Factors in Pricing Multimedia Projects

[by Paula Lerner]

Pricing a multimedia project is not unlike pricing a still photography shoot:  usage is the key factor.  As a parallel example for a stills only assignment, I would price a shoot for photo usage in a hospital brochure or a university view book quite differently than I would price a print ad shoot for a consumer product — different usage requirements fall into different pricing categories.

When writing a project proposal for multimedia, take the usage into consideration when you come up with a base price for the project.  Your Assignment Agreement should spell out what usage is included, along with specifics of how many hours of production time, how many iterations of the feature are included, out-of-pocket expenses, and so on.  Anything above or beyond that agreement incurs additional charges, and this should be discussed with the client up front.  That way if they keep sending you back to tinker with the audio or images, they know that they will incur additional costs and you will be compensated.

Keeping good time logs to track the work you do is important.  I use a simple excel spread sheet to log the total hours I’m spending, and what I spend them doing.  This serves two purposes:

1.    I have records to use to make sure I will bill the client for anything over and above the original agreement;
2.    I have good records to use to estimate the next project.

If you are doing your first project and don’t know how long things will take you, go out and produce a project on your own to get a sense of it.  Yes, there will be a learning curve and hopefully you will get faster as you get more experience (just like with stills), but at least you will have a starting point.

In addition, it is a good idea to find out what it costs in your neighborhood to job out any piece of the project.  This is basic research:  make some calls to production houses or independent producers and see what it would cost to hire someone.  This will educate you as to what the market will bear in your region, and will help you develop a network of contacts should you need help.  Whether you do the production work yourself or hire someone else to do it, you want to make sure there is enough money in your budget to cover it.

Having Confidence

[by Paula Lerner]

There’s a story I sometimes tell about myself when I speak to student groups. Many years ago at the beginning of my career, my husband walked into the room we then shared as an office to find me under my desk. Surprised and bemused, he asked “What are you doing under there??”

I had been attempting to make cold calls to clients, and had gotten cold feet. Rather than face the prospect of talking to people and trying to sell myself to them, I indulged an urge to curl up in a ball and hide under my desk. Eventually I came out, plucked up my courage and started to make calls. When I trusted myself to speak in an articulate manner, I was fine and the people on the other end of the phone were interested in pursuing a business relationship.  The point is that in order to convince others that you’re worth their attention and the money you’re asking for your services, you first must convince yourself that you’re worth it. You will never convince someone else if you don’t believe it yourself, as they will pick up on your cues. It took time, patience and courage to get the rough spots of my presentation worked out, and I made plenty of mistakes along the way. But in the end I learned from my mistakes.  In the end, I was fine because I managed to trust myself, and that trust came through to others.

For what its worth, I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy from a famous ivy league institution (Harvard). Many of the very smart people with whom I went to college were very insecure under the surface (in some cases, extremely so). Some of the most famous, well-respected people I know still get butterflies in their stomachs before they have to present themselves, their work and their ideas to others. Take heart in this, and know that you’re not the only one. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes, even though many of us never get over it completely. Take a deep breath, steady your voice and remember that whoever it is you’re talking with is human too. After its all over you can go collapse in the corner somewhere….

In Multimedia, Audio Comes Before Pictures

[by Paula Lerner]

One thing that many still photographers may not realize when creating a narrative audio slide show is that the audio comes before the pictures.  I recently had the opportunity to spend time with friends and colleagues at the annual meeting of Aurora Photos, my agency, where I had many interesting conversations about multimedia.  I noticed that some photographers new to multimedia didn’t realize the importance of audio, and that this is in fact where you start the workflow, not end it.

Unless I am creating a simple slideshow accompanied by music, or am doing something non-narrative that uses ambient sound together with images, when developing a narrative multimedia piece I start with the audio.  I cannot emphasize this strongly enough:   the audio drives the story, not the pictures.  This doesn’t mean that the photos are unimportant.  But it does mean that you must start with the audio to create the narrative script.

When I am developing a 2-3 minute profile feature, the first thing I do is record an audio interview with the subject, which typically lasts about an hour.  I have that interview transcribed for reference, and then edit that hour down to 2-3 minutes.  Once that is completed, I send it off to the client for approval.  If needed at that point I will do additional iterations, but only after the audio line is approved do I begin to photograph.  Once the audio track is laid down, I know exactly what scenes and topics I need to visually illustrate.  Trying to photograph before I have this completed is a much less efficient way of working, and usually results in much more time wasted producing photos that will end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.

There have been occasions when the logistics of a project required me to photograph before the edited audio was completed, but even in those situations I always tried to at least do the interview prior to photographing.  That way I knew the overall content of the subject’s story, and thus knew what I would need to illustrate.  So just because we are photographers and are focused on the visuals, we can’t forget that the audio is critical.  Get the audio first, and then go get some killer pictures to bring it to life.

Website Solutions You Can Plug Into Quickly

If you don’t have a website yet and need one, or want to get a portfolio or body of work onto the web quickly, you might consider using a template kind of web hosting service. These providers generally offer some kind of predesigned model that you can plug your work into quickly that will give an attractive, well organized presentation to showcase your work.

