Let's create things that matter. Together.
Sometimes to get noticed in the creative world you have to bite the bullet and take spec work (pitching or producing work that you may or may not get paid for). 50 years ago that meant pitching ideas to a large corporation (e.g. General Motors), and if they liked your ideas you won a multi-million dollar account.
In today’s world doing spec work is infinitely more complicated with crowdsourcing sites like 99 Designs, contests like the Doritos $1 million dollar Super Bowl commercials, and endless competition with template and stock companies that can provide entire packages for companies and individuals at affordable prices.
In this episode I discuss how to navigate the ever-changing world of spec work with post-production industry veterans Walter Biscardi and Shane Ross. Whether you are a seasoned vet figuring out how to survive in our rapidly shifting industry, or you are just breaking in and can’t figure out if spec work is worth it, we cover everything we can.
Walter Biscardi, Jr. is an accomplished video producer and storyteller serving a global clientele from his home base near Atlanta, Georgia. He founded his creatively driven company to bring quality video storytelling to all media driven projects. Corporate marketing & messaging, training & safety, original broadcast and web series, documentaries and feature films are some of the ways Walter and his team bring stories to life every day.
Shane Ross is a freelance editor residing in Los Angeles. He has cut shows for History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Disney and Nickelodeon. He’s an avid bicyclist, husband, and father to three amazing young ladies.
Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Walter Riscardi and Shane Ross, and this episode is going to be a little bit off the beaten path, because you may be thinking, well, what does spec work and design contests and editorial contests have to do with fitness and post? So, first of all, I want to make sure and welcome Shane and Walter to the show, because these are two definite heavy weights in the world of post and in the community of post production. So, I’m very, very excited to have you guys on today. Hello,
Shane Ross: Hello. Thank you for having us.
Zack Arnold: So, the idea is that I just kind of want to have a round table discussion that was sparked by a couple of Facebook posts that were in the post chat community, I believe it was probably a week or two ago, and I’ll put links to those conversations, so if you’re a post chat member, you can see them, but the idea is that there was a very, very heated debate about this, I about two kind of separate ideas, but are that in the same general category, and it is about using design contests or using design templates or editorial templates to do your work, and people questioning, well, those are ridiculous, because you’re taking money away from me, because you could be hiring me as a designer or an editor to be doing those things from scratch. And where this fits into my program is I really like to focus on the idea of productivity, and I like to focus on the idea of career advancement as well, and helping people get a leg up and move forwards to the next level in their career, and this kind of bridges the gap of both of those. Where is it okay to buy pre-designed templates because I want to make stuff look better, but I don’t want to spend 1000s and 1000s of dollars with a designer from scratch, or is it okay for me to use a company like 99 designs, or is it okay if you’re an up and comer to submit to a company like 99 designs, or the other ones that we can talk about today? You guys had submitted some new ones that I had never heard of that were kind of on both ends of that spectrum, so I have a feeling that I’m going to have way less to say in this conversation than the two of you. So I’m just going to kind of let you guys talk, and every once in a while I might check in, because you guys know way more about this than I do.
Walter Biscardi: You know, I’ll start it only because I’m the one who started that Facebook thread in the first place. And it was really a discussion about a company that approached me that claims that they have over 300,000 members right now, and basically a major brand comes to them, say a General Motors, and they want a new 32nd pre-roll created, so they put that job out to their community, if you will, and up to 300,000 people can put in a spec job, so basically you’re creating a 32nd spot for General Motors, let’s say, and only one person out of those 300,000 will actually get paid. So basically, you’ve got, and this just happens continuously for every client that comes in. So basically this middleman client isn’t doing a darn thing, except saying, hey, you are very creative people out there. We’d like your work for free, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get chosen, and then you get paid. But otherwise, you’re just going to continually do spec work.
Shane Ross: I got a question for you. Pardon me to interrupt.
Walter Biscardi: No, go ahead. No,
Shane Ross: You said that you said like a 32nd pre-roll. What is a pre-roll? Because is it a finished spot, or what exactly is that?
Walter Biscardi: Generally, a pre-roll in today’s jargon is a commercial. It’s what you would see when you hit play on Hulu. You’re going to see that 32nd commercial come up before the show comes up. Gotcha. And every time you’re online, say@cnn.com you’re going to watch that video. What first, a 32nd commercial has to come up. That’s called a pre-roll,
Zack Arnold: So it’s just a fancy way of saying a finished advertisement, basically
Walter Biscardi: It is, except it comes before the video, so it’s pre-roll, huh?
Zack Arnold: I see, so be like pre show if it were on television, because it’s before the show, clever,
Walter Biscardi: It would be, but we have to have a different term on digital, you know, of course, so basically, you know, I started this conversation saying, you know, this is utterly ridiculous to get all of these people to just simply submit free work, and then Scott Simmons, bless his heart, he went and had a conversation with them, which basically confirmed exactly what I said, in the sense of when the job bid comes in, they simply put it out to the whole community, and as many people as want to can submit back, and nobody’s going to get paid except that one person.
Shane Ross: Now, I wonder why. Who, who would actually do something like that, because it’s, it’s really bizarre to me that you would go to several bakers and go, I need you guys, you know, we want this cake for our conference, and we want all of you to submit cakes, and everybody, you know, works all weekend to make this really fantastic, gigantic cake to serve 150 people, and then you might go around the room and go, okay, taste a little bit, don’t. Okay, that’s the one we want, and that’s the only one you take, and the rest go away. That, that to me, is just makes zero sense.
