This is a business not just an artform

As with any job, you have to think of working in film as a business and not just an artform.

Now, I'm not saying that you can not work for free on a few projects, or that if you find a project you really want to be apart of to offer up your services and possible equipment to the project for discounted/free, but there is a point where you have to analyze not only what your time is worth, but also if you own your own equipment, what your equipment is worth too.

Because if you think about it, you could be busy everyday. It doesn't really matter at what level of skill you have, if you are honestly trying to get better people will always use you and the skills you have. The reality is though that they will use your skills and either pay you nothing or far little to what you are worth.

I mean think about it, do you have classic training in film like from a college or trade school, that cost you money, probably in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

Also do you have your own equipment, like a camera, microphone, audiorecorder, lights. That probably cost you probably at least 2k if it's professional. My equipment cost almost 5k with my computer.

That means that with your craft you need to try to recover at least that amount, and the question becomes how. True, you can work at a local coffee shop or a big box store to pay off your debts, but eventually and hopefully you will be charging money for your craft, and I would recommend at least 200 dollars a day for shooting and 25 dollars for editing to start out with. I know there are people who wont want to pay that, but you have costs too.

And if you are thinking to yourself at this point at least 200 dollars a day, that seems high, it really isn't, it's actually low if you factor everything into your cost and your return. If you own your equipment, good, but what if you didn't. Have you looked into what it costs to rent gear for a day. To give you an example here are the prices to a local Minneapolis company call Cinequipt, for an extremely basic set up.

Canon 7D w/ 28-135                  - $135.00
Manfrotto Tripod w/ Head           - $20.00
Zoom h4n                                 - $30.00
Sennheisser 66 Shotgun Mic      - $20.00
Mic Cable 25'                            - $3.00
Total                                        - $208.00

The above price is to just rent equipment for one day, not a week, or month, just one day. 208 dollars to rent equipment for a day.

So hopefully with this knowledge, I think that telling someone you are willing to work for at least 200 dollars is not a lot to ask for if you own your own equipment. Hopefully, if you break down the cost to rent equipment to the client they will see that you are essentially willing to work for what it would cost someone to just rent equipment, but it doesn't mean that they will.

People are always going to take advantage of whatever they can and because of that it means that as a professional you will need to stand firm on how you price yourselves out. This doesn't just benefit you, but also the rest of us professionals trying to get by on our crafts.

Two Companies Compete with their Perspectives

So, my weekend involved two days of shooting for two different organizations, and both gave different perspectives of how they view themselves and their property.

So, let's start with Saturday or Day 1. I woke up super early, like at 8:15 am early and got ready. I then headed toward the Bloomington Minnesota area and entered the Remada Hotel. I asked directions to where the meeting was taking place and I entered the room. I was surrounded by people who as many people would say have drank the cool aid.

So, as I was about to pull out my camera to start recording some of the presentation to help out the local committee, A woman from up front gave a very big word to everyone. NO RECORDING IN THE HALL. So, I calmly took my Canon 7D and Cowboy Studio and put it back into my bag. I then got a look from the main man I do my filming for Lucky and the two of us went out of the hall and began recording some of the people we ran into from North Dakota.

Afterwards, I went back in and with Lucky's advice/what he wanted I decided to ninja some video shots of Lucky and his business partner giving some advice to how to be a better seller of selling travel to people. Now I'm not great salesman so I'll just give you a link here if you care about traveling for cheap, and you can check out all of the cheesy videos that Lucky and I hope to change to show how people's lives can really be changed.

Now let's compare that with today. Today I was invited to shoot at the Hyatt hotel in Minneapolis for a spiritual health and wellness expo, which had many people speaking who are in the spiritual field, including those that are mediums and intuitive.

I set up my camera alongside my other camera operator and we shot everything throughout the day. They were much more open and because of that, we were given the opportunity to shoot many of the booths, and talk to many of the individuals.

Now I'm not going to upload any of the footage that I shot at the expo from today, because I'm not sure how the expo users want to use it, but I hope to do it soon.

I'll keep you updated.

Lucky Linda's Body Art Commercial is Live

So we've wrapped up everything with Lucky Linda's Body Art. It was a great project to be a part of especially since it contained mostly my vision, since I wrote, directed, and edited the piece.

It also happened to be the first project for the local start up Local Biz Productions, which is currently based out of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota and is currently taking on new clients to create low budget commercials.

Below you can find many of the links that are associated with the project. As well as the finished commercial. Let me know what you think and check out some of the other posts as well. Also if you are in the Minneapolis area, head on down to Lucky Linda's in Shakopee and give them some love.

