Are you making money?

Things were slow there for the past 5-6 months on the Video Production front for me, but in the past month or so signs of life have started to return. (Refering to paying Event & Commercial jobs, not the other crap I do that ends up costing me more money in the long run than making me any)
 
I work as a grip/electric on whatever people will hire me for. Indie features, music videos, commercials, corporate stuff....Basically I move heavy things in an efficient manner and shine bright lights in peoples faces. For some reason people pay me for it.

I got those jobs by trying my heart out to meet producers and asking if I could PA on their shoots. From that I met a bunch of grip/electric guys that brought me into their department. Just takes a lot of hard work is all.
 
First, I'd like to say thanks to all for an extremely informative and enjoyable thread.

To those attracted to it by the original question, I'd like to suggest that after digesting the wisdom offered by Puredrifiting, Chris, Noel, Barry, Jason and so many others that personal contact and recommendations trump reels, websites, and virtually every other form of advertising, understand that this is not unique to our industry. It holds the same for everything from shoes to sailboats to real estate.

Building a business successfully is all about where to use your time most effectively. Demo reels and websites just don't compare to networking. Believe me when I say I feel your pain. Most of us are not extroverts who find this easy. Many of us would much rather hide in our basement adding yet another sick effect to our reel or flash to our site. If only it worked.

For those giving this thought, may I humbly suggest robstar1's sticky.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=83958

One of the best, most succinct treatises on the subject I've ever come across. Just another example of what makes this one of the greatest sites on the net.


Best wishes, quick discovery and obscene profits to all ! ! :beer::beer:
 
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do u guys require a downpayment prior to the shoot and the rest on delivery (of watever is agreed on..raw footy, finished edit ect)?
 
First time clients are 50% deposit and 50% due on delivery of masters.

Established clients are on net 30

In doing this for about 15 years, I have only been stiffed once although a huge corporate client I had that owed me a couple hundred thousand dollars once told me, point blank, after they had screwed up a project and blamed me for their incompetence, "we aren't going to pay you this $5,000.00 overage because we are "company A" and you are just going to have to eat it."

Luckily I still had most of their masters for shows that were due to I told him, "fine, you can not pay me this overage and I will just hold onto all of your other masters that are on deadline." They paid me, they had no choice. It was amazing to have a real, legitimate client at a publicly traded company with an impeccable reputation in their industry tell me behind closed doors that basically they were going to screw me out of thousands of dollars, just because they were so large and that they gave my company so much business. It taught me a valuable lesson about trust and working on a handshake. I came in a week later with very long and detailed contracts for all of the other jobs that were in progress with them. It was nice to plop down a stack of contracts about three inches thick on his desk and telling him to have his lawyers look them over and sign them. This was a client I had been doing millions of dollars of business with per year for about eight years with no contracts and I had never had a problem getting paid, I was on a first name basis with all of the ladies in their accounting department, etc.

This person who threatened me was unfortunately pretty powerful there and eventually blacklisted my company to get back at me. I decided that it was time to move on professionally anyway as I was stagnating there. Lots of money and more business than I could handle but it was creative stagnation there. I still don't regret the decision but financially, it probably would have been smarter to let him rip me off for the $4,000.00 or $5,000.00 but in the long run, I made the right decision. I also learned about NOT putting most of your eggs in one basket. In 2001, my company only had two primary clients, this one and another large multinational. After 9/11, this client blacklisted me and a few months later, the other multinational shut down their world HQ that was near me, fired 70% of their staff and moved to another state and pretty much went from using a LOT of video and multimedia to almost none in one fell swoop. It is pretty tough to from two miilion dollars in business per year to about $100k in a six month period. It was not fun closing down our offices, laying staff off and figuring out what I wanted to do. But I am still in business and still having fun at this business. That is the great thing about this country, you can be on top, fail, learn from your failure and claw your way back up. If you want it badly enough, you always have another shot.

Dan
 
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puredrifting said:
First time clients are 50% deposit and 50% due on delivery of masters.

Established clients are on net 30

In doing this for about 15 years, I have only been stiffed once although a huge corporate client I had that owed me a couple hundred thousand dollars once told me, point blank, after they had screwed up a project and blamed me for their incompetence, "we aren't going to pay you this $5,000.00 overage because we are "company A" and you are just going to have to eat it."

Luckily I still had most of their masters for shows that were due to I told him, "fine, you can not pay me this overage and I will just hold onto all of your other masters that are on deadline." They paid me, they had no choice. It was amazing to have a real, legitimate client at a publicly traded company with an impeccable reputation in their industry tell me behind closed doors that basically they were going to screw me out of thousands of dollars, just because they were so large and that they gave my company so much business. It taught me a valuable lesson about trust and working on a handshake. I came in a week later with very long and detailed contracts for all of the other jobs that were in progress with them. It was nice to plop down a stack of contracts about three inches thick on his desk and telling him to have his lawyers look them over and sign them. This was a client I had been doing millions of dollars of business with per year for about eight years with no contracts and I had never had a problem getting paid, I was on a first name basis with all of the ladies in their accounting department, etc.

