Inovative Voyager 36" Cart

My work tends to have me traveling quite a bit, and a good portion by plane. I've got camera department buddies who usually work in the same city — or at least their home state — and are in a good position to work out of their cars or production vehicles. Meanwhile, the clients I've gotten to work with over the years normally have me out in other places.

If I've driven to wherever the work is, I've got a decent system of working out of my car on location. My Subaru Crosstrek has enough space to transport the gear I need. When I fly to a shoot, either the client picks me up or I rent a small to mid-sized SUV about the same size as my car. It's common too that I'll rent any additional gear I need online and have it shipped to a FedEx near the shoot or the hotel I'll be staying at.

The real issue though comes down to getting my gear to and from the airport and car rental shop. Normally I drive to the airport instead of having someone drop me off. While regular business travelers fly with a carry-on and maybe a checked bag, I'm essentially carrying enough equipment for a small sports team. It's not uncommon for me to have a long case or two for my tripod, stands, and tube lights, a larger Pelican case for my camera AKS, an EasyRig case, and a lens case. For years I'd used a Rock-N-Roller Multicart for shoots in town, but never considered flying it knowing how luggage gets treated.

Earlier this year I had a shoot out in Indiana and travelled with an assistant. Thankfully we were able to get our rental SUV close to where we were filming and work out of it, but it was still a whole thing to get back to the car instead of just having a dedicated cart with us. We lucked out because the location had an extra Rubbermaid cart we could use. Just having a basic mobile workstation to keep lenses, batteries, and the other small nonsense I'm always needing nearby was incredibly helpful. I also used it as a simple DIT station to hold my laptop, hard drives, and card readers.

The next week I was on another shoot in Bentonville, AR, with DP Nathan Maulorico. Normally we'd just be using production's Magliner carts, but this time Nathan was shooting on his Steadicam and brought along his Inovativ Scout 37" cart. I'd seen plenty of Inovativ carts online and heard how great they were, but hadn't actually worked with one on set in a while. Within a month, I'd bought an Inovativ Voyager 36" cart and some accessories.

Photo via Inovativ.com

No question, these carts are expensive AF; that's what's kept me from buying one earlier. But in working with Nathan's cart and then my own, I wish I'd have bought one years ago.

So far I've flown with it once and had two other out-of-town jobs where I traveled with it in a car. At first, I felt like an idiot setting it up in the airport parking lot, but I couldn't care less as soon as I had all my gear on it and started rolling it the nearly half-mile to the United Airlines gate to check-in. I had the same feeling when I got my luggage at the destination airport and rolled all my nonsense out of baggage claim. It's a thing too in getting gear up to a hotel room. Thankfully I've never had a vehicle get broken into and gear stolen, but I'm not taking unnecessary chances by leaving equipment in a car overnight. Hotels normally have luggage carts and I've done my fair share of dealing with that nonsense, but having my own cart makes things way easier.

Having and working with the cart on set is also freakin' fantastic. My $300 Rock-N-Roller has no doubt been great over the years, but I tended to overload it and always wished it had a top shelf to use as a workstation. They do make top shelves for those carts, but there's not an easy way to transport them. I'm still figuring out an on-set workflow, but this Inovativ cart has plenty of room to keep the gear I need close by and also act as a simple DIT and charging station. I also got the Camera Mount setup and just recently got the Baby Pin System to mount a DP/client monitor.

 

There are plenty of Pros to mention, but I do have a couple of Cons at this point.

COST

The sticker shock is real. I've still got some time left on my student discount at B&H Photo and was able to get 27% off the $4,000 cart. With the money I saved, I also got a couple of other accessories. A few of my production buddies highly recommended getting the travel case for it, especially considering how much I plan to fly with mine.

A DP I'd worked for years ago had an older Inovativ cart. It was incredibly helpful on set, but I don't remember it feeling super sturdy and it was a pain to set up. No clue which one it was, but it certainly didn't seem worth $4,000+. Seems like Inovativ has come a long way since that one. I feel like my cart is built like a tank and will stay working for a good while.

WEIGHT

This cart is heavy AF. It's heavier than you'd think it'd be. On the B&H website, they've got it listed at 96 lbs, which is just shy of the 99.9 lbs United Media Bag limit. The carts are designed to collapse down and there's space to store the wheels inside.

