Category: The Business of Production

Categories
Business & Marketing Item of Interest Monetizing The Business of Production

All My Children a killer app?

All My Children a killer app? http://tinyurl.com/3ue2fmr

You may have heard the announcement that All My Children and One Life to Live (cancelled ABC Soap Operas) are heading to Internet distribution. (In this context “app” means use not literally a software application). He runs the numbers on whether or not this could work financially – something I’m always interested in.

Fifty million dollars is $192,000 per episode or $4,370 per finished minute based on 44 minute shows. That’s a lot of money but a lot less than primetime TV budgets. It’s also the absolute most any soap has ever cost with most costing less. Certainly there are some savings to be found in there. Let’s claim a 20 percent labor savings from moving to the Internet, bringing per minute costs down to $3,496.

Actually, there are plenty of additional savings. Some savings will come from lower labor costs as actors accept smaller paychecks as an alternative to retirement or unemployment. But an even greater savings will come from any Internet soap’s ability to offer online every episode ever broadcast — the long tail — at an effective production cost of $0 per hour.

If a third of Internet viewers are watching old episodes that drops the effective cost of new episodes by a third, so we are down to $2,342 per finished minute.

With sponsorship he brings it down to around $2,000 a finished minute and then compares it with the (rumored/reported) budgets for YouTube’s future professional channels.

According toVariety, YouTube will shortly bring some professional channels to its service with budgets of $1000-$3000 per finished minute.

My biggest concern about this particular example – not about the trend to Internet delivery and alternate funding in general – is that the target market for the Soaps may not be technically savvy enough to pick up and continue on the Internet.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps The Business of Production

Who are Apple’s Final Cut Pro X customers?

When you’re designing software you always have a “use case” or typical user in mind. For our Assisted Editing software I can pretty much name every person we had in mind when creating it. First Cuts was definitely made for me. Transcriptize was an idea from Larry Jordan and was made for him. Sequence Clip Reporter‘s inspiration was from my friend Les Perkins.

So, when I had the opportunity to ask Apple who their typical user is, I had hoped for something more specific than “the vast majority of their current Final Cut Pro users”. Without knowing the demographics of their current user base, we have no idea how to work out who exactly is buying Final Cut Pro X, or who ‘should’ be buying it.

It’s hard to point fingers at who the “2 million installs” equates to, or even the year-earlier “1.4 million unique paying customers” (and there are likely a couple more installs that didn’t pay).

Continue reading “Who are Apple’s Final Cut Pro X customers?”

Categories
Interesting Technology Item of Interest The Business of Production The Technology of Production

Lighting bill plumets using EPIC

Lighting bill plumets using EPIC. http://tinyurl.com/3rqz73q. Post on Reduser parallels my thinking from March http://tinyurl.com/6kfogsy

From the forum post:

We are working on a few quotations out of the US, Europe and Asia at the moment and we often go back to older jobs for reference.

One thing that dawned on us the other day was how our lighting (gaffa) quotations have plummeted over the last 12 months. We still hire Gaffas but really.. hardly any gear comes out any more. Well only a small percentage of what we did use. 
The latitude and range of the chips these days are so bloody good in hi contrast situations and low light situations that large lamp fill is almost non existent anymore. In Shots were I’d throw up an 18k without even thinking twice to fill a shot under a tree through a 20×20 trace… gone. Generator gone, best boy gone… time delays waiting to set it all up also gone… Trucks have turned to Vans, Hmi’s turned to small LED panels or bounce boards…

Categories
Item of Interest Monetizing The Business of Production

How Do You Measure the Value of a Branded Web Series

How Do You Measure the Value of a Branded Web Series? http://tinyurl.com/6lcxj6e

As regular readers will know, I’m a big fan of branded media. Like soap operas of days gone by, branded media is a single sponsorship of music, film or web video projects. Of course, one of the problems with any media investment by a brand – be it with branded media or advertising – is measuring the effectiveness.

Wilson Cleveland of CJP Digital who has made a name for himself as a producer of branded content has a formula for assessing monetary value of the media to the brand:

And in working with brands, he’s created a formula by which the actual monetary value of a branded web series can be measured for the brand. “We’re in a position to calculate a different kind of ROI than ad plays and impressions,” Cleveland said via phone. The basic purpose is to evaluate things from an earned media perspective.

Branded media is at least only giving us one brand message, and one presumes it’s done in a way that is at least sympathetic to the media’s content.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps The Business of Production

What the heck is a “pro” anyway?

