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Suffering form wedding burnout?? Need something to "fill-in" the off times?? Videotaping school productions is a perfect way to expand your income base and provide a little variety to your work life. The opportunities for video within schools are almost limitless. Stop and think a minute, there are drama clubs, sporting events, variety shows, graduations and they take place at all times of the year and are usually during the week. The key to this gold mine is initially gaining entrance into the school. Public schools are some difficult because a lot of the events are covered by cable and cable access and also many schools have started A/V groups, video classes and clubs. Plus there is sometimes some governmental red tape involved. Private schools, on the other hand, are like bank vaults that someone left the door open to. And entry is best gained through the drama coach (director) or principal (or assistant) / headmaster or athletic director. There may be some initial resistance (especially if you do not work on speculation), but once they see your professionalism and high quality work, and shoot an event as a "trial", all hesitation will disappear. In fact, you will probably be getting multiple calls, from different faculty members to do this play and that event. Beware though, sometimes it can get out of hand where they will expect you to cover every event, even though only 2 people will want to buy videotapes! You must lay down your ground rules on what will be covered and your criteria for shooting an event (to sell tapes)! This may even get the faculty members to push YOUR video, just to get you to tape THEIR event (one hand washes the other). Once you make an impression at a particular school, it won't be long before you become a full time videographer for that educational institution. Some of my growth paths have started from taping one play, to doing the graduation, to creating a promo tape (that is up-dated every 2 years). Another school started with a play (by a parent hiring me on a recommendation) and now, I do their plays, provide sound reinforcement (for the plays and other events), their graduation and end-of-year photo montage video and big screen projection. The list goes on and on. Each year the list gets longer and, most importantly, the income grows. And as more parents see your work(from previous years) the percentage of students-to-orders also increases! Plus, I've had a few weddings booked because I did their high school events (both students and faculty/coaches). A simple rule of thumb, the younger the actors / athletes / performers / graduates, the more tapes you are likely to sell. For example, a pre-school of 125 youngsters, sold 91 copies of the closing ceremony (like a graduation), that's 73%. A private elementary school play with 130 actors / chorus, sold137 copies of the play, that's 105%. Another elementary school play with 90 actors, sold 111 copies, and that's 123%!! And these are all single camera shoots, lasting about 1 ½ hours of actual tape time, with adding just opening titles and ending credits (about 2-3 hours of post) and start dubbing. Lets see 1-hour setup, 1 ½ hour shoot, ½ hour tear-down, and 3 hours in post, that's 6 hours total (not including dubs). Now at $15 per video (your price may vary), that's $1665 or $277.50 per hour! Even if you subtract expenses for duplication ($2.50 per tape) it still exceeds $230 /hr. Now if you do a wedding for $2000, divided by at total of 25 hours (10 hours actual wedding day, a couple of hours of appointments and meeting with the B&G, and at least 15 hours in post (pictures /editing / graphics / titles, etc)), that calculates to $80 per hour. Not saying that Weddings are not profitable, but the potential for higher profits is in multiple-copy events. In addition, with the exception of providing half-page order forms to some of the schools, all of the selling, money collection, completed video pick-up and distribution are all done by the school! With the school issuing a single check to me (saves time in logging individual checks and the expense (bank fees) for each check deposited.). For those of you who have a duplication system, this makes good use of it and for those who do not yet have one, do some serious thinking about putting one together. In addition to doing duplication for your own events, the potential for walk-in duplications is pretty good. In my case, I even have colleges and businesses come to me, on a regular basis, for duplication. Some will argue that you can send your dub jobs to a "dub house", but my answer is that I tell MY clients that for anything up to 100 copies, I can deliver in 24 hours (depending on length, of course). Try that with a dub house! Though it not a big part of my business, "walk-in" dubs contribute about 6-7% of the bottom line. |
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