Brilliant! Unlike the light...
June 25 "Aputure House Party" live stream sales event
- Thread starter ahalpert
- Start date
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I somewhat agree. I am in the planning stages of an event like this for our live streaming business so my homework was to watch this event and take notes.
The event definitely had some technical issues but that's to be expected these days for a 5.5 hour live stream. The event had around 1200-1300 viewers the
entire time on YouTube Live and another 300-600 viewers on Facebook Live so the turn out would be considered successful.
There were a massive amount of complaints about coordination with the vendors for the deals. The FilmTools website immediately crashed and never came back up.
Several of the other websites crashed from the traffic, they weren't prepared. Viewers in Asia, Australia and Europe were complaining the entire time that
they either couldn't find a regional vendor or that the transport and duties from them buying from the U.S. based-vendors negated any savings from the discounts.
The best deal of the day was the Aputure Lightstorm LS-1S for 43% off, selling for $395.00, which if you were in need of a good panel, was an excellent deal. Deity also
had some good deals on their new lavs and they sold the Deity Connect system, which is already an incredible deal for 25% off. But many of the other deals were of questionable
value for the hype, too many accessories when most viewers seemed to only want a discount on the 120D MKII and 300D MKII.
Ken Emek from Matthews Grip was a huge hit, I think most of the audience knew very little about real grip equipment so Ken actually showing and demoing Matthews Grip Gear
was a novelty to most and they ate it up.
I personally think they should have just made this for U.S. viewers as far as buying, anyone could view from anywhere in the world. Trying to coordinate purchasing for global viewers was too ambitious for their first event
and they left a lot of foreign viewers frustrated, even in Canada with lots of complaints that the prices weren't showing up at Vistek. As we all know, we in the U.S. are generally spolied with prices and ease of purchasing
compared to almost all other countries. Foreign buyers probably would have appreciated a more region specific event with set ups with vendors who they normally buy from, rather than mostly having to order from U.S.
based vendors, which often turn out to be more expensive than their local vendor because of the duty and transport charges. But watching the chat all day, it truly became apparent that with events like this, you can't please
hardly any of the people any of the time. Half the chat were people excited and praising, while the other half or more were people whinging about how the item they wanted wasn't on sale or wasn't discounted or they couldn't
find the deals on the vendor sites.
Overall, Ted and company deserve kudos, putting on an event like this is a huge undertaking and they sustained nearly constant viewership numbers for the entire time, no mean feat. Lots of good tips and tricks from various DPs and others.
Sure there was some filler, the event would probably work better with shorter segments and more sale items. But you have to start somewhere and they did a good job in an era when there are literally no trade shows. The vendors got their
message out to their audiences, sold a little product, Aputure raised their profile. Our industry is a train wreck right now, so the fact that Ted and co took the bull by the horns and just made it happen is to be commended.
Having some years in retail electronics, people don't understand profit margins either, they think every item they buy magically must have an 80 or 100% profit margin, when in reality most of the items sold yesterday probably have a 20-40% profit margin so
the products sold were sold at close to cost. So you have to look at it from the manufacturers POV, if you are going to give away a bunch of product with little to no margins, what are you gaining? Hopefully enough engagement that the people
who bought product at a discount will buy more without a discount from you. Aputure has new competition from upstarts like Godox who are selling product that has 90% of the performance and specs at 40% less money. I think it would have been a bad
move for them to sell a bunch of 120D MKIIs and 300D MKIIs at Godox prices. Aputure needs to keep their brand mystique up and not sell at the same prices as Godox. Video lights are not a worldwide multi billion unit business, they are fairly niche items
with a small audience. Aputure needs to maintain their premium innovator status and hold their prices, even in a Flash sale.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Yes, there were some tech issues early on, mostly audio, but I did see video drop out once or twice and there was a weird continuous glitch on the K-Tek feed. I completely missed the Matthews stuff, I was outside talking to one of my audio guys who came by. The 30 minute blocks were too long for some of the stuff, in my opinion. They were so out of stuff to talk about by the end, the very last segment with the 300dII, Ted and his guest just did an out-loud countdown of the last 30 seconds. For f**ks sake, on New Years Eve and Shuttle Launches they only count down from :10. I did have to laugh at the K-Tek segment a little. The girl and the audio guy seemed to make a really big deal over the internally wired pole, like it was something new. I bought an internally wired pole with right angle from K-tek in 2003.
The only thing that really had me interested that I’d like to try, they weren’t selling: the reflector system.
B&H seemed to be on the ball with deals/equipment they were involved with. Just for the heck of it, I checked some of it out and the discount was automatically there when it was supposed to be, and gone when it was over. But they have had the on-line thing nailed down for a long time, now.
They definitely get an A for effort.
The only thing that really had me interested that I’d like to try, they weren’t selling: the reflector system.
B&H seemed to be on the ball with deals/equipment they were involved with. Just for the heck of it, I checked some of it out and the discount was automatically there when it was supposed to be, and gone when it was over. But they have had the on-line thing nailed down for a long time, now.
They definitely get an A for effort.
ReelFilmGeek
Well-known member
Got a link? I wasn't able to tune in yesterday so figured I just missed all the sales.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
As a producer, my mind was racing a million miles per hour thinking, how I would have planned out certain things, how my backups would have had backups. Per usual, 90% of the technical problems were audio based,
I suspect an audio sample rate mismatch somewhere. It's astounding that even in 2020, audio ALWAYS receives short shrift when it is so much more important than the video for a project like this. But as an audio-centric producer
and occasional sound mixer, I'm used to it, the world just almost always shortchanges audio with lack of resources, scouting, planning and no back up plan. I'd be very curious if they had an sound mixer at least on the host
segment.
