A huge thanks to @radekzawadzki for all the on set photos in this and @kacperwozniak58 for all the BTS footage and the gang @triostories for having me on 🎥
Thank you for putting this together. Bringing the shrinking budgets and underpaid workers to the center of attention is an important thing to do. And we all should keep pointing that out. Even when taking the job - communicate what your time would have actually been worth and list the discounts on your invoices every time.
Good stuff as always mate. Good points about creatives being taken advantage of. Everything on that shoot screams Underpaid and overworked!...but I understand they were doing what they had to do to win the bid.
Another great video thanks Scott! Just an idea for a video, there are SO many videos on YT atm explaining how to write treatments, but no one explaining how you get to the stage where you're invited to submit them in the first place ? I would personally really like that.
Very useful video. All lot of the issues you ran into seem all too familiar, many of us have been there.The end product looked great and I very much enjoyed your setting boundaries and realizing that having a life outside of production is so very important. We're all asked to do a lot more with a lot less today than we were were a decade ago, that's just the way of the world. I recently produced and shot a product training live broadcast for a big car manufacturer and it was similar parameters. The agency didn't ask the manufacturer for enough budget and we do these broadcasts quarterly so the agency knew going in that we wouldn't have the budget to have the right amount of crew and resources. So you have to either work under under budgeted circumstances or not take the work.
Such a refreshing honest video about the really key aspects of production. Thank you! Know this all too well. Currently navigating a project where I have half of the editing done, but my payed hours are out. Great reminder to be stubborn about this. 👊🏼💥
Thank you always for the amazing information! I can't wait for your next video. Do you ever plan to make a video on working with colorists, or maybe a run-through on a project with a colorist you work with?
Wow! This was an absolute golden nugget of a video. We just barely figured this out in our work. There’s a lot of things that you say yes to when you’re trying to climb the ladder, but I feel that we’re finally at a place where we can say “no, that’s unacceptable.” I completely identify with everything you’re saying in this video. Great job!
A proper zoom lens will actually matter once you start scaling the budget - with a proper cine zoom there's almost always 2 ac crew handling, thus making things more streamlined and being able to hit certain marks or adjust your zoom range hard stops - all saves time on set. Like literally, if your talent is 10x the rental and crew, then renting proper gear and more crew totally makes sense, while on a low budget shoot renting proper cams and lenses will definitely lag you back, because it's one more thing to handle on set, things will become heavier and working alone or in insufficient crew with all that is a big hassle. Basically, it always should be like > 1 goal = 1 person. Overall in the recent production in here - locations and art dept usually take a big chunk of the budget, often more than the whole grip & lighting package and the whole lighting crew price per day (without extra hours accounted), sometimes one can even add camera and lenses rental and crew to this. It takes a hard toll on health and lots of jobs to start actually acknowledging why certain projects can't be done in a certain budget, or at least shouldn't be done so.
1 goal = 1 person is increasingly becoming more and more of a dream of the past in what I’m seeing and experiencing. In a year of much of the industry working very little I’m sure one of the main reasons I’ve continued to have constant work is because I’ve played more than 1 role on jobs.
@@ScottPetersFilms it just doesn't work so. I mean - one can certainly do several different positions on one gig, but this will always come at sacrifice. Being a human being, we can physically do one thing at a time, meaning while you're DP'ing - you're setting up the shot, doing calculations on where to place the actor, camera, lights etc, but if you're also an AC - you also do a lot of different things like thinking where to charge batteries, place the gear, handling tripods etc - and often times we underestimate how much time it can eat from your main position of a DP (for example). Sure, it can be done to some extent, but there's a certain threshold when doing so becomes ineffective and actually will hit the production budget way more than hiring more people (as you know - time vs budget is the main constrain). I don't say that one should never do so, but what I mean is actually there's a thin balance when doing so may hit hard, resulting in an inferior product quality, blown budget (time time time), and lost money/health etc. Our job is by no means an easy one, and my rule of thumb is - if someone of the people I know (not working in the industry) can earn the same amount of money doing less - then this project is underpaid and I should not take it. Sometimes saying no will actually make more profit than saying yes to a project.
I was a video editor in the ‘90s and 2000s with my own NLE system and the de rigueur tape decks. Seeing how little was charged here for the edit made me die inside a little. But then, my computer system alone was $30k.
I went for a job interview at a Soho post house in 2008 and remember hearing how much the top editors were earning even then… and it feels like a dream compared to the kind of money that is available now. Technological advancements couple with accessibility is a blessing and a curse.