Yes, this is probably going to be a rant. I’m just about over hearing that Final Cut Pro X is “not for pros”, as if that had some useful meaning.

Guess what folks, that’s a totally meaningless sentence and anyone who says it is… Well, let’s just say I don’t have a high opinion of their thinking processes.

Continue reading “What the heck is a “pro” anyway?”

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Why Every Brand Should Hire a Professional Video Producer.

Why Every Brand Should Hire a Professional Video Producer http://tinyurl.com/6kjxthb

In summary: the professionalism expressed in the quality of production has a direct bearing on how well the brand will be received:

Bruce Alfred, Principal of Cobblestone Inc., is asked over and over, how important is it to create high quality video? Can I just use my consumer HD camera to make something and put it up on my business website? As professional video producer and web video consultant, Alfred’s answered that question many times and his answer is no, that’s not the best idea.

Alfred says,

“When you’re putting your own video on your site you want it to increase and raise your image. You don’t want it to join the YouTube, user-generated, quickly shot and thrown up on the web type of video because there’s so much of that. You want to rise above the noise. So, in short, make sure that you hire a video producer or a video production company that knows how to tell stories, that knows how to connect with any audience, that can learn your goals quickly and be able to interpret those goals into a message that calls people to the action that you need.”

Note that he doesn’t talk about how “professionals” have a certain level of equipment, but rather hire “a company that knows how to tell stories”.

Mind you, a little creepy with the author of the piece quoting himself in the third person, but that doesn’t mean what he’s saying isn’t accurate!

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production The Technology of Production

Is cloud editing the future of Post Production?

Is cloud editing the future of editing? http://tinyurl.com/3mpfqq5

Is the cloud the future of editing: with a facility cloud or a remote cloud? How will the tape shortage change delivery into the cloud? How does cloud editing work? Will the cloud be suitable for archive? Will the cloud be suitable for archive? Will the cloud lead to outsourcing?

(Recorded before Apple’s NAB Final Cut Pro X preview was announced to be at the Supermeet.)

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better?

How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better? http://tinyurl.com/4qtk6cb

I’ve been sitting on this article for a while, waiting for a gap in the Final Cut Pro X “noise” to post it.

Yes, it is true that we’ve just had one of the best years for documentary ever. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t also more negative issues for the mode than ever before. The thing is, there are so many kinds of non-fiction films and so many kinds of doc enthusiasts that we all have very different answers for the following question: what one thing could change for the better for documentaries?

Continue reading “How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better?”

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers)

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers…) http://tinyurl.com/3knt8xf

I have been a long time proponent of branded media because I find branded content to be much less intrusive than advertising. Branded media integrates with the program, hopefully in a relevant way, while advertising intrudes on a program with something likely to be irrelevant to me and my interests.

So I think this is yet another step along the way toward replacing intrusive advertising to models that are less viewer antagonistic.

Gone are the days of artists hoping and praying for that major studio deal  — which later they learn isn’t really that major. Instead they can take a paycheck from a brand and get pretty much the same thing as what they would get from your typical 360 deal offering.

But it’s not only music that is benefiting from having a brand as its studio.

Brands are positioning themselves as the new labels, no doubt, but they are also evolving into the content creators. There is, naturally, criticism of branded entertainment – it is necessarily the opposite of arms-length, unbiased reporting – but as the digital landscape has changed media integration, it has also increased consumer tolerance for brands looking for new ways to market. And if you want high quality content — whether that is music or print or video — someone needs to pay.  So, brands are stepping up as the new content publishers.

More changes coming of course…

At the March 2011 Shorty Awards, Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley pointed out that he saw an ad on TV encouraging people to discover the song in the Old Navy ad using Shazam. The call-to-action is then obvious: Purchase on iTunes.  Old Navy, Apple, a digital startup and an emerging artist all working together as one? That’s some epic progress – over some pretty blurry lines.  Expect more of this going forward.

Add in the extra news that Capital One is producing content and it’s a whole new world.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 24: The Netflix Advantage

Episode 24: The Netflix Advantage http://tinyurl.com/3urdxts

Terence and Philip consider the changes to the financial dynamics caused by Netflix’s funding ofHouse of Cards. Is Netflix a new studio model?  Where’s the opportunity for innovation in programming if everything is data driven?

Philip’ NAB session on “Growing and Monetizing an Audience” is mentioned. If you want to go and haven’t yet registered register at http://bit.ly/NABSM08 to get the discount automatically, or at http://www.nabshow/register using the code SM08.