Did anyone in UK watch Dragons Den last night?

[George Kilroy]

Hi Chris.

I don't think it will be much of a threat to professionally produced DVD, rather it'll carve out a market from people who might otherwise not consider having one. The sort of people who'd go for it I don't think would be looking for the traditional type of production, I don't think it's an either or.

I agree that their pricing seems ambitious, but if you look at their pricing menu you'll see it gets a lot costlier than the promoted £745 (though that is a £100 drop from the price pitched in the Dragons' Den). There is one thing that it might do though which is put the cost of the c£1000 producers in perspective in the minds of couples who think that that is expensive for a full production service.

On the negative side though I am a bit concerned whether the friends that are delegated (or volunteer) to shoot on the day will bother okaying things at the church or will just pitch up and start shooting without even the courtesy of speaking with the vicar. You'll no doubt know from previous post just how difficult some of our clergy can be here in UK, I wonder how many more are going to be antagonised by the 'director for a day' people who don't have to worry about going back there again, and will be feeling the responsibility of getting the shots at all costs sitting on their shoulders.

[Nigel Barker]

From what I have seen on a variety of forums here in the UK Shoot It Yourself certainly seem to have upset a lot of so-called video professionals. Their attackers mostly just come across as bitter & jealous of success sounding like orchestral players complaining that talentless pop musicians are making pots of money that should rightfully be theirs.

Shoot It Yourself are getting business because they are offering customers what they want & investing a great deal of effort in marketing via Facebook & Twitter plus spending a lot of money on advertising . (£1500 ($2300) per month apparently). Good luck to them. They aren't taking bread out of the mouths of video professionals but are catering to a market for reality TV style video with lots of dialogue to camera. This style doesn't appeal to everyone but neither does more traditional documentary style or arty cinematographic style. Different people have different tastes. While most weddings have a professional photographer the overwhelming majority of weddings don't have video of any kind. It's an enormous untapped market & it's mean & petty to begrudge Shoot It Yourself their tiny portion of that market.

[Claire Buckley]

Originally Posted by George Kilroy

They certainly have found a market niche, how large that will become we can only wait and see. They are reporting that they took 28 bookings at a wedding exhibition at the weekend. The backing of the 'Dragon' has certainly upped their game.

Hi George,

Matters of scale in both the market and the product process. I look at this in purely terms of input v. output.

Problem they now have is to ratchet up the revenue side of the equation in order to satisfy the Dragon (shoulder pad lady) but in order to maintain a level of post production quality their cost side will increase to meet the demand of the levels of (projected and actual) bookings.

Something gives; either the quality to meet demand, or the number of bookings has to reduce in order to satisfy the cost side of the equation. As a result, the expectation of year-on-year profit suffers - shoulder-pad lady will not be happy.

Although you could increase the number of editors and reduce their costs - how about auto edit to match the auto sound, auto focus and auto exposure? Perhaps they could get the local media college involved and have them call it work experience? Better still, they could sub-contract the work to some far-out sweat-shop economy like fashion retailing.

If the quality goes downhill then they are further maginalised (another name for niche market - a marginal approach); if the bookings reduce in order to match the throughput, then shoulder-pad lady will dump the stock (after she has got her money back of course).

Conclusion: Unsustainable. An effort to obtain the greatest level of revenue and profit. No need to worry about a five-year plan here, as this is a plan to make money fast and to move on. Well isn't this how the Dragon's see it?

And you guys want to hand out camcorders in order (you think) to offer a comparitive service? Why not just ask people to use their iPhones and extract the footage? Here's an idea: get them to dock their iPhones during the wedding breakfast in order to harvest the footage? Now you can have that for free...

Stick to what you know and what you do well.

If not, then make a £60K investment (preferably using someone else's money) in order to change your own business model... I wish you well in your new ventures.

:)

[Chris Harding]

Hi Claire

I for one, certainly wouldn't even contemplate undertaking such a venture. I was purely saying, as George was, that they have found a niche market ...whether it's sustainable or profitable is another story!!

Even the great Philip Howells who shoots pretty much high end stuff in the UK offers to loan a camcorder to the bride and groom during their honeymoon and produces a DVD for them!!

I personally would have nightmares wondering if the footage will indeed be editable at all...sure the demo video looks good BUT that might have been the best footage they had out of 30 shoots..all the rest might have been absolutely terrible!! I shoot alone and when I edit there are no surprises plus I "shoot to edit" so the post production process is fairly simple!! Give a would-be cameraman a camcorder and despite "training" they just might go around waving it at all and sundry and produce 3 hours of rubbish...that's the chance these people take.

I'm sure that George certainly has no intention of buying up a job lot of cheap cameras and starting his own version of these people's business... and that probably goes for all the other replies here too!!

Chris

[Claire Buckley]

Hi Chris,

I was quoting George concerning the mention of 28 bookings and the Dragon - I was not aiming the body of my reply at George.