This person who threatened me was unfortunately pretty powerful there and eventually blacklisted my company to get back at me. I decided that it was time to move on professionally anyway as I was stagnating there. Lots of money and more business than I could handle but it was creative stagnation there. I still don't regret the decision but financially, it probably would have been smarter to let him rip me off for the $4,000.00 or $5,000.00 but in the long run, I made the right decision. I also learned about NOT putting most of your eggs in one basket. In 2001, my company only had two primary clients, this one and another large multinational. After 9/11, this client blacklisted me and a few months later, the other multinational shut down their world HQ that was near me, fired 70% of their staff and moved to another state and pretty much went from using a LOT of video and multimedia to almost none in one fell swoop. It is pretty tough to from two miilion dollars in business per year to about $100k in a six month period. It was not fun closing down our offices, laying staff off and figuring out what I wanted to do. But I am still in business and still having fun at this business. That is the great thing about this country, you can be on top, fail, learn from your failure and claw your way back up. If you want it badly enough, you always have another shot.

Dan
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That's quite a story. I think that it's something everyone should consider, though.

I mean I've given a lot of thought to that because I had thought, well, if I do manage to get into this niche industry I'm working on and get a lot of work, I shouldn't expect that it will just automatically continue. There may come a time where I've simply exhausted the client resources, done work for most of the companies that need it, and that could be only 2-3 years after starting. So it's a smart idea even if I was making good money to keep expenses low and stockpile cash because you have to figure this kind of business is somewhat unpredictable and you will likely have long dry spells.
 
The real issue is that in corporate America, things constantly change. This person decided that their company was giving me too much business and he personally did not like me because I would not let him pull a Mafia like move on me.

My big takeaways were...

1. Stay diverse. If all you do is corporate video, your brain will melt creatively. Corporate clients don't care if something is great and well done, they usually just care if it is going to make them look good and secondarily, if the video/multimedia project will be able to quantifiably save the corporation money or time/resources/hassle, therefore still money. All I did for eight years was lots of corporate video. Did some good work, work I am still proud of. But I am so glad that I now do entertainment work, I write for a magazine and three websites, I am in development on six television projects, I freelance produce and DP on all kinds of crazy projects and I am still doing some corporate. Creatively, I am much more mature from doing all of these different things in different fields that doing the same thing over and over in corporate. But it becomes tempting because corporate budgets, at least used to be really good.

2. Don't put all of your eggs in even 2 or 3 baskets, no matter how tempting it is. It was tempting for me because I didn't have to look for work anymore, every Monday morning, I would have new project assigned to me with typical budgets in the $50k to $150k range. This went on for eight years. How could I not get comfortable? Need a new BVWD600? It's $75k with the lens, no worries, this project just paid for it. Need a new Pro Tools system? Just buy it, it's paid for. But it was a false sense of security. Looking back, if I could have done it differently, I should have put $200k per year into hiring a sales staff and expanding into other fields. But there was never time. I recall one Summer, in a one week period, I had crews and shoots going on in California, New Orleans, North Carolina, London and Munich. I could barely keep up with running the company. It becomes frantic just to keep delivering shows on time to the client and then producing the next one. Planning took a backseat and that was a deadly mistake.

3. Saving is tough for a corporation. Unfortunately, it is very expensive to save cash, you end up giving a huge portion of it to the IRS. I always thought, "I can invest in new gear to build the company or I can give it to the IRS". Which would I rather do? The other problem is in our business, the damn gear becomes almost instantly outdated though. The smart money is on grip and electric, it is a good investment. Cameras and computers are a horrible investment, outdated the week after you buy them and they have horrible re-sale.

Dan
 
puredrifting said:
In 2001, my company only had two primary clients, this one and another large multinational. After 9/11, this client blacklisted me and a few months later, the other multinational shut down their world HQ that was near me, fired 70% of their staff and moved to another state and pretty much went from using a LOT of video and multimedia to almost none in one fell swoop. It is pretty tough to from two miilion dollars in business per year to about $100k in a six month period.
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Hoo boy.. there are some of us who could only DREAM of making your bottom income figure in a year--or even in 3 years! I got done figuring taxes last month and come to find out we made $1300 last year. :-( If it wasn't for the personal injury lawsuit money and my wife's income, we'd be already living in a tent in the woods.
 
You are making me sad Mark. I would say that if you are not making money with video, you should do something you can make real money at. If I couldn't make a living doing video, I would demote it to hobby level and go do something that makes me money. I starved for many years and not having enough money is not something I will ever go through again.

