Working for free or low pay

I'm not going to knock a guy if he can and wants to cut his prices half below the competitor to feed his family, especialy if this line of work is all he knows. Sure it hurts the ones who have become accustomed to a certain level of living, but as the economy gets worse we will adjust or starve.

I'm not saying to become a video whore, and give your services away for free, but make minor lifestyle cut backs if need be to compete. Although this is my passion, I half to work a ton of different jobs outside of video production to survive and keep food on my kids plate.

So my question is, since technology has been made readily available and affordable to every novice with a desire to be a videographer, how will you adjust to the free market. i'm sure film guys can use the argument that 35mm adapter makers have cost them jobs, due to the cheaper solution, conveince and cost effectiveness of using a 35 adapter. Please don't think I'm against charging fair price for our services, but there is just to much raw talent out here these days to say my prices are etched in stone with no room to negotiate.

I think one has to also factor in a persons cost of living and lifestyle. If one person likes to live off beans and rice, very frugle, and does video production mainly for the love vs the money, it would be unfair for me to ask him to up his prices for his services.
 
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It's not very different over here, its just on a much larger scale. It IS getting harder and harder to make a solid middle class living in any media production. At some point, all of the newbies will realize how involved and time consuming it is to make anything at any level with some quality in it and will begin to diverge from doing media production for free/ultra cheap. But I don't see that happening soon.

The only way I keep going in this business is diversity. I DP, I produce, I write for websites and a few magazines, I do consulting, I do some still photography. If just did one thing, I would be washed out of the business.

Los Angeles and NYC and most other big cities in the U.S. are bursting at the seams with people willing to buy U.S. $10,000.00 to $50,000.00 worth of gear and work for free or close to free, it is truly amazing to see. For some reason, the siren lure of "being a producer/production company" must be really strong because it is becoming almost impossible to make a living at it as a single skill practitioner. And it is becoming tougher and tougher to even survive as a multi-hyphenate like I am.

Most of the successful people I have been meeting lately are in healthcare and a few other fields as diverse as small scale home mortgaging, property investment, tow truck companies, etc. The amounts of money that they are pulling down make entertainment look like a joke. You should definitely not be in this business if you expect to be middle to upper middle class. It is pretty much petty wages at this point unless you are lucky enough to be "in the gang" in Hollywood.

Dan
 
I agree with you puredrifting,
This is why we are called staving artist. but as yourself, I try and keep my feet wet in a little of everything. But there are just to many young enthusiast with alot of drive and no resposibilities, like they still live at home with mom and dad, no kids or bills, which makes it hard to compete with bids for jobs.
 
Noel Evans said:
Jason, I agree with you in part. But there needs to be caution used in giving it away. I think if approached as you are, insofar as creating opportunities that didnt previously exist, it can be used as a fair way to impart the evidence of the value of the end product to a market that didnt exist. Great if it works, and you can count on the down the line stuff coming.

As Grinner said, the times may require some haggling, but still I charge an equipment rental component in my rates, and that wont change. Think someone else mentioned it also, but Ive broken my rates down a little further, so theres me (and some other staff costs as required), camera and support equipment, lighting and grip, audio. I mean I paid good money for my Sanken audio gear, my wireless system cost me nearly $2500 USD without mic/s, why should I give that freely as someone who has a Rode mic and a Senn g2? Not saying thats not a decent set up, just falls in a different class.
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Yeah exactly, that's not right at all. I mean I own all of my equipment free and clear of course, and I have about $80,000 in equipment, but there's no way in hell I'm going to bring a bunch of gear to a shoot and not charge them. NO way, that's where most of my profit comes from! I'm happy to work for $200 to $300/day, so like $25/hr, but I want to be paid well for my equipment, and that means $1,000/day for shooting most things, negotiable for a week, etc., and for my editing suite I want to make $100/day anyway, hire my editor, have him come here, and at least be able to charge a markup on the $10,000 system being used, so I can afford another one in a few years when I need it.

The point is, this equipment will only last so long, if I don't charge for it, I'll end up with NO money on the side to buy new equipment when I need it, then I'm basically out of business. That's really short-sighted...

As for people who say they diversify and make it, that's one way to do it, I don't fault anyone's strategy in this economy -- if it works, it works. I, unfortunately, cannot do that. I'm not a shooter, I'm not an editor, I'm not a grip or a gaffer, my skills reside in producing and directing projects. I can coordinate projects effectively and work with clients and crew to get exactly what they want, I'm a perfectionist, I'm meticulous, no detail is overlooked, and I have their best interests in mind. With some clients, they don't even realize how careful I am to protect them, I mean I get all necessary photo releases and video releases even if they haven't asked for them, and it'd be THEM who got sued, not me, then I scan them all in, I back them up to two hard drives, and put them all on a CD or DVD and send them to the client for their own records. I don't even have to do that, but I do it because I want my clients to get the best experience possible and be covered fully.