Zack Arnold: Well, I’m going to step in for a second, not necessarily play the devil’s advocate, but I’m going to kind of ask an outsider question, because this is a world I’m not terribly familiar with. How is this any different than the way that most brands and corporate agencies have worked for the last 60 or 70 years, like if you watch Mad Men, they’ll have four agencies that’ll be trying to do a Jaguar commercial and win the Jaguar campaign, and all these agencies are working for free, and then the brand or the company says, “You’re the company that I want to do my future marketing. What’s the difference between those concepts?
Walter Biscardi: I would say the difference is that you are approaching specific agencies, or you’re going after, well, for one thing, you know what you’re bidding on, so say in the sense of that whole Mad Men thing, you know you’re bidding on the Jaguar campaign, that’s going to be a multi million dollar campaign, right, in the case of this, you might be working all weekend for a couple 100 bucks for a pre-roll,
Shane Ross: And the other big difference is, is that in those ad agency concepts, what they’re basically doing is the ad agencies are going to work on a pitch, they’re not going to make a finished product, they’re going to work up a, you know, this is the campaign that we envision for you, and yes, they do all this work for free, and that’s kind of like in their development budget, they have like a pitch budget to get all these people together to work on, you know, the storyboards or whatever diagrams to go, this is the idea we have, and this, the idea we’re going to pitch, and then the companies can go, okay, we will take this one or we’ll reject it, and then the other idea that they have when they do that is that they have this agreement that they’re not going to use your ideas if they go with another company, they’re just going to go, well, we don’t like that, we’re going to go with these guys.
Zack Arnold: Now I understand the difference, so that helps.
Walter Biscardi: This would actually basically be like that ad agency just putting it out open. General Motors has come to us, we have absolutely no idea. 300,000 people give us an idea. That’s exactly what it is.
Zack Arnold: The company that you’re talking about is a middleman company that’s just collecting all of these designers, editors, not even necessarily agencies, but just kind of putting them all in one bucket and saying, here’s all the stuff that I got for you.
Walter Biscardi: It’s basically the same as Angie’s List or Thumbtack. Here’s a big community of creatives. Hey, creatives, we have this job come up with an idea, and that’s.. and all these.. all this middleman does is go to these companies and say, hey, we can provide you with a spot dirt cheap, and we can give you hundreds of options to choose from, and what I wonder is, how many of these brands actually realize that they’re supporting, you know, hundreds of 1000s of free labor, if you will.
Shane Ross: Oh, so they might not even know that they approach this middleman and go, “Hey, we need an idea, and this middleman goes, “Okay, we’ll get you an idea, so they’re basically like approaching an ad agency, saying we need an idea, and the ad agency will then come back and go, here’s a finished commercial, and these guys might even know that there’s 30 people that had made a finished commercial yet,
Walter Biscardi: Or hundreds, or 1000s, like General Motors. So the company that approached me was something called Zupa, and so General Motors approaches Zupa and says we need a new pre-roll. Zupa spends three weeks, they get all these submissions, they collate through the submissions, and then they pick 100 or 50 or whatever to present to General Motors, and then General Motors picks the one, not maybe not even knowing that there’s about 100,000 more ideas that are sitting out there that weren’t even chosen, so, so to me, you know, in the other difference, to you, I think you actually brought up a great point with talking about the ad agency and the Mad Men, they pick and choose, you know, which things are going to go ahead and do spec work on, if you’re relying on somebody like a Zupa, or there’s 99 idea, I don’t even know what 99 ideas is, is that a, is that a stock site?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll go through 99 designs, because that’s a very, very popular one. But I will, yeah, we’ll, we’ll continue on this thread first.
Walter Biscardi: So, with, so, with the pitching, you know what you have to understand is, so I’ll do spec work, but it’s just on occasion, but I’m not going to do it day after day, week after week, hoping that my pitch is going to get picked, and then, by the way, what happens to my content after I submit it? Who gets to, you know, now they’ve seen all this work, and maybe General Motors likes this other thing, but instead of having me do it, they, General Motors picks three ideas, but they pick one artist to execute all three ideas.
Shane Ross: Well, see, that’s a question I have too, is with Zupa. They’ll go, we’ll come up with an idea for you. What if they go, we’ve chosen all these ideas amongst these guys. Here’s the idea. And General Motors goes, yeah, you know what, we don’t like that one. Do they then go, oh, what about this one? Do they like pick a top three that they show to General Mulligers?
Walter Biscardi: According to Zupa, they say that their clients like to see a whole bunch of. Options. Okay,
Shane Ross: So it’s like a pitch that they do to see, but a whole bunch of finished ideas.
