Disqus - Latest Comments for joelwynne

Re: COMMISSIONS & FEES

joelwynne — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:21:22 -0000

The maths is trivial. Getting all parties to agree to the fee basis is the Herculean task.

Re: bon voyage

joelwynne — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:28:38 -0000

It's a good thing you didn't make it to the South African party as I would not have recognised you and slurred in your ear. Next year Jerry :)

Re: inner thoughts

joelwynne — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:09:27 -0000

Harland is a genius, I'm just not sure at what though ;)

Welcome back Jerry, with a thoughtful and thought-provoking post. My 2 cents is that true genius will shine through, but that the very talented better be hustlers as well.

Re: tis the season to be rantin'

joelwynne — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 06:14:58 -0000

Last one (promise): The alien water tentacle in The Abyss. Oh and another one: The Lady of the Lake scene in Excalibur.

Re: tis the season to be rantin'

joelwynne — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:39:59 -0000

dayim Charles Day, that is a helluva list.

May I humbly add:
The pool scene in Scarface, the bath-tub scene in The Party, The final denouement in Blade Runner between Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer in the rain, The close-up of the waterglass in Jurassic Park, The hose-pipe scene with the gopher in Caddyshack, The race through the mines in Temple of Doom, The hot-tub scene from About Schmidt, Blowing up the titular bridge from Bridge of the River Kwai, the ice-dive in The Big Blue, The first time Laird Hamilton rides Teahupoo in Riding Giants and James Bond driving the white Lotus out of the sea onto the beach in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Re: where have you gone adcritic? an industry turns it's lonely eyes to you

joelwynne — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:07:17 -0000

Copyright ownership by clients and music copyright ownership would pull the plug faster than you could say "let's party like it's 1999". Modern internet is patrolled very efficiently looking for copyright infringements and a website where people slate something you spent a million dollars on creating to promote your brand is going to get slapped down pretty soon.

Re: the one eyed man

joelwynne — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:37:11 -0000

Reading an interesting book about the fact that all the big ideas exist externally to your brain. What this means is that a massive part of the really great, big ideas was and is collaboration. http://www.amazon.com/Smart...

By sharing your ideas you subject them to the criticism of others, helping to hone them and make them stronger.

By sharing your ideas you attract people to you and thus your company and place you strategically to form business relationships that hopefully are mutually beneficial.

Collaboration has many forms and could be a powerful force in our industry in the future, have a look at the recent betacup competition: http://www.jovoto.com/clien...

Then again you could just be schmuck giving away ideas ;)

Re: the on going search for the new model

joelwynne — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:50:24 -0000

Sounds like a brand curatorship.

I went through their list of co-conspirators and there are a lot of good companies there, several of which are members of SoDA.

My one concern is this: with so many co-conspirators it does feel to me that the work is being farmed out to whomever will pitch on it from co: and my question is: Is this in the client's best interests?

I think it is less of a problem when co: has a small roster of clients, but does this service then scale? What exactly are the economics of it? Do you mark-up your co-conspirators bid? Do you charge for man-hours within co: as well?

To quote a famous intergalactic physician: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it"

Re: have i got a deal for you

joelwynne — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:32:40 -0000

Is there not a business case for a short-term loan from some institution that will float you the expenses at a higher rate of interest than prime? that institution can take out default insurance and pass on the cost of the insurance to you in the interest charged.

Then all you are doing is looking for a way to pass this cost onto your client?

Re: rosh hashanah rant

joelwynne — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:51:01 -0000

L'shana tova u'metuka. Have a an easy fast, chag sameach and a wonderful year.

Re: selling points

joelwynne — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:17:48 -0000

I have a question:

I know that the nature of the relationship between rep and agency is a personal one, but are any reps taking advantage of social media to attract attention to directors that they represent? Is there a case for this? can you move the deal from one which is based on territory to one which, if Jerry is correct in saying that you are more a marketing partner, you sell the directors internationally too?

Re: spoon bending

joelwynne — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:23:46 -0000

So Jerry, does that mean you are master of your domain? (I'm sorry I couldn't help myself)

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: trading places

joelwynne — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:44:29 -0000

Ha! You try say to you contractor: "Look I know we originally said a 3 bedroom house, but we were thinking wouldn't it be awesome if we could have a 4 bedroom house, with a bigger pool and maybe a zen garden as well. I I know it wasn't in the original spec, but see if you can make it work on the budget".

The look on his face should be priceless.

