Finding a niche in a crowded market - live events?

F

firehawk

Veteran
Hi all. We've had discussions before how our field has largely gone down the toilet when the DSLR revolution hit about 10 years ago. Rates plunged, gear got cheaper and so many people trying to do video production now.
It is not fun competing against guys that will work for a $100 a day.
So I've been thinking of areas of work to focus on.

1. Live events.
Multicamera live switched events require more cameras and crew.The average Joe with a camera cannot easily do this.
Some clients want the event shown on screens at the event. Some want it streamed.
How many of you guys do this and feel it is a good avenue?

2. Higher end productions.
Landing these clients takes work. Average Joe cannot do this due to gear and crew needed. It seems that since the market saturated, there is a lot more low and bottom end, while the mid level work took the place of some of the high end work.

3. 3D animation
Years ago if you did this you were in the minority. Today it seems you can farm it out to another country. Plus the built-in 3D capabilities of even our NLE's now even offer some of what is needed when it comes to graphics/titles. Seems the solid modeled client demands are relatively low and most of my clients don't want to pay for it.

4. Aerial
Years ago this was something most people couldn't do. Today lots of people have drones and will do it cheap and even illegally so it's commonplace.

I think getting to the right people, selling yourself and helping them succeed is key, of course. But some areas of work are better than others to do that going forward.

What are your thoughts?
 
My only real input here is #2. This is an attitude/experience/sales thing. The average joe doenst need to HAVE the gear/crew to pull these projects off. You produce the project and hire everyone/thing you need. The hard part here would be landing the client/securing a budget...comes down to experience (how many/what kind of commercials/movies/whatever have you done in the past—you would use these as your reel/resume to sell client on your experience)? If you want to be more hands on (shoot/edit/direct yourself), then you hire gear and crew accordingly, client’s budget will determine what’s feasible. But you have to have the skill to get the client to cough up that budget in the first place.

We are not all suited to this approach. Some of us are not salesmen.
 
To me, the key is finding demand with value attached to it. Everybody wants everything these days but who is willing to pay for it to be nice or better than average Joe? Those are your customers in whatever field you choose to go after.

I do a lot of live events and have found they do have a stable nature as it is easier to do a poor job and a good job on a one time chance recording. But, are they for you? Are you a filmmaker or a shooter?
 
1 and 4.

I had an SD portable production unit - 4 cameras, rack mounted equipment, almost paid for itself and then I went HD, and the damn thing is still not paid for as work seems to be so hard to get at the kinds of rates possible - 4 cameras, feeding say a video wall is 5 people, or at least 4 if one camera can be locked off - 4 people, for a day - plus the cost of the transport and possibly a hotel if it's too far from base to do in a day means the budget clients can't afford it. One recently - reasonably local that it was less than an hour's drive had a low budget, so I spoke to the crew and offered them the job at a lower than usual rate - and I costed to out to be just crew costs, and consumables - so me taking a crew cut and nothing else - the idea to get the client. We lost the job - the client went with somebody else who was 30% cheaper? God knows what they used, or the kind of results they got?

As for aerial work. I bought a DJI Phantom, just to try it out before spending on the training we need here in the UK for commercial drone work, and I came to the conclusion that I simply don't have the talent. I can fly it, I can make it do what it's supposed to do, but it's just not for me. I don't have the coordination to make it fly 'gracefully' - framing for aesthetics and flying at the same time is just too hard for me!
 
Remote pan/tilt/zoom/focus cameras for lower end (image mag.) productions and other board room types of things. Cameras are in the $2500 or so range plus a cheap HD-SDI switcher, and camera controller. Stream encoder would be another good thing to have so you don't rely on a computer that can crash. This package is MUCH cheaper now than even 5 years ago. Would get you down to about 2 people, or one if you want to over work yourself.

Reasonable amount of need in my smaller market, but certainly not enough to live on as your only thing. Payback would be at least 5 years on the gear around here.
 
For live events you may be competing with companies that provide everything under one roof. Event planning, staging, lighting, Imag, produced video. And who work nationally.
 
firehawk said:
Hi all. We've had discussions before how our field has largely gone down the toilet when the DSLR revolution hit about 10 years ago. Rates plunged, gear got cheaper and so many people trying to do video production now.
It is not fun competing against guys that will work for a $100 a day.
So I've been thinking of areas of work to focus on.