Walter Biscardi: Yeah, it’s not even a pitch, it’s just here’s 20 ideas, which one do you like
Shane Ross: For an example of this, and how this is in the real world that other people out there might recognize. During the Super Bowl, Doritos will have a contest, basically to make a commercial that they will air during the Super Bowl, except I think now they accept two or three, and so lots of people, and typically I think they wanted mainly like the beginners, all the people out there who were like new to submit these fantastic ideas, and if your idea gets chosen, you get paid a million dollars, and your commercial airs, and as we’ve noticed, a lot of the what they say, the production value of these commercials. I think initially they started out kind of low, but now professionals are doing these, and that’s what’s happening, is that you’ll get 100 or 200 submissions, and then Doritos will narrow it down online to say 30, and then have voting, which 30 do you want to air, and then they air.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and in this case, I will share my opinion. I have no problem with this business model at all. I actually think this is great, because it opens the gates to people that would never ever have the opportunity to possibly be discovered or create something, because there are so many people that create spec work anyway, people that’ll spend weeks and weeks and weeks just creating spec spots, so they have a reel, so they can possibly sell themselves with no prospect of any of those ever becoming something. So, my personal feeling is I have no problem with this Doritos model, but it’s clearly very different than what we’ve been talking about. So,
Walter Biscardi: I don’t really have a problem with Doritos, because I think there’s kind of a cash outlay there, and one of the things that they, that they do right is they acknowledge who does the work, you know. If you go to that site, I think you mentioned, you know, they’ll put up like 30 ads and let people vote, they tell you who did them, so that’s cool. So, even if you don’t get picked, at least your work is getting recognized, and you’re doing it for a very specific, you know, reason and a purpose, and you know that this is a national spot, which I think you know is worth doing a spot for, and by the way, a Georgia team won with that fabulous goat ad, you know, the goat in the closet,
Shane Ross: Yeah,
Walter Biscardi: That was actually a Georgia team, so that was kind of cool,
Shane Ross: So that is the neat, the unique thing about this one is that because I’ve myself have done this, I have worked on four spec commercials where basically a bunch of us get together, like you know, like people might get together to make a short film, several of us to get together, like let’s make this ad for this car, let’s make this ad for this tennis racket, and we will put our own time into it to basically show off what we can do, show them the work to go. Either you know, hey, here’s this idea we have for you. Either you can buy it or see how good we are, and you know, come with us for your ideas, and you know we know we’re doing, we’re you know we know that we’re taking our own time to do this, and it’s if it doesn’t work there, we can still go to other commercial agencies and say, hey, look at the level of work we can do, so we can use that real, but you’re saying that this one site, it’s not like that, they actually pay, first off, you know, unlike Doritos, they, you know, there might not be an outcome where people get paid lots, but it might just be a couple $100 yeah, and then what happens to the other work, all the other people who submit, is that then the property of this middleman, or do they get to use it elsewhere?
Walter Biscardi: That’s the part that I really don’t know, and that’s something that you would have to look into with any of these sites. It’s not just the stupid site, it’s whatever sites are essentially creating this middle man proposition, you know the difference in creating spec work and then presenting it to an ad agency is, you’ve made this decision to say we’re going to go after this account. This is a situation where they’ve talked to somebody at City General Motors who then agrees that, yeah, we’ll try your services out, and instead of them even coming up in an idea, they just say, “Hey, community, come up with something to make us look good.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, now I see the distinction, where if we’re talking about the Mad Men business model that’s been around for ages, you’re saying, “All right, I’m willing to spend my own money, put together my own creative team, if I’m an agency, not if I’m a person, but if I, if I have my own agency, my own existing team. I already have overhead, but I know that if I win this account, say General Motors, that’s going to lead to millions and millions of dollars in a long-term relationship, as opposed to let’s, let’s use the analogy of I am that creative agency, or I’m a creative individual, and I want to do the Doritos ad, and I want to win the million dollars, but this guy over here, he’s going to submit my information to Doritos. Doritos is going to say to him, show me all your different ads, and then Doritos is ultimately picking him, and he has the relationship with Doritos, but he’s using my work to win that account now. I see the distinction, and why something like this can be dangerous. Now I get it.
Walter Biscardi: Yeah, and I mean, you’re all you’re doing is you’re you can’t build a relationship that way. You’re going to build a relationship with Zupa, maybe, or whoever the middleman is, but General Motors won’t know who you are, or Doritos won’t know who you are, and you know it’s possible, like the whole world isn’t even going to know who you are, because that’s part of it, you know. When they won the Jaguar account, it was a big, you know, the big thing. Press release, the whole world knows, you know, Don Draper is leading the Jaguar account, or whatever. Well, you can’t do that because your name isn’t a part of this thing at all. And I think it’s just, you know, there’s.. I think Shane asked earlier, who would do this, and I mean, obviously, the tools are so cheap now that there’s college kids, there’s high school kids that I know that can produce some amazing things, and they would be happy to go ahead and just keep pitching and pitching and pitching till one lands, and then, of course, there’s people all around the world that would be happy to keep pitching and pitching and pitching and pitching until something lands, but it’s just another example of the commoditization in general of what we do, it’s not that we’re reached out because we’re exceptional creatives, it’s just you’re just one of 300,000 so just give me an idea,
Shane Ross: And so this is one of those issues where, like, instead of coming to a, you know, to establish creative companies to say, hey, do this for us. They’re reaching out to the, you know, the young up-and-comers, who, you know, still might live, you know, share an apartment with four guys, not have that many that big of expenses, and that’s their way to kind of, you know, take the work. The large agencies, like large post houses, will have, like, their color correctors and finishers, but people won’t go to them, they’ll now go to the guy who has the garage, because you know he’s $100 an hour, as opposed to $350 an hour, so, so, so, is this eating into your business? Is that, is that the issue that’s happening here, Walter?