It's terrifying to consider how luggage gets handled when you fly. For my first flight with the setup, I kept two wheels in the collapsed cart and wrapped them with a furniture pad; the other two were in my other checked cases. The thought was by lessening the weight and padding those stored wheels, hopefully, they'd keep from banging around and not dent the surface of the metal shelves as badly.

With shoots where I'm just traveling with it in the car, I've tended to keep the wheels on it unless I'm short on space. Considering the weight and size, it's kind of awkward to get in and out of a car by myself. Still, the benefits far outweigh the hassle.

So far I'm only a few jobs in with this cart and I couldn't be happier. Surely as I use it more I'll find something else to talk about. I'll let you know.

Thankfully Crazy Busy

The blog typically goes quiet when things get hectic. Since the last post was from late September, it's fair to say my spare time margin has been tight.

Thankfully, work has been wicked busy. I've been back and forth to Bentonville multiple times on Sam's Club and Walmart shoots. There have been a couple of NYC trips, a trip to very rural Montana to film at cattle ranches, a project in Tulsa, and then out to northeast Texas to film sheep and solar farms. The end of the year is coming in hot and I've already got four scheduled work trips in December. Thank goodness St. Anne the Wife puts up with the nonsense of me being on the road so much.

Family-wise, we've had Fall Break and today is the start of the Thanksgiving break. The boys have both been keeping Anne and me on our toes and destroying us in chess. We've been able to get out to several OU football games and a fancy date night thanks to some good friends who've been incredibly generous. Good grief that OU Alabama game was bonkers.

Most of my work lately has been straight-up bill-payers. That kind of work allows me to keep freelancing, but thankfully I've also been able to sneak in a couple of personal projects as well.

The world-famous Tony Li brought me in to help with the visuals for the 2025 Red Ribbon Gala with Tulsa Cares. I also got to spend a couple of days filming with Carolyn Ray out in Upstate New York. About 15 years ago, she hired me to do a video about her original hand-painted fabrics. She had me back recently to do a follow-up and I'm excited about what'll come of that project.

There's also how I've fallen in love with the fancy Inovativ Voyager cart I picked up recently. Originally I'd thrown some serious shade at those pricy carts, but I've seen the light and wished I'd have picked one up sooner.

Hopefully there won't be another huge gap between now and my next blog post, but again, I'm crazy thankful to be busy, especially considering how dry it's been.

Part of "Where We Live"

So there's this internal push to make a photo zine or at least a longer-term collection of images around a theme. I've been diggin' this idea of "Where We Live" for the last bit and I've got a growing pile of images from around the Oklahoma City urban core. It's certainly still a work in progress, but I figure putting the idea out there will surely help keep me moving forward with the project.

These images are from a recent walk around the Paseo neighborhood with my RB67 and a roll of Kodak Gold 200. No clue if they'll end up in the final project, but a few of these were more than just hot turds out of the roll of 10 images

On the Road Again

There's a good reason why it's been so quiet on my end these past seven weeks. 2024 was looking to be one of the worst years I've had in terms of work and finances, but luckily several jobs made it my way and helped put me back on track.

Starting that first week of August, I spent one day in Bentonville and two weeks in Orlando on a shoot with Walmart via Vista Productions. The last week of August I was in Indiana on a project with a scientific instrument company and working with clients from Boston and Quebec. The following week I was back in Bentonville with Vista, this time shooting content for a Sam's Club event.

Thankfully I've got a few more weeks of work booked and a couple other potential jobs on the horizon. There are also a few days in NYC for a Filmsupply event and the yearly NYC NAB show.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't considering other career options the past couple of years. It's been a weird time in this industry and long gone are those bloated pandemic-era production budgets and streamers trying to outspend each other in creating new content. Crazy thanks to the clients and connections recently that've gotten this freelancer back to work.

Heartland Emmy Winner

Stoked that I got a chance to be included in one of Cherokee Film and OsiyoTV's 2024 Heartland Emmy wins. This is now my first win and second nomination for the Heartland Emmys, one of 19 Regional Chapters of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences that recognize excellence in local and statewide television.

I've won several Telly Awards over the years, but I've never purchased the physical trophy. For the Emmys though, the actual statuette is included if you win. It's now Monday morning and I've put that fresh Emmy on top of the bookshelf in our living room. Pretty sure I'd freak out seeing an Emmy with my name on it near my desk staring back at me with the constant pressure of "When are you going to win another one?!?"