The Importance of a Storyboard: A side by side comparison of the storyboard and the finished piece
And we Shot in Shakopee. Thanks Lucky Linda.: Picture copies of the storyboard used
The Head is Done: Image of what the muppet head looked like finished
Head Update
The Head is Built
A Small Setback
Tattoo Commercial

The Importance of a storyboard

Now, I know that I've talked about how a storyboard is important, and how it can make life easier, but I want to show you how side by side with the storyboard that planning actually does help regardless of if it is with stick figures, better looking hand drawings, Celtx's storyboard add ons, or any other storyboarding program. Making a storyboard helps out so much when it comes to production.

I know this because I've worked on productions that didn't have a storyboard of what the director was looking for. It was all in their head, so everyone was sitting around waiting for the director to give his vision for the shot instead of being able to jump to the next shot or scene, while the director was working with the actors.

To give you some perspective, we shot the commercial below in about an hour and a half and that includes set up and tear down times. Because we went into Lucky Linda's with not only a plan of what we wanted to shoot, but also an actual shot list of what we needed to get proper coverage we were able to get in and get out in a good amount of time.

If you've never done a storyboard before I am encouraging you to do one now and if you have done them before I continue to encourage you to do them in the projects you are working on. I hope you enjoy the video below comparing the storyboard we made to how the commercial ended up.

My Equipment

Here is what I am working with in the film world. A couple things that aren't in the pictures below are:

Vivitar 28mm Lens
Vivitar 50mm Lens
Vivitar 80-205mm Lens

But these lenses are available only second hand.

High speed recording is fun.

One of the nice things about DSLRs or at least the Canon line, which includes the t2i, t3i, 60D, 7D, and 5D is that there is a feature that allows you to record at 60 fps.

What that means is that you are able to record at a higher speed than what you would need in a film which is 24fps. And why this is cool is because you are able to shoot something at 60fps and then slow down the shots to 24fps and see either people or objects moving in slow motion and still maintain all of those frames.

I have posted a couple of videos below of some of the videos I have shot at 60fps and then slowed down. One is a glass of water being poured into a cup. The other is a compilation of a football game I made that was shot in high speed and then there is a combination of high speed video being slowed down and just the high speed video itself, which can create some cool effects. Especially if you think of fighting scenes like you've seen in movies.

A website that really helped me work through high speed shooting is film riot and I have included a link here for the episode that dealt with high speed shooting.

How I get my Film On

I have received a couple of messages in the last week about what my film equipment is and how I shoot some of my short film. So I thought I would list out my equipment below for you to see. Now some of my equipment isn't necessarily professional video equipment, but it does it's job well. I'm always looking to add equipment to this list so if you have ideas, then leave me a comment or send me a message.

VIDEO
Canon 7D 28mm-135mm
Compact Flash Card 32 GB x2
LP - E6 Batteries x3
Fotodiox Canon Adapter
7" Field Monitor
Vivitar 28mm Lens (sold second hand only)
Vivitar 50mm Lens (sold second hand only)
Vivitar 80-205mm Lens (sold second hand only)

AUDIO
Zoom H4N Audio Recorder
Sennheiser M66 Shotgun mic
K-Tek KE-89 Boom Pole
Audio Technica Headphones

LIGHTING
Clamp Lights x8
Car Sunshade
Cowboy Studio Green Screen Set Up
PVC custom made light stands x2

TRIPODS
Cowboy Studio Shoulder Mount
Dolica Tripod

DSLRs Ups and Downs

DSLRs have become key to the film makers tool kit. They are cheap for what they do in comparison to other film cameras. You can get a decent DSLR for under a 1000 dollars. Now saying this though they do have clear ups and downs for what they do.

Ups
- Cost (Again you can get a decent DSLR for under a grand)
- Ability to take pictures (always a plus when on set)
- 24p and many have 60p options (high speed shooting always has a unique look to it and can be fun if done right)
- Interchangeable lenses (this is a great feature to be able to change lenses for whatever you need, fun fact you can even make that telescope a lens if you have the right adapter)

So with all of these great options what could be the negatives.

Downs
- Monitoring audio (Most DSLRs don't offer live audio levels as you record, which means two things you will not know how strong the audio levels are during recording and generally mean that you have to record separately. This is because a DSLR is just that a DSLR, it was created to be a photo camera and the video part was put in after the fact.)
- Rolling Shutter (because DSLRs record top to bottom in every frame instead of exposing a frame all at once like you would see in a traditional film camera, you have to deal with rolling shutter issues which happens when you pan across something to quickly.)
- Recording Times (Many DSLRs have restrictions on time that they can record per clip. An example is that the Canon line has a 12 minute limit as to the length of each clip.)

