Flunky pay!
 

And if you think this is bad, how about when one videographer posts an add wanting another videographer to edit an entire wedding video for him for just a hundred dollars!

No kidding. It happened to me. His ad caught my eye because he specifically asked for an Avid Liquid editor. I responded to his post, told him a hundred dollars wasn't much money for a professional editor, asked a couple of questions, and suggested if he was lucky, maybe an intern from a college.

One of the questions was if I would be expected to capture the tapes, or if the footage had already been captured, ready to edit in Liquid. He was very insulting, like why would I make a big deal about capturing the tapes? So I'd had enough!!

I mentioned the previews on his web site didn't even play, but his pricing page worked just fine. His surcharge for a menu added to the DVD is $75, which takes me a few minutes to do in Liquid, but he was only willing to pay ME a few dollars more for editing the entire wedding, which is hours of work to do a good job.

My final comment was "You're not looking for a professional to work WITH you, but you're looking for a flunky to work FOR you!", and that there would be no more communications between us.

It's bad enough when someone outside our industry tries to cheat us. But one of our own?

Hi Philip

Very wise words from the master !!! Yes, we definately need to get higher up the timeline and totally ignore photogs!!!
A marketing guru said to me a while ago that you always need to make sure that the product you are selling in unique and cannot be replicated easily by the man in the street! That way you have a niche market and price comparisions are hard to do (as well as perceived value) as there is nothing to compare your product with!!
Let face it, any moron can go into a discount store and buy a camcorder for a few hundred then stand in the Church and film it on auto and even use the included software to spit out a DVD ... of course the result will be horrific but it can be done (and probably has been done too!!!)

We do need special features in our productions to set them apart and make them unique. I was actually with a bride last night and she said to me "Do you know why we booked you?"
"Because your weddings have lots of talking!!" (She was obviously un-impressed with footage set to music in other samples but loved the fact that we do one-on-one interviews with the guests during the pre-dinner drinks)

I think if we can make wedding films that have features that the average relative with a camcorder wouldn't or couldn't attempt then we have a more unique product with a decent value!!

Chris

Maybe we can offer to shoot in HD Progressive and the bride on a budget can simply use a frame grab of her favorite bits to get the pictures she wants? Besides, it will really get up the nose of the photographers! :-)

After all, we shoot 25 or 30 frames per second compared to just one or two by those lazy snooty photographers! :-)

Andrew

Hi Andrew

If it's interlaced any imaging software will sort out the interlace..I used to used screen grabs on my old cams for DVD covers and they came out well.
The only issue would be that the images are only 2megapixel (1920x1080) unless your camera has a hi-res still facility ?? I know the HMC40 does 10 megapixel stills...even at 2 you can get some pretty sharp prints as long as the couple don't expect wall sized prints from the images.

Come to think of it.. I'm wandering around a lot of the time with the camera and could quite easily do extra stills...I'm often asked to do stills later in the evening as the photog has gone home already!!

Chris

My camera doesn't have a high res facility. If anything, the colour model transforms between video and regular RGB / CMYK might give us a bit of grief.

Andrew