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Posted by ushere on 09/04/06 06:38
nobody special wrote:
> I would suggest that for many businesses, even though the cost of
> gear has gone down quite a bit, your money is usually better spent
> going to an out-of-house setup on an as-needed basis. I have seen
> this happen in real life several times, where a client of ours
> decides they've looked over our shoulders long enough and they want
> to bring the productions "in-house". I caution them, I ask them is
> their business making widgets or making videos. If you're an
> experienced pro, sorry to be talking down to you. If you are a
> causal, 'prosumer' user with a reputation around the office, I would
> say DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!. Here in brief is what I have seen
> happen:
>
> Guy/gal in office talks their boss into this, or it's the boss's
> idea. First they go out and they buy gear. They never buy the right
> stuff the first time out, or the purchases are incomplete, i.e.
> they'll buy a halfway decent camera, but no lights, mics or even a
> tripod. (they should be renting instead at this stage, but that's
> another discussion)
>
>
> Then the lucky new videomaker person gets pulled off their full-time
> work for quite a while learning the new stuff, training on the edit
> system doing tutorials, etc. Meanwhile they have to hire a temp or
> another worker to cover the stuff the videographer employee used to
> do full-time. Then they start to figure out standard office spaces do
> not make terrific studio spaces or editing rooms. By the time they
> have everything together right, the same product we could have
> knocked out for them for $200 has cost them thousands, it still
> doesn't look as good as what we make, and it's way late to boot. And
> their accountants are going nuts over the extra staff costs,
> expensive office floor space being used for studio space and all this
> depreciating equipment they bought that has little to do with the
> actual product they make.
>
> Comes the next round of corporate belt-tightening, they dump the
> whole department, we pick up some of their better gear for pennies on
> the dollar, and then we get to make more videos for them again,
> billing them for the use of the gear THEY BOUGHT.
>
> Seen it. Lived it. More than once.
>
> You can buy a camera, but you have to "make" a cameraman. Likewise
> someone typing stuff into powerpoint does not equal a well
> thought-out script. No, for cost-effective product, you get better
> results, faster, by staying with your core competency and trusting
> the video work to experienced professionals, producers, writers,
> shooters editors, who have already made the commitments of time,
> study, practice and money to perfect a craft and a facility to
> execute it in.
>
> Sometimes it can make sense to take production in-house, but IMO
> you'd have to be a really large company or doing it three times a
> week for it to make financial sense. What kind of public image does
> poorly-done video give your company, to potential customers, to
> investors? And think about it this way: your salesmen probably fly to
> various places out of town from time to time. Does the company buy
> them a plane, or an airline ticket?
>
bang on the nail!!!!
i have set up numerous 'studio's', editing suites, etc., for clients in
the past (hey, i'm a hooker, they're paying, i just jump through the
hoops). i just love it when they call me in to then 'train' their staff
(who leave as soon as they have acquired journeyman skills) who said
'they know what to do', and then management complains that they're not
getting ben hur because they only bought one horse and expected the
technology to do the rest...
thankfully i'm out of it now, but it's nothing new - it started with
desktop publishing and getting quark for the secretary. perhaps that's
why the 60/70's were so hippy trippy?
leslie
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