Walter Biscardi: Oh, 100% yeah, 100% I mean, I’m competing against people who are charging $10 an hour, I can’t, you know, even working out of my house, I couldn’t compete with that, you know, it’s it’s it’s companies like, like those that are just helping to come to further depress the marketplace, and of course, as a thing becomes a commodity now, now companies just simply go for which one is the cheapest, yeah, which one’s gonna be the best,
Shane Ross: And then how sustainable is this? Because even those young up-and-comers at some point need to make more money, but now this model of this price range is out there. So, really, you know, you can be doing this high-end work, but you’re gonna end up for a long time living with, you know, roommates, because you can’t afford rent elsewhere.
Walter Biscardi: I mean, the longer this goes on, the more companies like these are going to set the market rate. So, when General Motors looks out at Shane Ross and Zack Arnold and Walter Guardian, they’re going to say, “Well, we’re already paying 500 bucks for a spot, we’re not going to pay you anymore. If you don’t want to do it, we’ll just go back over to Zupa, let them do it. So that’s what I really don’t like about companies like these, where it’s the Walmart of commercials, if you will. Just go down the aisles and to go, well, here’s this, there’s Shane, here’s this guy, here’s that guy. Okay, I see that spot, I’ll just grab this spot off the shelf and go. It’s great for younger people to get their work maybe out there, but then once you’ve established that you’ll work for, let’s just say, $10 an hour, it’s very hard to go up from there and then step out, because how do you step out from from this and say, okay, now my work is worth $100 an hour? Well, you were just doing it for $10 an hour last week, so how do you identify stepping out?
Shane Ross: Yeah, that’s the danger of, you know, and that’s always been the danger, is you know, yes, I’ll do this for this rate, and you know, you hire camera guys to the same thing, and you go, yes, I really want to shop, I’ll do for this rate, but then from then on, you’re always at that rate,
Walter Biscardi: Right, and you know, working in the garage or working at home doesn’t mean that you’re worth less, and that that is a misnomer for some people too. It’s like, well, you know, I work at home or I work in a garage, and that means my skills aren’t worth as much. It’s like, well, if you’re working with the same stuff that you know they’re working with in the big post houses, well, you know, you have a right to, and your creative chops are what they are, then you do have the right to say, well, I might charge less than a big post house, but I’m still worth something, you know. I’m still
Shane Ross: Worse than that. Is something that I do, is that you know I am one of those guys that you know I color correct certain jobs at home in my garage, primarily for the companies that you know have such low budgets, they cannot approach the larger places to use the scratch or something, because it’s not in their budget. I’m not, you know, hugely cheap. I still have a good rate, but my overhead is low, therefore my budget is a little bit low. But I still charge a competitive rate, as opposed to somebody who’s brand new and going, ‘I’m only gonna charge you $200 flat to do this two hour documentary.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. I think that’s the distinction to make here, that’s that’s something I wanted to step in and say too, is that, and I’m glad you said it, Walter, is that just because somebody is an up and coming college kid that has a laptop on an iPhone doesn’t mean they’re not going to be the next David Fincher, and they don’t have amazing talent. The difference is devaluing the entire market, and more importantly, devaluing yourself just because you’re trying to get in, because that is a mistake that a lot of people make, is they take that one job for very low pay, and then for the next five years they have this rate attached to their head, it’s almost like they have a scarlet letter, it’s like, well, this guy already told me that you did this for this price, so why would I pay you more, so that is something you have to be very careful about, now that we’ve kind of gone through the this idea of these these contests in the sense of you’re this invisible person submitting to a middleman that submits to an agency. Now I want to go in a little bit different direction and talk about something where there is no middle man, because this is a common part of one of the the side threads in this main conversation was the idea of 99 designs.com and I know, Walter, you said you hadn’t heard of them, and the way that 99 design works is much more like the Mad Men model, just updated for the 21st century in the internet and technology, but it’s.. I don’t know how it works so much with agencies and corporations, I think it’s more on the individual level, but what you would do is you would say I need a book cover designed, or I need a logo design, or a T-shirt design. So, here’s my creative brief, and then people can voluntarily submit and put their work out there and say, these are my ideas, here’s a rough sketch, here’s a comp that I want to show you, and then you pick the top person, you go through a voting process and you pick the top person and they get paid the way that I see it, it’s your way to find somebody that you want to work with in the future and pay them a full rate. So, as a full disclaimer, I’ve used 99 designs before, and I don’t think that there’s any problem with using a service where it’s not like somebody’s submitting something and I’m actually using it. We’ll go down that road in a few minutes, but it’s just, well, do I like this logo design? Do I like this logo design? Do I like this logo design? And then once I have it, then I refine it with that person, paying them a full rate. So that’s that’s the model of 99 designs, and there are a couple other sites like that, but that’s kind of the big behemoth of this business model
Walter Biscardi: That sounds much more fair if the end client is coming directly to you at the end of the process,
Zack Arnold: So for example, I have a designer that I work with directly now, and I pay him a very good rate, but I found him through 99 designs, where I said, “Hey, I’m designing this new online learning program, and I like a really cool logo, I can’t hire a designer for $100 an hour. I just, this is my own personal passion project. I just can’t afford it. But there are people all over the world that will submit their designs, and I pay a package. You get a certain amount of services for this package. You get a client manager that helps you manage the designers, because there’s a lot of people and a lot of submissions, and most of them are really bad, frankly. But you do find some top tier talent, so I say, yes, I really, really like this look, I want to develop it with you specifically further, so I award them the contest money, and then we develop a personal relationship, and I’m paying them additional money, and they’ve now kind of become my de facto designer, where I say, hey, I have a whole bunch of elements, can you do this, this, and this, and like, yes, it’ll cost this amount of money, so because that person submitted, they found a new client, and I know that a couple people were saying, “Oh my god, that’s such a horrible model, and I’m like, “Why,
Walter Biscardi: That’s actually a good model
Zack Arnold: To me. That’s the 20-first century way of just doing the spec pitches.
