Steve Laramie
Veteran
Who is still paying to dollar for videographers in this economy. I have been distracted by DP jobs and kind of fell out of the event videography business because I had to turn down a bunch of jobs for DP jobs. Ideas?
what's a hot topic for videography jobs around now
- Thread starter Steve Laramie
- Start date
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Steve:
I am in much the same position as you. I divide my time between entertainment and corporate. Events are a waste of time in my mind because the skill level required to cover events is relatively lower than scripted material which means you are competing with everyone with a camcorder for event jobs versus fewer pros for scripted programming. I do perhaps one or two events a year and they are deadly boring to me. I covered ComicCon two years ago and it was both boring and exhausting and I covered a training meeting this year (presenter on wireless, they want the room dark for PowerPoints, blah, blah, blah) Totally non-creative camera babysitting in most cases. In my mind, you will make more money and have more fun providing scripted programming to corporations.
For the past year, I have done well with HR/managment training. Have produced some shoots for clients like UPS, American Express and BP Solar and all have been focused on various forms of management evaluation and training. Some have been pretty cool with actors, cars, stunts and some have been merely typical (two to three person skits and interactions). To me, shooting skits, esepcially where you have some sharp salespoeple can be a lot more fun than shooting boring interviews with executives. I shot a bunch of skit-based training in December and the "actors" were great, we did two takes of everything because they knew the script and material inside out and they talk for a living. Nobody got nervous, everyone was cool, it was a joy, better than many of my experiences I have sometimes had with real actors. Have also still been doing quite a bit of pharma. In general, privatized healthcare is recession proof. People will always be sick and will always be suffering from diseases, regardless of the economy.
In entertainment, I am usually too busy to edit so I hire editors but it seems that with corporate, I have also been seliing my editing services quite a bit as well. All of my edit bay gear paid for itself years ago so when I bill out editing, it is very good profit/low cost besides my time. And frankly, even though my company is all HD, most of my corporate work is still 4:3 SD delivery on DVD or on the web so you don't even really need HD gear for a lot of corporate because most of them don't have a way to show HD programming. My DVX100A is still making me money in the corporate world and my HPX170 in the entertainment world.
As long as you can present your services as the cure for a problem and something that will save the client time and or money or increase efficiency, you are in. With all of the bad news in the economy, corporations are looking to save money so if I can do a small video for them for $5 to $20k and that saves an entire team from having to fly in for a training session from all over the country, the money they have spent on my services is a pittance compared to how much it would have cost to fly everyone in and put them up for a 1-2 day meeting.
HTH,
Dan
I am in much the same position as you. I divide my time between entertainment and corporate. Events are a waste of time in my mind because the skill level required to cover events is relatively lower than scripted material which means you are competing with everyone with a camcorder for event jobs versus fewer pros for scripted programming. I do perhaps one or two events a year and they are deadly boring to me. I covered ComicCon two years ago and it was both boring and exhausting and I covered a training meeting this year (presenter on wireless, they want the room dark for PowerPoints, blah, blah, blah) Totally non-creative camera babysitting in most cases. In my mind, you will make more money and have more fun providing scripted programming to corporations.
For the past year, I have done well with HR/managment training. Have produced some shoots for clients like UPS, American Express and BP Solar and all have been focused on various forms of management evaluation and training. Some have been pretty cool with actors, cars, stunts and some have been merely typical (two to three person skits and interactions). To me, shooting skits, esepcially where you have some sharp salespoeple can be a lot more fun than shooting boring interviews with executives. I shot a bunch of skit-based training in December and the "actors" were great, we did two takes of everything because they knew the script and material inside out and they talk for a living. Nobody got nervous, everyone was cool, it was a joy, better than many of my experiences I have sometimes had with real actors. Have also still been doing quite a bit of pharma. In general, privatized healthcare is recession proof. People will always be sick and will always be suffering from diseases, regardless of the economy.