The Last Few Weeks

The last couple of months have had me bouncing around with work, summer stuff with the family, and other responsibilities, but I haven't put as much effort into this blog as I had been. Thankfully my health is somewhat back to normal after a couple months of a hot mess of dizziness and vertigo, so obviously that's preferred.

At the end of June, I was in Indiana with Vista Productions and DP Nathan Maulorico. It's the second year I've gotten to help shoot the International Thespian Festival at the University of Indiana Bloomington. We were filming on Sony Fx9s and Nathan's DZOFilm Catta Ace lens set. I'm still surprised and impressed with those lenses, especially given the price. I also got to spend a week on the SmallHD Ultra 5 monitor and that workhorse certainly won me over. Here's the recap video from that weeklong event:

I've also been wildly busy with responsibilities outside of working behind a camera. A few opportunities have opened up with consulting work given my MBA skillset. Hopefully, I'll be able to share more about those soon.

We'd been planning to buy an electric vehicle (EV) later this year, but an opportunity came up in late May that was hard to pass up. Given the current $7,500 federal EV tax credit and a 60-month 0.99% promotional APR, we were able to buy a 2024 Tesla Model Y. In doing all the math ahead of time given the trade-in value of Anne's 2018 Audi Q5, that wild 0.99% APR, the cost of gas vs. electricity, maintenance, insurance, an EV charger & installation, etc., I realized we'd be spending just slightly more per month with this new EV over the life of the 60 month financing period compared to what we were paying with her current car.

Monthly Costs
MONTHLY COSTS Audi Q5 (2018) Tesla Y (2024)
Maintenance $101.661 $25.002
Fuel $149.451 na
Electricity (kWh)3 na $30.00
Charger Cost4 na $38.13
Loan Payment $550.00 $700.00
Insurance $153.22 $163.22
Total $954.34 $956.35

1Based on actual 2020-24 monthly average
2Not sure I trust this estimate, but it's based on the July 2024 data at caredge.com/tesla/model-y
3Estimate based on $0.06/kWh

 

A few other things worth a quick mention:

We're in deep with FX's The Bear. It's such a great show and actually gets me excited about filmmaking. There's so much basic or boring or just bad TV out there, so anything that breaks out is just so exciting. Last night we finished season two and hope to start the newly released season three soon.

 

Just so you know, I'll get behind just about anything Donald Glover is involved in. Super excited about the Brando Stone & The New World trailer. The Childish Gambino world tour is opening in Oklahoma City this summer and I hope St. Anne the Wife and I get to go.

 

The trailer for the F1 movie with Brad Pitt came out yesterday. I've got such high hopes, but not quite holding my breath just yet.

 

There's good reason why Inside Out 2 has been killing it at the box office this summer. We saw it in the theater with the kiddos and it had me bawling multiple times. There's plenty to go into behind the business side of things and the value of theatrical vs. streaming releases, but the film itself is exceptional.

Creatives Building a Business and Community

It seems appropriate that I got ahold of both of these works of art around the same time. They both go into creativity and building a business along with a community.

First off, thank goodness for Gregory Kolsto's book The Art of Oddly Correct.

"...Oddly Correct is a coffee roasting company located in sunny Kansas City, MO. We've been roasting and serving coffee in our neighborhood for over ten years as of writing these words."

I'd come across Oddly Correct over the last couple of years in the course of my rubber stamp hunts. I'd had a job in Kansas City and made sure to stop by. They don't use rubber stamps, but Kolsto does run their coffee bags through a linocut process using an early 1900s block printing press and hand-carved blocks. There's a 2014 spruge.com article that goes into more detail about his block printing process if you're interested.

The book itself is full of some of the art that's come out of Kolsto's experience running the Kansas City coffee shop over the years. For more about Oddly Correct and a peek at his printing process, check out the video below.

My obsession with rubber stamps and coffee shop art had me instantly nerding out with his block printing process, but in addition to the prints, the book itself was chocked full of inspiration for other art kids interested in furthering their work while also building a business and a community.

"You don't need the best gear to get started. You just need to start."

"When we started, we never had the best brewing gear or the finest building materials. We endeavored to be as honest as we could with what we had... We wanted to be a small but mighty company."

 

Second, it's worth your time to go watch the new Jim Henson documentary over at Disney Plus.

There was quite a bit I didn't know about Jim Henson, specifically his advertising background and how he took advantage of those paychecks to make his experimental films. Good grief I'm glad to have benefited from his creativity via shows like Sesame Street, The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, Dark Crystal, etc. Thanks to David Bizzaro for the heads up about the film.

