Working for free or low pay

Chris Santucci

Chris Santucci

Veteran
This rant (link below) is relevant to any freelancers situation in the film/video/tv/entertainment biz and offers some insight into why it's almost always a bad idea to work for free or to give work away for free OR even low pay to certain entities.

There ARE major entertainment companies who make profit in the Billions that primarily hire freelancers they routinely try to offer less than the prevailing wage to. I've even heard of some companies asking people to work for free.

Some companies believe they'll always be able to find someone to provide services for the unfair rates they want to pay. Part of their rationale for expecting this is based on the fact that there are entry level folks on the bottom rung of the career ladder who are willing to just do the work for whatever pay is offered in order to get a foot in the door.

This mentality is not only destructive to the livelihood of established pros to some extent, but of course also to the up and coming people since they'll be recognized as the low cost option and it also tends to cause rates in general to decline over time which is bad for everyone in the labor pool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

.
 
HAHAHA, greatest interview clip ever. He's so right! I love this, especially: "I get so angry about this because you're undercut by all the amateurs. It's the amateurs who make it tough for all the professionals."

How am I supposed to make any money doing a music video for a band when some idiot on Craig's list will do a video for $500? Granted it's with two lousy cameras you pick up at Best Buy and he just does one take of the song, then quickly chops together these two angles, but heck $500 sure sounds nice to a cheap band. Amateurs!

For comedy value I loved this: "I don't take a piss without getting paid for it." hahaha
 
Wow that sure woke me up... My Prices are below and it's because of my uncertainty I don't need anyone to tell me my value I should know and I should stick to it.
 
Sad, sad, sad. Thats the world we live in - its a freemarket. Be warned, sell your **** for nothing, then expect nothing.

F that.
 
It has gone through my head lately, that I ought to go for more of these "Need a High Quality 3 chip camera, lots of exposure" jobs, and tell them yes, I do have a High end cam... then show up with my Hi8 camera. Then when they say they want the high end cam, drop the high end camera rate on them. Then when the job is done (Because it is a last minute crisis and they have no other choice), tell them that if they want the tape, that costs extra. I have tried using "Glowing references and exposure" to buy stuff, but they only accept cash.
 
LOL - he's funny. Fed up but funny! They won't even send him the DVD. Heck at least I always gave people a DVD. LOL :-)
 
Capt Quirk said:
It has gone through my head lately, that I ought to go for more of these "Need a High Quality 3 chip camera, lots of exposure" jobs, and tell them yes, I do have a High end cam... then show up with my Hi8 camera. Then when they say they want the high end cam, drop the high end camera rate on them. Then when the job is done (Because it is a last minute crisis and they have no other choice), tell them that if they want the tape, that costs extra. I have tried using "Glowing references and exposure" to buy stuff, but they only accept cash.
Click to expand...


That's awesome. I learned a long time ago that "exposure", the promise of more (better paying) work, and "it will look good on your resume" are buzzwords people use to get stuff for free or for cheap. If you cut a huge break on your rate, in my experience, the promise of "better paying" work never materializes even if you DO do a great job for them.

Oh, I almost forgot - a friend of mine and I were once negotiating with a major cable network to produce an episode of a kids show locally that they told us they had a small budget for. When we told them we couldn't hire local crew for the rates they wanted to pay, they said "try and sell the crew on the heart of the story." This was coming from a lackey working for a subsidiary of a company that made almost a Billion Dollars in profit every year.

.
 
JonathanLB said:
How am I supposed to make any money doing a music video for a band when some idiot on Craig's list will do a video for $500? Granted it's with two lousy cameras you pick up at Best Buy and he just does one take of the song, then quickly chops together these two angles, but heck $500 sure sounds nice to a cheap band. Amateurs!
Click to expand...

Hey, I'm that "idiot" on Craigslist offering two-EX1 shoots for bands and small ensembles in my local area and I STILL don't get any business from CL! And this is what I gave for $500: http://exposureroom.com/wwconcert
It's not all amateurs out there in this hard situation. It's also the pros who care about their work who are competing against kids with camcorders and also a prevailing idea that video is unimportant to the event.
 
I'd like to think there is a huge difference between doing a gig for $500, and doing a gig for "Great exposure and a DVD afterwards!".
 
I see it as fueling the industry, not dampering it.
When a kid does a production for nada, that, more often than not, makes my rates well worth it next time. The more companiesget what they pay for the more they wanna spend next time around.
What is changing is the economy and with it, more one man band productions will happen and less specialists will be used. When the depression lifts some old habbits will come back but not the one where companies pony up for middle men in productions... they will indeed stick with their now known to be sound one man bands.
If you are not expanding your services today, you are getting left behind.
 
Excellent post, grinner! I think this is a trend, but the question is, what is the most effective way to make room for one's self on that bandwagon?
 