But when it comes down to it I cannot go shoot something for someone, it's not even worth my time. If I was to get $300/day to be a shooter, why would I bother? I can spend that day looking for the next $20,000 client where I'll make at least half that in profit, paying for my equipment, my insurance, and all of my other overhead.
 
Jason, it's not likely that I'll see much of a return on my investment because, many of the projects were small-time community projects with really no future value. I volunteered my services as a way to gain experience with camera technique and improve my craft.
On rare occasions, I bill out as a second shooter, for a fare daily rate, but too few and far between to make a difference.
Like Dan, I wear many hats. My 'day' job was as a consulting broadcast engineer. Quite a different field from video--I found myself sticking my head inside of big commercial transmitters with 10,000 volts inside, troubleshooting, working under emergency conditions in adverse weather.
I've also done typesetting, writing, still photography, color prepress and graphic design.
My days as an employee were ultra-boring--electronics was the most underpaid field in the universe and that's where I worked most of my life. The ditch digger took home 3X as much as I did working on defence electronics!
Nowadays, I run multiple CL ads in different categories, seeking the most available types of work (weddings, corporate, music). Most recently, it's gotten down to the "$100 video shoot" if I'm going to land the client at all. Considering that I'll consume $20 on fuel to get to/from the job, it's hardly worth doing.
Oh well, we'll probably all be rounded up in FEMA concentration camps in 2012 anyway, so why should I care anymore? :Drogar-Angry(DBG):
 
What would you say if your car mechanic charges $25 per hour plus $800 for his tools a day?
Need a car lift to get the exhaust exchanged? An other $50 an hour.

That was the way it worked in our industry for a long time.
Like it or not - this will change.

Remember the 90s and how Apple, Adobe and Quark Express changed the whole prepress industry?
First the guys with the $500.000 drum scanners and type systems laughed.
Then they stopped laughing. View of them survived and only those that where able to adopt the new circumstances.

I predict (and I hope I´m wrong) that in 2 years we are all happy to get $10 an hour, including equipment.
The idea of having equipment the "pays by itself" is over. There will be no return of investment for most of us.

I don´t like that, but I belive that everything well be re adjusted in the next years.

Frank
 
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puredrifting said:
I think that Frank has the perfect outlook on all of this. He is giving of his time and resources for a filmmaker and project that obviously shows talent and promise.
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The crux of the argument being made by Ellison (and myself) has to do with working for large companies that make mucho profit, not working on self-financed films, or pro bono projects, etc.

When I charge for services, I have a different set of rates for Indie films, absolutely. When someone is paying for a film out of their pocket that's quite a different situation. When you are asked by a television network to work without overtime or work without a 10 hour turnaround, or work without per diem, or work for less than the prevailing wage, THAT'S a problem because if enough crew buy into it over time, guess what? We ALL end up working for the same pay we'd get bagging groceries.

When you're asked by some entrepreneur who HAS money to "pitch in" and give him a break on your rates because he'll give you more work in the future, THAT'S a problem because it's almost always a ploy to get work for cheap and nothing else.

When a network dangles celebrities in your face and asks you to work for free because the stuff will look good on your reel, that's a problem because THEY are still making money and they will not take you seriously if you buy into that schtick.

I bid on some still work recently for a mega-huge corporation that makes a Billion Dollars in profit per annum and I was told by the producer asking for my estimate that the client won't pay "usage fees" which is standard in the industry. They know they can just get someone to shoot the stills for a day-rate when every self-respecting photographer is charging for use of the images.

If everyone was in the same ballpark in regard to the rates they accept, then being hired would be based upon suitability for the job, not the fact that you're cheap and that there's another cheap guy they can hire next time because THAT guy is trying to compete, and is even cheaper.

.
 
Postmaster said:
What would you say if your car mechanic charges $25 per hour plus $800 for his tools a day?
Need a car lift to get the exhaust exchanged? An other $50 an hour.

That was the way it worked in our industry for a long time.
Like it or not - this will change.

I predict (and I hope I´m wrong) that in 2 years we are all happy to get $10 an hour, including equipment.
The idea of having equipment the "pays by itself" is over. There will be no return of investment for most of us.
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Your crazy. First off, mechanics DO charge for certain tools. Last time I had my car put on the computer to check it's readout, I got charged for use of that. Anything specialized like that gets charged for. Gear that will wear out/be out of date (video cameras, decks, etc.) in a few years will always need to have a rental fee, because people won't be able to buy it in the first place if it can't get paid off. It's that simple.