1. Live events.
Multicamera live switched events require more cameras and crew.The average Joe with a camera cannot easily do this.
Some clients want the event shown on screens at the event. Some want it streamed.
How many of you guys do this and feel it is a good avenue?

2. Higher end productions.
Landing these clients takes work. Average Joe cannot do this due to gear and crew needed. It seems that since the market saturated, there is a lot more low and bottom end, while the mid level work took the place of some of the high end work.

3. 3D animation
Years ago if you did this you were in the minority. Today it seems you can farm it out to another country. Plus the built-in 3D capabilities of even our NLE's now even offer some of what is needed when it comes to graphics/titles. Seems the solid modeled client demands are relatively low and most of my clients don't want to pay for it.

4. Aerial
Years ago this was something most people couldn't do. Today lots of people have drones and will do it cheap and even illegally so it's commonplace.

I think getting to the right people, selling yourself and helping them succeed is key, of course. But some areas of work are better than others to do that going forward.

What are your thoughts?
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Hey man, you're doing a good job of considering the market and your options, rather than blindly relying on hopium to get through this and next year. I can relate, I've been trying to think of ways to get above the industry and doing something different than the average Joe with a video camera.

My thoughts on your list:

1. Yes, for sure live events is for bigger, more established video guys and companies. It's not just the gear component, it's that there's no fall back if something goes wrong. Hiring a cheap video producer for a web promo video takes no risk - if it doesn't look good, then you just pull it. Lose some money and time, but not a biggie. Whereas if you have an event that relies on AV and there's AV issues, literally everything comes to a halt and it's embarrassing. If you have an event that doesn't need live streaming but still need a recorded copy, there's a little room for mess ups but not much. Plus, this kind of work is better suited for repeated, annual hire rather than having to find new clients every day. So I'd say you're in a good place with offering live production.

The concern is 1) how many and what kind of events are available in your area? I assume weddings are out of the picture, so you're thinking performances? Corporate events at ballrooms? There are some AV companies who already have agreements in place with venues. You might want to talk to your visitors bureau to see if there are other incoming events and conferences that aren't in the low hanging fruit venues.

2. I think this is even less likely to bring you consistent work. Most clients who are shopping around online don't know what higher end is - it all looks good to them. And so true higher end productions are all relationship based - an ad agency has work and they let you bid on it as the DP or DP plus editing.

3. Don't know about specifically titles but yes, motion graphics is much more steady work because you don't need a lot of it to stay busy, it's ongoing for some clients, and new clients could hire you to do work without selling them specifically on a promotional story/mini-doc or product live shoot. But it's a skill and takes a lot of time to develop and hone.

4. I don't think there's any money in freelance aerial/drone flying for filmmaking purposes, because every production can afford a drone. But for industrial applications, using big drones and custom camera rigs, yea for sure. It's a small niche B2B with growing demand, but it has nothing to do with filmmaking, so you'd need to change your business around to be more of an industrial aerial company.

I've also been thinking of how a video production company could offer a full suite of online/digital marketing services rather than stand alone video, and found a local Idaho company that does that. I interviewed them last week and put together this post on video production jobs.

Anyway, it's good to keep brainstorming and trying to figure out how to expand and get out of the race to the bottom. Looking forward to hearing what you decide to do.

Cheers,
Slavik
 
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paulears said:
As for aerial work. I bought a DJI Phantom, just to try it out before spending on the training we need here in the UK for commercial drone work, and I came to the conclusion that I simply don't have the talent. I can fly it, I can make it do what it's supposed to do, but it's just not for me. I don't have the coordination to make it fly 'gracefully' - framing for aesthetics and flying at the same time is just too hard for me!
Click to expand...

