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.

Got my MBA. Now What?

Oh man, if only I had an actual answer to this one. The whole reason I went to business school was this idea that as creatives, we cut ourselves off at the knee because we don't understand the business end of the creative work we do. It's not like business school was a golden ticket or anything, but now that I've done the thing, I've got a diverse set of new business tools that'll carry me through the rest of my career. At least that's the plan – and what I told St. Anne the Wife.

Being the analytics nerd that I am, I kept track of my time as a graduate student in fifteen minute increments. I'm proud of those 1,700+ hours of class and studying these last 18 months though I'm still bitter about that one B I got in Managerial Accounting.

About two years ago I got serious about pursuing this MBA nonsense and it's been a dead sprint ever since. I finished my last classes this past week and it's now the first Monday I've had in 18 months without a load of classwork. It's wild trying to realistically get my footing again as a working professional now that I'm not also a full-time student.

In addition to wrapping up my graduate work at OU, I was in the DFW area this past weekend with the OU MBA program. We heard from a handful of Dallas-based businesses like Texas Health Resources, 7-Eleven, and PepsiCo. I headed down early and got some face time with a couple of my contacts in the DFW area. Sai Selvarajan is a documentary filmmaker and an editor with Camp Lucky. We had lunch Thursday and talked shop about a few of his recent and upcoming projects. In 2021 he released The Unlikely Fan, a short documentary about his mom and her wild love of basketball. The film got accepted to the 2021 SXSW Film Festival and landed Sai some additional opportunities. He's got another film in the works and I'm looking forward to seeing what that leads to. I also met with Micah Austin who's been my go-to at Filmsupply over the years. Seem's like he's just as much an analytics nerd as I am, so we got deep in the weeds with that nonsense.

There are several creative works I'll start spinning back up this week in addition to pre-production work on a couple of client projects. Surely I'll have more updates on those as they get going again. Since I don't have any of my own nonsense to share at this point, here are a few recent podcasts and news articles I've gone through that are worth your time:

Eating Up the Art Kids

Hot dang it's been another minute. If you've been around a bit you'll have noticed the growing gaps between these blog posts. There was that solid season were I was cranking these things out once a week, but now seems I'm leaning hard into this whole "once a quarter" nonsense.

If you've stuck around too – or if you read the previous post – I'd mentioned something about going back to school for an MBA. Well, here we are almost two months later and I've got four applications started with different Masters in Business Administration programs here in Oklahoma. I spent nearly all of March studying for my GRE (Graduate Record Exam) and relearning all the high school math I'd packed away with my varsity letter jacket. Being on this side of adulthood, I can promise you I've never had to calculate the area of a circle based only on the length of two sides of an interior right triangle. Freakin' hats off to the good kids at Khan Academy for helping me hobble through all the maths with their video tutorials.

In addition to studying for that freakin' test, I also hustled a handful of people I've worked with over the years into writing me letters of recommendation for my grad business school applications. There's also the financial aid nonsense to work through, plus the resume and personal statements to write up. I'm not too worried about that 500 word essay considering why and how long I've been interested in going after an MBA. That damn resume though...

Being a full-time freelancer in the film industry, I've yet to have an employer ask for a legit resume. It's normally a potential client asking for my demo reel and possibly previous work history and examples. All those goodies are on my website, but that doesn't cut it when reaching outside the circle I've been in the last twenty years. I'd rather mow every yard in our neighborhood with nail clippers than try and cram my professional experience, qualifications, and recognitions onto one 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

But here we are.

Hopefully I'll know more and have another update in the next few weeks. Surely too I could go into the whole thing as to why as a creative professional I'm looking to get an advanced business degree.

"Businessmen drink my blood, like the kids in art school said they would." - Arcade Fire

On an actual cinematography related note, I smashed the soul out of my Mavic 2 last week with an "unplanned landing" and subsequently upgraded to the Mavic 3. Wish I'd have gotten the Mavic 3 Cine, but I couldn't find one in time considering how far I'm from either coast. Still, I'm digging the new drone but hating the basic remote it came with and the incredibly dumbed down software.

I also got to shoot on the new-ish Canon C70. It's tough to judge a camera based only on one two day shoot where you're actually never working with the footage. Buddies of mine have sung that camera's praises, but I'd still much rather run around with a RED or Alexa package any day.