Wow, that was a hectic project for sure! Unfortunately, now that the clients are choosing between doing a full-fledged production VS hiring a college freshman with an FX3 or iPhone 16 Pro who'd be happy to do all that one-man-band for 1/10th of that budget VS generating some wacky AI content, I feel like it's only going to go downhill from here. Personally, geographic filmmaking market I'm in is way smaller than that in either UK or Poland. As a DP I've felt a huge decline in both amount and quality of commercial gigs this year. I've even ordered a DJI Focus Pro lidar system, because I feel like next year there's gonna be plenty of projects I'd have to do with little to no crew to get by and cover the ever rising cost of living.
Hey Scott. Class vid as per. Just waiting on a dud from you but don’t think it’ll ever happen tbh! Your points about not getting paid for coming up with the creative really resonated with me and our small production company! Quick boring gear question. I see you were (I think?!) using the Sirui SQ75+VHS10 Carbon Fibre Tripod. We are at the stage of wanting (needing) a new tripod for our A-cam (happy to keep using our £130 Cayer BV30L tripods for B and C cams for now) but can’t really afford to go down the Sachtler route sadly (apart from renting one on bigger shoots). How did you find that tripod head and legs? Would you recommend it? Care to elaborate on “not sh*t”, please?!
Thanks Calum - as far as “cheaper” tripods go I rated this one, decent head and nice little led light for the level, only complaints is the clasps are metal and curve out for some reason so can be quite sore on the hands if you catch them wrong. For the price I think it’s a good’un. I don’t honestly think a great tripod exists, and to get even close to a good tripod and head is silly money.
What do you think is the best way to get onto a set and start working with professionals? Just reach out and offer to help for free and network from there?
It's a good way to start if you can afford to work for free yes, networking for sure, I would also strongly advise you make your own stuff and show it to anyone that will watch, you'll get better and find people more likely to want to collaborate with you when you can show you've done things.
@ makes sense. Thank you for the advice. Your approach of only doing the work you’re payed for is really needed in this industry. As you said. I think client don’t understand the scope of what they are asking for and if you just communicate it well, they are much more willing to give in to get the results they are after. Really enjoy your channel. Keep it up and thanks again👍🏻
It just really comes down to the terrible advice "GO ABOVE AND BEYOND." People take it too literally. We are running a business, you get what you pay for, if you do budget cuts, you get less, simple. Spec projects are the ones where you go above and beyond for yourself without creative restraint or feedback you don't agree with. Just my two cents.
A fair comment for sure! It’s only now later in my career that I’m starting to push back though, I’ve found any progression to better work at all super hard without going above and beyond to prove I can do it.
If you want we can do a breakdown of the costs of production over on our channel. It sounds like a lot, it really does, but it disappears so quickly! Also it was social content, so definitely not worth the money to hire a cinema camera. A7SIII did the job perfectly.
It starts adding up pretty quickly once you go from hybrid mirrorless to cinema camera route. Suddenly you need a focus puller, wireless follow focus, zero delay transmission system, additional monitor for an AC, cinema zoom lens, way bigger tripod, proper L-bracket to mount all that vertically, lots of V-mount batteries etc etc.
@@DastanZhumagulov Totally disagree. You can use af lenses with Canon system. Picture quality, color reproduction, dynamic range and craw flexibility is a night/day. A7SIII was also cost to the budget, so i just ask why mirrorless and why not cine cam ?
Well done on: - Message clarity - Balance of honesty and respect for Trio Stories Also, one of the hardest things for me is trying to make the "creative look worse" because of my level of care for my work. Therefore, I reduce other things, like meetings, rounds of revisions, and production days (without time stuffing). Have you made your creative look worse, Scott?
A huge thanks to @radekzawadzki for all the on set photos in this and @kacperwozniak58 for all the BTS footage and the gang @triostories for having me on 🎥
HUGE thanks to Scott for roasting us, respectfully
best youtube channel from this niche. thanks Scott for sharing all this.
agreed
My pleasure!
So brave of you and your collaborators to share the ins and outs like this. Thank you!
You’re most welcome 🙏
Scott Petere is like my go to channel in prep before a shoot. More please!
❤️ bunch more in the edit atm
We're saving this for a juicy, coffee watch tomorrow 👀 It was honestly a pleasure working with you and we can't wait to hear the roast 😅
Thank you for putting this together. Bringing the shrinking budgets and underpaid workers to the center of attention is an important thing to do. And we all should keep pointing that out. Even when taking the job - communicate what your time would have actually been worth and list the discounts on your invoices every time.
I’d love to see a side by side comparison for half of these jobs vs what they would have been to achieve the same thing 10-15 years ago!
This was super insightful, thank you so much Scott!
You’re most welcome 🙏
Off to watch 'Run All Night' Warner Bros. Pictures
Let us know if it’s actually any good… not seen it myself just wanted a police car doing a mad dash 👀
@ it’s a hidden gem
Fantastic video, great job!
Thanks Jesse 🙏
Merry Christmas Scott you are the best !