Walter Biscardi: Well, and that’s allowing you to meet designers that you’ve never met. It’s kind of like what we’ve done on the cow and Twitter and Facebook, where we kind of get to know each other, and then you’re like, oh, you’re a designer, hey, would you do this logo for me, but instead of that, you’re able just to go on to one site, and what I love about that is actually at the end of the process you have developed a relationship, so it’s not just, hey, here’s one spec for General Motors, they take it, and I don’t ever get to meet General Motors. You actually get to meet the artist and develop that relationship, so that’s awesome. That seemed to me a way for like people like me and Shane, who have our heads stuck in, you know, edit bays a lot, to go ahead and meet new people without, you know, meeting new clients, without having to go out and network with new clients, that’s awesome.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s if I were a young up-and-comer, I would have been all over a site like 99 designs from the opposite end. Now, I mean, I’m not a graphic designer, but if something like that existed for editorial, or somebody said, “Hey, here’s some raw footage, let’s see who can do the best cut, and once we find out who can do the best cut? You’re going to win the job, and you get to be a full-time editor at our post house. I would have been all over that, because there were not opportunities like that 15 years ago, where I was sitting in a room, like I started out on a TV tray in a 400 square foot studio apartment with a laptop and a hard drive. That’s where my business started. And if I had the ability every day to cut somebody else’s footage and submit it to contests and win clients, I would have been all over that.
Shane Ross: Yeah, that is a good way to do it, because I mean, again, I’m one of the.. I guess I’m now concerned with the old guard, even though I don’t feel that is the way they kind of used to be, is that we would have to have worked on a bunch of stuff and then submit them a reel, and we still kind of do, but you submit the reel. These are samples of my work. Do you like how I cut, and if you do, then you can hire me. But the problem is, is when you’re up and coming, you don’t have anything like that. You don’t have a reel to work with. You don’t have anything to show anybody. So, as a new person coming in, you know, it would be kind of cool to go, you know, have someone go, ‘Here’s a little bit, here’s like a small sample of footage, see what you can do with this, and I’ll see if I like that, you know, I, and then you can show off what you can do, and then they would go, ‘Hey, you know, that’s I like what you did, because, yeah, it gives you something to be able to create to show people what you’re doing, instead of having to, you know, oh, great, now I need to find some footage, so I can cut together a reel, and you know, because that’s that was a big issue I had when I started out, is that when I left film school, I tried to get work, and everybody’s like, well, I need, do you have a reel, and I’m like, oh great, one thing that I didn’t do in film school is do a reel, and I don’t know if I have, you know, that guy’s filmed in order to do the reel, so I couldn’t, it couldn’t piece anything together,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s the catch 22 when you’re trying to break into the industry, and it’s very, very, very different now than it was 1520, 30 years ago, where you’re like, all right, well, I need a reel, but I don’t have anything to work on, so how do I make a reel if there’s nothing to work on, so you can see that I’ve worked on stuff, it’s just this endless cycle, and I feel like now with these different types of contests, even if you’re going to submit to Doritos, you’re going to submit to 99 designs as an artist, you might, you’re going to be spending your own time with the risk of not getting paid, but when you’re done, you still have a product you can say, here’s something that belongs to me, not here’s something I’m submitting to this Zupa guy, and he gets to submit it. There’s a huge distinction there, where I think this conversation goes into the dark side of it, and this is where I wanted to go to next. That goes into the idea of templates, is if somebody is saying submit 100 different versions of smoke effects or backgrounds or whatnot, and then a bunch of people submit and then you build your own collection and you sell that collection, that’s where this really gets kind of messy.
Walter Biscardi: Well, now, so this all came from that original Facebook thread, and you know, templates and stock footage are something completely different, and in fact, in that thread, Rampant Design was actually singled out. First of all, completely different discussion has nothing to do with submitting your work for free. One, if we’re just going to mention rampant design, just very quickly, they create all their own work, which is fabulous. If, if we’re going to talk about templates and stock, I mean, that, that is a huge benefit for us working today. The person who brought that up in the thread might have been a designer. I’m not even sure who it was. It just to me it was just an angry person for whatever reason. I don’t think you can equate templates with submitting your work for free as the same thing. I mean, I don’t know how all of these sites work, but I work pretty much exclusively with Rampant Design, and they make all their own stuff, that’s like their living,
Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I want to make sure and differentiate, because I too believe that anybody in the free market that says I want to build a ton of stuff, all these templates, and I, as one person, I’m going to sell them to you, and you can use them at your will. I have no problem with that. I guess where I want to differentiate is there are people that collect those templates and that work from other people, like so they kind of are crowdsourcing their own library, whereas you have a company like Rampant, where a guy is sitting in a room with After Effects building a whole bunch of cool stuff, and
Walter Biscardi: How is that any different from stock though? I mean, Pond Five bills their library from people edit stock bills their library from people, so it’s just the same business model, and I’m assuming that these template people who, who, who collate pay the artists every time the template is sold, correct?