Film+Music 2018: Everything Else

Jumped the gun a couple weeks ago in thinking I'd have a good deal of content to share from the 2018 Film+Music Conference. Absolutely worth the price of admission and then some in hearing from solid speakers and connecting with such a hotbed of creatives from around the world, but looking through the rest of my notes from the event I figured I'd give a single shotgun blast of what I'm holding near and dear.

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GENERAL NOTES

I kept a running list of general notes throughout the conference; Rough ideas, discarded gum wrappers, and random tidbits all got thrown into the pile. Here's the condensed version:

Write another story

Following the experience with my 2015 short film Nora I'd kinda given up on the idea of seriously leading another narrative short film. Considering the amount of money and resources I'd dumped into that short, the return on investment just wasn't there. "Boo-hoo" and "woe-is-me," but I learned quite a bit in the process and had a great time making something with good friends. But again, I spent too much of my own money. 2016 brought an opportunity to direct a 48 Hour Film Project in Oklahoma City. That short, Illustrator's Anonymous, – again alongside Producer Amanda Hyden – was a much better experience, WAY the hell cheaper, and garnered a much better reception.

All that being said, being around such incredible creatives who're out making stuff and pushing forward was the prodding I needed to not give up on story. It's about time I get my nonsense together and move towards another narrative project with my name somewhere on it.

Connect with production companies

Surely to those in the know, this is a given. Oklahoma is a small market and production companies hiring out freelancers isn't a thriving thing here – at least in my experience. The majority of my DP, Director, and/or Production work comes directly through ad agencies, PR firms, and directly from businesses and non-profits. I get the random contact from out of state production companies for work now and then, but those are the outliers. More often than not those groups are phoning in their direction and I'm a "one-man-band" or simply running a 2-3 person crew.

Moving forward, I plan to keep the work and take the phone calls I'm already getting, but I absolutely see the value and built in infrastructure associated with production companies that are more than one or two people who got a bank loan for some gear and became a "Production Company" – i.e. Tanner Herriott Productions, LLC.

Fake it till you make it

This goes without saying. I was on a shoot not long ago where the client asked me directly if I'd "worked with (insert specific thing)." I'd literally worked with (insert specific thing) for the first time the day before so I wasn't "technically" lying, but I was for sure sewing the parachute together after jumping out of the plane on that project. Looking back at it now, that was exactly what needed to have been said and the project turned out well.

SPEAKER NOTES

Robert Legato was the opening speaker and is a VFX Supervisory wizard. He's been on major films like Jungle Book, Hugo, and Titanic. He pulled back the curtain on some of the technology used in those major motion pictures. He also talked about how "making something that's meaningful to you [being] at the heart of what we do" and "doing your thing and hoping someone likes it." In the end, "If they don't, well...that sucks." There was also the well-earned wisdom of "figuring out your 'work around' to get to the level you're wanting to reach. If something's on a high shelf, you build a ladder."

DP Laura Merians Goncalves's first of two breakout sessions focused on the creative- and career-oriented side of cinematography. Everything seemed to focus on being patient and kind to yourself throughout the process. Please keep in mind that anything that'll last is not built overnight. Looking again through my notes I highlighted "Just keep shooting" and "Rest well and keep going." There's also the point of "You've got to get out there and make connections and maintain those relationships," an important fact with which I'm constantly struggling. There's more in my notes below if you're up to check them out.

The breakout session from the Evolve Studios leadership further pushed the importance of a production company. They spoke about growing slowly and having the "infrastructure in place to further your career and get bigger opportunities." They also stressed how as a professional creative, you're in the service industry. "Protect your clients' interests and they'll keep hiring you."

Franklin Leonard of The Black List fame basically did his own thing and blew up any idea of what we expected to hear from a speaker at an event like this. You don't need me to tell you, but America is in an unusual time in its history with all that's going on politically, racially, socially, etc, and in no way was Franklin Leonard there to make us feel comfortable with what's going on. You could hear a pin drop as he spoke the truth in love to a roomful of creatives who're able to contribute to the needed change in the industry and otherwise.

