I’m defining luxury as something that you want or would like to have but don’t actually need. The Craigslist poster wrote, “They are ripping people off for all they have! Why when you want to get married it costs you AT LEAST 15 grand after all is said-and-done? Its such CRAP!! I love all you $ 3,000.00 photographers out there but i think your prices are WACK.” Immediately, I would like to point out that there’s a distinction between getting married and holding a wedding. Getting married is something you may need; holding a wedding is something you want. The poster is wrong when she states that getting married is expensive: relative to the price of a wedding, it’s quite affordable. For instance, if you live in Toronto and wish to marry, your total expenses would come to under $400, including the license and marriage officiant. I’m aware that the writer is from Puget Sound, but I doubt getting married in Washington is much more expensive than in Ontario. In any case, despite her choice of words, the writer was referring to holding a wedding.

Weddings are expensive because having a large catered party is a luxury. When you remove the ceremony from the rest of the day’s archetypical activities, you’re left with the greater portion of that hypothetical $15,000 bill. Your costs shouldn’t rise by much even if religious obligations require the ceremony be held at your respective house of worship. The major expenses are everything that isn’t part of the official ceremony: the venue(s), liquor and multi-course meals for guests, a multi-tiered cake, flowers, decorations, entertainment, your wardrobe, makeup and hair, accommodations, and, given the nature of this article, your desire to have a wedding photographer document the entire affair and do so with exceptional artistry.

Luxury brands do not justify their prices with complex breakdowns of their costs. For example, when someone walks into a Chanel store and considers buying a handbag, the salesperson isn’t going to relay the cost of materials, labour, freight, lease, marketing, etc., to justify the price. What they’ll do is sell the brand and its story, its exclusivity and the status it imbues, the timeless design, impeccable craftsmanship, customer service, and its ability to retain value longer than other less exclusive brands. All things considered, it would still be a frivolous purchase—because no one needs a Chanel anything, even among people who need a handbag—and most buyers of luxury goods know this. Unfortunately, when planning a wedding, some people, such as the Craigslist poster, never come to this understanding.

Consider the longevity of these expensive services. The alcohol, food, and cake get flushed down the drain (quite literally). The venue and accommodations will serve as faint backdrops to your memories. The flowers will wilt and decorations, tossed away. The entertainment will be a ringing in your ears the following morning. Your makeup will be washed away and the hair slept on. Your wedding dress will remain, but there will never again be a practical occasion to wear it (so donate your dress). Of all these unnecessary, impractical, and conspicuous expenses, the photo and video documents hold the most utility. Their value increases with time, having an inverse relationship to your recollection of the day.

When wedding photographers choose to acknowledge the question with detailed cost breakdowns, they put themselves and the profession as a whole at a disadvantage. Defending your rates in such a manner is an implicit acknowledgement that they are indeed unreasonably high and, worse, that your abilities don’t speak for themselves. Wedding photography is a luxury service and there is absolutely no imperative for you to provide customers with an audit. Such an analysis may also put you at a disadvantage with customers who question your margins (since those who do only care about the bottom line anyway) and your perfectly legitimate reasons can be misinterpreted as excuses.

I would like to make a proposal to my fellow wedding photographers: Stop justifying your fees using cost breakdowns. It cheapens your work. Treat wedding photography as the desired luxury service that it is, not the basic necessity that budget hunting couples wish it to be. Good wedding photography is a luxury service for a luxury occasion that commands luxury prices. As the saying goes, “You get what you pay for.”

http://blog.pavelkounine.com/the-unspoken-reason-why-wedding-photography-is-so-expensive/

Does anyone have any insight into the best system to market my video?

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing permanent new rules that would require media organizations to obtain a permit to film and shoot photographs in more than 100 million acres of the nation's wilderness.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FILMING_IN_WILDERNESS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-24-18-12-16

The US government is unbelievable ! Will US citizens ever wake up ?