There's also the issue that to get certain results you need so many crew, and certain gear (like big HMI's to cover large areas outside in daylight). The rental business may change for the hobbyist type video shooter, but for those of us who are pros and make their entire living doing this, gear rental will always be there and we will make top dollar for our time. Remember, I can give someone who knows nothing about lighting my RED and lights and they won't be able produce a masterpiece. Just because people can afford to buy a cheap HDV camera and some lights doesn't mean they can do a great job. The jobs that they take are not high end jobs that you can make a living off. Yes, you don't have to have a million dollars worth of gear to make a good product, but you still have to have a decent amount and plently of skill. Trust me, a company that uses someone who doesn't know what they are doing will either learn when they get burned in product quality, or they won't care so much about the quality and still pay jack for their next video.

Matthew
 
In a way, I agree with you Frank. The slight upside is that certain pieces of gear are becoming better and a lot cheaper. The new Canon Vixia camcorders seriously offer most of the professional features that most users need for most projects for under $1,000.00 street. The new Cool Lights LED 600s that I am using quite a bit are replacing Arri lights that cost a lot more for the same application usage.

Not saying all production gear will get cheap, it won't, but the cheap production gear is becoming a lot more capable than it was. It will reach a point where most of what you need can be purchased for a few thousand dollars. At that point, I agree, the typical rates for what a lot of us do will be $10.00 or $20.00 per hour. In a way, it already is that cheap if you do wedding and event work, which are perceived (notice I said perceived?) to take the least amount of skill in comparison to scripted programming. Not saying I agree with that but it is a lot of non-broadcast customers perception though.

The signs are all around. The revenues that certain shows on cable generate (Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods being one and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations being another) are considerable, yet both shows are shot on outdated prosumer HDV camcorders that can be bought on Craigslist for under $2,000.00. It does seem the way of the world. I keep telling people, video stopped being a special thing about 8 years ago. Video, unless it is something artistic, is merely a commodity to most potential clients.

Dan
 
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Matthew:

That's the thing that you may not be seeing in your market but what I see in the LA market is that for a lot of clients, they don't even care if its crap. That's what makes it so hard to compete. If you are bidding a job and your reel shows superior work to the competitor you are bidding against, yet the client still goes with them because they are 40% cheaper, what can you say?

I was hired to provide AV support for a corporate client of mine a few weeks ago. A few weeks before that, they had asked me to bid an editing project for them. I never heard back from them on the editing project so I forgot about it but my client had told me that another group that she works with wanted to award the editing project to this other company that they use. When I showed up to the meeting, they showed the video that the other company had edited together for them. Granted, the source material was crap, badly shot video that was shot by a hotel AV company out of the country.

When I watched the clips that the other company had edited, they honestly took a bunch of crap footage and put stupid AE junk all over it, every trick in the book, raster lines so it looked like video shot off of a television screen, :20 to :30 seconds of random layered rack focus blurs, a horrible yellow on gray theme with shooting arrows zipping all around the screen. Frankly, in watching it, I was embarrassed for them, it was so bad. It was like badly shot video, edited badly with graphics someone masturbating with AE. Bad music too.

What happened next flabbergasted me. I was putting a wireless mic on the CEO of the company and he congratulated me on the video clips, he thought they were so cool! It was one of those moments when you had to think really fast on your feet, so I decided to just say, "Oh, I didn't edit those, but yes, they were cool." I didn't want to take credit for the other company's work and personally, I thought how they edited it was terrible. But the CEO dug it. The clients in corp comm dug it. So what do I know? See what I mean, what appeals to clients these days is sometimes baffling. The message was totally obscured by all of this crappy flashy stuff but lo and behold, that was thought of as "good" by this client. So what can you do? I guess I will have to start putting a bunch of flashy garbage all over their videos that I do edit. Having not done corporate for a few years, it is easy to forget, corporate clients are usually 5-10 years behind the curve, what passed for "cool" on In Living Color bumpers back in the 90s is now cool in 2009 to these clients. Adapt or die, guess I need to brush up on my cheesy graphics styles ;-)

The bottom line being, many clients don't care is something is of quality. They just don't care if the message is obliterated by the medium. I have no doubt that the other company that they use is staffed people in their 20s who are learning how to use AE and think that all of this "noise" is cool. I am not against graphics but when it is really loud, distracting and obliterating the message, I have a hard time telling clients that they are obscuring their message when they show the video to their staff.

Dan
 
I had an experience similar to what puredrifting was talking about although, this was more about the client wanting something crappy vs something well done.

I got paid $500 to videotape an investor meeting (1 hour). I brought two cameras, lights, mics, the whole shibang. I arrived 2 hour prior to set everything up. When the CEO and his peeps arrive, they look at my setup and start telling me that I have to move things around because this simiply won't work for them. I tried explaining to the that if they wanted to have this video on their website for others to see, then we had to go with this setup.

