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As Competition Mounts, Producers Shoot for Higher-Quality Video

MEDIA: Industry Faces Challenges as Folks Take Do-It-Yourself Approach

Mark Schulze, CEO of Crystal Pyramid Productions, says more people can afford to do video production, but the quality has gone down.

By Julie Gallant

Monday, March 21, 2011

The proliferation of affordable camera devices mixed with the growing popularity of YouTube and similar do-it-yourself social media sites are leaving a lasting impression on the video production industry.

“The tools are getting better and cheaper, but, if the artists don’t know what they’re doing, they won’t end up with a good product,” said Mark Schulze, chief executive officer, director of photography and a producer for San Diego-based Crystal Pyramid Productions. “More people can afford to do video production, but the quality has gone down.”

While the availability of small, inexpensive cameras makes video production more accessible to the masses, Schulze says that it takes a multifaceted set of equipment and skills to make an impressive video. Among them are good lighting, audio, script and voice-over techniques. And the small cameras can’t accommodate the bigger lenses that go into making beautiful pictures.

On the flip side are technological advancements that have introduced such things as high-definition video equipment, which produces better quality pictures that reproduce well on the big screen for a fraction of the price of standard definition equipment. New microphones, the size of a button, are also producing good audio, Schulze says.

Schulze, who has worked on productions for adidas, Qualcomm Inc. and Oprah Winfrey, estimates that 80 percent of Crystal Pyramid Production’s work is for corporate clients, while the remaining consists of broadcast and TV commercials.

With a staff of four employees, the 30-year-old company generated $588,000 in gross revenue for 2009, ranking it No. 5 on the San Diego Business Journal’s latest Video Production Companies list.

Swinging and Missing

Jim Staylor, president and executive producer of locally based Staylor-Made Communications Inc., said, “You can buy the same bat that Tony Gwynn uses to hit home runs, but that doesn’t mean you know how to use it.”

Because the price has come down on the cost of video production, Staylor says people are willing to try to do it themselves, but often they’re disappointed with the result.

“There’s people willing to do things so inexpensively they’re really dumbing it down,” said Staylor, a 25-year industry veteran who works solo from his Poway home with a cast of contractors on corporate videos. “They think ‘good enough’ is good enough, and it’s not.

“If the goal is to have a video on a Web site, that’s easy,” he added. “To actually have a good video, that’s something else.”

Cost containment is an issue for Staylor these days because he says people aren’t willing to pay as much for his services.

Staylor-Made Communications, which ranks 11th on the Video Production Companies list with $179,449 in gross revenue in 2009, has produced training videos for Souplantation, a promotional piece for Outback Steakhouse, and recordings of Honda sales training seminars.

Quality Still Counts

David Zeigler, president and executive producer of Wind River Media in Golden Hill, says that in some situations the advanced tools available today make it easier to do quality work as well as make the production process easier.

Editing suites on computers, for example, enable video producers to keep their work in-house and make it possible to work with much shorter timelines.