What to Charge?

[wabbit]

I am more apt to work for free or deffered pay on a feature film. The reason being is feature films take a large amount of money and time and if I see that whomever is creating the movie is putting all of their efforts and resources into making a better product then I can understand that. Now for the people out there that want dp's for lets say music videos or live events and don't want to pay then I don't respond to those jobs because they are just trying to make a profit at my expense

I would take the opposite opinion. Feature films do take a lot of money and time to do right. If the producer can't secure proper funding for the film then it is unlikely they will have the skills or dedication to get things done at the sale stage. Maybe if the producer has a proven track record with selling films in the past I might consider it but 99% of the time the producer is as clueless about selling a film as they are about raising funds. There is an unfortunate mythology at the amatuer level that once you have a good film it will sell itself by simple sending it around to various festivals.

A ton of wasted man hours have been put into films that just collect dust as the producer has no clue how to sell it. No patience or skills to fund raise generally means no skills or patience to sell a finished product.

I have also worked on movies where the producer had the skillset to raise the proper budget to make one film but still didn't have the ability to sell a very good finished film. They generally can't raise funds for the next one as they burned through the reputation the first time through.

Unless you have someone who really has a solid grasp (not just theory and big talk) of how to take a film from beginning to sale, your hard work will just be dust in the wind.

Just my opinion

 

[SilverWolf]

I would take the opposite opinion. Feature films do take a lot of money and time to do right. If the producer can't secure proper funding for the film then it is unlikely they will have the skills or dedication to get things done at the sale stage. Maybe if the producer has a proven track record with selling films in the past I might consider it but 99% of the time the producer is as clueless about selling a film as they are about raising funds. There is an unfortunate mythology at the amatuer level that once you have a good film it will sell itself by simple sending it around to various festivals.

A ton of wasted man hours have been put into films that just collect dust as the producer has no clue how to sell it. No patience or skills to fund raise generally means no skills or patience to sell a finished product.

I have also worked on movies where the producer had the skillset to raise the proper budget to make one film but still didn't have the ability to sell a very good finished film. They generally can't raise funds for the next one as they burned through the reputation the first time through.

Unless you have someone who really has a solid grasp (not just theory and big talk) of how to take a film from beginning to sale, your hard work will just be dust in the wind.

Just my opinion

I'm not really referring to large productions when I made that comment. I'm more reffering to helping out local people on a feature for experience. I more than agree with you in that if they can't raise the money before shooting it's highly doubtfull that you're going to see any money afterwards. Once you reach a level like yourself wabbit when the chance of you leaving the production with this great learning experience decreases then it's really no point at all in working for little or nothing.