I hear you Joe, but it isn’t just in your area, it's everywhere.
When all this started with Rosenblum about seven years ago and this new wave of prosumer started making a lots of noises I gave several warning on this board to freelance professionals. The days of doing business as usual will end. These new wave, although with inferior quality and equipment have nowhere to go but upward. Soon or later they’ll catch up and those of us who stood still will be overtaken.
Granted, our work is better, but is there enough difference to justify the higher cost we charge? This is the question I asked to many professionals who back then were saying that clients will never go for that cheap quality. Apparently many did and many professionals now have fallen on hard time. Once a client gets the taste of cheap it becomes addictive.
If we try to compete with this lower form of production we’ll lose. “We are better, our work is superior†is no longer a valid argument with clients, not when cost saving has become a priority.
The only way to survive and still prosper is to put enough distance between them and us.
We have to reinvent ourselves. We have to create new services for our clients, something that the cheap competition can not do. But quality alone will not do it, the magic word today is value. Value doesn’t mean cheap, it means getting something better to our clients for their money, something that the cheap wave of productions can not do it. In order to do this we have to go to the root of the planning, once they’ve already hired a 25yo producer it’s too late.
Keep in mind that our business is not alone in this fight, every industry is facing the same challenges. The venerable “yellow fatherâ€, Eastman Kodak, who got this thing called “photography†off the ground just filed for bankruptcy. Cheap competition and not doing anything or very little about it is a killer for everyone, big or small makes no difference.
Don’t think for a single second that because I do most of my work for ESPN and all their divisions that I’m exempted from the budget cuts. They just came out with new rules that have their regular shooters across the country up in arms. They’ve dropped the rates they pay for run n’ gun SD crews to $1200 per day, down from the $1450 to1650 that they were paying, that’s for SD only. Apparently for “non important†stuff they intend to keep SD going awhile longer. This is for camera and sound and SD has to be 16:9.
Features and most of the stuff I do for them remain untouched so this new rule doesn’t effect me too much. Yet this is the result of having thousand of out of work newsguys and the new wave of cheap shooters that for them anything is better than an unemployment check.
This is textbook result of supply exceeding the demand.
Actually the new rule is welcome to me. I have a few out of work newsguys that are more than happy to work. I put a separate SD package together for them and ESPN doesn’t expect me to be doing the run n’ gun work that I really really hate. Not to mention that at 66 I look kind of silly running n' gunning, but I still can do it.
Let’s talk about reinventing ourselves.
This is just one “reinventionâ€. In reality it’s nothing new, it’s new because very few freelancers can offer these type of services, never mind the new wave of cheap newcomers.
Five years ago a producer came to me with a problem, they wanted to do a panel discussion but had no budget to fly everyone to Bristol, get a studio or hire a grip truck. Could I help them.
My answer is always yes, then I stay awake at night trying to figure how the f**k I’m gonna do that.
We built a studio in a hotel suite. Very small space, took us a day to build the set but we were able to get everything in there that was needed. Most important for the client was that we did it within the standard crew budget. The client was extremely happy and grateful. I had no idea back then what will develop from that.
Apparently ESPN and other clients saw the potential of what I was doing more that I did. Since then we’ve worked on several series of shows. These shows would originally be done in their studios at a very high cost. Don’t forget that these talents get multi-million dollars annual contract for a set number of days. Each of the talent might cost the network over 30K per day, so if they can save two days of travel plus the expenses (and they don’t travel coach and rent cars) whatever I charge them is still a bargain.
This is a chapter about large set-ups on the new EFPLighting.com that I’ve been trying to complete for awhile but time is in short supply. It will go back to subscription once I’m done with it but for now it’s free.
http://efplighting.com/2012/01/05/large-set-ups-step-by-step/