Let's be real about Pay $$$!

JonathanLB said:
It's very frustrating to deal with clients like that.
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It doesn't have to be. Getting paid by the hour, time is dimes and I simply cannot afford to spend my time talking about how much I charge. I state it and I'm done. It's up to them if they can afford me or not.
You guys should totally hit creativecow.net and look up Ron Lindeboom's Client's or Grinders article. Cater to clients, send the grinders to your favorite competition.
 
JonathanLB said:
I always get a bit nervous about the amateurs undercutting, though, because a lot of clients really don't get it. They don't know how much goes into it, so they have to learn from their mistakes first by hiring n00bs, getting bad results, and then realizing why those of us who are professionals charge money to do what we do.
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They get it when they're stuff look like crap. If they look at it and think "Good enough." Then thank God you didn't get the job because they would've been a pain in the rear.
grinner said:
Cater to clients, send the grinders to your favorite competition.
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LOL.


-Nate
 
LOL. They aren't the greatest video professionals in the world but they are loveable.

-Nate
 
"I have a little bit of trouble not losing confidence in myself / my business when I see such amateurs offering cheap rates, because I guess I just am not confident that businesses all understand the value of quality. I hope there are at least enough who do. For instance, I'm going to a conference to offer my video services for virtual tours, and when I do virtual tours it's not me there shooting with a tripod. I have no idea how to use a camera or setup lights, I'm just a director / producer, so I hire a small crew, no reason to have more than 3 of us total and I'm happy to grip basically and help setup equipment, but we use a nice dolly, a jib, setup great lighting for each part, and I integrate activities into the virtual tours, show life and energy in the places, then we add music and voiceover later so it's like a full mini-movie of the property and entices visitors / potential clients. It has been very effective for the properties we've done so far, and a few of them have reported people reserving units sight unseen, like just having seen the virtual tours, never having been to the properties at all, so they were really pleased with that. BUT I charge real money for this service, and offer complete Website integration (also Website redesign for extra, maintenance contracts, etc.). There is another company going to this conference, who I won't mention, that does lousy picture virtual tours, which is basically circa 1999, their technology is a joke and their photographers come with a camera and that's about it, they aren't highly paid so they're obviously hobbyists and amateurs, at best struggling professionals, but they offer this service extremely cheap. Probably charge 8-10 times less than I do. I don't think it works at all for this industry, it only works for residential housing, and at that, CHEAP residential housing, like under $500,000, any houses that are actually nice wouldn't benefit from such bad presentations. So in my mind, I know exactly what to say to tell these companies why they should choose me, but at the same time I know there are a lot of cheapskates who just pick whatever is the least expensive option and figure "good enough." So what I'm hoping, fingers crossed, is that there are enough companies out there, at least 1 in 5 or so, that believe in value and quality, and would prefer to stand out from their competition with superior virtual tours that really showcase their properties."

Me and another photog were trying to break into this. We had two betacams shooting high end properties, and instead of safe wide shots that were constantly panning and zooming, we had the realtor talk on camera about the amenities of the house, as well as the architect of the home, commenting on design, etc. Shot the hell out of the place, wove in the sound of the "talent", and made a small vignette about the house, pitched it around. No realtor wanted to pay more than 200 bucks for it. This was before the crash last November too, in the bay area where there was always a perceived "bubble".

200 bucks. To make that worth your while, you'd have to shoot a house in........what? 1/2 hour? Then edit, compress, post. Lot's of work in a tight timeframe. Thinking positively though: if you could stack up a few houses to shoot per day, and set the expectation level low, you could make some cash, but it would amount to a formula, i.e. grinding sausage. Not for me.
 
There are many online companies now wanting solo dudes to run out, make retail videos for them and make only a couple hundred bucks for the day's work. Same thing. If you are a student and you need some experience, it's by no means exploitation. If you are doing this for a living and that makes no living, you are waisting time when you could be billing your rate or networking to do that. Canibalization is not good for any business.
But it does make ya wonder what those retailers offer those middle men doesn't it?
...
 
BradFu said:
200 bucks. To make that worth your while, you'd have to shoot a house in........what? 1/2 hour? Then edit, compress, post. Lot's of work in a tight timeframe. Thinking positively though: if you could stack up a few houses to shoot per day, and set the expectation level low, you could make some cash, but it would amount to a formula, i.e. grinding sausage. Not for me.
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Yikes. The question is can you edit while shooting? Crunch that thing hand them the tape (or DVD) and you're out. If you could do that then monopolize all these low pay gigs then start making packages you could, as you say, "lower the expectation" then charge more for better service. No matter what you'd be making all the cash. Five a day will be $1000 for the day.

-Nate
 
frostgfx said:
I've been on this forum since 2007 and it seems that many of the Job postings are for No or Low pay jobs. Recently I was 'offered' $50 for rental of my crane and HVX200 system for a day shoot.

Come on... I didn't spend upwards of $20,000 on camera, crane, car mount system, doorway dolly and top notch audio/lighting equipment/grip... to be paid $50 for the day.

Let's break this down... travel time is 1.5 hours each way = 3 hrs. or $12 in gas alone.

