Barry_Green
Moderator
Agreed 100%, especially when they're asking you to put $6,000 of your own stuff on the line.
Production of MTV pilot is looking for 3 free HVX camera man?
- Thread starter VideMedia
- Start date
orangesaybananas
Active member
Exactly. But, as my story will show, having that attitude all the time, can sometimes cost you in the long run. About three years ago someone (who had only met me once before on a freelance gig) contacted me and asked if they could "borrow" my DVX100 package for a "paid" shoot they were hired to do for a "marketing company." For the record, shooting for marketing companies is my bread and butter. Anyway. I turned her down. Come to find out, years later, that she called a friend of mine (who was an even better friend of hers) to borrow his XL-1 for the day. The "marketing company" liked the results, and ended up renting my friends XL-1, for Four Hundred Dollars a Day, over 12 times between Fall of '06 and Spring of '07. Boy, you can guess what my reaction was!
All that to say, it's wise to keep an eye out for emerging growth markets. Experience has shown that the instant I turn something down, for whatever reason, it ends up benefitting someone else. Sometimes production companies take on low budget stuff, just so no-one else will capitalize on those opportunities, and build their company reels, in order to get better work. There's a case to be made that doing unprofitable work keeps the outsiders outside. Your goal is to remain on the inside of the business, right? Sometimes you just have to accept crappy jobs to keep your competitors (and the people nipping at your heels) away from them.
That's my 2 cents, for what it's worth...
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grinner
Carbonite Member
I sometimes get the feeling that people really do think they will profit from making a pilot on spec.
It's either that or they just want free labor because they know otherwise but more often than not, they remind me of myself 20 years ago with exeption of not wanting to make it themselves.
lol
It's either that or they just want free labor because they know otherwise but more often than not, they remind me of myself 20 years ago with exeption of not wanting to make it themselves.
lol