--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I realise there are people making money from commercial shows - and > some of you are being funded by people like Podtech to produce a > certain number of shows per month in a certain genre. Probably not > enough to pay the rent by itself, but it's great. > > For me, I just don't see the numbers stacking up for videoblogging as > a rent paying gig.
hehe Me neither. That's why I asked the question to begin with. :) > More than that, though - I don't want to poison it by making it What > I Do To Make Money. Let alone making it What I Do To Get Rich. I see what you mean by "poisoning it", however, there's the slim-to-none chance of someone paying you to do exactly what you WANT to do. Yes, I realize the odds are incredibly stacked against it, but I don't think your fun videos would be poisoned if someone offered to fund you to do them... assuming there weren't strings attached. If you didn't deliver what they wanted, they'd just stop funding you, and you'd just have some extra money, having done exactly what you wanted the whole time. Having said that, I think the 99% probability is that you're right and it would poison what you do to have fun. :) > To guarantee enough viewers, I'd have to abandon what I enjoy about > videoblogging and invent a commercial concept - a Show. And then > slave over selling that to as large an audience as possible. Yes, this is the problem. The difference between videos that you want to make and videos that people will pay you to make. Also, what the format is... production schedule... locations, etc. > And I don't want to be restricted to only making one type of film in > order to make money, because it'd mean I wouldn't have time or energy > to make films for fun, or be inspired to create different things. > I'd have to choose a subject that guaranteed the maximum number of > viewers and advertising income. Suddenly, it'd be like making > commercial television. I think that's what Jeffrey Taylor's point was about AFTRA. It IS making commercial television, just scaled down in most cases as far as equipment used. That's why in order to work on professionally-created videoblogs, people should be getting professionally PAID just the same as if they were working for a television studio. > The freedom and lack of worry about numbers, accountability and other > pressures is what I love about videoblogging. And equally, I love > the people I've found who feel more or less the same way. That > amazing atmosphere of creativity and connection for its own sake that > hit me at Pixelodeon. I've been realising that it's like being back > at university again - where we created and shared things together > because we wanted to. Yes. I watched that video where you were talking about that. So for you, this conversation doesn't work anyway, because bringing in money would bring other factors that poison the situation and make it business instead of fun for you. > Since university, I've watched all my friends and the people I used > to make shorts with come to London looking for jobs in things they > love - writing, TV, film, etc - and most of them succeeded. And that > was pretty much the end of any fun they had being creative. There > wasn't the time or the inclination to make things outside their job. > They just service their mortgages and make slick products for other > people. Great for them. But my idea of extreme boredom and > frustration. But that's just me. I don't like doing one thing for > long. Well... It depends how creative those people were in the first place. If I spend 10 hours cutting a show, and I know I'm going to do another 10 hours the next day, THE LAST thing I want to do in between that time is edit more stuff, personal or otherwise. However, if making a video is my form of self-expression, I may very well go ahead and take that extra time to put out an episode or three. "Success" in the TV or film industry isn't necessarily what it's cracked up to be when you get 'typecast' or land in a studio where you cut the same thing over and over and over and over and over. I can't imagine how bored the editors of dateline have to be, stretching a 15-minute piece into either an hour-long or TWO-HOUR LONG show by using maybe 20 stills and 5 video clips and rotating and zooming them differently to make it look like they actually have footage. YAWN. I wouldn't be able to do that for more than a week. > Now, for rent and food money, I use my skills to make one-off little > corporate films and websites for individuals and small businesses. > And in my own time I take out my phone camera and muck about with it > and put stuff online. I don't make much money - just about enough to > get by - but there's a clear enough line between those things that > videoblogging is still just 100% fun. You're not alone in that. A lot of companies call themselves independent filmmakers, when really, they're corporate video shops. Their bread and butter is doing corporate video, because that's what people will pay them to do. Meanwhile, they have one film that they've been shooting for five years already, with no end in sight. When you meet them, they talk about their film as if it's their main thing when it's really nothing at all until they A) get it in the can, and B) get the funds to get it edited properly into a finished product. -- billcammack > And I can stop making films with my phone tomorrow if I want without > any worry and, I don't know, spend a while making things on Super 8 - > or doing a small series of short stories. Whatever. I can > experiment without risk and enough people will watch and connect to > make it worthwhile. For me. But again, that's just me. > > Rupert > http://twittervlog.tv >