Shane Ross: Yeah, see, that’s that’s a question I had. I mean, like with Pond Five, I have stuff on Pond Five, I shot some stuff. I’ll put it up there for sale. If it sells, pawn five gets half, I get half, you know, because I created the work, and pawn five is sharing the work. I’m just wondering, because that was a thread that just took a tangent that was like, where did this come from?
Walter Biscardi: Right?
Shane Ross: He must have been some graphic design guy who was in some contest, there must have been some contest somewhere, or something, where they go submit a graphic design, and he submitted it, and then it was, you know, when they submitted somewhere in the fine print, it said, you know, here’s this contest, make this graphic, you know, to make some kind of graph, you know, background or some kind of graphic thing, and who’s ever gets the greatest, you know. Background thing that we like, you win, you get $500 and then you win this contest, and they’ll get 500 submissions, and now they’ve taken those 500 submissions and said you no longer own those. Boom, here’s our collection for sale. I’m wondering if that was the situation there, because that’s what he seemed to make it appear as,
Walter Biscardi: That’s what it seemed like, but for whatever reason, he singled out Rampant Design, which, that’s the part that threw me over the edge, because I know Sean and Stephanie personally, and they not only do they create a lot of this cool stuff, they actually shoot it in camera, a lot of this stuff. So, I mean,
Shane Ross: Let me just show their companies to, like, what the Jump Back, so was that Digital Jew? I mean, those guys have been around for a while, and I had purchased all their, like, SD stuff, because
Walter Biscardi: Video blocks,
Shane Ross: Yeah. I mean, because you know, I’m not a graphics guy, and I don’t have time to go hire a graphics guy to specifically do something, because sometimes I might not know specifically what I want. That’s the other thing, is I go, I kind of want something, but I don’t know what I want yet, and I don’t want a graphics guide to then try to do, how about this? How about this? How about this? I liked going to the jump backs, because I would be able to see, you know, here are 50 things. Okay, that’s actually closer to what I want, and that’s what I like about Rampant, too. Is that I go, I know I need some kind of out of focus thing to layer on something, and then maybe a background. Okay, he’s got, you know, 300 things for me to look at. So,
Zack Arnold: God, too much. And that’s the record that I wanted to set straight. This is really the heart of the whole conversation, and all the confusion is if you’re somebody that is building your own template library and selling it, it doesn’t matter if it’s stock footage, Pond Five, Cinemody, who’s one of my sponsors, in full disclosure, you’re a rampant design, whoever it is, it’s the free market, I love ideas like that, but if you’re a singular designer and you’re saying, well, somebody should be hiring me to do those things for them, I can’t compete with this, this is ruining the market. My response is, Welcome to the free market. This is a guy that had an idea, or a company that has an idea, they’re paying other designers to make these things and sell them. So, what? Welcome to America. You can’t say, “Well, I’m a designer, and people should be hiring me at my full rate to make all of those digital graphic backgrounds and lower third backgrounds individually. It’s like, no, somebody was smarter than you, and they figured out how to market this on a larger scale. Like, that’s the way that it works. What’s different is if, like, let’s say, for example, that company asked other designers to submit submissions for free as a contest. The best one wins, but then all of my submissions become part of my library. That’s where I think the disconnect was in the conversation, because that is immoral, illegal, like that should absolutely not be done. But I think that was the understanding of, like, oh well, companies are outsourcing their work and they’re selling people’s work in their own collections like that is absolutely, totally wrong. If there are people doing that,
Walter Biscardi: I think the heart of his discussion was we shouldn’t be using templates, we should be hiring designers to do this work, and that’s just flat out no, that’s never going to happen.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and my response to that is, remember all of the buggy whip creators that went out of business when there were cars, like that’s the way the world works.
Walter Biscardi: I had a situation, literally a few weeks ago, where I had to create a national commercial in 24 hours. I got the call at 11 o’clock at night, they needed the spot by 10pm the next night, and it was all motion graphics and photos and all this stuff. So, what did I do? I went to, I think, Envato, paid 30 bucks for a template, found a gorgeous template, and it still took me, you know, the better part of eight hours to pull the whole spot together, but all the motion was already there, and all I had to do would modify the motion to what I wanted it to do. I didn’t have to create it from scratch, and it’s like I will gladly pay somebody 30 bucks for coming up with a starting point for me,
Shane Ross: Yeah, and in some of the cases of what stuff I used to work on, we would shoot video back in the SD days, we’d shoot video of stuff, but we wanted to look like it to look like film, so we might then, you know, go shoot a piece of film somewhere, just so we can, you know, like against white, so we can get the film grain or do something so we can get dirt on it. We would shoot that, scan it, and then have that in our library of stuff to choose from. But you know, okay, now we need something specific, so we’d have to keep doing that, and we’d have our own little private collection. But it would cost us a lot of money to do something like that, and we wouldn’t really sell it out to the market. So somebody went, “Hey, you know, yeah, I’m wondering if that’s where it came from. Somebody goes, “Hey, you know, we shot this for our stuff, wouldn’t it be cool if we made this available for everybody else? So now, if you have a collection of film grain and dirt and scratches, because that’s where I got one of those, you know, the other things I worked was like Art Beats, boom, Bart Beats got, you know, all these tragic
Walter Biscardi: Stuff,
Shane Ross: And that’s how you know someone went, “Hey, that’s a fantastic idea, and that’s that’s where it saved us money, because instead of us going, you know, we need this, you know, go out and buy this, you know, certain thing, or hire the, you know, the one graphics guy to do a certain thing, we kind of go, we just need a generic, you know, lens flare or something like that. Boom, now we can get out there, and it’s a great business model, because now this guy goes, I can sell it for $30 to this one, you know, to 500 people, so therefore I get my. Money back,
Walter Biscardi: Yeah. And then After Effects has save as a template, so somebody got smart and said, ‘Hey, I can save this template and sell it. So there you go.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s an example where, like, for example, I’m not going to spend years to learn how to use After Effects expressions, but I can buy templates from somebody that does know how to use After Effects expressions, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I think that again is where the disconnect came from, is somebody saying, well, I spent years learning After Effects expressions, and this designer should not be allowed to sell that intellectual property and information as a template, so somebody like me that knows nothing about it can pay him $100 for a template, and I’m like, why not, why, like, what, what is what is wrong with that? If I were taking his actual work and selling it as my work, like, that’s that can be different. Well, before we, we wrap up, we have a few more minutes. The I always like to give the audience a takeaway, not just be like, oh well, that was fun to listen to, so what am I supposed to do with that? And I think really, where the takeaway is here now that we’ve kind of differentiated these different types of options, looking at it from the artist’s perspective, because pretty much anybody listening to this is going to be one of the artists. I don’t have too many General Motors executives that listen to my podcast, so yeah, right, maybe someday. And actually, I really wouldn’t want that anyway. I don’t know why.