In entertainment, I am usually too busy to edit so I hire editors but it seems that with corporate, I have also been seliing my editing services quite a bit as well. All of my edit bay gear paid for itself years ago so when I bill out editing, it is very good profit/low cost besides my time. And frankly, even though my company is all HD, most of my corporate work is still 4:3 SD delivery on DVD or on the web so you don't even really need HD gear for a lot of corporate because most of them don't have a way to show HD programming. My DVX100A is still making me money in the corporate world and my HPX170 in the entertainment world.
As long as you can present your services as the cure for a problem and something that will save the client time and or money or increase efficiency, you are in. With all of the bad news in the economy, corporations are looking to save money so if I can do a small video for them for $5 to $20k and that saves an entire team from having to fly in for a training session from all over the country, the money they have spent on my services is a pittance compared to how much it would have cost to fly everyone in and put them up for a 1-2 day meeting.
HTH,
Dan
Last edited:
Steve Laramie
Veteran
Thanks Dan
I used to be connected with weddings but I started to turn down jobs because I was so bored of shooting weddings. However I need to start raising some money for a feature and I am looking for a quick in which is allot easier said then done. I live in Philly so there arent allot of paying cinematography gigs. Only thing that pays around here is boring events.
I used to be connected with weddings but I started to turn down jobs because I was so bored of shooting weddings. However I need to start raising some money for a feature and I am looking for a quick in which is allot easier said then done. I live in Philly so there arent allot of paying cinematography gigs. Only thing that pays around here is boring events.
Nektonic
Veteran
Man, ain't that the truth. Of course there are skilled people working in events too, but you're right it is hard to make a living and you won't get paid as much per project as commercial or corporate ones.
Dan, if you don't mind me asking, I'd be curious as to your thoughts on my current dilemma.
Currently I'm primarily doing weddings, which I enjoy but everybody and his brother is doing this as well due to the fact that anyone can pick up a camera and buy a computer to edit with. I believe the quality of my work is great. With a few tweaks and a couple new techniques I plan on introducing this year; I feel I might have some of the best, if not the best quality wedding videos in my area (not to toot my own horn but I've got enough experience doing this to know what I'm doing).
The problem is I'm not a marketing expert and with the economy in the dumper so many brides are either cheaping out on wedding videos or nixing them altogether. The problem is, and maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but I get the feeling that most brides aren't really looking for quality work per se, but usually rate a company first on a lot of things that don't matter as much as the work itself. For example: cheap price, must also offer photography services, do they have a fancy office, do they have a fancy website, etc... and then later only does the quality of the work actually come into play.
I've done corporate work, projects up to $10K, but my problem is how to consistently get the work from bigger companies. I love the fact that most corporate projects are usually planned out to some degree and that you can shoot multiple takes as opposed to an event where you are just capturing things on the fly willy nilly.
Is there a good book on this type of marketing or any specific techniques besides cold calling companies? Or if you could share any methods and strategies, I'd be extremely grateful. I enjoy weddings and events. I've shot some truly great images in the company of some great people, but in terms of making a living at events, I feel as if I'm missing the boat on larger paychecks for the corporate stuff.
Oh, and I've shot most of my stuff on a DVX too, up until about a year and a half ago when I got a Canon A1. I agree, you don't need an HVX, an EX1, or a RED One to do the higher paying projects.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
There are plenty of good corporate jobs out in your neck of the woods. There are a ton of management, consultant, real estate builders and pharma companies right through the outskirts of town, I would concentrate your marketing to the big fish out there, also New Jersey is the pharma and biotech capital of the world, tons of potential clients out that way.
Now I am feeling really guilty, I have a pretty big shoot in Philadelphia for a corporation out there the week after next. Sorry. OTOH, I got the project through an old client of mine out here who now works for a consuting company to the client in Philly so its not like I was looking for work out there. They just happen to be in Philly.
