Comments on: What if there were no established TV production “industry”

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:12:37 +0000

I agree with all the comments re content being king. Over 30 years of editing drama and documentary have confirmed this to me over and over again.

One of the great advantages of the “democratisation” of production is that even though the equipment may be cheap, when it is in the hands of skilled and creative people the cost does not necessarily increase (if they are working for themselves) but engagement with an audience does.

The one technical element that fails most often in my observation is quality of sound. Everyone wants to me a DP and hey doesn’t the camera come with a microphone?

Experiments have shown that people will willingly suffer poor image quality if the content is good but if the sound is similarly poor they will struggle with it.

When a low grade image is played with poor sound then again with good sound people perceive its quality to have improved.

By: Chael

Chael — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:51:24 +0000

This:

“That’s not to say that quality doesn’t have it’s place, it certainly does, but it’s been demonstrated time after time that viewers will tolerate low production value if the content is compelling.”

Upon buying my first HD TV and connecting it to an HD source, I showed my wife a channel in both SD and its’ HD brethren.

I gloated, “Isn’t that incredible!?”
She said, “I hate this show.”

Fact is, most consumers cannot differentiate quality unless the difference is overly exaggerated (think, 100k 10fps 160×240 30% quality motion-jpeg vs. uncompressed SD or HD), and it is even more disassociated if the content is something of interest

Does that mean as professionals we shouldn’t strive for better production value than the common YouTube “broadcaster” recording from their webcam? Certainly not, at least IMHO.

However, in my mind, it does make 99% of the constant technical arguments about acquisition equipment kind of moot, if they weren’t already. I mean, honestly…do you think the average person would know the difference between a 5D, 7D, Rebel, Red, or a good quality DV camera? Maybe looking at a clip and being asked which looks the best. But for most, if you presented their favorite show to them, shot on any of those various tools, they wouldn’t think twice about it.

Content has always been said to be king, but timely, relevant content is the ring to rule them all.

I still don’t get how the money can tie into all of it, but I’m rambling.

By: Dave Bittner

Dave Bittner — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:25:31 +0000

The Demand business model would have been very attractive to me when I was a college student. I was living on campus, my expenses were paid, but shooting for Demand would have been a great source of beer money. And I suspect a lot of shooters are using it that way. Got a few empty days on the schedule? Go crank out a few how-to videos, make some cash that you wouldn’t have made otherwise. The other key to this is that it can be done stealthily. You could be out shooting for Demand whenever you have free time, but your regular clients don’t have to know about it, so you’re not necessarily pushing your core business downmarket. You’re not advertising this as a service, you’re just doing it for Demand when you have the time, and assignments come along that you can crank out quickly.

Seems to me this whole this is about the push-pull between content and quality. I believe compelling content wins every time. The shows that Demand is generating aren’t “useless,” they’re drawing traffic and generating revenue. That’s not to say that quality doesn’t have it’s place, it certainly does, but it’s been demonstrated time after time that viewers will tolerate low production value if the content is compelling.

By: david bogie

david bogie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:24:41 +0000

Philip,
I enjoyed this and you used a bunch of werdz I haven’t seen since taking Political Science 101!

By: Libby

Libby — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:31:48 +0000

I think corporate and television are actually different in standard and requirements. I know when I was in the corporate world we often produced an nice opening and closing for a video, but filled it with lesser quality content in the “middle” because information changed so quickly that it wasn’t possible to afford high quality throughout. It wasn’t ideal, but we got paid and the customers remained happy.

I worry though, that as people get used to lesser quality that it will be harder and harder to justify spending the time and the money to do things really well.

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:35:53 +0000

The reality is that some people are that hard up for work. Business is *really* that slow apparently.

Philip

By: Simon Wyndham

Simon Wyndham — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:45:36 +0000

I don’t understand this current drive for quantity over quality. Which is better? One well made show that gets 30 million viewers, or 30 million useless shows?

The Demand Media model is sickening. While the website owners are making money left right and centre, the contributors are not. I would dearly love to know how even the most basic of video equipment can pay for itself, along with travel costs, editing equipment costs, apartment rent or house mortgage payments, food shopping every week, healthcare, etc etc using money made from Demand Media?

The way that people are seemingly queuing up to work for such people is astounding. They remind me of people in third world countries surrounding food supply trucks. If these people have any skills at all, why are they so willing to prostitute themselves? Is business *really* that slow in the corporate or TV sectors?