|
Around the World there are hundreds of companies that offer production services to shoot TV spots. Some don’t have in-house managers and hence they just work for alien production companies. Others, on the contrary, have a roster of managing directors and give rise to commercials for the local agencies while they offer production services to companies based elsewhere. Our offices in Miami, Mexico, Costa Rica and Argentina belong to the second category accordingly we recognise the business from both angles: on one hand we have shot commercials in over 30 countries of all Continents using local production services and, on the other, we acted as production services ourselves. As we learned over the years, there are three major difficulties that very ofttimes surface when working with production services. First of all they don’t have any aroused connection with the project: they are hired to coordinate the shoot and their originative involvement is almost zero. The conductor doesn’t belong to their organization, the finished spot will not go into their reel, and they will not win any awards with the mercantile they helped produce. The spot is just a business. Secondly a lot of production service companies tend to give low bids at the beginning of the procedure in order to get the occupation and then they charge for everything claiming that it was not included in the introductory bid. Some years ago, for example, I was shooting a spot overseas for a cosmetic product. The day before the shooting the conductor asked for the “book” of the make up artist. The local producer told me “If you want to see a book, it means that you want a top make up artist. In the bid we approximated a “regular one”. Top make up artists are way more expensive”. “Of course we want a top make up artist!” I said. And of course we had to compensate more. In another occasion I was going to shoot in Morocco so we worked with a service company based in Casablanca to bid the occupation that required a lot of set construction. We sent them blueprints of the sets, dimensions to proper bid the job. After the bid was approved, we sent them a great deal of further and added specs including the color of the set. The Moroccan producer faxed back saying that they expected (and estimated) the set to be brown not blue as the new specs were establishing, that the blue paint was more costly than the brown one and hence the cost was going to be higher. These uttermost situations are rare but they happen: all measures have to be taken to refrain from them. Thirdly, in some cases, service companies try to implement to alien clients rates that are higher that the real ones. If, for instance, a gaffer in their country get salaried $125 dollar per day, they charge $200. It is still less than half the cost of a gaffer in the US or Europe but the service company is making, in addition to the declared 15% mark up, another 60%. It is true that in each country the best crewmembers charge a little more than the others because they are in high demand, but even in this case, the real rates are not always reflected in the bids staged to American or European companies shooting overseas. Production services recognise the rates used in the US, the UK, Italy or Germany and realize that everything will look cheap. Knowing the marketplace is rudimentary for any production company more than willing to shoot overseas and spend wisely the client’s money. In 70 or 80% of the occasions I shoot in countries where my company has offices consequently I am using my own structure to manage the production maximizing the efficacy and minimizing costs. When I need to shoot in the jungle in Central America, for instance, I don’t need a production service in Costa Rica because I have my own office there that may take care of shooting not only in that country but also in Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, and so on. But when I have to go to a country where I never shot before, I do a lot of homework. For this task a comprehensive network of contacts plays a major role because it is not sufficient to call friends who have shot in that country: they may tell you with regards to the efficacy or the reliability of the production service they used there but they cannot say anything in regards to the honestness of that company. They may very well have been to a considerable degree overcharged without knowing it. You need to get not only contacts of authenti and honorable production services but also lists of crewmembers. If you know someone who shot with great success in India, Rumania or Malta for instance, you ought to ask him the full call sheet with the names of all the crewmembers they used. Some remarks from people who already shot in that country will help: “the camera crew was excellent, but the art division was very slow”, “the wardrobe stylists did a good job, but the make up artisan didn’t.” But in addition to that you ought to investigate a little bit more regarding normal rates in that country. DP’s, art directors, cameramen, special effect technicians are good origins of information: if they shot there they probably spoke with camera assistants, carpenters, drivers, PA’s with regards to their rates and with regards to the cost of renting equipments. Crewmembers don’t commonly talk in regards to cash with the makers but the do talk with other crewmembers even if they are from another country. With a list of experienced and professional persons and a clear idea of the rates, a producer who is going to bid a occupation in Romania, for example, ought to call two production services based in Bucharest and have a chat with their executive producers. A 15-minutes long speech with a producer based various thousand miles away gives a lot of information. Asking a few key questions, you may without delay detect if the guy has experience or not and if he understands your standards of quality. Every specific occupation is a dissimilar story from the production perspective and you want to know if the producer on the other end of the line knows how to handle it. In a heap of cases there is a major logistic issue: hundred of extras, complex permitting, special effects. In a good deal of other cases the key issues are the technology, the equipments, the art direction, the locatings and so forth. Getting two bids from two dissimilar production services will give the prospect of comparing not only rates bat likewise procedures and systems. In a lot of countries, for instance, crews are ordinarily much larger in number than in others. When you receive a bid from a heap of countries you will see a great deal of more crewmembers than you would suppose in the US, the UK, Holland or France. But it is how it works there: you can not reduce the number of people without compromising the efficacy of the shoot. In a good deal of countries the instrumentation rental companies require a good deal of crewmembers to be in charge of their stuff, you cannot keep away from having them, and hence the size of the crew grows significantly. I always commend you send the production service company a very detailed, precise and elaborated list of necessaries in addition to the board and, if it is possible, the director’s treatment and reel. Don’t make the service company do your occupation and guessing what the specs of the project are: you are the producer, you know the director, the agency and the client and you have a clear understanding of what the project needs. The bids have to be cautiously revised to make sure that everything has been the right way included and that unpleasing surprises are not going to take place later. Sometimes the revision of a alien bid is very time consuming because the breakdown is very dissimilar from the AICP one and items are located in dissimilar lines or differently defined. But it is worth laying out capital galore time making sure that everything the conductor needs has been included in the bid and accurately estimated. When shooting overseas you need to be exceedingly flexible: once in a while in remote countries they use dissimilar methods but they still achieve magnificent results. It is essential to do a very careful exploration before awarding the occupation to a production service but, after that, it is of paramount importance to comprehend how they work and undertake not to impose the processes we use at home unless it is perfectly necessary. During a great deal of years I have seen production teams making miracles in places with fixed production industries and deliver what we needed. Some trust, good communications accomplishments and a good deal of humility will let you achieve your goals and have a good time in the process. |
Favorite for crafting-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
Categories
Meta