I'm right there with you. Bought a Mavic Pro and just learned how to fly it last year. I am competent over land, not great but I can get useful shots. But put me over the ocean with high stress, battery and wind stress plus the fact that at least the DJI drones seem to freak out and act possessed over water. I've tried turning of all obstacle avoidance sensors and RTH and it has still done some WEIRD unexplained things that make me very paranoid that I am going to run it into someone and injure them, had one close call that could have been ugly, it missed a persons face by less than a foot and was doing so on it's own, I was in hover with my PA getting ready to catch it and it just shot off on its own. So I put the Mavic away and hired a pro with a 107 and a P4 Pro and I was very happy with the results and the much less stress on myself. Like you, I will never be a great drone pilot, I think most of the great ones who are are video gamers who have that hand, eye coordination thing down. I'm leaving the drones as toys for me to have fun with occasionally, I don't want to try to work pro with them, not worth it, market is very saturated and I will never be great at it.
 
As my Dad used to point out to me when I was a kid and I'd try to throw out the ole "it improves your hand-eye coordination" line while playing video games, it's actually hand-mind coordination. ; )

Y'all are right about drones at the low and mid-level. No money in it. It's overcrowded with kids that throw it in for free. And you better be damn good at the high-end.

I like my Mavic PP and Mavic 2 Pro and I really like the perspective you get from aerials, but I'm nowhere near good enough to do it professionally and charge for it, nor is it worth it to go through everything to do it legally, at the mid-level and for the money you'd make at the mid-level.
 
Personally, I made the decision a few years ago to specialize in sound. For various reasons:

1) I enjoy it
2) Am good at it
3) sound is the bastard stepchild of film production, which means relatively speaking the whole supply vs demand equation is a bit less out of whack than it is for many other crew positions
 
slavikb said:
I've also been thinking of how a video production company could offer a full suite of online/digital marketing services rather than stand alone video, and found a local Idaho company that does that. I interviewed them last week and put together this post on video production jobs.

Anyway, it's good to keep brainstorming and trying to figure out how to expand and get out of the race to the bottom. Looking forward to hearing what you decide to do.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Slavik for sharing that fantastic article. This is a direction I’m taking as well. I noticed something on various types of jobs including all of those mentioned except drone work. The “quality” of a job is directly proportional to the value of that video to that client. Jobs that wanted to “cover an event” without any clear deliverable in mind become a mess of low-balling, late payments and unclear expectations. I have much better results by defining the deliverable and its value to the client before engaging. If I can get it in for a budget that makes sense to the client, we’re good. If the potential client wants “something” but do not know exactly how it will affect their offering, whether product or art, I try to shepard their needs. If we can’t figure out the ending, I keep trying or walk away. Otherwise it is like shooting a poor script in narrative work. Read Slavik’s article. It proposes a modern approach that I have found myself. Solve problems with your work and you’ll be happy.
 
Great thread. I've been asking myself some of the same questions lately. Haven't considered offering an events package, but perhaps I should. Some thoughts:

The local agencies now seem to be going after the same smaller and mid-sized jobs that I'm looking for. It used to be that they wouldn't touch this stuff. I've been thinking that the way forward may be to band together with some other freelance professionals to present a united front. Some clients seem to be looking for that.

I recently teamed up with some people who are really good at what they do to answer an RFP for some video work. It wasn't a lot of money to begin with, so we proposed a very skeleton crew (skeleton everything, really) and even offered up our own small business/nonprofit rates to hit their price point and potentially form a relationship with a new client (I know, I know). Figuratively, the client would have been getting a new Lexus for the price of a used Hyundai and I think that we made that very clear, but the bid was unsuccessful. Made me wonder what the winning party was able to offer for that squeezed budget, and if they knew what they were getting into. Or maybe they just came in and said they would do it for half of the budget without running the numbers. People have been doing that; mostly new shooters who just purchased a camera and are desperate to get paid anything. Things are crazy out there.

I'm also seeing a trend of paying clients who don't know good work when they see it. To them, good composition is anything shot with shallow depth of field or on RED. Sometimes, this work isn't even staged properly, or lit at all -- there's a clear lack of pre-production (which is probably one of the reasons those quotes are coming in lower than mine). I am having a heck of a time convincing these clients otherwise.

I don't have a drone. I was on a shoot two years ago and there was another crew whose Phantom fell out of the sky and hit someone in the head. It could have easily been fatal. Fortunately, the person was wearing a helmet and was shaken, but unharmed. It wasn't a dead battery, or out of range, and no one could figure out what happened. But they didn't have much time to get to the bottom of it because we were all booted from the property. Ever since then, I'm not willing to shoulder the risk and I look to hire pro drone operators whenever it's needed.
 