Dan
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi Nektonic:
I have zero advice as far as the wedding thing. To me, shooting videos of weddings is similar to events. There are people who are very successfull at it but they have high end clients and travel in those social circles (oh, Miranda, didn't I meet you at the country club with your children last week?), which is how they get established as high end wedding videographers. There is a market for wedding videos out there in the $25k to $100k range, but it is very small and the people who do those aren't exactly publicizing how they land their clients. Yes, I know its crazy but I have met a few of these people who were shooting weddings with ten cameras and a mobile truck. Of course, that is here in crazy SoCal, that probably doesn't happen in too many other parts of the country.
As far as corporate, it all comes down to the same thing. I don't land ANY clients anymore from ads, website, yellow pages, etc. And none from cold calls and direct marketing of demo reels, postcards and flyers. IMHO, video people who do that are wasting their time. It will sound cliche' but it is so true, it is word of mouth and reputation. ALL of my work for the past ten years has come in strictly from word of mouth or people have heard about or read my names in the credit roll of the tv show that I did that they liked. Sometimes disasters can even be beneficial. I used to do almost all of the corporate video for Kinkos, back in the late 90s. We had a very good business relationship and I was producing perhaps ten to thirty shows a year for them. Training videos, tradeshow videos, marketing videos, you name it. When they would do a new commercial campaign, it was up to me to produce the video presentation presenting the new ad campaign to all 35,000 employees worldwide, I got work with Chiat Day, all of the top executives knew me and it was a good thing. I made them look great and they gave us tons of business.
Then Kinkos went through hard times. Then they pulled up stakes, downsized and moved their world HQ from Ventura, near where I live, to Texas. Most of my clients there were fired and were calling me up, asking me for a job. It was hugely depressing. Fed Ex/Kinkos still does videos but not with me, they use some people in Texas now. But then here we are, years and years later and one of my best clients used to work for Kinkos and was a client of mine there. He moved on and landed with another good company and hires me a few times a year. Then another landed at a sales consulting company, called me and hired me to do some projects. So the good seeds that I sowed in the early 90s are still paying off. It's who you know and who knows you.
If nobody at large corporations knows you, you aren't going to get that business, you can cold call them all you want, send them demo reels and postcards, etc. It's all a waste of time and money. Don't want to depress you, but it is a long term process, there are no quick and easy answers. It is really no different than meeting quality people to date, you need to be where quality people are. The country club, YMCA, church, city council meetings, etc. etc. Business leaders are usually a part of their community so if you become involved on the social aspect of your community, you can meet potential clients who will hire you. That's another thing, you need to shake hands with decision makers, so you need to be around people like HR managers, corporate communications managers, executives, etc.
No easy answers. I have landed jobs from a friend's dad who worked at a defense company. I have landed projects through people I go to church with. I have had people call me who someone I met five years ago and shared a nice dinner with on a business trip told them to call me, etc.
I have tried the old "going in through the ad agency" for corporations who use ad agencies for trade shows, marketing campaigns, etc. That used work but now that video is so cheap and common, all of the ad agencies do a lot of lower end corporate production in-house. Plus even when I did go through big agencies, it used to piss me off at how they would mark up my bid by 300 or 400%, then pay me a pittance because they ground me down on price, then pocket three or four times as much as they paid me, essentially for doing nothing. So I don't like working with ad agencies anymore.
Wish I had a straightforward method for you to try but it does all boil down to who you know. Hollywood is identical, you wouldn't believe the nepotism and favortisim but that is life and how it works in most businesses. Why should corporate video production be any different? If you think about it, video production is now a commodity. There are tens of thousands of people who do it. and they are all lining up to a market that has too many choices to choose from. There too many people who do video production and too few clients really. And with all of te gear getting better and cheaper and the software getting better and more automated (you have read about that new FCP software that performs edited cuts?). The only thing that will set any of us apart are our people skills and selling YOU, not the video. You have to be able to deliver to the client's expectations of quality but the reason they are hiring me is because they have faith that I will make them look good and will solve a problem for them. Realistically, there are a LOT of talented people out there doing this and they are joined by hundreds of thousands more who are not talented but still clutter up the marketplace because everyone wants to do what we do for a living.