There are a number of such hosting services out there, one of which is Sitewelder. My own site is hosted by Sitewelder, and my experience with them has been very positive (I am not affiliated with them in any way, I am just a happy customer). Sitewelder offers a variety of templates, decent customer service, and reasonable monthly fees. You can tinker with your site directly, making changes or add/swapimages at any time and from any location, without having to go through a designer and waiting for them to update it. If you want or need design help, it is available.

Sitewelder hosts many photographers across a variety of specialties, and has a number of options for presenting web galleries of work. When I transferred my site to Sitewelder several years ago, I worked with their staff to slightly modify one of their templates to keep continuity with the look and feel of my previous site. This worked well for me, and my site has been there ever since.

The down side of using providers like these is that some people complain they are too “cookie cutter” and similar to each other. But if you want your site to look unique, its not too hard to make modifications that give your site its own distinct look and feel.

With services like these available that are both a good showcase and fairly economical, there is no excuse not to have your work up on the web.

Some examples of photographers’ sites powered by Sitewelder:
Brian Smith
Chip Simons
David Burnett
Paula Lerner
William Coupon

Multimedia Made (Relatively) Easy

If you’re looking for a way to produce a simple audio slide show (stills combined with either music or an ambient sound/interview track) that is fairly straightforward and does not require extensive training, look into a program called SoundSlides.  Labeling itself as “Ridiculously Simple Storytelling,” it is just that.  I have been producing multimedia for three years now, and for the first two and a half I produced everything in SoundSlides.  With it I was able to deliver professional, plug-and-play features to my clients.

Created in the late 1990s by former photojournalist Joe Weiss, SoundSlides is basically an easy to use Flash template for photographers.  You import an audio file plus a folder of JPEGs, and arrange the images on a time line as you see fit. Hit export, and SoundSlides creates a folder (named “publish-to-web”) that you can easily upload to the web.

If you want to get your feet wet in producing multimedia, or if you have a fairly simple presentation you want to create, SoundSlides is a great way to go.  One limitation is that if you have a feature that is longer than 2-3 minutes which uses more than 40-50 images, the interface can get crowded and harder to use.  Also, if you want complete manual control, it is not the best software choice.  I migrated to Final Cut Pro recently for these reasons, but Final Cut has a significantly steep and off-putting learning curve.  SoundSlides can be learned and used much more quickly, and is designed specifically for producing audio slide shows (no video).  Plus, its inexpensive ($39.95 or $69.95, depending on which version you choose), and has an online community of users that are generally helpful.  I am in no way associated or affiliated with this product, just a happy user.

Some examples of features created with SoundSlides published online:
The Photographer: The Making of a Graphic Novel
Jazz 2009 Tales
Under One Roof

Registering Your Copyright – Just Do It

While registering the copyright of your photos affords photographers a variety of benefits and protections, very few of us actually do it.  What most don’t seem to realize is that once you get into the regular habit of registering, its just not that big of a deal.  Registration should be like any other part of your business –  like sending out invoices, keeping business records, and paying taxes.  I’m pretty sure that most of us take care of the latter, but for some reason we get stuck on the former.

In all of my paperwork I include in the terms and conditions that usage rights are not conveyed until the invoice is paid in full.  On various occasions I have called up accounts payable (rather than the photo editor or art director who hired me), and asked about the invoice.  If they seemed disinterested in acting on it, I would mention that all the images were registered with the Library of Congress Copyright Office.  I then politely mentioned that rights are not conveyed until payment is received, and gee, we don’t want to get into a copyright dispute about this, do we?  That usually incentivizes them to pay promptly.

On one occasion some photos of mine that were in a stock agency were transferred in error to another agency who had purchased the first.  For three years the second agency had been licensing my work without bothering to pay me the fees.  A friend tipped me off that he’d seen my photos on the second agency’s site.  When I called to investigate, agency 2 very lamely claimed they hadn’t paid me because they didn’t have my current address (I haven’t moved in 18 years).  I requested an immediate accounting of the licensing sales, which they provided. It turned out the total was several thousand dollars.  They then claimed poverty and offered to pay me in drips and drabs over the next year or two.

I pointed out that I had never agreed to the transfer of my images to agency 2, that they were licensing my photos without my permission, and that all the photos were registered images.  When they heard the photos were registered, they fedexed me a check for the full amount the next day.  “Registration” was the magic word that made it happen quickly.

ASMP has a full copyright tutorial and a NEW Best Practices Guide for registering your work.

I strongly urge anyone who is not currently registering to make use of this resource.  And don’t be overwhelmed at the thought that you have to register a mountain of work all at once.  Start by registering the work you are currently doing from today forward, and then make it a habit.  You can go back and do your legacy images as you have time.  For me, I have a folder on my desktop labeled “ready for  © office.”  I simply make a low res copy of any image I produce at the time I download it.  In a program like Lightroom, Bridge, or Aperture its easy.  All you do is export a low res copy to that folder, and when you’re ready to make a submission the files are right there.  Don’t wait, start today.