Then there's meals... @ $7.00 x 2 = $14.00

I bill my time at $50.00/hr whether I am doing audio, lighting, grip or camera work. Once I am set up and ready to shoot/record... the clock starts ticking...

I bill my HVX system out at $150/ 8 hour day

I bill my crane out at $75/day and that includes the 1.5hr. setup time for the crane/motor pan/tilt and mounting whatever camera is attached to head.

I would like to know how other users are charging for their time and equipment and whether it 'pays' to take these low ball jobs...

Namaste,
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I have been doing this for 33 years and here is my observation: THE BOTTOM HAS FALLEN OUT OF THIS BUSINESS. Literally. Many factors, the most critical ones being the low price of cameras that offer a decent image and their ease of use, plus format wars prevent servicing the widest range of clients. Clients are willing to accept a lower quality level, many because they don't know better and computer screens plus quick cutting styles can make junk look good. Colleges are pumping out communications majors with the idea they can make a living at video (but only the trust fund babies survive recessions). Younger guys who don't need a lot of money to live bid against DPs who have to pay mortgages, Suburban/van payments and their kid's college tuition. Wedding videographers have branched out like hungry locusts and now compete against us because digital technology has made their cameras high end. It is simple supply and demand: there are now way too many shooters (who are pretty good), have the ability to edit and clients now see us as a commodity and bid us against each other (Production Hub, Craigslist, etc.). That is the biggest difference I see from the past. It really means nothing, besides the cache of doing something unique, to be a cameraman. We are now so numerous the prices are sliding...

Posting crew positions on Craigslist has shown me that the bottom has fallen out of this business, people respond (even before the current recession) begging me to shoot, some have offered to pay me, that's how desperate they are for experience. The internet has really ruined corporate video profit structure because the attention span of the web viewer is now so short, what used to be a 6-8 minute project you could make some profit on has now been reduced to three minutes. Many businesses have younger graduates who are fairly comfortable with shooting and editing, or at least create a Power Point that takes projects away from us outside folks.

The television market I used to make a good living at, like History Channel & Discovery, they've shortened shooting schedules, gone to clip shows, which I can understand, but many of the production companies now have their own rigs and want us just for labor. Or they have spun off channels that are willing to accept HDV which opens the competition pool so wide it brings everybody's rate down because more shooters are available to bid each other down.

We are now in a business that everyone wants to get into unfortunately. Anyone can now figure out how to do what we do if they are technically inclined, I have watched the geeks take over because everything is now computer based. What they don't realize is that it is extremely difficult to make a decent living in this business, especially now. The business model all of us DPs who are now in their fifties (and yes, someday you too will age) subscribed to was you buy the best, most popular camera and after you make your monthly loan payment it is pure profit for the rest of the month. But now there are so many cameras and the clients only want the format they (or their editors) are interested in.

What I see happening the last few years is a downward rate spiral of cut throat, dog eat dog competition in all segments, unless you establish a great relationship with clients who have money and appreciate quality. And no client lasts forever...

Oh well, that's my rant, but after doing this for so long all the trends I see are not pretty in regards to making a decent living at this, meaning home ownership, decent car, vacations, save for your kid's college and retirement, etc. It really paid VERY well for a very long time and before the internet and 9/11 clients had to fly us all over the world. Although I have had my shingle out as a DP since 1976 I must migrate to producing, which is not as fun but there is still money to be made at least. Due to supply and demand the bottom has definitely fallen out of this business, even before the current recession, and I don't see it coming back. Low rates for high quality, professional video production are now the New Normal. Unfortunately there are now many, many talented, creative and technical people who will work for dirt cheap and can turn out a pretty decent project, as DP or producer because the tools are so easy to use and cheap to attain.
 
But lets not forget that at the same time technology has opened the door for a lot more wannabes to get into the business it has also opened up a lot more need for captured content. If the business model stayed the same as it was 20 years ago the internet and a gazillion channels of cable TV would be pretty bland for the lack of content.
True a lot of people that need video content can't tell the difference between a pro shot and a turd but they still have a need. I assume anyone that has a need for a varicam shoot isn't really looking for some kid right out of college or a 16 year old skate punk. And does a high school garage band that's goal is to get something on youtube really need a 5k video shoot? Come on they never have and never will. It's also human nature to want more then you can have. They may want a video like the latest hip band but it's just a fantasy and human nature playing out. And unless you worked on that million dollar shot you probably only "want" to be able to produce a video like it.
Video is just like every other business- you've got to make yourself worth the money and change with the times. How much your camera is worth is meaningless and your bills aren't the clients issue.
I went through it 15 years ago in the music studio business and it's just how it goes.
 
