sthugh
10-16-2009, 11:56 AM
Here's an example of how you can make some money with your studio just because you happen to know how to do some things that the other guy doesn't. It pays to know some video and multimedia web development. I regularly work with Flash animation too. There are times when all this useless knowledge pays off.
I have some friends who had two daughters on the local Catholic High School Dance/Pom team. If you've ever watched any of these school dance team competitions then you know that the ones who are at the top of the heap generally have music that goes through lots of changes. They can be real inventive with the dance steps if they keep changing things up rather than dance the whole 3 minutes to the same song.
Well these girls had wanted to take music and voiceovers from all kinds of various sources--some CDs, DVDs, even web downloads along with mic'ing their own voices for some things. You'd be surprised how few people there may be in your town that know how to do all this. They had tried other audio guys, but they didn't know anything about working with audio from video. Then they tried a video guy, but he didn't have a good enough wav editor to take bits and pieces from various sound files and do proper crossovers and so on. He also was very expensive.
Anyhow, their mom asked me to try and help them eventually because I had helped her with some problems with her own computer once, so she was convinced I was some kind of computer wiz (guess I fooled her!). Anyhow, since I also shoot video along with doing web work and audio, I had all the programs and the know-how to do anything they wanted and do it in about 1/4 the time the previous video guy did. So we were ripping segments from CDs--maybe 30 seconds from one song here and there, then rip the audio from a DVD for a voice over, then download a video from YouTube to steal a few seconds of audio from that and so on. Then we'd have fun editing it all and playing with effects, stretching audio, speeding up or winding down parts etc. Anyhow, the girls ending up winning state the last two years and it's a feather in my studio cap to be able to say that I did all their audio work. They've both graduated now, and their mom used to pay for all that, but the school has hired me now and have begun paying me out of the Dance Team budget, so I'm working with whoever the current team leaders are every year and it's become a regular gig. Some of the girls were over last night. I worked 3 hours, had a lot of fun doing it, and made an easy $100 bucks in the process.
Learning some things about video, Flash, and web multimedia might help you too. Apparently there aren't many guys out here that can do it all, and folks will think you're worth your weight in gold if you can.
I have some friends who had two daughters on the local Catholic High School Dance/Pom team. If you've ever watched any of these school dance team competitions then you know that the ones who are at the top of the heap generally have music that goes through lots of changes. They can be real inventive with the dance steps if they keep changing things up rather than dance the whole 3 minutes to the same song.
Well these girls had wanted to take music and voiceovers from all kinds of various sources--some CDs, DVDs, even web downloads along with mic'ing their own voices for some things. You'd be surprised how few people there may be in your town that know how to do all this. They had tried other audio guys, but they didn't know anything about working with audio from video. Then they tried a video guy, but he didn't have a good enough wav editor to take bits and pieces from various sound files and do proper crossovers and so on. He also was very expensive.
Anyhow, their mom asked me to try and help them eventually because I had helped her with some problems with her own computer once, so she was convinced I was some kind of computer wiz (guess I fooled her!). Anyhow, since I also shoot video along with doing web work and audio, I had all the programs and the know-how to do anything they wanted and do it in about 1/4 the time the previous video guy did. So we were ripping segments from CDs--maybe 30 seconds from one song here and there, then rip the audio from a DVD for a voice over, then download a video from YouTube to steal a few seconds of audio from that and so on. Then we'd have fun editing it all and playing with effects, stretching audio, speeding up or winding down parts etc. Anyhow, the girls ending up winning state the last two years and it's a feather in my studio cap to be able to say that I did all their audio work. They've both graduated now, and their mom used to pay for all that, but the school has hired me now and have begun paying me out of the Dance Team budget, so I'm working with whoever the current team leaders are every year and it's become a regular gig. Some of the girls were over last night. I worked 3 hours, had a lot of fun doing it, and made an easy $100 bucks in the process.
Learning some things about video, Flash, and web multimedia might help you too. Apparently there aren't many guys out here that can do it all, and folks will think you're worth your weight in gold if you can.