooking and pretty much booked for 11 years now… and we have always cut exclusively with Premiere… starting back on 4.0, and now up to PP2/CS3. Ok, maybe an exaggeration, three suites aren’t always constantly booked, but two defintiely are. At least in our market here (which I admit isn’t huge, I think we are the 80th DMA), people are happy to line up for Premiere.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Mike…. maybe we SHOULD have McGuyverisms forum.

We almost always without fail ship all of our gear and have FedEx-dedicated anvil cases with removable wheels just for such use… I always say I never ever ever fly with my own gear (it’s just such a hassel and so much easier to pick them up on location at FedEx), but tomorrow I am pretending I never said that.

Rules are made to be broken, I suppose… even one’s own.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com