Video and multimedia's meteoric rise is getting the attention of the pro photographic community. ASMP Seattle today hosted Paula Lerner and Gail Mooney to talk about the transition.
Paula is a photo journalist making her mark in the audio multimedia format. Her Washington Post series on Afghanistan women is quite an achievement, and it's gotten her gigs for institutional assignments, like the student profile series on the Boston University site. Gail Mooney is an early (2000) Platypus Workshop alumni, and offers a good business model for low-impact video production. Her latest project is Freedom's Ride, about a bus trip, with students from two very different socio-economic communities, from NY to Alabama to understand the civil rights movement from the original participants.
The tips on technique were not new, but new to me was an honest disclosure regarding rates and terms. A Statement of Work (SOW) includes all the terms of a production, including the approval process and, tellingly, the number of revisions the client gets. After the pre-production meeting, (a billable item), the sign-off moment for Paula's clients is when they approve the audio track. They get one shot to do so, and future revisions are extra. The cost of a video piece is based largely on post-production time, as the fee for a videographer and camera for the day tends to run much less than for a still photographer. It's a good idea to log your hours on your personal projects so that you know how to bid jobs in the future. A 2 minute piece might take 30 hours in post. Base all your production expenses on what it would cost to hire it out. If the going rate for editing is $150/hour, if you bill $75 and get busy and have to sub it out, you're screwed. Include interview transcription as a billable item on the invoice—it's essential to the editing workflow.
If your livelihood depends on a camera, pay attention.
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