How many 'films/videos' do you 'publish' per year?

[kye]

To qualify as a 'film' it must be edited.  No live streams.  No single shots, unless that shot was planned in some way (Russian Ark, etc).

To qualify as 'published' it must be prepared and be made available to an audience.  This can be showing it to your family, or uploading to YT (even if no-one watches it..  spoiler, lots of YT videos never get a single view).

I ask this question because I was talking with a friend about wedding videographers, and how they are often shooting with 80Ds and C100s, but are getting better looking images than most of these 4K 6K 8K camera tests.  I offered the rationale that they're shooting 12-50+ weddings per year, and so get to learn the nuances of their cameras, how to light, how to get the best angles and how to pose people, and overall, how that must be a continuous crash course in film making, even if for them it's just in one genre.

Thoughts?

[kye]

Oh, and if your film-making took a hit because of COVID, just answer what it was before COVID happened, as that's where you would have been and reflects your involvement with film-making.

[rdouthit]

For my YouTube channel I produce 60+ a year. But when you add in client work, that easily goes up to about 200+ per year as we do promotional videos for some chains that have 300+ retail locations and each one gets a video. Of course our YouTube show is much more involved involving multiple shoots and locations for every video. I find when doing high-volume (it comes and goes based on client projects) there is very little time to stop and really think about what is being done, so growth can be limited simply doe to a lack of bandwidth. I've also done this for close to 20 years.

[MrSMW]

49 minutes ago, kye said:

I ask this question because I was talking with a friend about wedding videographers, and how they are often shooting with 80Ds and C100s, but are getting better looking images than most of these 4K 6K 8K camera tests.  I offered the rationale that they're shooting 12-50+ weddings per year, and so get to learn the nuances of their cameras, how to light, how to get the best angles and how to pose people, and overall, how that must be a continuous crash course in film making, even if for them it's just in one genre.

This.

Of course an even higher standard of technical perfection could be achieved, but practice practice practice makes ‘perfect’ over kit.

[IronFilm]

How do you define "you publish"??
Do you have to direct it? Do I have to produce it? Do I have to edit it?

As I do none of those. Thus my answer should be "zero"?!
And yet, I'm one of the busiest filmmakers there are here. 
However, I just stick almost exclusively to my roles in the sound department. 

[barefoot_dp]

Of course you're going to get better at something if you're actually out there doing it, rather than examining endless resolution/DR tests or arguing about film theory or which camera has better colours science online.

Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat.

That said, the jobs I learn the most from are the ones where I'm the 1AC. It's much easier/quicker/less painful to learn when there's someone better than you to learn from (of course this means checking your own ego in at the door).
 

[MrSMW]

46 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

It's much easier/quicker/less painful to learn when there's someone better than you to learn from

This is why in a way, this period of mostly inactivity has been good for me because despite very little practice being possible, I have been able to pull stuff from various YouTubers and websites I would probably otherwise have missed had I been busy with actual work.

Sometimes in fact, you can be too busy to develop so you are just rinsing and repeating bu not really moving forward.

Getting a balance is good.

[SteveV4D]

Learning skills can vary depending on if you're shooting more work or not.  The downtime has allowed me to learn new skills such as colour grading, but also shooting so many Weddings per year allowed me to quickly learn the ins and outs of shooting with a particular camera and general use of the editing software.  I picked up Resolve quite quickly 2 years ago, learning on the fly, because I had to.  When you have actual projects to direct your learning, it can focus my efforts more than if I were to just dip in for the sake of learning.

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, barefoot_dp said:

Of course you're going to get better at something if you're actually out there doing it, rather than examining endless resolution/DR tests or arguing about film theory or which camera has better colours science online.

Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat.

That said, the jobs I learn the most from are the ones where I'm the 1AC. It's much easier/quicker/less painful to learn when there's someone better than you to learn from (of course this means checking your own ego in at the door).

Agreed. Even when your HoD is clearly inferior to you, there are still opportunities to learn! You're better off than sitting at home. 

42 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Sometimes in fact, you can be too busy to develop so you are just rinsing and repeating but not really moving forward.

Yup, I feel this is especially a trap OMB-ers can full into. (after all, when you're going solo you're stretched to the max so you can't think of the big picture to improve beyond what you're doing right here and now to get it done)

[MrSMW]

I find that over my season, I am basically over-worked and in my off-season, under.

I do generate ideas all season long, but it's really only in the off season I can consider them properly and then plan how to execute them the next season.