• demonstration of product features using shooting live video
• illustration of products with animated video
• screen capture to show web interface usage

You will be working with our marketing people on the idea and implement it.

Requirements

• must have developed at least one type of videos listed above
• skills manage video collection at youtube, including editing, posting, organizing
• students and college grads prefered

ANY HELP OR ROUGH ESTIMATES IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!

https://www.youtube.com/yt/fanfinder/

You need to make sure your channel has a short video, less than two minutes and ideally under one minute, that is copyright free and suitable for an ad. Or make one as I did below, either using material you have or new material.

They then play this ad--like an unused billboard in a way. They also provide click through to allow ppl to subscribe to your channel.

I made a short one to test it it, and sure enough, lots of clicks and an increase in subscribers. Note that if you make your vid 59 seconds long, as I did, YouTube counts this as 1:01. Still way under two minutes, but if one minute is a threshold, factor that in. For two minutes, shave the two seconds off for sure.

If the copyright trolls flag your vid, you will have to clear it through the appeals process before using it for Fan Finder. Since that can take a month, or more, figure that in to your timeline.

For this vid, I just took three clips and added a logo. I'll post figures in a few months to show how well the vid does with the free ads, and see if different ads do better.

This guide explores various types of insurance policies working photographers should consider, plus offers insights from insurance experts to help photographers make the smartest decisions for their businesses. Protect Yourself: What Photographers Should Know About Insurance can be downloaded directly

http://www.photoshelter.com/doc/mkt/what-photographers-should-know-about-insurance.pdf

So here is the video, I would be very grateful if you guys could offer criticism and advice!

What I learned about my gear & stuff :

-A monopod would have been more practical than a tripod, I shoot too much handheld and had to stabilize in post.

-A fast 35mm or fast standard Zoom would have been very practical!

-Doing interviews is critical to shape the edit for this kind ok work. The client did not want interviews but that's something I'll try to push for next projects.

-Plan a finite number of revisions on the invoice, like 3 revisions, and make the next ones payable. This client was Ok but I feel like others could ask shit & endless modifications.

http://www.breakthroughphotography.org/3-essential-gallery-tactics-for-photographers/

I’ll be doing a little walkthrough of the steps involved in one of my typical productions, from pre-shoot to final product. Whether you’re an upcoming photographer or just a hobbyist, I hope it sheds some light on the behind-the-scenes and you will find it an interesting read

I should also mention that typically for major clients, there is usually a large team of people working on a campaign. In those instances an executive producer will handle everything related to preparing the shoot, and thus often, all that’s needed of the photographer is to prepare his treatment (more on that in a bit), show up, and shoot.

However, it’s becoming increasingly popular these days for the photographer to quote and execute the full-scale production of the photoshoot themselves. This post will cover a project’s process on this scale.

1. How It Begins – Quotation Request
   It begins with a quotation request from the client or advertising agency, for the sake of consistency I’m going to use the agency as contact point in this post.
2. The Next Step – Photographer’s Treatment
   This happens two ways, sometimes it’s requested during the job bid, sometimes it’s part of pre-production after you’ve been confirmed.
3. Casting
   When the model agencies send you quotations for the job, they would often have attached packages of their available models already. From there you can shortlist the faces you like and arrange for a casting, don’t be afraid to request for more options if you don’t see anyone that fits the look and feel you’re going for.
4. Your Team
   This one is relatively straightforward. You should already have a few regulars you love working with, whether from doing editorials or test shoots.
5. Risks and Backups
   Almost every shoot will have a small chance of something going wrong, be it camera failure, last minute cancellations, models falling sick, or the studio becoming unavailable. Always make sure you have a backup, a second and third option on hand for someone you can call.
6. Pre-production Meetings
   You have finished your treatment presentation, casted and shortlisted the models, confirmed your call time, studio, hair and makeup team, and your stylist has prepared a list of options for wardrobe. You sit down at the meeting with the creative team and client to go over details for your ideas and shooting schedules.
7. Equipment Rentals & Final Checks
8. Pre-light
   Once all that’s s set, the last thing is light test.
9. Shoot Day
   This is where you just do your thing — be confident, you’re thoroughly prepared and ready.
10. Post Production
    Naturally, how much work there is to be done here depends on the complexity of the visual. Just let your retoucher do their thing.

