The business side of photography
Entertainment reporter to photographer: “I wish I was a photographer. You don’t have to talk to [the actors].”
During the film festival:
• There were two near fist fights between photographers in the photo areas.
• As macho film star Josh Brolin arrived, a photographer yelled, “Give us a wave!” Brolin stopped and stared, “Are you crazy?”
• When a photographer called actress Eva Mendes “baby”, she stopped and yelled back, “Don’t ever call me ‘baby’!” :
For those of you playing along at home, here are a few more missteps, mistakes and outright idiocy at this year’s Toronto Film Festival:
• Internet service still not reliable and many times, it’s just dead. The wifi at a nearby Starbucks today was about 45 times faster than the film festival set-up.
• For some unknown reason, the festival doesn’t do printed call sheets (a list of people attending each movie premiere). Instead, it does e-mail call sheets. But the festival doesn’t e-mail sheets to everyone and it forgets some movies entirely. Some call sheets are being sent to newspaper or agency editors, some of whom are located in other countries, rather than being sent to the photographer at the festival.
At one premiere, a publicist from a US movie distributor expressed her surprise at the lack of call sheets and then opened her bag to pull out her studio’s own call sheets complete with names, bios and even small photos to help with IDs. Perfect.
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Following the previous post about events leading up to the annual Toronto Film Festival, today was Day One of the 35th annual event. Opening night. Full media attendance. What could possibly go wrong?
• A TV guy shooting B-roll inside the *media* lounge got kicked out of the room. Apparently no one is allowed to shoot video or photograph any part of the film festival’s “inside” areas. Also not allowed to video, photograph or interview anyone who works for the festival. And, get this, you’re not allowed to photograph the *exterior* of any theatre where film festival events are taking place (?!?).
• The film festival’s WiFi system died immediately. It was already down when I tried at 2:30 PM.
Can they fix the WiFi? – “I don’t know.”
Can they call someone to fix it? – I’m not sure.”
Is there a backup plan? – “I don’t know.”
Why does the press office use wired Internet but the media has wireless? – “The WiFi is unreliable.”
If nothing else, the Toronto Film festival serves as an example of how not to run an event. You might think that going into its 35th year, the film festival would know how to properly run a media event. But you’d be wrong.
Make no mistake, the primary function of the festival is for movie producers, actors and directors to get publicity for their projects, and for distributors to find buyers for their movies. To help do this, they need media exposure. The reason they come to Toronto is the huge media coverage. The film festival itself acknowledges the importance of this media coverage when it says the festival wouldn’t happen without media attendance.
Where to start?
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“We don’t hire you because of your beautiful, wonderful, terrific photographs,” says corporate communications director Greg Thompson. He goes on to explain that a company hires a corporate photographer to be the “solution to their business problem.”
In a video interview (and shown below) by journalist Stanley Leary, Thompson offers some advice for photographers who are trying to transition from photojournalism to corporate photography.
“It’s about how you do the job, not the job you do.”
We’re all amateurs. It’s just that some of us are more professional about it than others.
– George Carlin, comedian
Professional photographer: Earns a living from photography. Consistently produces quality pictures to suit their customers’ needs. Stands behind their work and takes responsibility for their actions.
Amateur photographer: Has another day job. Produces pictures to please themselves. Has nothing at stake and nothing to lose.
Professionals are predictable. Amateurs are not.
An amateur practices until they get it right. A professional practices until they can’t get it wrong.
An amateur might know how to fix mistakes. A professional knows how to avoid them.
An amateur has to be good once-in-a-while. A professional has to be good every time.
An amateur is judged by their best photo. A professional is judged by their worst.
People don’t expect much from an amateur but they expect everything from a professional.
If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
– Nathan Gilkarov, economist and philosopher
Earlier today, I was looking at some media handout pictures from a movie distributor which is looking to get publicity for an upcoming release:
• The pictures had no captions, no names and no IPTC data. You have to guess who the people are and what/where/when is happening.
• Photos were overexposed by about two stops and had far too much contrast. (EXIF data showed that the pictures were shot on an amateur camera using an auto-exposure mode).
• Pictures were out-of-focus.