Shane Ross: He only has 10 listeners anyway, so these 10 listeners,
Zack Arnold: So all, so all 10 people. If one of you works for General Motors, the rest of the show is not for you, but for the rest of you that are creative artists, like we are. I want to talk about where this makes sense, where you should be putting your creative energy, and what you really, really need to avoid. We’ve kind of said some of those things, but I just want to, very concretely, you know, between the three of us, decide if I’m a young up and comer or I am one of the old guard, like you said, and I’ve also had that realization, Shane, where I’m like, wait, I’m one of the old editors now, when in the world did this happen, but anyway, that’s a totally new conversation for a different episode, but if there are people listening to this that are saying I’m trying to break in, I know that I have talent, and there’s now so many options with so much noise. What should I be choosing? How should I be getting out there if I’m not doing it the old fashioned way of networking and finding the clients directly? And I want to try these 21st century methods of crowd sourcing, but I want to find the right way to do it. How can somebody get started?
Walter Biscardi: So, first of all, you have to realize that your work has value, your creative knowledge, your it’s not just your ability to use software or to use a camera, it’s that creative knowledge that you have, and it actually has value, and there’s nothing wrong with waiting for the right job and saying, you know, I’m worth x amount per hour, and I’d really like to get paid that, because once you start at a low rate, it’s very hard to move it up. Now, companies like this 99 design actually sound like a good way to get your name out there, because at the end of it all, like you said, Zack, there’s going to be a personal relationship between you and the end client, and that’s what you’re always looking for. You always want to be able to connect directly with that end client. You never want to be working with the middle man, because it’s that middle man who’s going to build that relationship, and they don’t honestly care about you. All they care about is who has the best idea. You had the best idea today, you get the gig, but then tomorrow Zack had the better idea, so he’s going to get the gig, and now you don’t have any kind of a relationship with the client in terms of these templates and stock, that’s actually a good way to get your name out there and make a little bit of money, you’d look at some of these libraries, like Shane said, you put it up on Pond Five, or you put it up on Video Blocks, or you make a little money for your work, and if people download your work enough, they actually know who you are. Your name is attached to your work, so they could potentially reach out to you directly and say, I’ve been buying your stock footage for quite some time, I’d like to work with you directly. So, I would just say, if you’re up and coming, one, your work has value, and two, if you’re going to participate in some of these sites, make sure your name gets attached to it, so people know who you are, and that you get a little bit of cash back for each time you know, go out and develop 1000 After Effects templates, go for it, and put them all up on a on a site like Envato, or something like that, where maybe you make 10 bucks every time somebody downloads something. At least your work is getting, you know, you’re making a little bit of money.
