Sandy B
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Sep 11, 2007, 11:21 PM
Post #4 of 4
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Re: [Postal Boy] Funeral & Graveside Funeral Photo Service
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I am working with a local funeral home that is in a rural Texas market for two towns, one town being less that 3000 people and the other town maybe 4000.
The production on video is very simple, in camera edit, just record the funeral service from the back of the church or funeral home, nothing fancy on moving camera techniques or over saturation post production color correction/manipulation - just basic steady on tripod recording of the service. If the family asks for personal comments from friends and family, that isn't out of line either. Add some opening and ending titles and author the DVD. One hour service for actual video taping (two hours on-site/location to include set-up & break down times) with one DVD copy is $325.00, if they want the graveside service, too, then it an extra $150.00 extra ($425.00 total).
I figure that if I get one funeral per week, and the funerals are normally in the morning starting at 10 am, that it won't effect my workflow in editing during the week. Heck I need sometimes a reason to get up in the mornings anyway so if I can earn a couple of hundred bucks before lunch, and not have the post-production editing backlog, seems like it might help on the income side.
And just being visible in the community with my video camera and/or digital still camera, people at the funeral will recognize me doing what I do, and might have other "non-funeral" work for me to do for them.
I have had a hard time in my local community conveying to them what I do, I get lots of business from the huge market in Houston, but my neighbors, granted they live several hundred yards to half mile away don't know what I do. They know that I don't ranch cattle or farm rice/soybeans. But when the director of the local funeral home contacts me and tells me that video (and sometimes photography) is beginning to be requested more and more by their clients and that they don't have a resource to refer and/or contact except for a videography company in Houston who has quoted them $2,500 to cover/videotape a funeral service, they were delighted to find me doing what I do without an outrageous price tag. But as a test pilot program, I am venturing out in to this virtual unknown market and see what impact and difference I can make on these peoples lives.
I gave the funeral home a price sheet that covers setting up a video camera to feed a video/audio signal to an overflow room for large funerals at small churches. Price to project a photo montage (one that we produce for the family at a market value) or slideshow (if prepared by a family member) on a screen or wall at the funeral service. Along with videography and photography packages. Heck I can see me hiring Rusty B during the week to shoot some stills for me in a pinch. He would love to have a reason to be in Bellville, Texas during the week.
Bottomline, there is opportunity to receive income during the week and it doubles as networking.
Sandy B
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