http://www.profoto.com/blog/instruction/zhang-jingna-walks-us-through-a-commercial-photo-shoot-from-request-to-postproduction/

I have a question regarding pricing for videography work.

I work at a nonprofit childrens home that is 100 years old and recently a faculty member at a neighboring college wrote a play about the story of the college and the childrens home which were both founded by the same man around the beginning of the 20th century.

The play runs for about 45 minutes and is relatively static as far as what would be needed to film it. Well, earlier this year a local man claiming to run a video production company approached someone else at my company about filming the play for us and producing some DVD's for us to be able to share with visitors, donors, board members, etc.

He was kind of secretive about his work and never gave us a ballpark figure on what he was going to charge us for producing the DVD's of the play. There was no contract either stating that we had even agreed to pay him for this project, in fact he even seemed to avoid anyone who asked about final cost until he was done with the project.

Note that as the project was ongoing we were not able to see any preliminary footage or edits to have any sort of checks on the quality of the piece.

Now that the DVD's have been made he has sent us a bill. His pricing scheme worked out to an hourly fee for the actual filming, $250 per hour for on location filming. There were several hours of filming because of the separate narrator sort of shots throughout the piece. That's not a problem.

The problem is that he included a per unit cost related to the length of the finished(edited as delivered) product at $1000 per unit. In this case a unit being one(1) minute, which makes his cost for editing $43,000.

Does that seem as ridiculously high to anyone else as it does to me? Are there any of you guys that are a one man shop that would charge $50,000 for a pretty basic edit of locked off shots, no camera movement, for a 43 minute product?

I've looked at the rate information on the bureau of labor statistics website and can't find anything that would be this expensive even in the 90th percentile of pricing.

On top of all this, the project looks like it was shot on an old minidv handicam complete with fried blown out highlights and an overall lack of detail. The sound in the project is also terrible.

Let me know what you think.

-JPB

Most of the crowdfunding services have terms and target budget, like we need to collect $XXX until YY.ZZ.2014. I need a donation based approach. It's not a start-up, the film is almost finished. The authors just want to have a reference in the titles encouraging people to show their appreciation. No terms, no targets. Just a link to a service that will offer different payment methods.

Yeah I can hear the peanutgallery moan about copyrights and laws to protect us vulnerable artist, imho made to protect the banksters, not the artist. But what this really means... as well as making pirating impractical but not impossible because I simply switched the audio to spanish w/eng subs, which means everyone...i.e all of those non-english speaking countries, will be able to watch the material unhindered...is that no one will ever be able to copy their own collection, or archive material with this protection scheme . Now cinevia is only being rolled out on blurays. But you can be certain it will migrate to dvd's as well, and who knows, maybe audio cd's. No more copying your commercial discs ....ever !

I await hackers to disable the firmware on players.

The pitch document I prepared is attached.

I started doing expo's about 5 years ago and gave up after my first 4 - the response was abysmal and so I gave up. Last year I tried again and had a different result - the difference, a big stand (2.4mx2.3m), a big TV (55") and an amp & speakers to suit. The problem for me was getting lost in the crowd. Only 3 out of 10 weddings here have video so it's not something brides are looking for unless I hit them in the face with it - and I do.

I don't take orders on the day, I believe it's about exposure and I've certainly seen couples come to multiple expo's and their interest increases over time. I booked 5 weddings the day after 1 expo, don't usually do that well but I can certainly see the website traffic & the enquires peak after an expo.