End of 2019, I had some 'big' plans.

What 2020 season?

What 2021 season so far?

Very frustrating when your subjects instead have to be a slightly less than willing wife, a teenage daughter (need to say more?) and a couple of dogs that have poor acting skills.

It's why I am happy to be picking up a few smaller commercial marketing projects right now where I can test things ahead of the next (wedding) season, whenever it does manage to get going again.

 

[herein2020]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

This is why in a way, this period of mostly inactivity has been good for me because despite very little practice being possible, I have been able to pull stuff from various YouTubers and websites I would probably otherwise have missed had I been busy with actual work.

Sometimes in fact, you can be too busy to develop so you are just rinsing and repeating bu not really moving forward.

Getting a balance is good.

 

I couldn't agree more...I used this period to finally ditch Premier and truly embrace Resolve.....best decision I've made in a long time.  It also gave me time to properly build my kit for the S5 and transition from the GH5.....now I just need paying clients again and I'll be all set. If I could just get rid of Photoshop and Lightroom I'll have eliminated nearly all recurring costs.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, herein2020 said:

I couldn't agree more...I used this period to finally ditch Premier and truly embrace Resolve.....best decision I've made in a long time.  It also gave me time to properly build my kit for the S5 and transition from the GH5.....now I just need paying clients again and I'll be all set. If I could just get rid of Photoshop and Lightroom I'll have eliminated nearly all recurring costs.

I was meaning to at least move from Premiere to Resolve and ditch both it and Photoshop (which I never use), but keep LR as a standalone option.

But I forgot about my auto-renew sub and without warning, the payment went out last month.

I'm no fan of subscriptions as it is, but there should at least be a 7, then a 3 and then a final 1 day warning.

But nothing to do with this thread, so I'll wind my neck back in!

[EphraimP]

For the past two years, I had 20-25 videos I shot and edited (not films, really) posted to various social media platforms. And last year I edited another 30 short videos for social media with assets provided to me by others. This was as a part-time professional. This year I went full-time, so I should see an increase in volume of output.

I definitely have learned a ton from watching tutorials online and also agree that practice makes perfect, especially on the shooting side of things. Familiarity with gear is huge.

[herein2020]

3 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I was meaning to at least move from Premiere to Resolve and ditch both it and Photoshop (which I never use), but keep LR as a standalone option.

But I forgot about my auto-renew sub and without warning, the payment went out last month.

I'm no fan of subscriptions as it is, but there should at least be a 7, then a 3 and then a final 1 day warning.

But nothing to do with this thread, so I'll wind my neck back in!

 

That actually happened to me last year, but I simply cancelled immediately and contacted Adobe who refunded my money. Adobe also no longer lets you keep LR only, you have to pay for both LR and PS at a minimum the last time I checked. 

[kye]

Wow..  someone answered 360+ !

18 hours ago, rdouthit said:

For my YouTube channel I produce 60+ a year. But when you add in client work, that easily goes up to about 200+ per year as we do promotional videos for some chains that have 300+ retail locations and each one gets a video. Of course our YouTube show is much more involved involving multiple shoots and locations for every video. I find when doing high-volume (it comes and goes based on client projects) there is very little time to stop and really think about what is being done, so growth can be limited simply doe to a lack of bandwidth. I've also done this for close to 20 years.

You make a great point about the time to reflect at the end of a project.  

Just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if there were two kinds of learning from a project.  
The first is learning what happens when you decide to do something and it either doesn't go well or it goes surprisingly well.  If you stuff something up then you're going to notice in post, even if you're just going as fast as you can!
And the second one being opportunities for improvement and innovation on things that aren't going noticeably wrong or spectacularly right.  This is probably the one that requires the time for reflection.

18 hours ago, MrSMW said:

This.

Of course an even higher standard of technical perfection could be achieved, but practice practice practice makes ‘perfect’ over kit.

When I got started I used to think that people using phrases like "learning cameras" was about settings and once I learned the exposure triangle and things like composition etc I came to think of it as a really clumsy phrase.  Then I got to the point where I started reading about cinematographers doing explore attitude tests, and things like that to understand the sweet spot of the image etc, then I understood that each camera / sensor / codec has its own quirks that you have to learn to navigate to get the best image from the camera, and so the phrase made sense in a new way.

15 hours ago, IronFilm said:

How do you define "you publish"??
Do you have to direct it? Do I have to produce it? Do I have to edit it?