I'm not really convinced that's true, grinner. I'm no one-man band myself, I can't shoot, I don't edit (I can edit basic stuff), I'm just a producer-director, I'm the middleman who makes things happen. There needs to be someone like me on most projects. Sure, a little event videography, I'm useless, and I tell clients that, haha, I hook them up with a shooter so it's more in line with their budget. But when it comes down to a larger corporate project where a video needs to be filmed, voiceover added, music added, specific marketing text written for the voiceover (I'm also a pro writer so I can work with the marketing dept.), and then have that project integrated into a Flash element on their Website (I have those connections too), then you need a coordinator, someone to make it all work, and that person is me. Projects don't just materialize, and there is no sense in one person doing all of the work. Division of labor will always be alive in Hollywood, that is the way professional work is made.
 
ok... but if youre going to be doing a one man band.... you should be paid more for it. instead of paying 650$ a day for a sound guy and gear, 1000$ a day for DP lights,

they can pay 1250$ a day for a sound camera man.... and save 400$..... not say, we'll give you 500$ for the job of two people... and amazing rsults...
 
Timur,

you obviously go through the same things I do and are offered the same exact rates. You are in NYC and I am in LA and $500.00 for 10 for one man band seems to be the standard.
It's ridiculous but doing everything really cheaply seems to be in vogue right now and will be for at least another year or so.

I am having better luck charging $500.00 for labor and $350.00 for camera package, $150.00 for sound package and $250.00 for G&L. I have several corporate clients who seem okay with this rate.

Dan
 
yea its kinda weird out here right now. Some people are flourishing, and some are starving...
 
I see it as fueling the industry, not dampering it.
When a kid does a production for nada, that, more often than not, makes my rates well worth it next time. The more companiesget what they pay for the more they wanna spend next time around.
Click to expand...

I agree with you completely on this one.


If you are not expanding your services today, you are getting left behind.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it varies market to market, but I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Most of the people I see desperate for work right now are those that have expanded their services too much and they're desperate for one reason: OVERHEAD

Those people who have expanded their services to duplication, studio, lighting, audio, equipment rental, etc. (all the other common sense add-ons) now have all of that overhead that they have to pay off every month. And with the economy and credit-crunch being what it is now and for the near future, it's a bad time to be in debt.

I suppose it's a matter of available capital and willingness to take the risk, but for now I would rather work harder to sell the value of hiring a specialist to a client than lowering my price for the sake of getting a gig to pay off all of my expenses that are hanging over my head.
 
Well I have billed mainly as an editor for the last 20 years or so. An animating one at that.
As budgets tighten, I see from my chair where money was waisted. I edit shows of crews of many knowing I could grab my HDV camera and do it for a fraction... so I pitched that and got it.
Now, as a one man band, I travel, I conceive, I shoot/produce/dorect, then come back home and edit it. In my hayday, billing a grand a day was no problemo but today it's quite challenging, unless in tight with a long-lasting client not feeling budget restraints today.
Now, as mentioned, I got my day rate back up to where it belongs... by saving them a boatload of money on a production that use to cost them an easy five figures. I flat bid these at like 6k now. Thats 1.5 days of travel, a day or two of shooting and the rest for post.
I'd not be back up to my wanted day rate today if I were an editor waiting on a gig.
I go claim that gig with my camera now and bring the post home. I get better content than their big crews, ensuring this lasts beyond the depression.
Now was this risk? Heeeell yeah it was, the middlemen I cut were my very clients. Thats either success or suicide right there. All or nothing is required sometimes. I've never had a problem going all in. I think that is what is required today.. risk takers with confidence to back it up.
 
chris f said:
I agree with you completely on this one.




I'm sure it varies market to market, but I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Most of the people I see desperate for work right now are those that have expanded their services too much and they're desperate for one reason: OVERHEAD

Those people who have expanded their services to duplication, studio, lighting, audio, equipment rental, etc. (all the other common sense add-ons) now have all of that overhead that they have to pay off every month. And with the economy and credit-crunch being what it is now and for the near future, it's a bad time to be in debt.

I suppose it's a matter of available capital and willingness to take the risk, but for now I would rather work harder to sell the value of hiring a specialist to a client than lowering my price for the sake of getting a gig to pay off all of my expenses that are hanging over my head.
Click to expand...

I agree. I sell myself as someone who can do a specific project and guarantee results on it that are professional and valuable. I don't guarantee that my way of doing things is the cheapest, but I guarantee it's fair and reasonable.

For me, I mean there is no day rate, I suppose I could make a day rate for my time, but that'd be pretty low and reasonable, it's just dependent on what equipment is used, insurance, etc. If I'm doing a one-day shoot, even simple corporate video stuff, I want $1,000 for equipment if it's a one-off, if it's part of a larger project I'm highly negotiable, say filming for 5 days in a row then $3,000 is fine, even $2,500 is probably fine. Then I want 5% of the project's budget to go to insurance, I have to make a profit on insurance since I'll rarely ever use it all up by year's end, I mean I pay for $300,000 production insurance, if I do $200,000 of productions and charged the same rate I pay, like 3.15%, I will lose money. At least if I bill at 5% I stand some chance of having that be a wash at the end of the year, which is fine. I just want to break even on that if possible, so it's not useless overhead. Then for my time I'm fine billing like $25/hr, so $300 for 12 hour days, I'm not opposed to that. I'm not trying to be Mr. Expensive but when I'm using expensive equipment to do a project I want to be paid fairly for that. Then I want my company to take 15% of the cost of the project to be used to pay my own business expenses and overhead. So by the time all is said and done, yeah on a small one-day shoot type of project that takes a total of 3-4 days I want to make a good profit, but not mainly just on my labor. As a businessman.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top