"If I keep talking about how dirty [the world] is out here, someone is going to clean it up." - Tupac Shakur

Q: "As a white male filmmaker, how can I contribute to change?"
A: "Step out of the circle of people who look like you and invest in other people... Talent isn't concentrated among the people who are just like you."

Q: "Should someone from a majority race approach telling stories of minorities?"
A: "It's important to 'write what you know,' but equally as important to 'write what you research.'"

Again, seriously a solid event that I hope continues to grow and help shape this generation of filmmakers and creatives. Already looking forward to next year's conference.

Becoming an Old Freelancer: Finances

Sustainability as a freelancer is something I don't think gets enough attention. It's not flashy and for sure doesn't make for a good Instagram post. Still, to stick around you've got to try and figure out what works for you and your situation.

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If you know me at all, you'll know I'm always up to talk about money. Not in the "Hey plebeian! Look what I've got!" way but more in the mindset of "You're in this hot mess too?! What are you doing?! Is it working? Is there a way we can learn from each other?"

The last few weeks have been a welcomed whirlwind. I've broken record'd the battle cry of "Oh man, I'm so busy" and I'm absolutely aware of it. What's freakin' awesome though is the fact that money is coming through the doors and for that, I'm insanely thankful. Freelance is "feast or famine" and I know the financial spigot could shut off for a season at any point.

Turns out it's expensive AF to be a freelancer, especially as you get further into your career. The amount of overhead I've accumulated over the years running this freelance operation is DUMB. Thinking back to when this whole thing started as a side hustle back in 2004-ish I'd have never imagined the amount of money it takes to keep this up plus trying to be intentional about the future.

At times it feels like I'm working just to keep up: production insurance, health insurance for me and our two boys, plus life and disability insurance. Then there's the money set aside for taxes and retirement accounts. Oh, then there's paying off bank loans, paying myself every two weeks, phone and internet bills, and on and on and on. It's dumb.

Positive side note: I paid off my car today – several months early BTW – so that's rad.

The biggest leg up I've had in terms of money management as a freelancer has come from a book I read back in 2010-11-ish – The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed.

Here are some of my biggest takeaways from the book:

"If you’re trying to create financial security as an independent worker, but you are following guidelines that are designed for traditional workers, you’re going to get yourself into trouble."

"They [percentages] are the best - and really only - way to save consistently based on what you actually earn, especially when what you earn varies widely and doesn’t arrive on a predictable schedule."

This was the biggest thing for me. As a former full-time employee, I was used to working on a very specific budget with close to exact numbers. Unlike my wife's very reliable paycheck each month, there's no way to know the specific amount that my freelance work will be bringing in each month. I've already written about using past records to help me predict my busy and slow seasons, but that's still just an educated guess. In planning ahead financially, I stick with setting aside 15% of my profits to pay my taxes as well as 10% to put towards retirement. I've been slowly and steadily stashing money into a RothIRA since I was 21 as well as another RothIRA under my wife's name as I max out the first one each year.

"If you don’t pay yourself first, you probably won’t do it at all."

"Debt is by far the biggest threat to both your career and your stability and stands between you and your success."

"Debt is sucking the money from your present to pay for your past at the expense of your future."

"If you don't save for your retirement, no one else will."

"Being an independent worker means you have to save more, plain and simple."

2017 Film + Music Conference

Short of all the coffee I bought in 2017, one of the best spends last year was attending the Film + Music Conference in Ft. Worth, TX.

Pretty much like all things from the Musicbed/Filmsupply mothership, the Film+Music team killed it. They brought in some freakin' fantastic speakers: some I'd heard from before, others I'd followed online for years, and still more that were new to me. The music and live performances brought another dimension to the event. A serious kudos is due to whoever was behind the lighting design on stage. Most of all, the people attending seemed to be the "Who's Who" – and the rest of us plebeians – in the creative film/music world. 

My biggest takeaways were ideas like "The world needs you to stop being boring" and "The internet is a treadmill that doesn't love you" from Brad Montague of Soul Pancake/Kid President. Ryan Booth – of Ryan Booth fame – encouraged us to "Go home, make things that are interesting to you, and put them on the internet." Natalie Kingston's lighting workshop was pretty rad and wish it would've lasted longer. 

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