They didn't care and they started to move things around on me. I kept my cool and tried to compromise. But then, I really kinda almost lost it when the CEO (a fairly older gentlemen) told me that this key light on him (he was speaking to a crowd of 100 people from a podium) was hurting his eyes and asked if I could shut it off completely.

I told him I couldn't shut it off beause then the video would be too dark to see and that we needed the light. Again, he didn't care. He didn't want the light on him. I exchanged the 500w lowel with diffussion I had originally for a small 150w prolite. As I expected, I had to turn the gain up on the camera because he didn't want the light in his face.

Although I was paid for my time and was done within the allotted time I was given, I felt very angry that the video looked so bad because the client didn't know any better and I did my best to try and educate him on the spot. I edited all the footage and posted it on their website.

They loved it! I was worth every penny they said. Luckily my name isn't anywhere on the video and I am just fine with that.
 
Postmaster said:
I predict (and I hope I´m wrong) that in 2 years we are all happy to get $10 an hour, including equipment.
The idea of having equipment the "pays by itself" is over. There will be no return of investment for most of us.

I don´t like that, but I belive that everything well be re adjusted in the next years.

Frank
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I won't mind making $10/hour when school teachers in my district don't mind earning that amount too. Until property taxes adjust to the new world order/third world economy, there are going to be a lot of tax foreclosures accompanying these reduced wages. But it probably won't matter anyway, as we'll all be living under martial law in a few years, as the economy collapses totally, causing the breakdown of society that the banksters and the Bilderburgers wanted so they could bring on the NWO. :Drogar-Smoke(DBG):
 
I know in my head and in my gut that something is out of whack -- the entrepreneurs and businesses, which must be the foundation for a growing economy, have no security, no health care, and make far less than a third grade school teacher or the guy answering the phones at the government's help desk. I don't think these protected wages can be sustained.

As for the price of video production--maybe it's just not worth it to the client to have a corporate video shot by the next David Fincher. These clients don't notice and don't care that the lighting is bad, so why should they pay for it?
 
DecadenceFilms said:
One of the ironies is that I can probably get a better service for free than I can by paying at times. Let's say I want some editing done. I can pay a professional £250 a day to do the job or get a young, talented guy to do it for free. The pro who rightfully expects to be paid for his time will do a good job up till the point that the money runs out. If you pay a guy for two days of his time, you'll get a good job for two days and that's it. The free guy will do it till it's finished and you can go back and ask him to change it. All for nothing. It might take him two weeks, but it'll be done.
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That is what annoys me the most out of the cheap bastards. It isn't bad enough they are getting slave labor, but then have the gall to expect more. "That's great, but could you just..." Even low paid jobs deserve some respect for the time already put in, to ask for more above and beyond, is seriously rude. Time is time, and a quote is for a one time job. If you want things changed last minute, you pay the last minute prices in addition to the original quote, or you do it yourself.
 
puredrifting said:
In a way, it already is that cheap if you do wedding and event work, which are perceived (notice I said perceived?) to take the least amount of skill in comparison to scripted programming. Not saying I agree with that but it is a lot of non-broadcast customers perception though.


Dan
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Yeah, isn't that a kick in the Nuggets? If you are starting off in Wedding Videography, or even seasoned, people expect you to sit through their entire Wedding and reception, get it edited, top music, and free copies for everyone... for $50. Yet the photographer asks $1,500 for his package and they don't even blink. WTF?
 
I'm not criticizing anyone's chosen profession, but isn't there something to be said for avoiding a line of work where the clients are this cheap? Could it be limited thinking that has one perusing craigslist for jobs? I just signed a job that is going to bring in $600k this year of which we'll probably spend half doing the actual project. i used to go after the clients via craigslist that nickel and dime and one day I woke up, set my sights higher and now i make a very comfortable living (even during this economic crisis) doing the same kind of work, but for clients with actual budgets.

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There is a lot to be said for that Zak, but often times you take what is there if you can. I doubt that I am even in the same league as you, but it isn't like I just fell off the stupid truck either. When I come across one of those "No pay, but great exposure" ads, I laugh, call them a few choice names, and move on. I don't dwell on it. Those jobs would cost me money, between gas, time, wear and tear, plus $10 a tape. Most jobs I do take, I average anywhere from $75- $250 for an hour or two. Not bad, not great, not nearly frequent enough.
 
we *are* in the same league. i'm not doing anything that others on dvxuser couldn't do. many could do it better. here's an idea that anyone is free to take... every retiring CEO has a legacy he wants to protect. why not pitch biography services to interview the ceo, his family, co-workers, travel with him to his hometown, full editorial of a cinematic "feature-length" documentary and budget it between $100k and $1m? one ad in the sort of magazine a ceo would read that had the words "your legacy" in the copy would have the phone ringing off the hook.
 
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