Minus Questus Magis Facere - A Producer's Manifesto for 2011

For the last three years, I've been working for millionaires and going broke in the process. My daily frustrations have included watching people with credentials like Harvard MBA degrees make decisions that erase any threat of profit for the company and seem anathema to the actual practice of business. Sometimes, I've been branded as "cranky" which makes me doubly so. I'm only agitated because I'm left to clean up after ineptitude.

In attempting to practice Media Storytelling, it seems devillishly hard to even lead the horses to water; which makes me want to drink.

Media Storytelling is something I just dreamt up. It's an all-encompassing term that attempts to put traditional TV-based work, corporate video and radio under the same umbrella that keeps web-based work such as videos hosted on YouTube and publicized via Twitter, Facebook, email campaigns, etc from getting soggy.

It's basically meant to cover what I do as a producer. Whether it's a 30-second TV commercial, a training video on how to use the latest XYZ app for your iPhone or a video that's embedded directly on your website, my process doesn't change that much. I still need to know What I'm putting across to Whom, Why I'm doing so, and the Action I'd like them to take.

Simple, ain't it? This ain't rocket surgery, but you need to know what the hell you're doing to pull it off. Perhaps it's less akin to constructing a Saturn V and more like the care and feeding of an '05 Saturn. There are always all sorts of new tools and technology to assist you, but I have spent a good part of my time lately explaining that we need solid concepts and plans before we roll a frame, and words like "effects" are just synonyms for "crutch." I don't want to minimize the skills I have acquired and nurtured as a writer, editor, audio mixer and all the other roles I've filled during my coming up, but the best piece of gear I've ever had the pleasure of utilizing was my organic computing power. My brain.

I'm at a place in my career where I'm practicing with the calm, steady professionalism that comes from being exposed to a wide array of different challenges. Some I solved more successfully than others, but I brought all my mental faculties to every one of them. I work hard. I think harder. I obsess. I internalize and take ownership of a project to the point that I would be considered a micromanager if I didn't recognize my limitations and back off or delegate, which lets me work with great people.

One thing a business should absolutely, positively not do is accept work on a cut-rate basis as a way to jam a foot in the door of some potential client. This never works. You must get paid for the work you are doing right now. If you want more work down the line, that's wonderful, but that's not now. Every long-term client relationship begins with a single project. If you don't respect yourself enough on that first go-round to stand up for your efforts and say "here are the rates, here's what I'll do for you, and I'd love to talk further about other opportunities I can see for us to continue working together," then you're sending the wrong message. If you don't respect your operation enough to ask for fair compensation, your clients will also not respect you, and they may not even value the work you do for them, no matter how good it is. There's a massive perception gap between "free" and "I paid for it" when you're talking about intrinsic or implied value.

Another common mistake I've seen time and time again is the premise that you can staff up exclusively with young, enthusiastic (read: cheap) talent. Some actually are talented and have the tenacity to make it, and new blood is essential. I was once willing to work for peanuts. I worked all day and all night and asked questions of people with more experience than I had. That's how I learned. All of a sudden, I found myself fielding calls and emails from colleagues who wanted to know "how to get After Effects to do this" or "how would you handle this situation" or "do you know how to pull clean green-screen keys and color correct? Can you tell me over the phone?" More and more, my advice centered around a holistic approach when solving problems. Answers like "what camera you really need to use is driven less by the flavor of the month and more by the competence and size of your crew, and you" sealed the transformation. I can now say I'm a producer of some sort or another. I get shit done. This is an industry that evolves by apprenticeship more than anything else. You need professionals to turn out professional work. No amount of diploma-mill college degrees or watching Philip Bloom tutorials on Vimeo will give you the skills that ten years of stark terror will.

Customers don't hire you because you'll do just what they ask of you. If that were the case, they wouldn't need you in the first place. Customers look at your past work, talk to your past clientele and think that you might be just the person to solve their particular conundrum. The client wants my expertise, my steady hand and steely gaze. They are the experts in their field, and they want me to be the expert in my field. Part of that is not being afraid of telling them "you're wrong." Another part of it is finding diplomatic words to express that opinion.

What's the point of this screed? Other than catharsis, I wish to focus my thoughts and perhaps convince someone besides myself that these are good core tenets. Ideally, I'd love to be surrounded by people who are of the same mind as I am. I can be found regularly burying my nose in a manual or being a pointy-headed bastard dissecting circuit schematics and delving into the operation of charge-coupled devices and condenser microphones. Whatever. How can you fully utilize the tools if you don't know which wrench to use? This is the stuff that makes professionals worthy of that descriptor. Things should not leave a shop with wildly uncontrolled audio mixes (or worse, some kind of awful "magic bullet" plugin applied willy-nilly,) non-color-corrected imagery and a project that's so slap-dash assembled that media is strewn across six drives and a network. Working sloppy bites you, and it trades drag-race championship for endurance-lap failure.

I want to be around people that take this as seriously as I do. I take pride in what I do, and I don't ever want to say "whatever, it's only for ____." It's got my name on it, so it better be good enough to act as a business card, because that's essentially what it is. I don't know that I'm proposing a new venture, or looking for somplace to infiltrate with a pal or two and just do things right with an atmosphere of sardonic esprit de corps, or if I'm just venting. I'm open to suggestions.

Dan Roth straight up loves good advertising, and is passionate about finding opportunites to practice the craft. Committed to quality and driven by a strong desire to work with people who appreciate wordplay, engineering and obscure references, Dan is trying to surround himself with both. A multifaceted individual, Dan has capably filled the role of writer, DP, editor, producer, recording engineer and mixer, not to mention the inevitable account management we all wind up doing by winding up in the line of fire at the right time. You can reach Dan at [email protected] to say "hi," "go to hell," or "you're hired!"