🙏🙏
Excellent
🙏
Great work Scott, no one is talking about this stuff as honestly as you do, thanks for sharing and well done to you all for pulling this off.
Thanks Ed! 🙏🙏
Valuable content. Thank you!
My pleasure!
Good stuff as always mate. Good points about creatives being taken advantage of. Everything on that shoot screams Underpaid and overworked!...but I understand they were doing what they had to do to win the bid.
It’s so often the case. I think those that aren’t now are becoming more and more the privileged few
Can you maybe make a storyboard of everything so we can scroll through it for 5 minutes? :D best customer request
😂😂
Such a good video 🎯
❤️❤️❤️
Another great video thanks Scott! Just an idea for a video, there are SO many videos on YT atm explaining how to write treatments, but no one explaining how you get to the stage where you're invited to submit them in the first place ? I would personally really like that.
Very useful video. All lot of the issues you ran into seem all too familiar, many of us have been there.The end product looked great and I very much enjoyed your setting boundaries and realizing that having a life outside of production is so very important. We're all asked to do a lot more with a lot less today than we were were a decade ago, that's just the way of the world.
I recently produced and shot a product training live broadcast for a big car manufacturer and it was similar parameters. The agency didn't ask the manufacturer for enough budget and we do these broadcasts quarterly so the agency knew going in that we wouldn't have the budget to have the right amount of crew and resources. So you have to either work under under budgeted circumstances or not take the work.
And then you wanna make good work… but not be taken advantage of… it’s a struggle I battle with far too often 🤷♂️
Such a refreshing honest video about the really key aspects of production. Thank you! Know this all too well. Currently navigating a project where I have half of the editing done, but my payed hours are out. Great reminder to be stubborn about this. 👊🏼💥
… and btw had Max burgers for lunch today 😅 so I’m not really complaining 😂
Glad it was helpful!
Jealous 🤤
Loved this video Scott, well done mate so insightful and thanks for sharing!
You’re most welcome 🙏
u a G Scott! keep it going brother, much love from another DP in Liverpool
Thanks! Will do!
Thank you always for the amazing information! I can't wait for your next video. Do you ever plan to make a video on working with colorists, or maybe a run-through on a project with a colorist you work with?
Absolutely! I have so many videos planned, that included… just time and resources to them around life and work 💀
Just had a Max burger in Copenhagen and boy oh boy do I know what you mean
You lucky person! 🤤
Wow! This was an absolute golden nugget of a video. We just barely figured this out in our work. There’s a lot of things that you say yes to when you’re trying to climb the ladder, but I feel that we’re finally at a place where we can say “no, that’s unacceptable.” I completely identify with everything you’re saying in this video. Great job!
Thanks Mike! Appreciate the appreciation 🙏
Fantastic stuff.
Glad you enjoyed it
A proper zoom lens will actually matter once you start scaling the budget - with a proper cine zoom there's almost always 2 ac crew handling, thus making things more streamlined and being able to hit certain marks or adjust your zoom range hard stops - all saves time on set. Like literally, if your talent is 10x the rental and crew, then renting proper gear and more crew totally makes sense, while on a low budget shoot renting proper cams and lenses will definitely lag you back, because it's one more thing to handle on set, things will become heavier and working alone or in insufficient crew with all that is a big hassle. Basically, it always should be like > 1 goal = 1 person. Overall in the recent production in here - locations and art dept usually take a big chunk of the budget, often more than the whole grip & lighting package and the whole lighting crew price per day (without extra hours accounted), sometimes one can even add camera and lenses rental and crew to this. It takes a hard toll on health and lots of jobs to start actually acknowledging why certain projects can't be done in a certain budget, or at least shouldn't be done so.
Overall the whole video was quite insightful and interesting to watch, thanks for sharing and taking your time to do so!
1 goal = 1 person is increasingly becoming more and more of a dream of the past in what I’m seeing and experiencing. In a year of much of the industry working very little I’m sure one of the main reasons I’ve continued to have constant work is because I’ve played more than 1 role on jobs.
@@ScottPetersFilms it just doesn't work so. I mean - one can certainly do several different positions on one gig, but this will always come at sacrifice. Being a human being, we can physically do one thing at a time, meaning while you're DP'ing - you're setting up the shot, doing calculations on where to place the actor, camera, lights etc, but if you're also an AC - you also do a lot of different things like thinking where to charge batteries, place the gear, handling tripods etc - and often times we underestimate how much time it can eat from your main position of a DP (for example). Sure, it can be done to some extent, but there's a certain threshold when doing so becomes ineffective and actually will hit the production budget way more than hiring more people (as you know - time vs budget is the main constrain). I don't say that one should never do so, but what I mean is actually there's a thin balance when doing so may hit hard, resulting in an inferior product quality, blown budget (time time time), and lost money/health etc. Our job is by no means an easy one, and my rule of thumb is - if someone of the people I know (not working in the industry) can earn the same amount of money doing less - then this project is underpaid and I should not take it. Sometimes saying no will actually make more profit than saying yes to a project.
