Tom Land

Thanks you guys for all of your responses. Mr. Baldwin, I am just starting out and don’t really want to make enemies. I’m sure this operator and a few other operators are sweating while reading this wondering if I’m talking about them. I don’t know their situation and I believe that it’s important to be professional and civil. I hope to one day be able to shake their hand and say, I sure am glad those hard times are behind all of us. My post was more of a frustration and honestly it just blew me away. I honestly thought the project would get some lower level rigs but when I heard what they got I was baffled. Thanks again guys.

I will not name names but heres my frustration. I just found out that I was outbid out of a job by an operator who is somewhat established. Now, I am not established yet and my steadicam career is just getting started. I have a relationship with this company already and have worked with them in the past. I gave them a quote for the day witch was roughly 1% of my investment in my rig. I have worked with this company in the past and they like my work but due to the fact that they would have to rent a wireless follow focus and do without a video transmitter, they decided to post on craigslist to see what they could get for $250.00 for that day. What they got surprisingly was several replies. They went with the first response they got. This ope came out with his Professional grade HD big rig, a preston wireless follow focus, and a wirless video transmitter for a full day. Let me try to put that in perspective, you cant even rent a preston for that price. This blew my mind. 1% of my gear was more then that and this ope comes out with $80,000 to $100,000 plus dollars worth of gear. Apparently this individual was not the only one willing to do this. I know times are tough but how an earth are we going to recover from this if you are known as the guy who will do it for $250.00 if youre not booked that day and chances are you wont be. This is a producers dream. I feel like even if the economy turns its going to take our industry a whole lot longer to turn around because of this situation. I guess Im just venting but please let me know what you guys think. What can we all do to turn this around?