I am so blessed to make enough money to survive doing what I love to do. But if I was not meant to do it and couldn't, there are many other ways to utilize my talents. I was in sales for 12 years before I was in production, I can sell anything if I put my mind to it. I can write, about a quarter of my income is coming in from writing. I am consulting, advising and training people on how to wisely spend their money on gear and learning. I am sure that you have other marketable talents besides video production, you need to step outside your comfort zone and make a living.

Dan
 
There used to be an old saying, I'm paraphrasing: "To a normal person, 10 million dollars seems like enough. And, that's why a normal person will never be able to acquire 10 million." You can substitute any number you like. Principle stays the same...
 
My editing gigs have brought me quite a bit of money and hopefully I can do more than just editing to get even more money. :)
 
The thing is, I've had dozens of careers over my life.. some have paid a poverty wage, some a bit better. All were an interruption to living--I lived for the hour hand to strike 5 so I could get the heck out of that place. I've had assembly line manufacturing jobs, electronic tech jobs, I've tried my hand at Amway in the early 1970s, I've tried my hand at Primerica in 2006--hated doing door to door sales and hated doing cold calling, never made a dime at either. Worked as a tech writer for some years, but found that frustrating and unfulfilling. I was desparately unhappy at every job I've had. Did broadcast engineering for 12 years, after my graphic design business went down the drain in the '90s. It was a little better, but the commutes to tower sites from hell were not fun--especially during raging storms--which was the bulk of my emergency calls--but in the best year, I hit $19K of income from doing that business. By 2004, it started to fizzle, with radio stations cutting corners and pencil pushers taking over and pushing the real radio people out of the business. By last year, I was only doing web site maintenance for one radio station and one symphony orchestra and billed about $600 total in that area.
It was my 2005 epiphany that keeps me sticking to video production, no matter how bleak the outlook. In 2005, I was recording an orchestra and it hit me like a ton of bricks that, for the first time in my entire life, I was enjoying, felt totally confident and competent at, the work I was doing. For the first time on a job, my blood pressure wasn't elevated, I wasn't angry, frustrated, or annoyed and I was LIVING. I don't have much time left, and when I pass on, I want to being doing what I enjoy, not working in some factory sweat shop--I remember back a few decades when I worked in a paper mill, some young kid of 47 had a heart attack and died on the job. I remember the medics rushing in, we shut down part of the mill that evening and it hit me "I don't want to die in this place" and so I resolved to get the heck out of there. I ended up going from a $9/hr 12 hour work day to a $0/hr 16 hr work day, but I was a lot less stressed out and MUCH happier in my own business as a typesetter after that. And now, as a videographer, if I drop dead tomorrow, I won't feel so bad as if I were still stuck in some sweat shop making some corporate big wig get rich while I bleed life away on some factory floor. The only real source of stress for me is that $15K annual property tax bill for my home. Other than that, I would live pretty comfortably on what we make. And I expect to do better as more people discover "the best-kept secret in Connecticut."
 
This has been an informative thread. Many good points and ideas. Even though I agree with the "word of mouth" belief, I have had to reach out and expand to a new client base recently and for that I believe a good, clear, un-cluttered website and reel are important for some interested clients. I belong to several web search websites which are national so for a client on the west coast, there is an element of instant gratification in mulling over different companies to perform services say on the east coast. Once the phone call comes or an email reply, the chance to convey professionalism and confidence is struck and a deal can usually be made with a new client. Even though the current economy has slowed down, I have had more requests in support services for DP's based on the west coast who need green screens, lighting, sound and even transportation to offset the excess baggage costs of flying in their own gear. Blu-ray encoding is slowly but steadily increasing with my clients who need promotional video production to be played or looped over their companies' HD monitors or even projection systems. I have been fortunate to have used my trusty HVX-200 (in both SD & HD) as well as my DVX100A's for so many years already without having to upgrade (or even service). It seems as long as a company can adapt to client needs and trends, even a slow economy can yield enough of a profit.
www.andersonweddingvideo.com
www.outofthebluefilms.com
www.southafricamovie.com
 
One thing that strikes me about this thread is that I see that most of the people who are having success are able to deliver a diverse amount of services. It also seems that most of the people who are not achieving success seem to be "one trick ponies" (I do video production. That's it.)

In our economy and society, if you are not flexible, multi-talented, multi-disciplinary and well educated (not necessarily with advanced degrees, I even mean self-educated) and and able to perform a lot of different jobs with multiple skill sets, you will starve. The days of being a one lane specialist, unless you are a surgeon or something like that, are over. Jim sounds as if he fits this multi-disciplinary description. I fit this description, I received this wakeup call a decade ago.