Another issue with live events, in addition to contracts venues may have with AV companies, could be union issues. Depending where you live, IATSE (for example, may have strong reach into many of the venues and clients who produce live events big enough to produce decent revenue and also decently-interesting gigs. Easy to find out, and probably worth finding out if there is such an issue, if you're cool working with union members, and if you'd want to try to join the union (depending on the role you see for yourself).

Maybe try to get hired on a few gigs of the type you're considering. Maybe you'll dig the adrenaline of live production; maybe not.

Let us know what you try out and how it's going. Good luck!
 
I enjoyed the article and it makes sense. I have been employing this over the years with regards to shows and performances where the host organization gets so many discs etc... to sell and have a chance to make some money. Win-win is the way forward.

My only concern about being a mini social media ad agency is being able to produce on the ad results side. Basically you are adding a new service that has to show results or it will be shunned just like video. But the overall premise is spot on. Just doing video these days is not going to impress very many people. Giving them more of a complete service is more attractive.
 
QuickHitRecord said:
The local agencies now seem to be going after the same smaller and mid-sized jobs that I'm looking for. It used to be that they wouldn't touch this stuff. I've been thinking that the way forward may be to band together with some other freelance professionals to present a united front. Some clients seem to be looking for that.

I recently teamed up with some people who are really good at what they do to answer an RFP for some video work. It wasn't a lot of money to begin with, so we proposed a very skeleton crew (skeleton everything, really) and even offered up our own small business/nonprofit rates to hit their price point and potentially form a relationship with a new client (I know, I know). Figuratively, the client would have been getting a new Lexus for the price of a used Hyundai and I think that we made that very clear, but the bid was unsuccessful. Made me wonder what the winning party was able to offer for that squeezed budget, and if they knew what they were getting into. Or maybe they just came in and said they would do it for half of the budget without running the numbers. People have been doing that; mostly new shooters who just purchased a camera and are desperate to get paid anything. Things are crazy out there.
Click to expand...

Yo man, two things. First, a lot of RFPs are for bigger projects that require a longer term commitment, so the clients are mostly looking for companies and not individuals, because they can trust the company can manage a bigger project and also won't go out of business in a year. Presenting yourself as a group of freelancers may scream even more potential mess for the procurement officer, who just wants to sign a vendor and move on.

Second, be super careful about teaming up with freelancers in an "equal" way. The standard procedure of you landing a client and then hiring a subcontractor for a project works has worked for a long time, and everyone knows who's the boss. And maybe next time that sub will land their own client and will hire you as their sub. Work goes around and everyone's happy. But, if you try to come at a project as equals, well, someone will still have to be the managing organization or individual responsible for the contract, and when it comes down to skeleton budgets, it's likely not everyone's gonna put in an equal amount of work, but then who gets paid more? Who owns the relationship? Who does the client email throughout the process?

From personal experience, it's just messy. Stick to the contractor / sub contractor heirarchy even if you end up swapping roles on every project.

Cheers -
 
QuickHitRecord said:
Great thread. I've been asking myself some of the same questions lately. Haven't considered offering an events package, but perhaps I should. Some thoughts:

The local agencies now seem to be going after the same smaller and mid-sized jobs that I'm looking for. It used to be that they wouldn't touch this stuff. I've been thinking that the way forward may be to band together with some other freelance professionals to present a united front. Some clients seem to be looking for that.

I recently teamed up with some people who are really good at what they do to answer an RFP for some video work. It wasn't a lot of money to begin with, so we proposed a very skeleton crew (skeleton everything, really) and even offered up our own small business/nonprofit rates to hit their price point and potentially form a relationship with a new client (I know, I know). Figuratively, the client would have been getting a new Lexus for the price of a used Hyundai and I think that we made that very clear, but the bid was unsuccessful. Made me wonder what the winning party was able to offer for that squeezed budget, and if they knew what they were getting into. Or maybe they just came in and said they would do it for half of the budget without running the numbers. People have been doing that; mostly new shooters who just purchased a camera and are desperate to get paid anything. Things are crazy out there.