I was a video editor in the ‘90s and 2000s with my own NLE system and the de rigueur tape decks. Seeing how little was charged here for the edit made me die inside a little. But then, my computer system alone was $30k.
I went for a job interview at a Soho post house in 2008 and remember hearing how much the top editors were earning even then… and it feels like a dream compared to the kind of money that is available now. Technological advancements couple with accessibility is a blessing and a curse.
Wow, that was a hectic project for sure! Unfortunately, now that the clients are choosing between doing a full-fledged production VS hiring a college freshman with an FX3 or iPhone 16 Pro who'd be happy to do all that one-man-band for 1/10th of that budget VS generating some wacky AI content, I feel like it's only going to go downhill from here.
Personally, geographic filmmaking market I'm in is way smaller than that in either UK or Poland. As a DP I've felt a huge decline in both amount and quality of commercial gigs this year. I've even ordered a DJI Focus Pro lidar system, because I feel like next year there's gonna be plenty of projects I'd have to do with little to no crew to get by and cover the ever rising cost of living.
This Lidar system interests me greatly too!
Oh man.... Editing in a foreign language 😂😢 what a ride!!
It really was 😂
Hey Scott. Class vid as per. Just waiting on a dud from you but don’t think it’ll ever happen tbh! Your points about not getting paid for coming up with the creative really resonated with me and our small production company!
Quick boring gear question. I see you were (I think?!) using the Sirui SQ75+VHS10 Carbon Fibre Tripod. We are at the stage of wanting (needing) a new tripod for our A-cam (happy to keep using our £130 Cayer BV30L tripods for B and C cams for now) but can’t really afford to go down the Sachtler route sadly (apart from renting one on bigger shoots). How did you find that tripod head and legs? Would you recommend it? Care to elaborate on “not sh*t”, please?!
Thanks Calum - as far as “cheaper” tripods go I rated this one, decent head and nice little led light for the level, only complaints is the clasps are metal and curve out for some reason so can be quite sore on the hands if you catch them wrong. For the price I think it’s a good’un. I don’t honestly think a great tripod exists, and to get even close to a good tripod and head is silly money.
@@ScottPetersFilms Yeah that all makes sense. Thanks so much for the info :)
What do you think is the best way to get onto a set and start working with professionals?
Just reach out and offer to help for free and network from there?
It's a good way to start if you can afford to work for free yes, networking for sure, I would also strongly advise you make your own stuff and show it to anyone that will watch, you'll get better and find people more likely to want to collaborate with you when you can show you've done things.
@ makes sense. Thank you for the advice. Your approach of only doing the work you’re payed for is really needed in this industry. As you said. I think client don’t understand the scope of what they are asking for and if you just communicate it well, they are much more willing to give in to get the results they are after.
Really enjoy your channel. Keep it up and thanks again👍🏻
It just really comes down to the terrible advice "GO ABOVE AND BEYOND." People take it too literally. We are running a business, you get what you pay for, if you do budget cuts, you get less, simple. Spec projects are the ones where you go above and beyond for yourself without creative restraint or feedback you don't agree with. Just my two cents.
A fair comment for sure! It’s only now later in my career that I’m starting to push back though, I’ve found any progression to better work at all super hard without going above and beyond to prove I can do it.
40k $ for a production and no budget for cinema camera (C70/R5C/Komodo) ? Really ? Renting at Warsaw it's a 70-80$ per day...
If you want we can do a breakdown of the costs of production over on our channel. It sounds like a lot, it really does, but it disappears so quickly! Also it was social content, so definitely not worth the money to hire a cinema camera. A7SIII did the job perfectly.
It starts adding up pretty quickly once you go from hybrid mirrorless to cinema camera route. Suddenly you need a focus puller, wireless follow focus, zero delay transmission system, additional monitor for an AC, cinema zoom lens, way bigger tripod, proper L-bracket to mount all that vertically, lots of V-mount batteries etc etc.
@@TRIOStories Sure, it can be intresting
@@DastanZhumagulov Totally disagree. You can use af lenses with Canon system. Picture quality, color reproduction, dynamic range and craw flexibility is a night/day. A7SIII was also cost to the budget, so i just ask why mirrorless and why not cine cam ?
@@paulosmoello3551 I should've clarified, talking particularly about Komodo & all other non-AF cinema cameras
Well done on:
- Message clarity
- Balance of honesty and respect for Trio Stories
Also, one of the hardest things for me is trying to make the "creative look worse" because of my level of care for my work.
Therefore, I reduce other things, like meetings, rounds of revisions, and production days (without time stuffing).
Have you made your creative look worse, Scott?