Shane Ross: Okay. In my end, what I could say is, yeah, I mean, don’t undervalue yourself, don’t try to go, I, you know, I got to get this job, so I’m gonna be, I gotta get my foot in the door, so I’m going to bid this a lot lower, because you know, once you bid that low, that same company might consider you to always be that low. So, yeah, you do value your work. I mean, I know you’re going to be a little bit cheaper than the next guy, so you will go a little bit lower, but don’t go too low. And the other thing is, is that if you want to, I mean, look. Were certain contests that allow you retain ownership of your work. I know that there’s like a couple of contests out there that you know say, hey, submit a music video or a commercial and you can use our library, use our music, or use our stock footage, and it’s a contest, you win prizes, and and I know there’s a couple of them out there that allow you to, you can retain it, and if you want to use it, as you know, out there, all you need to do is pay them to license the footage, and then you can use it, but you know, and that, and that’s one way that you can like build your reel, and then there are other sites out there, I think I know there’s this one called Edit Stock, this friend of mine, Misha Tannenbaum, has this, where you, that they shoot full scenes of, you know, from like movies or something, and you can edit your own thing, and then there you have something for your reel to show people, so you don’t have to, you know, try to like scrounge and do a short film, you can actually create something. Now, you know, Zack and I are from the, in the same area, we’re in broadcast TV, so unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of people who come out right out of college, or even just if they go to college, to, you know, to nude editing, to then jump into a broadcast show, that’s kind of difficult to do, so I would say, you know, learn, you’re gonna have to learn your way into the market, you’re gonna have to like start as a post-PA, an assistant editor, and go up that way, but this is still one way to kind of, you know, like if you’re in a post house or a production company, and they need, you know, webisodes edited or something like that, they don’t want to pay three $500 a week editor to do it, but you can go, look, I can cut something, I’ve done these kinds of things in the past, they will go to you,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and just as a full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of Editstock, and they were a former sponsor of the show because of that. Those are examples of people that are absolutely doing it the right way and not creating these contests and these systems where they’re just devaluing your talent and exploiting your work and your ideas to sell it to other companies or sell it to other individuals. And then you had sent me the link to one this morning that you had just alluded to, called Film Challenge, which I had never heard of. And after two minutes of looking at the site, I’m like, this is awesome. I totally would have done this when I just moved out here, and it’s great for both parties, because it has the stock footage companies getting their work out there, music libraries are getting their work out there, so you’re saying I want to build something, submit to a contest, and have something for a reel, but then you develop a relationship with the stock footage company, which is what the stock footage company wants. So that was a model, and like, this is a great example of how this works correctly and above board in an honest way. And you look at the list of judges, and you’re like, these are all the good people that you meet at the conventions, and you’re like, oh, they’re the good ones, they’re not the bad ones, and the ones that are trying to take advantage of people. So, yeah, I think that where I would just jump in and kind of reiterate what you guys have already said is that you have to be very careful nowadays about companies and websites trying to commoditize your talent and sell it to other people, where you become the invisible man behind the curtain, which, frankly, in the world of editorial, we already are the invisible devalued people behind the curtain anyway. So, don’t let another middleman come in and do that to you. But at the same time, I think you should try to avoid the rhetoric that some people have out there of saying that, oh, these design contests are just devaluing everybody, and I don’t really agree with that. I think that if you’re young, you’re up and coming, and you want to put in the time to get your talent and your work out there in front of people, and try and find a client you can do so. So, like, for example, on a 99 designs, if I were an artist, I’m not going to submit one logo design to one contest, I’m going to submit 50 logo designs to 50 contests, and I might only win two or three, but now I’m building a client base, and I can move forwards getting more work like that’s just a model that wasn’t around and easily accessible online when I was coming up, and I would have loved to have a service like that, and I know that even in that thread 99 designs was being slammed, and I just.. I don’t believe that’s the right way to look at
Walter Biscardi: It. Yeah, I mean, back, back when we were all just getting started, I think the I think the WW UG was about the best we had. Get in touch with each other, and then a Creative Cal came along few years later. So, all these tools that are out there today, there’s like you said, there’s some fabulous tools, there’s some fabulous people out there. You know, you mentioned Ed Stock, we’ve talked about Rampant Design, you talked about 99 there’s a lot of examples of really good people out there, and then there’s some really bad people out there, and I guess that’s the best piece of advice you guys have given. Just look at the site carefully, actually read into some of those terms and conditions. I know we all laugh about Apple, but you know, just look at the terms, and mainly you want to see who owns this, and do you have the right to show it if it doesn’t get chosen? As long as you have the right to show it, yeah, do what you will.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that’s a great point, because for example, with 99 designs, what you’re paying for, if I’m the client and I’m hiring an artist, I’m paying them the money for the copyright to that design, but all the other submissions I can’t use those I. Have to pay the money, because that’s their idea, their design, their intellectual property, even though it might be my logo or my company name. I don’t own any of that until I say you win the contest, so I’m going to give you money. So, if you’re the artist, look through the terms and conditions and see, all right, what happens to my work? Am I as soon as I hit the submit button, does somebody else own it, or do I own it until I paid money, if I’m considered one of the winners, like that’s a huge telltale sign of whether this is the right company or the wrong company.
Walter Biscardi: Yeah, and I’m 99 design, whatever you didn’t choose, that artist can turn right around and now give me a logo with the exact same look, but it’s one of the ones that you didn’t choose, so you know
Zack Arnold: Exactly. So you’re already building a collection of real world work, you can use it as a portfolio. You can say, well,
Zack Arnold: Exactly, this logo lost, but I was able to get two rounds of creative direction from a client, and I could do that with 10 other clients. So I now have 10 real world logos that I built, which is your spec portfolio, which is no different than what people have been doing for 100 years,
Walter Biscardi: Exactly.
Zack Arnold: We’re just doing it online.
Zack Arnold: So that having been said, I think we’ve covered this conversation very, very well, and I hope this has been helpful for people listening, especially those that are younger and trying to break in and just get some sense of how do I just clear out all this noise and how do I move forwards and not get taken advantage of and get my talent out there. I’m hoping that we’ve cleared that up. So this has been tremendously helpful. I learned a ton of stuff just from listening to the two of you guys today. So, it’s been a tremendous pleasure. So, thank you both for being on the show.
Shane Ross: You’re welcome. Thanks for having.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Jakin Rintelman, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA
Unlike doctors or lawyers, the path to having a successful career is not linear. The key is learning the proper steps to forge your own unique path.
It’s extremely common in creative industries to see job listings for free or low paid work, but how do you know if it will ultimately lead to career growth?
