Is January going to save us?

It's a classic behavior for any new business opportunity. Everyone dives in head first, panicking that they must get in or lose out. They dive in without having any idea how to garner market share because there is no roadmap to success. So one has to spend piles of money in hopes of being the one to win.

The same is happening with AI right now. There's probably some company out there that makes fish hooks trying to figure out how to use AI to increase their revenue.
 
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DustinSchmidt said:
  • Sign up for all of the online marketplaces for photo/video/editing. - Most of these are horrible, lowball forums for people to get stuff cheap. But if I needed to make a few quick bucks I'd do what I could to spin up quick business here.
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What are these specifically that you're referring to?


Arash Ayrom said:
I had actually planned on going down a similar route, getting behind the camera more, which I love to do, including taking stills. A good friend had been nudging me into taking photography more seriously, as he does quite well with it. My intuition had been wrong, I guess. I thought that photography had become way too commoditized, given everyone with a phone is now a "photographer," saturating every social channel with endless images.
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While I agree the very low end has been totally flooded with "photographers", I reckon if you can hit five key points then you'll still be above 95% of the other "photographers":

1) actually know the technical side of photography (not just pointing and clicking), being able to for instance do off camera flash, or how to shoot tethered for clients who want that. Just to give a couple of examples.

2) having an artistic eye for beauty

3) having post production skills to use LR and PS effectively

4) being a professional who behaves to a high standard during the pre production, during the shoot itself on set, and afterwards

5) knowing how to run a business / be a freelancer

As an experienced filmmaker you already have a huge advantage in all five of these areas vs the average person who just picked up a camera yesterday.

NorBro said:
Here's a fun [related] question...if not this, what would have some of you done in your lives if you could rewind?

Which other path(s)? 🤓
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With the benefit of hindsight, probably should have stayed on the career path as a software engineer and kept photography / filmmaking as a weekend hobby.

ahalpert said:
But sometimes I think back to my computer science professor in college telling us about how machine learning was a lucrative subject to study. But then I remember how boring it would be to do that work and why I never had any real interest in it.
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I've been passionately interested about AI since I was a teenager, but back when I was at Uni then AI was deep into an AI Winter. It was a career dead end, no more or less lucrative I guess than the math/physics degree I as doing (which I also love!).

But yeah, interesting looking back with hindsight now.
 
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NorBro said:
Here's a fun [related] question...if not this, what would have some of you done in your lives if you could rewind?

Which other path(s)? 🤓
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Given I entered college as a biochemistry major / premed, I have, of late, thought a LOT about what if I had stuck it out... No guarantee, of course, that I would have actually made into and through med school.

But I guess I didn't want to be the typical immigrant kid becoming either a doctor / lawyer / engineer.

[Enters time machine. Sets dial for mid-90s. Smacks college me upside the head.]
 
What initially attracted me to this industry was independent cinema, and not so much the big Hollywood flicks. I spent a number of years programming for an independent film festival as I was learning to edit.

There seems to be a lot of fatigue for the big-budget formulaic stuff these days (not that indie films can't be formulaic). But I am getting the sense that there's a revival happening. Not sure if it has legs, but it is giving me hope. And just like Abe, I got into this to write and make films.
 
Arash Ayrom said:
Given I entered college as a biochemistry major / premed, I have, of late, thought a LOT about what if I had stuck it out... No guarantee, of course, that I would have actually made into and through med school.

But I guess I didn't want to be the typical immigrant kid becoming either a doctor / lawyer / engineer.

[Enters time machine. Sets dial for mid-90s. Smacks college me upside the head.]
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You probably would have been a biochemistry-something making YouTube shorts and Threads videos like the rest of the doctors and lawyers and engineers and everyone doing stuff on the side for their practice(s), businesses, etc.

I swear you can learn anything on the Internet today. I mean, of course tons of bad information, but so much good info from different sources vs. a few textbooks 30 years ago (we're probably around the same age, you might be just a bit older).
 
IronFilm said:
What are these specifically that you're referring to?
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Things like Fiverrr, Upwork, and even ProductionHub.

I know there are many others if I did some searching. Those are just a few off the top of my head.
I’ve never had much luck finding viable projects on those platforms, although I’m sure they’ve worked out for others.
 
Paul F said:
It's a classic behavior for any new business opportunity. Everyone dives in head first, panicking that they must get in or lose out. They dive in without having any idea how to garner market share because there is no roadmap to success. So one has to spend piles of money in hopes of being the one to win.

The same is happening with AI right now. There's probably some company out there that makes fish hooks trying to figure out how to use AI to increase their revenue.
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Is that actually the classic behavior? I thought you were supposed to start small and scale up. You open a hot dog stand, later a restaurant, then a 2nd location, and you eventually franchise.

What we're talking about here is, I think, more typical of Silicon Valley and relies on their access to capital markets which they can use as a weapon to crush smaller competitors. It's called blitzscaling: "Blitzscaling is what you do when you need to grow really, really quickly. It's the science and art of rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale." https://hbr.org/2016/04/blitzscaling

There's usually a lot of collateral damage from blitzscaling.
 
DustinSchmidt said:
Things like Fiverrr, Upwork, and even ProductionHub.

I know there are many others if I did some searching. Those are just a few off the top of my head.
I’ve never had much luck finding viable projects on those platforms, although I’m sure they’ve worked out for others.
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I don't know about the first two you mentioned, but I've gotten a job or two from ProductionHub. More useful to me was Mandy.com and Media-Match as well as Craigslist. I only ever got responses from a small percentage of what I applied to, and even fewer bookings. But my main client now (Christie's auction house) I connected with through a jobs posting on Mandy. I started out getting just a trickle of work from them but the relationship has bloomed over the past 6 years.

