[Andrew Richards] "That is a bad pricing model. As Philip Hodgetts is fond of saying, sell your talent, not your tools. Do clients really have such low standards that broader access to tools and a lower cost of entry for said tools means they don't care about the quality of the work?"
It's not that higher equipment prices allowed higher rates and that people were making huge margin on their gear, per se; it's that higher equipment prices created barriers to entry for post-production. With those barriers tumbling down, massive amounts of new entrants are able to flood the market. With that increased supply, competition is pushing rates down.
Some of that new competition, with very lower overhead and little business experience, set their rates at unsustainably low levels. Most of these businesses will fail (or will be part-time businesses that do not provide livable wages for their owner/operators), but because post is sexy, the failed businesses are quickly replaced with equally unsustainable businesses.
Some clients value quality and are willing to pay for it; others either don't care or are unable to see the difference or added value, and are willing to burn through preposterously low-priced editors.
See Walter Biscardi's blog post
For now, editing is a commodity and less a craft [link]. It's a great article that positions this as a trend that may ultimately reverse as clients and the industry learn.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at
Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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