Tom Sefton
Forum Replies Created
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At least you can spell oops properly…
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Not patronising, just honest. You’ve had your day Andy. If you can’t make money from all of the tools available to a media producer now, you never will again. If you do own your house and car and have no debt, why the hell are you creating a business model that competes with newbie producers, undercutters and cheapo firms? You have backed yourself into a corner with your clients by undervaluing your own product. Why bother to reference a case study for a guy who is hiring red camera and 4 man crews for €600? I guarantee I’ll be buying his kit from a bankruptcy auction in 6 months if that’s his business. Stop insulting people, paying no respect to advice or well aimed criticism and leave. The cow is for professionals, and you aren’t acting like one.
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Mick, I wouldn’t pay much attention to andy’s post. Andy- Running a successful production company does bring you into contact with the president of a company and high ranking execs. A few calls and a creative pitch sent out last year put me directly in contact with the chief exec of one of the largest councils in the uk, a similar scenario happened recently with the creative director of one of the largest design companies in the uk.
Andy, don’t snipe too hard at professionals who are making a very good living from production. The business has changed and good ideas, excellent service and solving problems a firm didn’t know they had, will always be a part of it.
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Andy,
I think everyone here can feel your pain. However, I don’t believe that the industry is dead or dying. It is changing, and always will change. Unfortunately there are plenty of clients out there that will look around for the cheapest producer and use them = why do you want them as your client? They will waste your time, waste your energy, ruin your business and will never appreciate what you are doing. Don’t give them another thought.
Bob made a wonderful and very eloquent point. I’ll try and put it another way – why chase after a lowballing clown for a job? Why waste your valuable, precious and experienced time?
I know it is easy to say, but chase the clients who pay top dollar. Don’t offer to do it for less, offer to do it twice as well, faster, with less hassle, better results and more add ons. I’ve been saying for years that people who chase a client by offering to be vastly cheaper are shooting themselves in the foot. The client will always associate you with cheap, not good, and you will never get your prices up once you have offered to do it for £250. Go after the big clients, go after the guys who know video/motion graphics/media is worthwhile. Invest all of your energy and time in locating someone who spends FORTUNES on video and chase them until you collapse or win them over.
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How many days shooting?
How many days editing/grading/post?
How many staff will you need to do the job and what are their rates?
What are your costs as a business?
What equipment do you have/what will need hiring?
Where do you have to travel?
What are the final deliverables?
What margin to you want to make?
There are more questions, but answering these should give you a good idea.
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If you only have 1 DSLR camera for a public speaking job that lasts for 1 hour you need to hire something else.
Either;
at least 1 other 60D that you can set for a different shot, and then stagger the start so you can flit between both cameras to re-start and change cards. You will also need to purchase quite a few memory cards, or else you will have to transfer media onto a laptop whilst working and delete from the used cards meaning you have no backup. If you have to go down the DSLR route, I would recommend (at least)one other cameraman and camera for the job, and buy 4 more 32GB memory cards. You also need an external sound device for recording the speakers mic – you should be able to take a signal from the live mixing console and sync it in post.
Or, hire a camera that is more suitable for the job – something with a large hard drive, a tape or something that can output a signal via HD-SDI that you can capture into your edit suite. You should also be aware of the issue of overheating – Canon DSLR’s get hot when used for video; we used one for B-Roll on an event once, and it overheated after 1hr’s use and needed cooling before we could use it again.
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https://www.creativevideo.co.uk/index.php?t=product/idx_cw-5hd
Signal quality loss is inevitable – we have used these with good results though.
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Hi Dan,
We’ve had this same problem a few times. I’d suggest giving your client a dual proposal based on you creating the DVD and having no claim to future profits, and another where you reduce your rate but have some percentage.
However…tread carefully with a small seller and a niche market for something that you are going to have to put a lot of work into. How are you going to monitor his sales and ensure you get your cut?
Each time we have done this; admittedly to similar business niche markets as yours, we have decided to just charge for creating the DVD. First off, you need to chat with your client and find out what his aspirations are for the DVD (does it need looped videos for the menus, bespoke animations, animated thumbnails, extras within menus, easter eggs, subtitles, menu pages designing etc…). Each of these will take you time and increase your invoice. I’d figure out a charge per hour, and per day for designing the menu pages and working in your authoring program and go from there.
Don’t forget to factor in a charge for rendering all of the material to the correct codecs for the DVD. Then plenty of time back and forth with him until he is happy with it.
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Had to wipe the C drive and restore the system!
Couldnt get Adobe to uninstall, or Blackmagic.
As a lesson to anyone – don’t plug the Shuttle into your machine unless you have updated the drivers, and even then, don’t plug it in unless you have a backup machine!
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Had to wipe the C drive and restore the system!
Couldnt get Adobe to uninstall, or Blackmagic.
As a lesson to anyone – don’t plug the Shuttle into your machine unless you have updated the drivers, and even then, don’t plug it in unless you have a backup machine!