Dan
I have zero advice as far as the wedding thing. To me, shooting videos of weddings is similar to events. There are people who are very successfull at it but they have high end clients and travel in those social circles (oh, Miranda, didn't I meet you at the country club with your children last week?), which is how they get established as high end wedding videographers. There is a market for wedding videos out there in the $25k to $100k range, but it is very small and the people who do those aren't exactly publicizing how they land their clients. Yes, I know its crazy but I have met a few of these people who were shooting weddings with ten cameras and a mobile truck. Of course, that is here in crazy SoCal, that probably doesn't happen in too many other parts of the country.
As far as corporate, it all comes down to the same thing. I don't land ANY clients anymore from ads, website, yellow pages, etc. And none from cold calls and direct marketing of demo reels, postcards and flyers. IMHO, video people who do that are wasting their time. It will sound cliche' but it is so true, it is word of mouth and reputation. ALL of my work for the past ten years has come in strictly from word of mouth or people have heard about or read my names in the credit roll of the tv show that I did that they liked. Sometimes disasters can even be beneficial. I used to do almost all of the corporate video for Kinkos, back in the late 90s. We had a very good business relationship and I was producing perhaps ten to thirty shows a year for them. Training videos, tradeshow videos, marketing videos, you name it. When they would do a new commercial campaign, it was up to me to produce the video presentation presenting the new ad campaign to all 35,000 employees worldwide, I got work with Chiat Day, all of the top executives knew me and it was a good thing. I made them look great and they gave us tons of business.
Then Kinkos went through hard times. Then they pulled up stakes, downsized and moved their world HQ from Ventura, near where I live, to Texas. Most of my clients there were fired and were calling me up, asking me for a job. It was hugely depressing. Fed Ex/Kinkos still does videos but not with me, they use some people in Texas now. But then here we are, years and years later and one of my best clients used to work for Kinkos and was a client of mine there. He moved on and landed with another good company and hires me a few times a year. Then another landed at a sales consulting company, called me and hired me to do some projects. So the good seeds that I sowed in the early 90s are still paying off. It's who you know and who knows you.
If nobody at large corporations knows you, you aren't going to get that business, you can cold call them all you want, send them demo reels and postcards, etc. It's all a waste of time and money. Don't want to depress you, but it is a long term process, there are no quick and easy answers. It is really no different than meeting quality people to date, you need to be where quality people are. The country club, YMCA, church, city council meetings, etc. etc. Business leaders are usually a part of their community so if you become involved on the social aspect of your community, you can meet potential clients who will hire you. That's another thing, you need to shake hands with decision makers, so you need to be around people like HR managers, corporate communications managers, executives, etc.
No easy answers. I have landed jobs from a friend's dad who worked at a defense company. I have landed projects through people I go to church with. I have had people call me who someone I met five years ago and shared a nice dinner with on a business trip told them to call me, etc.
I have tried the old "going in through the ad agency" for corporations who use ad agencies for trade shows, marketing campaigns, etc. That used work but now that video is so cheap and common, all of the ad agencies do a lot of lower end corporate production in-house. Plus even when I did go through big agencies, it used to piss me off at how they would mark up my bid by 300 or 400%, then pay me a pittance because they ground me down on price, then pocket three or four times as much as they paid me, essentially for doing nothing. So I don't like working with ad agencies anymore.
Wish I had a straightforward method for you to try but it does all boil down to who you know. Hollywood is identical, you wouldn't believe the nepotism and favortisim but that is life and how it works in most businesses. Why should corporate video production be any different? If you think about it, video production is now a commodity. There are tens of thousands of people who do it. and they are all lining up to a market that has too many choices to choose from. There too many people who do video production and too few clients really. And with all of te gear getting better and cheaper and the software getting better and more automated (you have read about that new FCP software that performs edited cuts?). The only thing that will set any of us apart are our people skills and selling YOU, not the video. You have to be able to deliver to the client's expectations of quality but the reason they are hiring me is because they have faith that I will make them look good and will solve a problem for them. Realistically, there are a LOT of talented people out there doing this and they are joined by hundreds of thousands more who are not talented but still clutter up the marketplace because everyone wants to do what we do for a living.
