So much goodness in the last few days, I hardly have the bladder to contain it all.
So, first off, I went to my first viewing of Livewire Radio. It’s the best thing ever. I filmed a their Give!Guide promo videos this last season, and as pay I get to see some shows. They are amazing. AMAZING! You should go out and see them. See all of them. When time travel is developed, the best use of it should be to go back and watch all their shows.
I wanted to put a major plug in here for the upcoming comicbook and pulp culture convention that is happening in Portland on May 14th and 15th. Wonder Northwest is the premiere comic book and pop culture expo featuring all the best things about all that stuff under one room with coolness added in. Dark Horse comics and Things From Another World are part of an ever growing list of people, such as Tim Seeley (HACK/SLASH), Paul Guinan (Boilerplate), Anina Bennett (Heartbreakers), as well as Kaijucast, Cort & Fatboy, PDX Yar, The Alter Ego Society, and the ever popular Billy Galaxy. It’s star studded. It’s spectacle. It has it all. To top it all off, The Last Stand will have it’s world debut on DVD.
As far as freaking out over art, I am just gushing over this. Mike Dringenberg is one of the original artists that worked on Sandman with Neil Gaiman. He was the inker, then became the penciler, and helped to create the beloved character Death. He was at Stumptown comicbook show this weekend, and I met him. He drew me a beautiful original Sandman while we talked over coffee, solved the worlds problems, and discussed gear head topics in road biking. I was in awe!
OK, next post is about work, I promise.
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I totally forgot. I have another new video that I need to put up here. This is the long version for NECA/IBEW, with a short version playing on their website and newsletter. Enjoy.
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Anyone out there who has done freelance work or works as a project manager probably has come across some issues with clients not paying you for your work.
We went in another direction.
We decided not to use the items.
We have brought in a new designer with a different vision.
We can’t pay you because our clients haven’t paid us.
F*ck you. Pay me. I have had far too many issues in this category. Most were my fault for one essential reason: I didn’t have a contract in place to protect me. I have learned this too many times, and I am amazed at how easily it is to get involved with another client and not have a contract on the table. It astounds me. No matter what the project is – whether I am freelancing as a camera guy or signed on to edit a feature film – there has to be guidelines. If I enter into something and I haven’t laid out the boundaries, that means I can’t cry foul if by unknown boundaries are crossed.
No matter how much “art” I want to place on myself or my work, what I do is ultimately business. In business, you set up guidelines for working, guidelines for accomplishments, and guidelines for payments. If you don’t set up these guides in the beginning, it becomes a game of Who Has The Bigger Steamroller. Usually the person with the money that didn’t pay you has that bigger steamroller in one of two fashions: a lawyer or time. You will either be intimidated by the legal side of things and have it cost you more to try to recover your lost pay, or they wait you out…and you go away.
I have had too many of these. Some I had my ass covered by a contract, but even then I didn’t get anything back. However, it is good to have this in place because of one specific reason. You see, the projects that were covered by contracts where so small in pay that it wasn’t worth it to go after these folks. I wasn’t going to work with any aspect of them anyway because they were dishonorable dicks. I could let it go because the price was enough for me to have learned a lesson, so that when the big projects come in, the twenty or thirty thousand dollar projects, I will be ready to have a contract submitted that will cover my ass and assure both me and the client that the best work possible will be done on time and on budget.
For your viewing pleasure, I give you Mike Monteiro of Mule Design Studios talking about this subject:
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Hello fellow film fanatics, filming types, movie lovers, and gun dealers. That’s right, I cater to all sorts now. As I wrote about in an earlier post, I now rent out guns from the Command Center here at GSP Headquarters. Right now, I have a decent little cache of fake fire arms. Most of them couldn’t pass detailed scrutiny, but they are one-to-one scale and have some moving parts to them. The best are the M-16s and the Glocks; those things are sweeeeet! So far, I have had some good little rental deals, but the sweetest one was for Studio Sundell. Carlin Sundell is a photographer and owner, and his group recently did “To Live and Die in Shanghai.” Here is what Studio Sundell has to say about who they are:
Carlin Sundell is the founder and creator of Studio Sundell: a group of creatives that construct exquisite and compelling imagery for fashion, advertising, and editorial clients, with old-school professionalism and high-spirited elegance.