As I do none of those. Thus my answer should be "zero"?!
And yet, I'm one of the busiest filmmakers there are here. 
However, I just stick almost exclusively to my roles in the sound department. 

I was thinking your blogs might qualify you, as I think I recall one where you had an edit point in there!  

I guess the logic extends to your role in sound, although if you're not that involved with post-production then the feedback loop isn't as tactile as it is when you do post completely yourself.

5 hours ago, EphraimP said:

For the past two years, I had 20-25 videos I shot and edited (not films, really) posted to various social media platforms. And last year I edited another 30 short videos for social media with assets provided to me by others. This was as a part-time professional. This year I went full-time, so I should see an increase in volume of output.

I definitely have learned a ton from watching tutorials online and also agree that practice makes perfect, especially on the shooting side of things. Familiarity with gear is huge.

When I was writing the questions, I began to think of the people making short things for social, and if you were a creator like David Rock at Vayner Media, then I'd be cutting the poll short by not putting in options of 5-10 per day and 10-20 per day!

It's funny when you have some people making less than one feature film per year, and others making over 400 or even 1000 times as many pieces of finished content.

[EphraimP]

1 hour ago, kye said:

When I was writing the questions, I began to think of the people making short things for social, and if you were a creator like David Rock at Vayner Media, then I'd be cutting the poll short by not putting in options of 5-10 per day and 10-20 per day!

It's funny when you have some people making less than one feature film per year, and others making over 400 or even 1000 times as many pieces of finished content.

Yeah, people are putting out lots of types of content. In my estimate, I didn't include derivative pieces, like when I make a 3-5 minute piece for Facebook and then 1-minute or less versions of the same content for Instagram/Twitter, or even for paid ads on Facebook. I almost always do that, so one video becomes two or even three. Now one of the social media managers who I feed work to is talking about snipping it up for Tik Tok. 

And you cut out livestreaming, which is becoming more and more important. I did between 7 and 10 multi-cam livestreams in the past 12 months (can't think of them all right now) and they were definitely complicated and involved a serious learning curve on both the shooting and switching (editing) side. You really need to be able to make snap decisions and think on fly, plus know your gear well enough to nail everything the first time. Many of these shoots involved at least one other shoot, plus a sound engineer. I even ran the switcher for one livestream where we had remote camera crews in two states. And almost all them involved some level of preproduction; creating lower thirds, photo or video assets to switch into the stream, logo bugs. 

So, yeah, switching a good multi-cam livestream is a lot like editing a video, only harder. You can't just fix it in post 😉

[MrSMW]

4 hours ago, kye said:

Then I got to the point where I started reading about cinematographers doing explore attitude tests, and things like that to understand the sweet spot of the image etc, then I understood that each camera / sensor / codec has its own quirks that you have to learn to navigate to get the best image from the camera, and so the phrase made sense in a new way.

Which is exactly why most ‘reviews’ by folks unfamiliar with a brand, never mind the closest model within that brand, are often lacking. Or just complete BS.

[IronFilm]

7 hours ago, kye said:

Wow..  someone answered 360+ !

Not surprised, I know of a friend or two in the real estate business who'd at their peak would be pushing close to that in a year. 

7 hours ago, kye said:

I was thinking your blogs might qualify you, as I think I recall one where you had an edit point in there!  

Ha! I bolded the relevant points. 

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

I guess the logic extends to your role in sound, although if you're not that involved with post-production then the feedback loop isn't as tactile as it is when you do post completely yourself.

Sometimes I'm tempted to dabble in Sound Post. But it would be distraction from my main focus (are there any absolute top top tier drama sound mixers who are also equally top of their game in post audio too? Nope). Also, when would I find the time? Lately been doing 100hr+ weeks (when we're not in lockdown though... like we are currently. At least it ends tomorrow! yay). 

[barefoot_dp]

On 3/5/2021 at 10:56 PM, IronFilm said:

Even when your HoD is clearly inferior to you, there are still opportunities to learn!

Watching other people's mistakes is a great way to learn. Much better than making those same mistakes yourself.
 

[SteveV4D]

26 minutes ago, barefoot_dp said:

Watching other people's mistakes is a great way to learn. Much better than making those same mistakes yourself.
 

Watching others mistakes can be satisfying as to remind you that you're not alone in making them.  As a lesson to stop you making them, it can have limited value.  I've learnt from my mistakes and I learnt quicker that way, than hearing about them from others.