Thank you for all the new replies!
Could another option be to rent another small studio apartment to serve exclusively as the center of business operations? This might work if the monthly rent is cheaper than a business office location and you might be able to get a shorter term lease six months to a year giving you the ability to not enter into a risky longer term business office lease.
I'm looking at a specific type of lease. In France there are "professionnal" leases, which are kind of an in-between real commercial leases and domestic leases. It has a 6 months notice if I want to leave, so not too bad
BTW, if the o.p. hasn't checked it out already, both MixingLight and Cullen Kelly on YouTube have done extended tutorials on the
business side of color, particularly the pros and cons of buying equipment, getting an office, doing the accounting, advertising, contracts, justifying expenses, taxes, all that stuff. I think
@Darren Mostyn also gets into this in his 2- or 3-times yearly course.
Cullen has been honest enough to say that he once tried to open an office in another city and did not do well because of kind of "putting the cart before the horse," assuming that
if you build it, they will come. I know of a handful of very successful colorists in LA who do well largely because they have fantastic sales and people skills, even more than their technical acumen; you can argue that the "soft skills" might ultimately be more important in terms of business.
Thank you for the tips on both Louper.io and the business tutorials! I'll be sure to check those out during the holidays
Adrien, are you sure your clients will want to ride/fly from Paris/Montpellier to your studio on a regular basis? Why wouldn't they prefer closer facilities ? Also, if you work "remotely" from your studio, would your Paris/Montpellier clients accept to pay you more for your studio expenses than if you continue to freelance without a studio?
Looks to me like a studio (not a home office) could be more attractive to clients from Toulouse area. Shouldn't you focus more on them in your business plan?
Je te souhaite la meilleure des chances
The tricky part is that there are not as much projects here that can afford colorists as there are in other cities. There would be some demand but not that much. Some of my clients from other cities would be willing to come for sessions but if I'm honest, it wouldn't be frequent and only for bigger projects, at least in the beginning. I would be relying on remote work mostly in the first years.
The hope behind this business is also to provide better resources for the industry here and help productions decentralize a bit.
Paris is a really big hotspot and overall the rest of the country lags behind. It's more because of a lack of resources than because of a lack of local talents. A lot of people I know started their career outside of the capital but moved to Paris to work although they really didn't want to. I have a lot of friends living and working in Paris who wished they could move out without compromising their careers.
That's not the case for every parisian of course but there is a strong sentiment.
I feel/hope I can be a small part of that decentralization by providing better services than what's already available here and a place to work.
Merci !
This is what I worry about the most with your plan. IMO, unless you have a list of several COMMITTED clients who are not working with you because you don't have a couch, client monitor, and a cappuccino machine I would proceed very carefully. I would be interested to hear from others, but the agency people I have dealt with recently have very little time and most are fine doing some sort of remote approval, these are well budgeted regional projects. The days of sitting in a suite all day listening to music and collaborating with the colorist seem to have been lost, at least in my corner of the world. And, to be honest, some of the younger creatives that have been thrown into roles that are over their heads really don't know how to manage a session or really even care.
Again, to be honest, there would not be that many instances for now, where the ability to work in person is a dealbreaker. It's started to happen to me. But it's also hard to measure. My regular clients don't even tell me about their biggest projects, but I know they have to do them in a suite.
I think I would get a fair bit of them if I had a studio, but I don't have concrete numbers. I've also heard about a feature film that could be coming my way in spring 2024 but I haven't got enough information to bet on this.
For sure, there is a lack of knowledge and interest client-side on color accuracy. I try my best to warn the client everytime, but I know that a lot of times I'm making final tweaks so the grade looks good on their specific setup. That situation can't be uncommon for all colorists.
It's a shame, but if they're paying me, they have the last word on edits.
I would definitely have complete remote control over your work computers and storage, nothing worse than having to go to the office to send out a minor tweak to a completed project that a client requests after hours.
The place I'm looking at is like 10min away from my home on bike and I'm a bit iffy about remote control for security reasons.
I imagined just having Resolve on my home computer and grabbing a SSD with a copy of the project if needed, or worst case, just make a run to the office.
But overall, I'm would want to avoid bringing work to home. I'm slowly getting to not grading on weekends or nights (unless there is a specific emergency and I overcharge). My clients so far are pretty understanding.
I would also recommend that you offer some sort After Effects or other graphics (Fusion) capabilities as these seem to be in higher demand than grading alone. Maybe your junior person could be proficient in AE / Fusion and help with conform and output, learning grading along the way. You seem to be very contemplative about this and you are young so if it doesn't work out you have time to recover. Again, best to you!
Regarding the motion design/VFX, absolutely! Several clients have told me they would be really interested in those services. I do a tiny bit of compositing, and intend to learn Nuke one day as I think compositing and grading are quite complementary. But as of today, I'd be reliant on freelancer friends for all this kind of work, which I'm happy with.
My future intern has basics but not much more in these areas. If he's interested in this, I'll have him learn, that'd be great to have this skill internally.
Thank you very much again for your concern and your advice!