That’s a cool way to describe who they are, but as words are only words, what they put out speaks for what they can do as much as them telling you. Behold, my guns used in their short, non-dialog video “To Live and Die in Shanghai.”
To the other side of that is a recent talking heads video I did for The Art Cubby. These folks are fantastic, and I really want them to succeed. So I agree to shoot a promo video to showcase who they are, what they do, and how it effects kids. The end result is a dandy little piece that highlight Brooke Facteau and her wonderful brainchild. I think they say it best about who they are and what they do:
The Art Cubby is a unique, drop-in child care program focused on introducing children to the world of creative artistic expression. Accepting children 2 – 12 years old, our staff works with each child’s individual skill level to ensure proper growth that is developmentally appropriate.
Brooke and her crew are fantastic, and I really want to see all of you dump your kids off at her place. That may not sound totally right, but it’s still a great plan. Here is the little video for Brooke and crew at The Art Cubby:
The Art Cubby from Galaxy Sailor on Vimeo.
I am really happy about both of these projects coming out at the same time, as well as a video I did for The Dairy Council of Oregon. This particular video is due to have excerpts play at the new Jeld-Wen Park, home of the Portland Timbers, on the big jumbotron. I’m pretty excited this is happening, and a nice little dose of reality that I am doing this for real, even if it all isn’t going as fast as I like. This is a daily struggle that I have, and can leave that for either another post or my therapist.
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I find it interesting that I have chosen two “industries” in Oregon to be placed on budgetary chopping blocks. I used to be an Oregon middle school science teacher. When the cuts came, I lost my job, being in my second year of teaching, in my late 30′s, and spend $40k of my own dollars to get a masters degree. I was over worked, under paid, and susceptible to getting the ax despite years of hard work, a masters, and an eduction system that is begging for people who would remain diligent and stay in the fight. When my job was gone, I turned to the one thing that I had been doing on the side, and decided, in my late 30′s, to follow my passion.
In the last three years, I have gone from losing my educator job to building a small production company from nothing more then me, a camera, and a computer. Creating commercial and non-commercial film/video work is one of the greatest jobs I have ever had. Now it seems, that is on the chopping block, because someone thinks it is an elitist game. I’m here to tell you It’s Not!
I took a $10k a year pay cut to become a teacher. I took a $15k pay cut from there to start my own business. I have done free work; lots of free work/ More than I should have. I have scrapped by on nothing just so I could keep my camera running. I have had people work for me for nothing all the way to pennies on the dollar just to see the project through.
We are not rich at all.
Do rich folks benefit from the tax incentives that we have? Of course they do…that is one part of the system. There are rich people, poor people, middle income people all participating in this. There are all levels. The arguments are always swinging back and forth, though, depending on someones re-election position. Awhile back we were told that people making over a certain amount should have their taxes cut so they could trickle down the benefits. The same people are cutting part of the budget with incentives claiming that those same tax payers are benefiting, when really the people benefiting are the middle and lower. That money hires people, buys food, rents cars and motels. It gets make up people and stunt people. It hires camera people. It hires editors. It hires talent. That money comes right back at us. None of us are getting rich, but we are making our rent payments, and entertaining you while we do it.
The film industry is an industry. It takes investments to make it work. To invest, you have to have something to come forward with that puts you in the game. None of us can go to Wall Street and say “I want $5million worth of investments, but I only have $20.” The same goes with ALL investments. You have to put in before you can get anything out. You want multi-million dollar projects, you have to start with that. Only millionaires have millions to spend. They have the capitol and the collateral.
Things don’t happen for free, or over night. To invest in Oregon’s future, you have to put something forward in order to secure that future. All too often, I believe that Oregonians want all the goodies and all the great aspects of a blossomed economy without the hard work and hard choices that come with looking toward the future.