For those of you who "do video production" and nothing else, good luck. There is some kid with an iMac living across town with his parents who is undercutting you and it is only going to grow. You had better obtain some new skills if you want to survive in this business. Learn how to sell, write, design, edit if you are a shooter, shoot if you are an editor, etc. At the end of the month when I pay bills, I used to receive a pay check. These days, I am typically depositing 5-10 different checks, each from doing different kinds of jobs for different clients. That seems to be the key.

Dan
 
The fact that I'm even doing video is just one of those quirky twists in direction. I started off drawing early, and somehow went from art to graphics. This was back when you developed your film, cut and paste was very literal. Another decade or so goes by, and the internet and websites comes along. After a while, I decided I like this, and it had possibilities. I went to school to learn web design, and picked up graphics again. When you have to fix the teacher's exercise in Frames so that it works, you can drop your learning expectations, ya know? Anyways, one of the new things I picked up, was when they made us buy several books on video editing, so that we could do one exercise in Premiere. That was fun, and I liked the idea of video editing, but this was just after mini DV was the standard, and we had to do VHS Captures in class. But a skill learned, is a skill you can expand on! I went to work with SurfGuru.com to do web design, ended up doing some graphics, and editing their videos. I learned how to shoot, so that I could teach the camera people how to shoot for a better edit.

So, to sum it up, I do graphic arts and design for occasional print jobs. Some web design, but nothing fancy. Some shooting here and there, doing some B cam stuff, corporate stuff, whatever, I just shoots what they want and they give me cash at the end of the night... damn I sound like a whore... Anyways, my point is, if I were to rely on only one skillset, I'd starve. Well, that and the missus is a high tech cardiac Nurse.
 
In our economy and society, if you are not flexible, multi-talented, multi-disciplinary and well educated (not necessarily with advanced degrees, I even mean self-educated) and and able to perform a lot of different jobs with multiple skill sets, you will starve. The days of being a one lane specialist, unless you are a surgeon or something like that, are over. Jim sounds as if he fits this multi-disciplinary description. I fit this description, I received this wakeup call a decade ago.
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I agree that it's important to have a well rounded skill set, but I still think it's important to have one or two things that you excel at over the others. Back when I graduated college, a lot of my classmates graduated with the same "multimedia" degree and hardly any of them did anything with it because they graduated being an average jack of all trades and master of none. They had nothing to differentiate themselves from the competition, no value proposition.

The ones that graduated ahead of the class and are now doing great work after college are the ones that focused on their speciality and what they were passionate about. It's a risk I guess, but there is a greater reward.
 
I agree Chris, it is good to be highly skilled at one discipline but I have found that it does become tough to make a living sometimes when you are that way when the economy goes south, SAG strikes happen, other unprecedented events occur, you may end up starving and not being able to pay the bills.

Don't get me wrong, you cannot do all of these other jobs half assed to be successful. I am a decent writer, I write for two magazines and a few websites. But I am not a screenwriter. When it comes to snappy dialogue or writing an exciting parallel action scene, I hire a screenwriter. I am pretty decent at lighting, but my experience is mostly with interviews, tabletop and greenscreen, if I need a huge action scene or a dramatic dinner party lit, I still hire a DP because it is not in my expertise to light setups like that. There are so many different levels of competence and achievement in what we do. I think that you have to be at least decent at 3 or 4 and really good at 1 or 2 of the 3 or 4.

When the writers strike happened, there were thousands put out of work because they only were an AC, or a grip or a DP or a director, they didn't know how to do anything else. If you are in this business for a number of years, you can hire great people and sometimes learn some profoundly useful skills from them. That's how it has been for me with editors and DPs. I am not a great editor, I am a good editor but I have hired and worked with truly great editors. Some of the skills that they have taught me have allowed me to expand my once extremely limited editing skillset into being reasonably well rounded. Definitely enough to earn money doing it and to make the clients happy.

I think the future of trying to make a living in the entertainment or media business will require kids coming up to be good at 3-4 jobs, not just one, for the most part. Of course, there always will be a tiny percentage of people who are a killer DP or a great director who can do that all of their career but those people are rare. There are a lot of others who are talented but just don't get the breaks, have the connections, etc. Those people, which are most of us, will need to be able to do different jobs well in order to survive in this business, especially going forward.

We have already seen it happening. Look at FCS2. Soundtrack Pro isn't as good as Pro Tools but it is good enough for many video editors to finish audio when there will not be a sound mix. Motion is not as capable as AE for graphics, but it is excellent for editors to whip out a simple graphic package. What's that editors? Yes, you do have to be able to mix sound and design some motion graphics these days in order to be an editor. The days of the off-line editor who does nothing but content and then the on-line editor who does nothing but finish are almost completely gone. Editors are expected to do it all these days unless you are on a network show or big feature.

The times, they are a changin', you have to change with them.

Dan
 
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