My fellow video/film people, if you have old gear lying around that you’ll NEVER use again, and if it’s perfectly serviceable, sell it. Don’t be a packrat. Repurpose your gear - someone out there can use it, and you can use the money. But where the deuce do you sell it? I didn't really have a good firm grip on anything beyond trying to sell locally. But that's a subproblem I have to address quickly: where I'm living at the time of this blog post is middle Georgia, with chickens, trees, and hundreds of thousands of people. I wouldn't say there's a major metro, but we do have one of the largest ..read more

Never fear. These suckers look scary, and there is no quick, easy way to wade through this other than the fool’s errand: sign your name away and hope for the best. It’s like John Oliver’s joke about a copy of “Mein Kampf” being in the Steve Jobs-trillion-dollar-company’s terms and conditions, the ones we always say we’ve read through. Likewise, we say we read contracts before we sign them… pfft. I once had a gig in Vegas, and the contract was so in favor of the client, I was reluctant to go to work for the man. He wanted me to edit with some tight turnarounds, and if it’s anything I’ve learned ..read more

Would you like an extra $100 for your video production business every week? Every day?! For only $9.99 a month… I'm kidding. But if you want the nuts and bolts of this post, make a byproduct. There. I said it for all you people who bounce after three seconds on the site. For everyone else… A byproduct? What the deuce?! How many times have you been retargeted by those ads on YouTube where people try to tell you about the keys to making passive income? Or the ads about pounds and pounds of toxic poop the average bear is carting around at any given time? Couple times, dozens of times, or more? D ..read more

It was August 17, 2020 - a Monday. I checked my work email in the morning and saw the “Come see me at 8:30 am” email - sent the day before. Good thing I didn’t check my emails outside of work very often or I wouldn’t have slept. I knew it was coming. I didn’t know when, but I knew it was coming. Sometimes, you just see the public signs for what they are, and 2020 was full of big, glaring Neon-Vegas-Strip-Style signs - macro and micro. This was just confirmation, and deep in my doughy belly, I knew it was the ill-fated ax. My coworker and friend didn’t think it was so, but an hour later, I walk ..read more

Whether you are creating a video or a trailer or just even a teaser clip from a short film or even a feature film, there is the potential to use Facebook for your clip. I've spent years, like you learning everything there is about video and film that I can will myself to dive into. Now, you and I - we - absolutely love this stuff, but it doesn't make a world of difference unless we understand a little bit about the financing, marketing, and with it, the distribution that round out the FILM BUSINESS. I think the three of them kind of form a triangle (tripod?) of sorts. You get what I'm saying ..read more

In this post, I’m going to walk you through what I’ve learned about Facebook ads when it comes to video views. I am by no means an expert, and I fail more often than I succeed, but if you will adopt the Thomas Edison mindset which says, “I have not failed; I have simply found 10,000 ways that don’t work,” then you can treat each outing with Facebook ads as a learning opportunity. Given my role in 2019 at my church, and my “come to Jesus” moments I’ve had this year, I’m convinced - as a follower of Jesus - I (and other followers of Jesus who film/video) need to leverage this tool of Facebook ad ..read more

Fellow video producers, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this strategy works for any type of video we create, even if it is a short film. Grant Cardone says that businesses die because they’re trapped in obscurity, and if you are a filmmaker or a video producer, you are definitely a part of a business, even if it’s the business of your service or your film getting made. So, I think you can adopt this strategy for any piece of video or digital film that you create. It follows after Gary Vaynerchuk's idea of taking a longer piece of content, what he calls pillar content, and then makin ..read more

Bold Nation! No fancy-schmancy words here - just a straightforward, easy post you can read right now about a handful of clues a video production prospect will give you to let you know they’re not the clients you’re looking for. After this post, you’ll know when to say “adios” before wasting any more of your time - or theirs for that matter. And… if you make it through this entire buffet of a post, I’ll throw in three more clues in the bonus section. 1) Tire Kickers My favorite. I’ve talked about them before here and here. I ..read more

Fellow microbudgeters and video production ladies and gentlemen, this post is for you. It’s quick-ish (actually, it’s kinda biggish), it’s easy, and it’ll shed some light on some of the fog surrounding this big move of yours.I’ve worked video production as a PT side gig. I’ve done it as a FT freelancer/self-employed/single-member LLC. I’ve worked at 2 different W2 (i.e. someone else can claim me as their employee) video production jobs - FT - in 2 different states. And since I left home at 18, I’ve lived in 9 different states/countries, sometimes as brief as 8 weeks, and at other times, as lon ..read more