Thanks for the Welcome

bbq wiz wrote on 2/25/2006, 2:37 PM
I too am thankful I jumped the P ship after all the years of being on it. I am working on a project for my son's HS wrestling team and last year I had so many software issues I spent probably 50 additional hours on workarounds to get it done in time.

This year I'll have just as many, probably even more hours but not because of software problems. Now its using the many great things you can do in Vegas when you use your imagination. 37 DVD's each having one of our wrestlers and the matches I videoed during the year. Then I'll have a highlight DVD with about 1 1/2 hour of content that will have 50 copies made for the wrestlers, wrestling manager, coaches and our programs sponsors. Learned many things along the way, but I don't believe I have the right work flow setup. If I was charging for all of this, how do you get compensated for over 150 hours of work, and this does not even include the hours at the matches sitting with my camera shooting video.

Once I get done with this project, I reach out to this group for ideas on how I can do this differently next year. I'm a volunteer Dad with a camera and 10 year hobby of cinematography. From kids baseball teams, to my daughter's dancing to my boys involvement in Scouting, I've had my camera poking in and telling a story. Just need to speed up making that story!! Thankfully my wife is very, very patient with this time consuming hobby.

BBQ Wiz

Comments

jrazz wrote on 2/25/2006, 2:49 PM
I was given some great pricing ideas here.

j razz
randy-stewart wrote on 2/25/2006, 3:09 PM
BBQ Wiz,

WoW! Now that's a dedicated hobbiest. Hat's off to you. I do similar stuff for work and schools only on a much smaller scale. I'm struggling with the same things, it's great doing these things but hey, there's got to be a way to get some compensation for the cost and efforts. Here's a couple of ideas I'm throwing around to help with the costs.

1. Go to the school and pitch your work as a fund raiser. Tell them you will shoot and produce the DVD's for them at no cost but they have to promise to sell at least 30-40 at $15.00 each. They can keep $5.00 and you get $10.00 for each copy sold. If they sell lots, give them $7.00 for every copy past 50. That will mean you have grossed $500 and they have netted $250 by then. Normally, once they catch on, every family has to have one. Bigger the school, the bigger the sales. The buyers are helping the school raise money and you are getting a little bit compensated for your efforts. Of course, if some of the families want personal work done, you can go from there. I'm testing this marketing methodology (using a video yearbook theme) here and so far, the one's I've talked with love it. No cost to the school. All they have to do is what they do best, sell things to raise money.

2. Another approach is to do a presentation with all of the players and parents attending (school gym or auditorium) and after the show, give disks to the player's families and allow them to make a donation. Give part of it to the school. Usually, they will want to give you something for your efforts anyway. If others want copies, take orders and charge a nominal fee. Of course, the school will have to agree with that and you will certainly give them a copy or two for their use.

Lots of possibilities. Hope this primes your imagination. For me, putting money in the mix lessens some of the joy I get when people like my stuff especially if I'm paid in advance. I feel more pressured about the job. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with charging for your work especially if it's your livelyhood. I gladly pay for others work. As a hobbiest, for me it's a little weird trying to put a price tag on my work (and some may say you get what you pay for). If you charge by the hour, few could/would want to pay what we all know should be charged for the work especially in the home/school market. So, I choose to go the mass market route and just charge for the DVD or just not charge at all (beyond expenses).

Good luck with your efforts. I'm sure you're bringing a lot of happiness to kids and families for years to come with your generosity. From what you've said, it's way past time to get a little back for your efforts. Hope this helps.

Randy
bbq wiz wrote on 2/25/2006, 11:07 PM
While my son is on the team, I don't plan to not charge the team. But if I was had my own business, I don't know one could ever make a reasonable return doing this.

Just recording the matches takes up the majority of a Saturday when multiple schools are present. I typically had 4-5 hours of tape to capture at the bigger events. I have 6 hard drives with just over a terrabyte of storage space (added 2-300M drives this year).

I have just 800 video clips on my hard drives of the wrestling matches. Just organizing the clips is almost overwhelming. I learn late how to use the media manager, and I went back and did a scrub through all of the clips, tagging them with the wrestlers names so I could pull all of the clips to make the 37 individual DVDs.. I had initially capture the clips by match, and used the wrestling tournament and then the wrestlers name for file name for the clips. But then found this would not allow me to bring up all of wrestlers clip as my naming convention was not perfectly executed.

I've spent around 75 hours just in being at the tournaments and then capturing the files. I saw in one of the links charging $45/hour-thats over $3K and there has not been any editing, burning of DVD, make labels for the cases, etc

So even if one got $300, lets say from a booster club, I don't see how you could ever recover the cost of doing this to have a small business on the side (which I thought about from time to time).

But, I could never of even considered doing the individual DVD's using my old software package. Just could not of even kept track of all of the clips to make a compilation. Last year I did just the highlight tape and spent close to 150 hours, 50 of it in workaround issues the software created.

This year I'm using composite layers to create short segments that have a few wrestlers that were taped in front of a green screen, doing an Arnold Schrwatzeneger-like scene in Terminator 2 when he travels through time, and rises from a crouch position to a standing position. I have masked them out (my green screen didn't work too well as I did not light it correctly) and our on a planet with dark clouds in sky, and lighting strikes constantly coming from the sky. A fireball enteres the scene and then head shots of our wreslters appear. It then goes to short clip of a few wrestlers, the video modified to an old video filter with the sound of Led Zeppelin "Rock and Roll" in the background.

I am a glutten for punishment, but this one of about 7 "themes" that make up the highlight tape. Being knew to compositing, I've about 10 hours into this clip with it still not complete. Between reading a book, and then reviewing DVD's on Vegas I purchased to understand how to unlock the power that is in Vegas.

Time to get back to work. Have 2 more weeks before the banquet and will need every spare moment to wrap this up.

BBQ Wiz