Dan
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Nektonic
Veteran
Thanks a lot Dan.
I've tried the whole cold calling thing. I've gotten some from that but you have to hit a ton of places before you get one that is interested. The wedding marketing arena is very different. True, word of mouth is important there, but there's also expos, the web, bridal lists, and working with other vendors in the wedding industry. I still plan on doing weddings and events but I'd like to amp up the amount of corp/commercial work that I do. It sounds like I should focus on nurturing the contacts I already have as opposed to worrying so much about marketing for new ones, although that is important too.
And the 100K weddings with 10 cameras and a grip truck. That is insane. These must be some massive weddings (500 to 1000 guests). I would think that level of production and gear would be too obtrusive. The brides and grooms I deal with sometimes freak out about a videographer using a video light at the reception.
Your advice is helpful though. Thanks again.
I've tried the whole cold calling thing. I've gotten some from that but you have to hit a ton of places before you get one that is interested. The wedding marketing arena is very different. True, word of mouth is important there, but there's also expos, the web, bridal lists, and working with other vendors in the wedding industry. I still plan on doing weddings and events but I'd like to amp up the amount of corp/commercial work that I do. It sounds like I should focus on nurturing the contacts I already have as opposed to worrying so much about marketing for new ones, although that is important too.
And the 100K weddings with 10 cameras and a grip truck. That is insane. These must be some massive weddings (500 to 1000 guests). I would think that level of production and gear would be too obtrusive. The brides and grooms I deal with sometimes freak out about a videographer using a video light at the reception.
Your advice is helpful though. Thanks again.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Nektonic
Veteran
Hilarious.
I'd love to be able to make a living doing DP work instead of weddings, but since I don't have enough experience to be a DP, I'll have to stick with the scared people and the preacher.
Scott F
Pug Life
Just wanted to say that Dan/puredrifting is a great asset to this site, taking the time to write out his responses. I enjoy reading your trials and tribulations.
RE: shooting weddings. It's a slippery slope. I agree, it's deadly boring and soul-sucking work. The plus side for me is the extra cash. It has allowed me to buy some nice equipment. If you fall into the cycle, "Yeah, I'll shoot that, put me down." you may find your calendar is quickly booked with those gigs. This could prevent you from seeking out the real work. One thing, as much as weddings suck, I try to do the best job I can for the client. (The amount of food/drinks provided by the bride & groom may increase or diminish those results)
rogar-Evil(DBG):
So lairhair, if you are looking to raise $$ for your feature, you might want to do those weddings/events, but know how to pace yourself. Don't lose sight of your goal.
RE: shooting weddings. It's a slippery slope. I agree, it's deadly boring and soul-sucking work. The plus side for me is the extra cash. It has allowed me to buy some nice equipment. If you fall into the cycle, "Yeah, I'll shoot that, put me down." you may find your calendar is quickly booked with those gigs. This could prevent you from seeking out the real work. One thing, as much as weddings suck, I try to do the best job I can for the client. (The amount of food/drinks provided by the bride & groom may increase or diminish those results)
rogar-Evil(DBG):So lairhair, if you are looking to raise $$ for your feature, you might want to do those weddings/events, but know how to pace yourself. Don't lose sight of your goal.
Scott F
Pug Life
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Yes, its for real. I believe that Ned Soltz or someone at DV Magazine recently reviewed it and said it isn't bad. Of course, it requires copius amounts of log notes to work but it does work. Interesting concept of editing, huh?
Dan
Yes. I learn I lot reading his posts. Esp on lighting. Thanks Dan. They should make him a moderator, or give him free beer of something.
adkimery
Veteran
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Thanks Adkimery. I know Philip, you would think that I could have remembered that he invented it ;-) Senior moment.
Glad that some of you are getting something from the posts. Mmm...free beer, nice idea! ;-)
Dan
Glad that some of you are getting something from the posts. Mmm...free beer, nice idea! ;-)
Dan