Black Chip Collective | Production Blog

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Production Blog

Aug 17 2018

Film vs Animation—What Type of Video Works Best for Your Brand?

If you are not using animated or film video marketing, you are likely losing leads and conversions. While video marketing is imperative to a successful marketing strategy, you must determine whether animation or film is best for your brand. Benefits of Video Marketing It is essential to utilize video marketing for a number of reasons. Today, the vast majority of consumers prefer to receive their marketing messages through short, entertaining videos. These videos, when produced properly, will increase brand awareness, define your company personality, skyrocket social media engagement, establish trust, improve...

Apr 11 2018

Fitting In to the Freelance Recruiting Process

Imagine a full production or post production team is a jigsaw puzzle. Your potential client is missing one piece. That could be you. IF you can make yourself fit the puzzle rather than expecting the puzzle to accommodate you. To understand how to achieve this, you'll need to make sense of a hiring manager's process. We spoke to some producers who walked us through what the hiring process looks like for them. The recruitment process almost always starts before any particular crew position opens up. "We’re not always actively hiring, but...

Feb 28 2018

The Experience to Be a Leader

Everybody wants to be the boss. Or rule the world, if you ask Tears for Fears. But how do you get there? And, more importantly, what experience prepares you for these top positions? TV/Studio Exec Traditional Career Path: Assistant > Junior Exec > VPHelpful Background:ProducerGreat managers understand the people they manage and the challenges they face. Execs often work with producers to develop and execute projects and they need to understand how they work, how they think, and how to set them up for success. Any Creative Production JobIt's no secret that nearly...

Jan 24 2018

Donald Trump is Still a Freelancer’s Worst Nightmare

Many estimates project that 50% of the working population in the US could be freelance by as early as 2020. Yet Washington, ever lagging behind the real world, has produced few allies for the considerably vulnerable contractor. Regardless of your personal politics, it's difficult to deny that at the helm of the forces working against America's freelancers is a familiar figure: Donald Trump. This might be somewhat surprising, given that even as tax professionals sort through the wreckage of the GOP tax bill it appears to be a boon for the...

Nov 29 2017

You Need a Freelance Contract and You Want These 6 Things in It

I'm not an attorney. I can't write your contract for you. And if I was an attorney I probably still wouldn't, because that sounds painfully dull. But I know enough to know that you absolutely need a contract with every client. At the least, it clears up expectations and in worst case scenarios, it keeps you from getting screwed.There are plenty of standard freelancing contracts floating around the web that can be adapted. And you don't even need to be a lawyer to write or adjust your own, although you...

Nov 08 2017

If You Want to Be an Employable Editor in the Next Decade, this is the Software You Should Know

I've always said that I don't care about software competencies, I just want the best editors. Most editors can pick up the basics of a new NLE in a day and have a strong command of the core functionality in a few weeks. But most hiring managers don't think that way, especially for freelance jobs. You need to fit into their workflow and they don't often have time for you to learn on the job. The industry won't bend for you so you need to bend to the industry. Since...

Oct 26 2017

No Video Freelancer Should Ever Work for Less than $30/hr

Now Hiring: Director of Photography for 10 day projectRequire 10 years of experience and must own Alexa or better.Total Budget: $40 If you're in the industry, this probably made your blood boil. As hyperbolic as it might be, we can all imagine seeing something similar. Maybe because our industry is so competitive, possibly because it's creative and fun, or maybe because people are just terrible, but film and video crew are frequently called on to work for next to nothing. We're not the only ones, certainly, but it does seem especially...

Sep 06 2017

Don’t Be Afraid of Black

Watch virtually any movie trailer and you're going to see a whole lot of nothing. That is to say, you're going to see a black screen pretty frequently. It's used to set a tempo, a mood, gain narrative distance between shots and is a generally useful tool, especially in short form editing. Yet literally every time I've cut to black in the middle of a piece, a producer or client fought me on it. Hard. Part of it might be their initial instinct that it was simply a missing shot...

Aug 30 2017

Why Game of Thrones is the Most Popular (Cable) Show of All Time

The runaway success of Game of Thrones was hardly assured, considering it's spiritual predecessor, Rome, got nixed due to high budgets and middling ratings. But Game of Thrones has become the most popular show of all time, averaging over 10 million viewers per episode just in live US views, an insane feat for a program on a premium cable network. It has further become so embedded in the cultural zeitgeist that non fans are being rounded up and shipped off to the Iron Islands so Thronies don't have to explain...

Jul 26 2017

The Only Reasons You Should Ever Work For Free

Being a creative professional pretty much guarantees that at some point you'll be asked to work for free. You'll likely also get the 'do it for the expooooosuuuuureee' manipulative spiel (side note: I've been a creative professional for over a decade and have never gotten a job from exposure of another project, despite some of those projects being seen by millions of people) or some vague promise of back end compensation from a total hack who has never actually been able to turn a profit from a creative project. But on...