It is frustrating too how live streaming is also often underresourced in video as well. Few of the setups besides the host were lit or lit well. Kind of funny that a huge portion of the whole endeavor was for selling lighting and grip, from lighting and
grip companies to an audience who uses those tools to light effectively, yet many of the remotes looked like an iPhone without a mic or lighting. Talk about sending the wrong message with their actions. If any live stream should
have had great lighting and sound, in the history of live streams, it was this one. Ted's setup looked good. But none of the others did. The K-Tek feed, the camera was glitching out as well, but at least their audio wasn't cutting out.
This production was the perfect example of why people in production (not Aputure, they did pretty well), shouldn't dabble with live streaming as far as doing it for clients for money. Doing it right is HARD. Overcoming the technical limitations is REALLY HARD.
Once you throw remotes into the mix, all bets are off. So much harder than streaming your own material where you have control.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Part of the problem, people still think like and have the “it’s just for the internet” mentality.
Ironic that the two lighting modifier companies looked like complete a*s. DoP was in the mud and Chimera was blown. And K-Tek could have definitely sounded better.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
"The shoemaker's children go barefoot" as far as crappy lighting for a lighting sale goes
And regarding ignoring sound - do you expect audio to get more attention over time? Sound mixers will still be asked to rig all their mics in the last 5 minutes before a take when our great grandkids are shooting (or their robot replacements). It's not a technological hurdle, it's a psychological one.
And regarding ignoring sound - do you expect audio to get more attention over time? Sound mixers will still be asked to rig all their mics in the last 5 minutes before a take when our great grandkids are shooting (or their robot replacements). It's not a technological hurdle, it's a psychological one.
G
Guest
Guest
Haha!
For DP’s that like to light dark.
Polaroid22
Well-known member
10% of the aputure 300D ii is not big of a deal immo. Even would not have considered it at 20%.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I 100% agree. I used to own an audio post facility and I was consistently amazed at filmmakers who spend a fortune and go to the ends of the Earth to shoot their film, yet wouldn't include the sound department on any of their location
scouts, wouldn't pay for the extra boom op or sound utility. Then they would assemble their cut and realize their audio was garbage and come to us to "fix" it. It just makes me scratch my head, it makes no sense. They'd spend a fortune
paying us to try to repair their badly recorded audio and the end result was still sub standard compared to if they had just spent a bit more time and effort recording clean audio in production. ADR was and still is a nightmare.
Run&Gun
Veteran
What’s the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”?
I have a friend in another state that I work with occasionally and I hate the way he treats his audio guys. It’s so bad, that it’s hard for him to find guys that will work with him, now. I’ve been there when he would not let them start setting up until well within what I’d consider the danger zone time window and he does it on purpose to buy himself a few extra minutes of tweaking time, but is able to blame it on audio. It doesn’t matter how pretty the shot is, in an interview, if you don’t have audio, you don’t have anything.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Samys, who was not a listed vendor, the same day, was supposedly running the 300D MKII at $896.00, they had some kind of instant rebate.
As I wrote, it was smart of Aputure to not sell their two flagship lights at fire sale prices. Once they sell the 300D MKII at $750.00 or the 120D MKII
at $399.00, they will have damaged their market perception. Their sales would plummet unless they were always selling those lights at
those prices on sale.
Consumer marketplace value perception is a tricky thing. Aputure has a pretty great market value, they are the most desired
of the lower end videographer/indie filmmaker instruments on the market. LitePanels market value has plunged because of the Astra power supply debacle. And there are a lot of
lower end newcomers like Luxli and Godox who want to take Aputure's market share. Companies like Arri, Astera, Rotolight, Hive, K5600 all compete
in a different market segment.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Litepanels lights still produce some of the best light on-camera, regardless, but yes, they hurt themselves with the power supplies in the Astra's and then taking SO long to acknowledge that it was a real problem and still never issuing a recall. I still have one that hasn't been fixed and they screwed me out of the "refund" for repairs on one that I had to pay for out of pocket. They also devalued their brand by retailers, such as B&H, continuously discounting their products(one day it's $1500 and two days later it's $800) and the Group Buys that run through Adorama. While good for the consumer, if you get in on it, why in the hell would someone then buy a "$4K+" light today when you just sold it for 75% of that yesterday? After the group buy on the original Gemini's, my primary dealer stopped stocking them and said you couldn't give them away after that. Unless you're gonna go to a direct-only sales model and have the infrastructure to support it, it's not a good idea to piss off the majority of your dealers.
ozmorphasis
Well-known member
It was $836 at Samy's I believe. However, it was like $100 for shipping or something like that. After tax and shipping, it was basically the same price as buying it from BhPhoto with the Payboo card and free shipping. Basically $1000.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Ahh, got it. Thanks for clarifying that. I wonder if you could have drove to Samys instead to forgo the shipping? Probably not?
Run&Gun
Veteran
Probably be quicker than waiting on anything to ship from B&H, right now...
The items I ordered on Wed(all in-stock) still have not shipped(“order in progress”) and a broken item I had to exchange earlier in the month is finally supposed to arrive tomorrow, after B&H received the returned/broken one on 6/8. 21 days later for those counting. And again, it was in-stock.
And one of my audio guys has been going round and round with them since last weekend on an order that has turned into almost a comedy of errors, between them and now FedEx.