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.

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.

Compress all of your Events i.e. Time Lapse

Time Lapse is one of those cool things that people like to use, and I am a fan of it too. Recently, I was asked to create a time lapse for a local senior high church event that I volunteer with to which I responded with okay.

The question that followed became more about the logistics of how to create this video than the actual shooting of it. It was decided that I would use the Sr. High's Canon Vixia, instead of my DSLR, the Canon 7D.

One of the main reasons for this was because I don't have an intervalometer (an intervalometer is a device that is commonly used with a DSLR to take photos in spaced out periods of time and then are all put together to create a video time lapse. This is the common practice for when you see sunsets in film or cities light up at night). Here is the wiki link if you are wondering.

The other reason was because in order to get the shot that was required for the time lapse we would need to get the camera fifteen or twenty feet high so as the main part of the set up and event could be seen, and to be honest I didn't want to have my camera that high. This was especially because to get to that height I was forced to duct tape a tripod to the top of a ladder.

So after I set up everything, I hit record and then got off of the ladder and let it go. Four and a half hours later we had all of the video footage and then was ready to edit the video. I imported all of the video into After effects and did a simple time remap of the entire thing bringing the video down to two minutes. The export took almost two hours because of the massive compression of the video.

Also if you watch the video you will probably notice a bump in the shot. This is because someone hit the ladder and messed everything up, because the most important part about time lapse is that everything that you need to shoot needs to be stable otherwise the time lapse is destroyed.

This is a huge problem with any time lapse video because if you have a bump in the tripod then everything can go array, and because I was using a video camera instead of a DSLR, which would have shot at a higher pixel size than what is needed for video.

I hope to get this intervalometer soon and will post video of why this way of shooting is better for time lapse.

What can I get for a grand

As I've been on a lot of social media sites, looking at people who are looking to get into the film game a lot of people have been listing questions about trying to get into the film game for under a thousand dollars (that's us dollars my global readers), and after giving my advice time and time again for particular items and suggesting them individually to each post I decided to come up with this list. It's my recommendation on how to get you started in the film game for under a grand.

So first and foremost you need a Camera, I recommend the Canon t3i, it has the same sensor chip as the Canon 7d and the Canon 60d. It also has a 3x crop that you can use in film mode extending the lens length by three but still maintaining true1080p resolution and that is going to be the bulk of the budget right there.

Next you need a microphone, particularly a directional shotgun mic, the Azden SMX 10 is great for an onboard camera mic, and for the sub grand market it comes in really handy too.

Thirdly you need a tripod/camera stabilizer. I use both the Cowboy Studio Shoulder Mount and the 60 inch Dolica Tripod.

All of these prices are off of Amazon.com's website

Canon T3i 771.13
Azden SMX 10 84.99
Cowboy Studio Shoulder Mount 26.69
Dolica Tripod 65.99
Transend 32 GB SD Card 43.52


Your total cost is just under a grand, and with that you are ready to go out and shoot the world in film.

To check out all of these items together on Amazon.com click here.

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