2024 Heartland Emmy Nominee (& Marketing Efforts)

Back in early July 2022 I got to work with the Cherokee Nation on a project about one of their citizens being awarded the Medal of Honor. I've already posted about that trip, but I did find out this past week that the project was nominated for a 2024 Heartland Emmy award.

From OsiyoTV's YouTube description:

A hero to countless people, Dwight Birdwell sees himself as just a former strawberry picker from Stilwell, Oklahoma. He is also the only Native American recipient of the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War. We hear his story of heroism and the selfless actions that led to him finally being awarded this prestigious honor.

It's been a hot minute and an entire graduate business degree since that shoot, but I'm still thankful for the opportunity and I look forward to the next one.

Normally I shy away from straight-up self-promotion, but that's probably not the most ideal marking strategy. I've also got mixed feelings when it comes to participating in awards like this. This is now my second Heartland Emmy nomination and I've got a handful of Telly Awards.

We're told those accolades look good on a resume and I'm sure those statuettes would look good on a shelf, but they should also come with some kind of asterisk saying you paid for the attention. If I were to have a local project I wanted to submit to the 2024 Heartland Emmys, the entry fee starts at $135 for the primary entrant, and then $85/person for names 2-6, and $135/person for names 7-12. That doesn't include the $65 yearly Heartland Chapter membership fee; Non-members' entry fees start at $235/person. If you get nominated, congrats, but then be ready to pay the $125/person early-bird ticket price to the awards gala. We're talking $450+ to be a member, one named person on an entry, and tickets for St. Anne the Wife and I to go to this year's Heartland Emmy Awards Gala. It's hard to look at that cost and not think about how else that money could've been spent, e.g., additional on-set production assistants, a month of health insurance for me and my two kids, 100+ cups of coffee, etc.

2023 Heartland Emmy Nomination

Cost Breakdown of
2024 Heartland Emmy Nomination
Entry Fee1 $135
Yearly Membership Fee2 $65
Gala Tickets (two tickets at $125ea.) $250
TOTAL $450

1 Fee for one name only
2 Heartland Chapter Yearly Membership Fee

This is where my business school nonsense starts to kick in and I'm reminded of my marketing and strategy classes.

A quick Google search would bring back the idea that a business-to-business (B2B) marketing budget should be around 5-10% of its yearly revenues. For example, if my yearly revenues are around $100k, that should have me budgeting $5-10k/year in my marketing. Suddenly that $450 doesn't feel so bad – roughly 0.45% of my yearly revenue and just 6% of a $7,500 yearly marketing budget – and it also includes a networking opportunity with some of my target audience and a fancy date with my wife. All that said, it's worth keeping an eye on whether or not your marketing efforts are actually working. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you one client relationship I've earned thanks to the awards I've won over the years.

Dang you business school for actually helping me do what I'd hoped you would.

OU Grad and Resident Drunk Toddler

It's been a hot minute since my last check-in. I'd wrapped up with my actual grad school classes and got started on two different work projects. One had me on an ad campaign for an OKC non-profit I've worked with for years. The other had me out in Los Angeles on an industrial piece with a group based outside Boston. Both projects are now in the later stages of post and will be finishing up soon.

This past weekend I graduated with my Master's in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Oklahoma. The week before all the pomp and circumstance had plenty of events and opportunities to meet some of my online classmates in person. It's still wild being on this side of a personal goal I'd had for 15+ years. My mom busted her tail in getting her master's degree when I was young and St. Anne the Wife has two graduate degrees of her own. Education has been important in our lives and we're trying our best to model that nonsense for our two house fires.

Another big deal that's happened since mid-March is my dealing with some health issues. Obviously, the last few years have been stressful – grad school, work, family, and generally being alive – but it seems to have finally caught up with me physically. Since early April, I've been dealing with dizziness and at times nearly debilitating Vertigo.  

My resting heart rate had been around 50 BPM and a few low-40s, but my doctor wasn't concerned since I'd also been training for the OKC Memorial Half-Marathon. The doctor had me wear a heart monitor for a couple days, but nothing was out of the ordinary. While I was out in LA, I got wildly sick after what I'm assuming was related to caffeine, but thankfully that nonsense didn't flare up during my client shoot.