Re: fairness

joelwynne — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:42:44 -0000

If you looked at the risk-reward profile of a director-based production company to decide if you enter the market or not, no-one would ever do it. A service company that does not accumulate assets or any annuity income streams? An over-traded marketplace, with too many participants where you cannot lock in a competitive advantage? An industry which gives new meaning to the word "peripatetic". Fair does not even get a look-in.

Yet there are companies such as Epoch that have been open and successful for over a decade. It's testament to the ingenuity and doggedness of the people of the production industry that we have such icons as Epoch, Smuggler and MJZ.

How can someone sit there and say this is the "cost of being a small business owner"?

Re: i have seen the future

joelwynne — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:01:36 -0000

Hey Eric

No koolaid for me thanks, trying to watch my weight ;)

Just reporting what I have discussed with other people. Personally my thoughts run to the ARRI Alexa seems to me to be the best compromise solution, but these are just my thoughts. I base these primarily on what has happened to gearhouses with the RED One. Mini-gearhouses have sprung up that specialise specifically in the RED and hire it out with techie attached for a lower fee than the big gearhouses.

This space is innovating so fast though that any bold claim as to the "best way to shoot your footage" is just that: a bold claim.

Re: i have seen the future

joelwynne — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:13:24 -0000

Panasonic GH1, Canon 5D mkII, Canon 7D, Canon 1D, Nikon D3 - all HD DSLR's and all being used to shoot film footage and the variations in footage can all be seen at Zacuto's great shootout on www.zacuto.com/shootout (well worth a view). It is quite remarkable that some of these cameras can go up 10 000 ISO and can light a close-up scene with a lighter held at arm's-length in otherwise total darkness.

I followed @philipbloom around NAB via twitter and 2010 is (not to be melodramatic) the "year that celluloid died". ARRI announced that they are shutting their 35mm R&D departments and showed off their new ARRI Alexa camera - future proof, PL mount, small, rugged and priced around the same as a Red when you throw in all the extras (USD60k).

With respect to your last statement about film-making being a craft, well then lighting and shooting with one of these HD DSLR's becomes an exact science, one that is very unforgiving of mistakes. I was chatting to an international DP who works and lives mostly in South Africa and he had just shot on the 5D. His comments were whereas before you had leeway when the exposure was wrong and you could go into post and extract information out of 35mm to adjust for the error, the limited dynamic range of these HD DSLR's meant that if you got it wrong on the day there was nothing there for you to work with. He also said that it was the future.

Locally in Cape Town, Media Film Services are getting 2 Alexas. I had a quick chat to them yesterday and told them that if they think that if they think they can hire these digital cameras out at the price of a 35mm body when you can BUY a 5D body for the same expenditure, then their business is dead. It's just another example of how technology, the ultimate disruptor, is changing the business of capturing and publishing moving images at levels of the value chain.

Re: guest bloggers wanted

joelwynne — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:21:23 -0000

This is me dropping you a note :)

Re: eyeballs eyeballs and more eyeballs

joelwynne — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:46:41 -0000

Performance-based remuneration for marketing? That's a can of worms :)

As you say Jerry remuneration as a function of sales has too many variables to account for. How about several fee structures for clients?

1) A flat-fee. The project cost to client is x, a pre-agreed fee paid in two tranches.

2) Flat fee + sliding scale. A reduced flat-fee where the execution company assumes risk for a potentially higher reward. Then based on pre-arranged levels of certain metrics additional money becomes payable. Since there is a minimum level of remuneration set, it is reasonable for there to be a maximum level set too.

3) Pure performance remuneration. As an execution company you assume the same risk as your client and could get paid zero, but the sky's the limit when it comes to a wildly successful campaign.

Being a student of human nature and game theory options 1) and 2) are unlikely scenarios. 1) because there is implied reduced value and 3) because no matter who the client is or how happy they are with the results, when the project goes viral they will hand over the cheque with a gritted-teeth smile.

This leaves us with option 2. Suddenly doing financial forecasts for a company over a financial year enters the realms of partial differential equations and actuarial-level mathematical models.

Also each project has certain constraints that make could make the fee structure change quite dramatically. what is the lifetime of the execution? Is there a bonus for repeated interaction?

How do you educate your client to say "Well the last job had a 2 month lifecycle and this job could potentially last a year, we need to take metrics at each month-end to calculate amount owing to us"

What a client hears is "We have this blackmagic juju box, some smoke and some mirrors and here is the invoice for a large amount of dollars"

As I said: a can of worms.