George knows my position, don't you George? :)

But agree your points Chris - sorry for the confusion.

:)

[Cristian Adrian Olariu]

Apparently they had a brilliant idea... over 100 weddings in the past six months, as I counted.
Shoot It Yourself's videos on Vimeo
I guess one year from now we will see much more videos like this over the internet.

[Dave Partington]

The big question in my mind is how many vicars will get totally pi**ed off with amateur video people that they eventually ban 'anyone' with a video camera. Could be good for us, could be bad. Hard to predict really.

And then how about:-

Who is paying the MCPS fee?

Who is paying the PPL licenses?

Are they getting away with calling it friends and family, meaning the church fees will be lower (i.e. no video fees) whereas if a pro videographer is recording it most organists seem to want double the fee for their terrible playing!

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

Who is paying the MCPS fee?

Who is paying the PPL licenses?

Ultimately the customer of course as with all of us. SIY only provide one DVD in the £749 package so a fiver for the licence isn't going to break the bank. However I doubt that they have legitimately licensed any of the copyright music on their website Wedding Videos / Wedding Videographer / Wedding DVDs / Wedding Videos London / Wedding Videos Essex so I wouldn't be surprised if a disgruntled professional wedding videographer hasn't already grassed them up to the MCPS/PRS. If they want to take any wedding videographers to court over infringing copyright SIY would make a perfect high visibility example.

[Danny O'Neill]

If you read their FAQ's they say they take care of all the licences. They are a legit outfit.

As for the comment about vicars getting pissed at people running about with cameras im confused. Are family and friends not already filming wedding days with cameras??? At every wedding we do, someone has a camera or a video camera and is filming. A friend filmed our wedding, I was a friend who filmed our friends wedding. I see it all the times on the forums that people are just going to have a mate film it. Just because SIY supply the cameras its not going to make things any different.

Almost every vicar we meet has a horror story about a professional videographer who he had to have words with... they never have a horror story about a family friend who had to be told.

Guests with cameras is nothing new.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Danny O'Neill

If you read their FAQ's they say they take care of all the licences. They are a legit outfit

They are legit but like many of us (including Mintyslippers) the videos on their website are infringing copyright. The MCPS/PRS licences only cover physical products (DVD, Blu-ray etc) they do not cover broadcasting to the whole world over the Internet.

[Mike Peter Reed]

Seems like a pretty good idea to me, and they are "first" in the new category. Increased competition is good, no?

Anyway, I watched the demo vid and had to laugh at "you only get married once" - now that indicates the target market along with the "MTV credentials".

[Ana Conlon]

They are wise with their advertising...For example there was no need for investment form a dragon. They were already set up and making money but dragons den is a massive platform for getting your company out there. I would say their business has 10 times the intrest now. I admire their business way of thinking....that said for couples getting married it makes no sense. Why pay the almost the same amount to have armatures shooting your day in a half arsed way with low end equipment and I can't even bare to think what the audio would come out like!

Its a novel idea and people will think it's cute to begin with.....But when brides compare their armature footage with a friends professional footage at the same cost...they will regret the investment

[Cristian Adrian Olariu]

Yes, but they won't admit it.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Low end equipment would be Flips or Zi8's or something like that - they were renting A1U's (old, but still a decent small "pro" cam), and it looked like they were shifting up to the MC50, which is a pretty capable camera, with good stabilization, pretty decent sound (not sure about the shotgun on that kit, but the on cam mics aren't too bad).

Sure the "gear" isn't super expensive, but it's more than adequate for acquiring good HD clips, now if you can teach the monkeys, er clients proper camera techniques and give 'em a shot list...

So the finished product doesn't have any artsy fartsy DoF/slider/steadicam/crane/arial footage... will it give them something fun (and hopefully watchable) to remember the day, you bet it will, and for most people that's ALL that matters.

I watched (somewhat in horror) some footage of a few friends who literally whipped out the Flips and video'd a wedding for their friends... Bad cam technique, iffy sound, pretty bad, but I'll venture the couple was happy to get it.

When everybody and their dog (or perhaps CHICKEN) has a HD video capable device in their pocket, with them everywhere they go, the professional REALLY has to up the ante in production value/deliverables, the "gear" is not so much the issue...

[Danny O'Neill]

Hi Ana,

Another way to think about it... and no doubt many couples are thinking this way. Is not that a pro can do it for less. But 'WHY' is a pro doing it for less.

Shoot it yourself have a very VERY strong brand. A brand instils a feeling of trust. What is now happening is brides are seeing what it costs to do themselves and then what it costs to have someone do it for you and there not thinking SIY is a bad idea. There wondering why is the pro cheaper.

SIY are now setting the baseline price for a wedding video.

I firmly believe this is a good thing for our industry and may well encourage many to charge what they are worth rather than fighting to offer the lowest price around.