At the end of the day though each person has to make the choice if the DSLRs are worth it.

I personally think that they are, though I will admit that they have put me in sticky situations at times and to show this I've linked a clip from today that happened when my mic battery ran out of juice and because I wasn't able to see the levels I didn't realize that I missed it. Good thing the project I'm working on will be just fine.

The video is of the first place winner of the Monster Dash 5k coming across the finish line.

Also for those that are wondering, I use the Canon 7D, which you can check out here.

Building a Brand

Yes, you read that right, a brand. It's one of the most important thing to sell whatever product you have is to be branded. It's also one of the most difficult. How do you seperate yourself from everyone else, what makes you unique, what's your niche. This is one of the main jobs as a video professional, to weed through all of what makes your client the same as everyone else until you find the thing that makes him unique, unlike anyone else.

The reality is that this could be anything from location, to equipment used, to formal training, to product, but it comes down to finding out what makes your client special, and usually involves answering the why question. Why should I use you verses your competitor, or why do I need you more than the other guy down the street.

I'm writing this at the moment, because I am building a brand at the moment for several people as well as myself. I'm trying to get myself to stand apart from my other competition, I'm trying to show why you should pick me over Jimmy or Sally down the street, I'm trying to find my niche in this big city, and if I were blatantly honest this is one way that I am doing that, by writing about my experiences when it comes to film and video.

The image I'm trying to give off is that I know a lot about the internet and network marketing. That I know how how to get hits to your website or blog, because look I've gotten hits to my website/blog. I know how to optimize your website and ad campaign to hit the most amount of people effectively, but that I also know how to create the content for your website to progress you to the next step in your company's direction.

As I talk about branding more, I'll give a concrete example of a client I'm working with, Lucky, now Lucky works for a network marketing company that sells travel to people, and what he gets money for is when people sign up for the travel company through him. So how do we brand him? Well currently we are starting to take down stories of his partners/clients who have gone on trips around the country and have begun releasing them on youtube and his website.

They are simple stories, but they drive home a point that people want to enjoy life, and have fun. This ultimately links back to that if you want to have fun and enjoy life, you will want to contact Lucky, because he is the fun maker, and without him you will not have fun. I've embedded a video so that you can watch the first of these videos that have been released to youtube.

And we shot in Shakopee. Thanks Lucky Linda's

So today we shot at Lucky Linda's Body Art tattoo parlor. A link to their facebook page is here

We shot using the Canon 7D with the standard stock lens.  I also got my friend Brian to come along and lend a hand and shoot a bunch of B-Roll for us that we are going to use. He was using the Canon T3i to shoot his footage and I'm planning on putting up some of that random B-Roll tomorrow at some point.

The shoot itself went pretty smooth, except that we didn't have lights and I had to run home quickly and get them. Also, the mouth on our muppet head didn't seem to work when we needed it to either, so I had to put a part of the extra shedding brown cloth over my hand and I had to operate the head manually.

On a plus note though our actress, Destiny, showed up on time and worked out perfectly for the part that we hoped her for. We hope that once we get this commercial finished and out to people that you can help Destiny out who was able to help us out on our shoot even though we couldn't really pay her.

As promised though here is the storyboard for the shoot. In a later post I will tell you how important a storyboard is to a shoot, especially a shoot on a timeline, and no budget.

Here's some of my Past work

So as I work on some current projects, with editing and building of props, I feel that I should upload some of my previous work starting with a copy of my current reel. It has selections from work I have done with such famous Minneapolis local actors including Trevor Rychly, Lawrence Levesque, Paul Cram, and Rachel Grub.

Also the animated piece in my real is a piece that I am currently still working on is a chunk from the film that I am getting ready to submit to MUFF.

October 18 2011 - Editing and lots of it

So last weekend I went out of town to video tape Wooddale Church's fall retreat, and it went really well. I got some high speed video of kids climbing over a wall at an obstacle course and playing football. I shot the video on my Canon 7D at 60 frames per second, but now I'm stuck with the grueling part of taking the video and stretching it out so it looks like it is going in slow motion. I'm sure the video will look good, but it is just taking time. I'll post the video once I get the video completed later tonight. It should be good to watch, but we are looking at a longer video, probably around fifteen minutes.

I'm also working on trying to get my short film The Reformed Man done for MUFF and it's not that one. It stands for the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival. It's looking good, but it's time consuming as the video is done in the same styles as a Scanner Darkly, Waking Life, and those Charles Schuaves (sp?) commercials. I'll post a link to the trailer once I get that done.

Looks like another night without a lof of sleep, though that won't be so bad, because tomorrow I get to sleep in.