The 2nd most regular client I ever had came from a referral from someone who had worked with someone I had worked with on something I applied to on one of these sites.

Generally speaking, the rates and budgets for stuff you find on those platforms are not great. But they can lead to better stuff. Also, you have to apply quickly once the job is posted. The posters get inundated by applications and usually don't look at any after the first bunch come in.
 
Staffmeup.com is another option for all sorts of production work, although its usefulness really varies depending on your location. I've landed a few jobs from the site (including a repeat client) but it's a trickle, at least in my area.
 
You have to find the work. It will not come to you. My best corporate/government/military clients almost always came from three sources:

1) Me reaching out to a potential client that I recognized needed my services. Sometimes they didn't even know they needed video services until I told them they did. But once they were hooked, I had a reliable client that I could count on for years of repeat business. I was never interested in one-off clients because there's no room for growth. Why bother?
I am not a salesman, but if yo uhave good examples of your work and references from happy clients -- you don't need to do the selling. You just present it, quote a price, and they can choose to pull the trigger or not.

2) New clients that were referred to me by existing clients.

3) People I worked with at company A, who took a new position at company B, and then brought me onboard for their production needs. In many cases, company B didn't know how the power of video could be leveraged to boost their business either, but now I had an insider in my corner to educate them.

Once you get a half-dozen good clients, you can stay as busy as you want.
But you have to always keep in mind your video is not the product. Your video is just a tool for the business to accomplish a bigger goal. A lot of newbies don't get that distinction. And if you can't understand that, then you should go work on indy film crap that nobody really cares about watching, let alone paying you to make.
 
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There needs to be a website for filmmakers up there with Linkedin, Indeed, and Glassdoor. On top of that, job placement up there with vocational rehabilitation and an employment office.
 
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[The post above was edited.]

Well, you just have to analyze the above with critical-thinking.

How readily available are biochemists who have real jobs with heavy paperwork involved vs. a PA for a dinky video production you can get on Craigslist, you know?

Like, yeah, they're going to keep the biochemist around and teach and mentor, whether the person is funny or relatable or not (although any human connection is always preferred vs. awkwardness and being unable to bond).

Also, stop working long hours without pay and driving several hours to filled positions, no one does that, lol. Email.
 
I know NorBro, and in a way I have to respectfully recognize that I'm just a bit different from most people. I'm at the point NorBro, where I'd love to join the military for example.
 
We're all figuring it out as we continue to live --- but regarding that situation, where did the communication breakdown happen and how did it get to the point of you getting into your car and driving several hours to a filled position?

Maybe it was just an example to make a point about the business, but it was so specific, lol.
 
NorBro said:
We're all figuring it out as we continue to live --- but regarding that situation, where did the communication breakdown happen and how did it get to the point of you getting into your car and driving several hours to a filled position?

Maybe it was just an example to make a point about the business, but it was so specific, lol.
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I unfortunately don't want to talk about it. I will tell you one thing positive and that is I'm currently trying to photograph a possum and a rabbit; they do get out at night near me.
 
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I don't know what January is going to bring but I do realize I've gotten much older and reminisce often about the old school 2005 days of DVX user when we were all just a bunch of cowboys pissing off the DV info people

I haven't given up my dream but one thing I've realized is I have no desire anymore to be anywhere near Hollywood

Frankly I wish I could just channel my inner cassavetes and make a living as an independent filmmaker

Time ****ing flies and they use it or lose it term is real

Don't get it twisted, the fire isn't out for me even at the age of 54 but I'm really realizing in a startling way What the **** am I doing and where am I going

It's funny how life just gets in the way of your dreams and how you can lose track of time so quickly

I recently picked up a new anamorphic lens and it's rekindling a lot of creativity that I've been missing

I recently relocated to the Olympic Peninsula and they have a small film community near me in Port Townsend in which I will be going to the January meetup for the first time (I've only been here 3 months)

They also have an annual film festival in Port Townsend that I would like to enter into. This festival has been going on over 26 years.

At the end of the day I would like to make a very polished Oscar caliber short film by the end of this year

I'm just ranting on New Year's Eve now!
 
J.R. Hudson said:
I don't know what January is going to bring but I do realize I've gotten much older and reminisce often about the old school 2005 days of DVX user when we were all just a bunch of cowboys pissing off the DV info people

I haven't given up my dream but one thing I've realized is I have no desire anymore to be anywhere near Hollywood

Frankly I wish I could just channel my inner cassavetes and make a living as an independent filmmaker

Time ****ing flies and they use it or lose it term is real

Don't get it twisted, the fire isn't out for me even at the age of 54 but I'm really realizing in a startling way What the **** am I doing and where am I going

It's funny how life just gets in the way of your dreams and how you can lose track of time so quickly

I recently picked up a new anamorphic lens and it's rekindling a lot of creativity that I've been missing

I recently relocated to the Olympic Peninsula and they have a small film community near me in Port Townsend in which I will be going to the January meetup for the first time (I've only been here 3 months)

They also have an annual film festival in Port Townsend that I would like to enter into. This festival has been going on over 26 years.

At the end of the day I would like to make a very polished Oscar caliber short film by the end of this year

I'm just ranting on New Year's Eve now!
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what would you do in 2025 if you knew you were gonna die in 2026?
 
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