If you've ever dealt with legit Vertigo, you know how debilitating it can be. It's almost like a switch gets thrown and your sense of balance just stops working. My inner drunk toddler seems to spin up when I'm dealing with loads of stress and – unfortunately – coffee (caffeine). It's too bad those things have essentially fueled the last 20+ years of my life. Being in the dark and dealing with lots of motion can also throw me under the bus, so again, good thing I make a living behind a camera and I'm constantly paying attention to light and motion.

It sucks thinking about health concerns interfering with what you do to provide for your family. It's scary. I'm intentional about my health and I'm planning on being around for quite a while. I'm also excited about the potential of my newly minted business school degree. I promise you I'm trying to end this post on a positive note, but I don't have a neat bow to tie to what it's been like the last few weeks. Still, I'm okay with that.

See you on the next one.

Data-Based Insights & Decision Making as a Creative

It's not difficult to track data, but effectively using it in decision-making is something else.

Since late 2015, my Filmsupply stock footage portfolio has generated 1,276 individual licensing fees. As a Contributor, that revenue gets split with me (currently 45.1%). 2020 and 2021 saw my revenues up 150-200% compared to previous years, but those two years were outliers due to COVID-19 turning live production on its head. There was a solid period in that mess where my cut of that revenue was $6-7,000/month, but those days are long gone. 2023 was a dumpster fire and my average monthly licensing revenue was roughly 47% below my 2022 numbers. So far, 2024 is looking up, but I'm hesitant to be holding my breath.

The chart below helps me feel somewhat better in terms of trying to explain the significant swings in my licensing revenue. As the U.S. Federal Funds rate decreases, it becomes cheaper to borrow money. As that rate increases, borrowing becomes more expensive, making it harder for businesses to finance their operations. That said, I wouldn't say I'm qualified as an expert in this nonsense so I'd take this chart with a grain of salt. If you've got the time, go check out Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlation where he features charts of correlated data that actually have nothing to do with each other. "Correlation is not causation."

Having a solid understanding of this nonsense has helped me to make better-informed decisions when it comes to investing in new film projects and/or equipment likely to contribute to my stock footage portfolio.

 

Investments in Projects & Equipment

As of last month, I've made a 13% return on the actual money I've dumped into my unfinished rubber stamp project. Based on my previous data, I was confident I'd make a decent return on the licensing fees from the raw footage. My film has elements of small business ownership and the existing clips in my portfolio around a similar theme have done well in the past. I also know I'd be traveling quite a bit while making this film and I've had a good experience with drone footage of city skylines.

Keeping my fixed costs low has certainly been helpful; I own the gear I'm using and I've kept my additional crew expenses to a minimum. Still, I've had major expenses including a week-long road trip to Washington D.C., a couple NYC shoots, and a trip out to Amsterdam with a couple local crew hires. This project still hasn't been released and could honestly be a hot turd, but the reality is that it's been profitable and will continue to generate revenue via stock footage licensing.

Another example is looking at the licensing revenue generated by my DJI Mavic 2 Pro. Currently, I'm not tracking the revenue generated by each piece of gear with my client projects, but I do know what gear was used for my stock footage clips. There's been a 53% return on investment (ROI) with my Mavic 2. In April 2022, I crashed that flying chainsaw to death and I replaced it with a Mavic 3. I do have some stock footage sales connected to that new drone, but considering I don't have as many clips associated with that gear yet, I can imagine it'll be a hot minute before I see the same types of ROI via licensing fees.

 

Forecasting

As an MBA student we learned how to use different forecasting models and I've done some nonsense with my existing licensing data, but it's nothing I'd lean too heavily on. It's important to remember that it's impossible to forecast with zero error, meaning forecasts are always inherently wrong. My stock footage sales haven't been exactly stable the last few years and a level of data stability is necessary if it's being used to forecast. Still, I have a good idea of where I'm at and what to expect.

 

Cool, So Now What?

Do realize that none of this nonsense is directly related to generating additional licensing revenue but simply tracking what's already happening. It's possible to increase the search visibility and potential sales of each clip through search engine optimization (SEO) tools, but I didn't talk about adding more assets to my portfolio. Now that I'm wrapped up on my MBA, I've got the additional margin to go out and create new works that could generate additional licensing revenue.

All this nonsense is helpful in gaining insight and making data-based decisions, but at the same time, I'm fully aware of the fact I'm still a self-described "art kid" out here trying to make creative work. It's a fine line trying to convey a feeling or tell a story while still being profitable.