Re: everything is broken

joelwynne — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:18:11 -0000

Hey Agency Person

I refer you to a previous post of Jerry's around rethinking the model, where we discuss that change is necessary on the client side too. Why can the brand curating not be done in-house? An agency that is solely doing creative and not managing the conversation around a brand is not doing their full job anymore.

When Jerry says "the model is broken" he is not denigrating agencies and the people that work there. He is asking the question wether maintaining a large staff of creatives, client liaison, planners, broadcast & management that has revenue streams of billable hours and mark-up on production and media-purchasing is the most business-effective way to manage client's conversations with their consumers?

I know what my thoughts are on the subject, but will wait for Jerry's post tomorrow to comment.

Re: the reality of perception

joelwynne — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:28:27 -0000

I like the point you touch on there Jerry, which is that there is no model / methodology yet. As I highlighted in an earlier post: perhaps there is not one? Do the parameters of this new space prohibit our very human compulsion to observe and create patterns? Maybe the equivalent of Matthew Herbert's manifesto (http://www.matthewherbert.c... of throwing away even his most basic composition presets at the beginning of each song is what is required to continually deliver creative excellence?

It's also intriguing to note that a "one stop shop" is perceived as better than assembling a team of freelancers. The accepted wisdom of production is that you keep it tight and light and crew up with the appropriate "best in breed" professionals as and where it is appropriate. To try and assemble a proprietary dream team would almost definitely be a pyrrhic victory - the cost of maintaining this team means that your company looks great on paper, but in truth is losing cash. As you say the key to success is educating the client as to where the value lies.

Good luck!

Re: drinking and thinking, the birth of the micro agency

joelwynne — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:13:01 -0000

Fascinating development Jerry. I think that this will become more pervasive than you think. If you want top-of-the-line point of sale work done, you go to the micro-agency that provides that. If you want the team that did that last great Nike commercial you go to the micro-agency that did that.

The only way I see this replacing a large agency is if the company marketing department is beefed up in terms of expertise and project management skills to run this model. If your CMO can do this well then you can go down this road and reap the rewards.

If your CMO is the kind of person who barely can tell where the end of their nose is, then the current agency model can help this person still produce results for the company.

Excellence will follow excellence by using the micro-agency and mediocrity might show flashes of brilliance, but by and large will produce mediocrity in a large agency.

If the agile model becomes dominant my question is: where do you send young, creatively excellent people to learn their trade?

Re: to blog or not to blog

joelwynne — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:44:48 -0000

There will be rough nights in the future Jerry, there will be rough days. I truly believe that this conversation that you have started here is a very important part of our changing industry.

3 to 4 a week is good enough though :)

Good luck

Re: the disease of me

joelwynne — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:52:30 -0000

So surprised that no-one has commented on this yet. This post goes right to the quick in terms of the challenges facing all of us (when I say us, this post reaches further than the marketing industry).

The question you pose is interesting in that a) it shows your understanding that we may have to sacrifice things along our industry's present path for future long-term prosperity and b) that the Ayn Rand social model of the "virtue of selfishness" that is oft-quoted and followed by arch-capitalists has failed us.

What your willingness to open a dialogue between all parties (agencies, production companies, clients, unions etc.) shows is that with effort and perhaps even sacrifice there is a way for everyone to concede, yet still win.

However I do think that the quest for a large-scale model for web advertising is a Quixotic quest. The way that people interact with a brand online should be unique to each brand. To paraphrase the Matrix: "Instead of looking for the model, it is easier to realise that there is no model". Enough craptastic quotes, Good shabbas and good weekend! I'm going home to spend time with my daughter.

Re: paying for production results in argentina

joelwynne — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:01:20 -0000

Re: Guest blogging - only a pleasure.

Re: paying for production results in argentina

joelwynne — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:56:33 -0000

I think that Jerry's response is the correct context for this article. What are the core factors driving production off-shore from the US? Speaking from the South African service perspective I can confirm that our US work mostly stems from the ability to buyout talent at great rates. 2004 was the SAG strike and South Africa had a bumper season of US work flooding in. There are other factors involved - great locations, hemispherical seasonal differences etc. but the key factor will always come back to price.

Eric I would be very interested to hear about why your post experience sucked? We have had great success with US and UK clients bringing out editors to do post in Cape Town.

David - you don't do yourself any favours trying to shirk the self-promotion tag when you point out in your last comment that BA is cheaper than NZ and the flight is shorter. All service destinations have their pros and cons and all our clients are well aware of these points.

I do thank you David though for kicking off this dicussion as I would like to continue along these lines, as there are many interesting points that need to be raised about the globalisation of production - one of the many game-changing issues facing our industry this year.