Taking Paying Gigs to help fund own projects.

Hey Guys,

Back from vacation and got some pretty cool news. I don't know how many of you ended up taking a peek at my collaborative film project, however my film partner told me over the weekend of an opportunity we will have to start banking some cash toward our budget... Now as our "savings" for our personal film project "Ethel's Diner" is currently 0, its a good thing we are still in the screenwritting phase...

Oh I hope I put this in the correct forum section :)

I am excited to start putting cash into the film sock under my bed, so I thought I would ask for some advise to help make sure I screw up as little as possible and ensure the ability to add additional funds to said sock.

The Opportunity

Film a 15-20 Training Video - Polishing 101.

The Backstory

My film partner works for one of the largest elecroplating companies in the world. (Family Owned) Up to this point the company had on staff a media guy (a family member - yikes) who filmed all of thier training videos and uploaded them to a corporate training site for employee viewing. Apparently the vids are pretty good (though I have yet to see them).

The media guy has since left the salary position and has become an independant contractor. My partner who had put the bug in the ear of the "guy making the decisions" to give us a chance. I don't really want to go into too many details as to why they are looking elsewhere for thier training vids... however I am happy to have the opportunity...

The Timeframe

They are hoping to have this vid done by end of September. My partner has already had a meeting to discuss the opportunity. I am to come in for a meeting Tuesday Aug 14th. After the meeting I will be allowed my first walkthrough of the plant area in question and then will have the ability to sit and watch the current training videos...

A comment that was made was that the media guy normally took 10 hours of footage to get his 15-20min training vid.

My questions and thoughts.

I would love to ask for advise in a number of areas.

A) The meeting - What questions should I ask? What statements should I make to the client?
**My first thought is to spell out exactly what is expected of each party (i.e. We are filming a process so I assume they will give us an exact shot list of what they need to see, they will provide a script (approved by a process expert) and have a process expert on hand for questions?)

I want to ensure that we set deadlines like filming to begin within one week of shot list and script being delivered to me. That way if they say dead line end of sept and we don't get script till mid sept, we don't look bad.

Any thoughts as to other stuff to ask/discuss in the first meeting?

B) The plant walk through - I will ask if I can take still photos in the plant for planning / reference.
Any thoughts as to what I should look for/keep in mind during my walkthrough? Maybe available outlets?

Oh noise shouldn't be an issue... Mike (film partner) mentioned that the training vids didn't have sound, cept music and voice overs. We have been asked to provide the voice over work. (I will verify this when I watch the training vids.

C) Watching the current vids - I hope to have same quality if not better/ I hope to add a little Zazz haha. Thoughts as to what to watch for... Maybe I can catch common mistakes the other dude made that I can overcome??

**OK Once this initial day has gone by, I will update this thread... Have any of you done training videos in the past? Have general advice? I am thinking that 10 hours of footage is ridiculous! I figure planning the shots correctly I should be able to shoot 20 minutes of process in 2-3 hours? Am I cracked out?

** We are thinking of a starting price of $750CAN does this sound reasonable? We don't want to be too high, but we don't want to sound like we have no idea what we are doing.

OK I will follow up with more! I appreciate all the help and insight!

Jason - blackcloak
 
Oh I forgot to mention the caveat Mike offered to his company was that they would not pay if they weren't happy with our product. Of course without payment we don't allow our vid to be used by them. We hope to do a good job so that this is not an issue at all.
 
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