I'm also seeing a trend of paying clients who don't know good work when they see it. To them, good composition is anything shot with shallow depth of field or on RED. Sometimes, this work isn't even staged properly, or lit at all -- there's a clear lack of pre-production (which is probably one of the reasons those quotes are coming in lower than mine). I am having a heck of a time convincing these clients otherwise.
Click to expand...


How do you know that those other people were bidding lower than you? People don't always pick the lowest bid which answers their RFP.

In fact sometimes people intentionally chuck out the highest and lowest priced bids before even reading them.
 
Things are crazy. I've done some work with a well-known company around here. They're hip, they're brand aware, they do about $500 million in sales a year. But their high-end branding videos often cost them nothing. Companies with decent experience offer to do create those videos for free so they'll have a great new portfolio piece. Ya, it's someting of an issue, but the marketing department says, "how can we say no?" And they've been getting these offers for many years. And the pieces are pretty damn good. I don't have those issues with financial-services clients. :-)

So I don't know QHR's competing bidders offered. Maybe just a moderate rate and a 10-year track record. But things are funky out there. Solution: Do really good work at a fair price.
 
In my former life as a small market TV news videographer/editor, I also was in charge of
directing our live productions. In small market, you get to do some of everything (which
has it's pluses and minuses.) Recently, I decided to start offering live production with my
video business. One of the differences in running a video business in a small town, is
quite similar to the difference between small market TV news and large market TV news.
Basically if you run a business in a small town, it's good to know how to do a bit of everything!
Anyways, I wrote a blog post which on the surface of it is a review of a cheap capture card for
live production but also talks a bit about live production overall here if you are interested:

http://alaskacameradude.blogspot.com/2017/09/you-get-what-you-pay-forand-other.html

Anyways, I decided to try something out. I have a couple clients who both hire me on a regular basis.
Maybe 15-20 jobs per year. And one of them does a lot of events that seem to be a natural fit for
live production. As a matter of fact, at least one of their events, they pay a TV station to do live
production on. I wanted to let them know I now offered this service as well. There is a common
theme among some cheap clients. "Do this job for us for cheap/free and we'll give you lots of paid
work." It doesn't commonly work for the video business. But I used to turn this on it's head and tell
the cheap client "Give me lots of paying work first.....and I'll do one for you for cheap/free." So I was
just thinking about that, and decided What better way to promote my live streaming abilities than to
offer a free live stream of an event, to a client who already has proven they will spend money on me?
I know they value video services enough to pay for it, and at worst, I will have given them a big 'Thank
You' for all the business they have done with me the last few years.
So I offered them a free livestream of an event of their choosing to their Facebook page, Youtube
channel. And it turned out great. Big numbers of viewers, lots of comments on their Facebook page
and their president loved it! I got tons of thank you's from them for it, and they turned around and hired
me to produce a live event about 2 months later which also turned out good. Now they are talking about
live streaming all sorts of things.

Now for me, it's a big of an 'add on' or 'extra feature' that is just another service I offer as my market is
too small to make a living only off live streaming. But it's a nice thing to be able to do. However, I wouldn't
be betting the ranch on it being an area which 'only the pro's' are able to tread in. I've already witnessed the
birth of some competition from people doing live's with their iPhones at the same events that I'm doing.
There are apps which allow you to add graphics and lower thirds to your iPhone live broadcast. There is
even a hardware setup you can purchase, which allows you to use an iPad as a switcher and wirelessly
switch from multiple cameras (including iPhones) as well as adding graphics and titles. Much like the
rest of the video field, it has it's hobbyists and 'kids with iPhones and cheap DSLR's'. As an aside,
speaking about cheap DSLR's, one thing that's nice about live streaming, is that as long as your camera
can send an clean HDMI feed out, it doesn't matter if it's a mirrorless or a DSLR or what. You are streaming
(and recording) on the computer/switcher that you use, and so there is no 30 minute 'record time limit' and
no overheating because the still camera are not actually processing the video just sending it out. I've used a
Sony A6000as a camera on a 4 hour live stream with no issues (other than needing a external power source.)
Anyways, if you have any questions about live streaming, let me know. I've done a fair bit of it now.
I even got to live stream the west regionals of the Little League World Series from California last summer.
What I like about it, is when it's done, it's done. No post production needed, all lower thirds, titles and
graphics are added in live. You just pack everything up and your job is done.
 
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