I'll do most expo's in the area next year and after that I might sit back and be a bit more strategic in which ones I attend.

the field is certainly evolving, at the last expo I had a pole dancing exhibition right next to me and an intimate apparel & sex toy stand a bit further up. I was pretty funny to be talking to the brides and watching the guys trying not to look at the dancers next door.

thanks in advance for any assistance on this

Vimeo offering film makers presenting a movie in the Toronto International Film Festival $10,000 to debut their work on the site before anywhere else.

Those that accept the advance money will distribute their film on Vimeo for a period of 30 days — or however long it takes Vimeo to recoup its expenses (e.g. making $10,000 off that particular film). After that, Vimeo will split all future profits from the film 90/10 — with 90 percent of profits going to the film’s creator. And just like with others that set up a pay-per-view movie, the film’s creator wil be able to set the price of the film, enable which regions can watch it, and how long it will stay online.

Via http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/03/vimeo-offering-indie-film-makers-10k-to-distribute-their-movies-via-vimeo-first/

Start live streaming if you have 100+ subscribers: All channels in good standing with at least a hundred subscribers will be able to live stream, within the next few weeks. Check your Account Features page for an “Enable” button, and click it if you're interested

Choose your best thumbnail: Help your video stand out by using a custom thumbnail. Make sure you only upload images that are representative of what viewers will see, like prominent stills from the video.

Via: http://youtubecreator.blogspot.jp/2013/08/investing-in-you-more-tools-to-build.html

So my question is, to all those who somehow made it passed this terrible stepping stone and for all those who are in my position, what's a stupid graduate like myself supposed to do to break into the film making world? How are we supposed to avoid those mindless editor jobs from corporations that take video for granted?

I figure this can be a place where everyone can glean some very useful information on how to make themselves marketable as well as finding good job sites and other tools for either getting into videography or into the film industry.

Elements of which include:

• Corporate
• Event
• Commercial
• Educational
• Business
• Government
• Advertising
• Marketing
• Clients
• Networking
• Portfolio
• Revenue
• Expenses
• Margins
• Etc.?

And do not include:

• Film
• Cinema
• Short
• Feature
• Genre
• Story
• Web Series
• Viral
• Music Video
• Art
• Contest
• Screenplay
• Etc.?

The topic comes from my own selfish desire to tap the P-V collective knowledge as I pursue this goal. But I think a lot of us could benefit. We'll see.

http://douglashorn.com/wordpress/filmmaking/the-open-source-short-film-business-model

http://goodinaroom.com/blog/lie-most-frequently-told-in-hollywood

If you can’t get an in-person meeting at all. If your emails don’t get returned in one week. If your calls don’t get returned in two weeks. If your script has been passed along (to a star, director, or producer), and you haven’t heard back in a month.<

If you pitch to a decision-maker and they want to be in business with you, they will get in touch as soon as possible. If you haven’t heard back, the answer (almost always) is “No.”<

A) In other words, how can you share a secure downloadable video file for someone that will not be pirated and spread across the web? (I know it's near impossible to prevent a video from being pirated on the web, but isn't there a way to share it via a secure downloadable file?)

Also, if A) is possible... than can you create a file that will expire on a certain day as well? For instance, for people to use at screenings...

Thanks ahead for any response to this!

1) there can be no photography or videography during the service (this was stated in all caps!). 2) one photographer may stand at the back of the church and only photograph the entrance/exit of the service.

Does anyone have experience with negotiating more options with officiants? Should I ask him if I can keep a fixed camera rolling on a tripod in the back/balcony (or just do it)? Should I pretend to be a guest and just keep my GH2 silently rolling at chest level while watching the ceremony? Should I ask, or will anyone notice if I am there along with the photographer to film the entrance/exit of the service?

If I ask the officiant about these details, should I write a letter, go in person, call on the phone, ask the bride to ask?

Would appreciate any advice or past experiences.