The topic is one of my pet peeves... yeah, been there, done that before, with typesetting, graphic design in the '80s & '90s and now, after finally getting up to speed in capacity to provide a really high end video production, I'm running into it again. It seems like every time I finally get the funding to build my business right, the market is just becoming saturated.
And these Craigslist ads are absurd. Asking people with tens of thousands in equipment to work for $50-100/day--and the people who respond to those ads only make it perpetuate.
I've had the ephiphany last year: we are entering a Third World Economy. The only problem is that our government hasn't figured that out and still taxes us at First World rates. Dang, how is one supposed to pay the $15K annual real estate tax bill on one's home if you're working for $50/day, a few days a month because that's the only work you've been able to find? I myself won't even bother to respond to an ad like that, but I wish CL had an abuse button that read "offer's insulting rates" because I'd be reporting dozens of CL postings for that reason alone.
My take on it is that the video business as a service, is dead. I'm thinking it's more about content now. Stock footage, movies--that sort of material. I've been down that road where I give my best price, only to find out the client wants to pay 1/50th of my quoted price. I sometimes feel like putting on my best impression of The Kid from Brooklyn and telling these people to 'go f--- yourself!'
It's funny, but I remember in California, in the '80s, when pro quality audio recording gear was becoming popular for less than insane prices, home recording studios were popping up everywhere--and the music industry fought back by making it against the law for these small recording studios to exist. Somewhere I have an article detailing the SWAT team raids of these home studios, the equipment confiscations and the arrests for those indie home studios that were bringing down the bar for what the big studios could charge. Not that I agree with that anti-competitive practice, but it's interesting how we in the video business have not one iota of power to stop the deluge of cheap "videographers" that have all but destroyed the market.
 
I found the article, by Rock Stamberg, from an old issue of some audio/recording magazine I used to subscribe to.. many here will see some oddly familiar parallelisms...


"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, all-out war erupted in California between the owners of professional studios and those with professional-quality home studios. THE DISPUTE CENTERED ON THE ISSUE OF LOST REVENUE: The professional studio owners, in short, felt that the home-studio users were stealing part of their pie. At the same time, the professional studios' overhead costs—commercial rents and mortgages, business taxes, client parking, equipment and maintenance—were soaring.
In 1989, about 25 audio professionals from commercial recording studios in the Los Angeles area formed a coalition called the Hollywood Association of Recording Professionals, or HARP. The coalition's mission was to instigate investigations by the Los Angeles Planning Commission into home studios in residential areas and to have those studios closed for violating local zoning ordinances. By 1992, HARP was responsible, directly or indirectly, for shutting down home studios all over California. Among those affected were Chas Sanford's wildly successful Secret Sound studio, the rock musician Eddie Van Halen's 5150 Studio and the guitarist Steve Vai's studio. Sanford, Van Halen, Vai and at least 20 others — were notified of preliminary investigations, if not actually shut down.
THE HOME-STUDIO OWNERS WERE USUALLY CHARGED WITH CRIMINAL MISDEMEANORS FOR VIOLATING ZONING LAWS, and several closed voluntarily after receiving orders to comply with local building and safety rules. Many considered these actions a witch hunt—one in which anyone who had bought a piece of professional-level recording or mixing equipment for home installation was instantly suspect.
One must remember that in the late '80s and early '90s, the professional recording industry was in a slump. Studios were hurting; records weren't selling; and, professionals felt, drastic measures were called for."


Hmmmm.. that last line sounds oddly like what the RIAA is whining about today. The story is the same in any decade.
 
Good to see a healthy range of opinions in this thread. I empathize with the people who are pissed about Craigslist requests for top quality for free. It is frustrating to see our work, experience, & investment trivialized like that. And it is true that the hole at the bottom of the market has had a ripple effect all the way to the top; basically holding our rates stagnant vs inflation.

But the unfortunate truth is this is what you get when the price of admission is low (cheap cameras). Before the last 10 years or so it cost the equivalent of some home mortgages to get into this business. Those who have been around awhile will remember the cost of an Avid or even the linear tape editors (think well into 6 figures). You had to get a business loan to start a freelance video business. Therefore you needed to actually have some experience prior to 'going out on your own' in order to get the loan.

Not true today. How many people out there actually apprenticed under someone for any serious length of time, or held a full/part time job in the industry? A few still do but most today don't. When you can buy your way into the business for what some spend on a modest vacation the floodgates of amateurs posing as professionals will open. No, the equipment doesn't make you a professional but neither does a year or two of hobby experience.

The people at the top of their game will tell you; it takes at least 5 years of full time experience to really come close mastering the craft. There is even still a learning curve extending to 10 years before the job really offers very few surprises.

Yet the cheap cost of 'going pro' has every trust fund kid with a year of film school thinking he should be making standard professional rates for his 'investment.' These kids are the ones you should be pissed at, but even then, who can blame them? This industry never had a really good apprentice system; a 'how to' of making your way up in this business. That they thought daddy's $10,000 would buy them an exciting career is to be expected when there is no clear path to point to and say, "that is how you are suppose to do it."

The top and middle of this industry are still surviving (as well as anything else in this economy) and they will continue to provide the siren call to fresh young talent who will kick the ladder out from under the rest of us before turning around in 5 years and bitching about the latest batch who is doing it to them.

Really the whole video industry is just like the acting profession, just the people are less attractive. :)

In this new 'bottomless' paradigm it really just becomes caveat emptor to anyone thinking of starting a career here. Those of us who already invest a portion of our life into this will have to grow or die. It sucks but what are you gonna do?

Cheers
 
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