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Artists Make Results, Results Make Artists
Whether a martial artist, cartoon scribbler, baseball player, or anything in between, the bottom line in everything we do in life is that we are judged on our results.
No one cares what the budget was, what issues we ran into, what obstacles we overcame. None of it. Simply put, everyone judges each other on the results they produce. If you hit a lot of home runs, you are a home run hitter. If you sell a lot of deals, you are a great salesman. It becomes a life resume per se.
We are what we Produce
For creatives like us, we are in a unique position. Usually, when it comes down to it, we have more control over our results then we’d like to admit. Sure, clients can be naive, and budgets can be downright insulting, but the truth is, at the end of the day, we still have results.
We have found that these results are all that matter. Artists make results, and the results make the artist. Simple as that. So, painstakingly at times, we have ignored the constraints of a budget, our personal sanity, and our emotional loved ones. We do this because we want the best results possible. We know that good results are worth the effort, cause the return on the investment is well worth the initial sacrifice.
Free Work
No one likes to work for free. No one likes to feel like they are always giving and never recouping anything in return. For a creative though, such is life. No one will believe you can do anything unless you show them. No one wants to hear you talk about your talent. They want to see it with their own eyes. Due to this, creatives are forced to make a choice between a rock and a hard place. Work well below your worth, or work on your own dime, and then hope what you create can bring in more clients.
For those contemplating if doing free work is okay, here is my take. I have done a bunch of ‘free work’ over time. Below is an example of a free project we did, and what resulted from it.
TV Commercial Production
Advanced Martial Arts Commercial – When we first decided we wanted to get into commercial production, the obvious issue was having a commercial to show for it. So I went to my closest resource, my jiu jitsu school. I told my instructor, and great friend, Brian that we wanted to make him a free commercial, as long as he would air it. He knew of my video work, so he was on board right away. Not too hard to get free work I must say. We produced the commercial, our first, and it took weeks. It was our first foray into greenscreen, and my partners very first video shoot. However, after a month of ups and downs, we had something to be proud of. Since then, here is what resulted from that project.
- Performance Jiu Jitsu – Brian’s instructor saw the commercial and wanted one.
- Elite Martial Arts – saw the commercial and wanted one.
- Elijah BJJ – saw the commercial and wanted one.
Not only that, but Elite Martial arts also became a great client for us. We started to handle their print work, website redesign, and were introduced to their entire network of schools as well. You can say Martial Arts has become a niche for us.
All from one free commercial.
Go All Out
The other lesson about doing free work is to understand what it means. It does not mean you should half ass it to get it done cause it’s free. That is not only wasting the client’s time, it is wasting your own. If you are not getting compensated monetarily, then you must get compensated by getting a great piece of work.
A great example of this, continuing off our last example, is Elite Martial Arts. A year after their commercial, because of the work they brought, we wound up doing another free commercial for them. We could have made it easy on ourselves, but we did not. Instead, we took it to the next level. If it was going to be free, it had to be our best.
We went in with the RED ONE package having worked out a deal to get that paid for at a ridiculously low cost to the owner. Each of the people in on the project were determined to get a great show piece out of it. We filmed in a high frame rate to slow things down, and tried to mix up the angles. Check out the results of our rough, soundless cut…
Now, any Jiu Jitsu school on earth would be happy with that for free. All we needed was to add sound, and titles. However, we wanted to go the extra mile. So instead, we decided to really go all out in post, playing with time remapping, color grading, and adding in motion 3D titles to spice it up.
Here are the final results…
Results make Artists
Now which one would you rather have as your ‘free work’? Do you think it helps to have an okay piece that you can tell everyone you did for free? Or do you think it helps to have a sick showpiece to get you more work in the future?
The bottom line is, free or not, it’s the results that will make who you are. So no matter the sacrifice, in the beginning, it is up to the artists to make results. Simple as that. Go all out, and make results. Then take what you learn and make more results. Don’t worry about the budgets, time, and all of that jazz. That is for later. For now, it is time to build a portfolio and reputation you can be proud of.
Everything else will follow.
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Agreed 1000 percent. One of the things that is important in anyones life is to raise the bar. Doing work that doesn’t raise the bar if it is free or for pay, is pointless. Recently I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. Certain people have expectations of what they want and what they think something should cost. What someone thinks something should cost is really irrelevant and not really rooted in reality rather rooted in their idea of what they think something is worth. Sadly these people have no real way to gauge what something is worth so they only thing they can use is their eyes. What they see is what they get and so they judge what something costs by what they are looking t for face value. Mind you a commercial or a website may look simple enough, but that would be the equivalent of me telling a mechanic “a transmission change seems simple enough, it’s only located on the bottom of the car how hard can it be to remove it and replace it?” Short sighted. That doesn’t make these people bad it just makes them ill informed.
Most clients are not trained in Web, Media, Development, or Graphic Design so most only rely on what they see and usually what they see is very limited or a small piece of the picture.
Having the audacity to raise the bar each time will make you worth more, and make your work better each time. Doing something to pay the bills… well.. I can get a job for that. I didn’t get into Design to do half assed work to make a paycheck, and I certainly didn’t get into it so I can do less than what I am worth either. It would be like telling a fighter to just don’t get defeated rather than win. You can’t tell a baseball player to hit 50% of your power.. Why would he do that? What is the benefit to that player? Would a jiu jitsu practitioner try to teach less effective jiu jitsu and lower his price to get more clients? lowering your price doesn’t mean getting more clients and it usually attracts people who only look at what we bring to the table as dollars or bottom line. Then those people are not looking at our service as such and rather a commodity. Those are not the clients we want. We want clients who want to work with us, and who can afford to pay what we are worth. Doing free work for personal projects sometimes gives you that lift to put yourself into a new realm one you couldn’t actually get as a paying job without an example like it to show.
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