Larry Jordan: 2012 A Look Back

By Larry Jordan

The end of a year is a good time to look back and reflect on changes over the last twelve months, which is how this blog starts. Then, I included some of your comments.

In my newsletter, I invited readers to share their thoughts on the last year. So, here is a look back at 2012 both from my perspective and from the point of view of the folks in the trenches.

NOTE: In the truth-in-advertising department, I edited many of the reader comments for spelling, length, and clarity.

LARRY’S THOUGHTS

To me, 2012 was a year where our industry continued to struggle under tremendous pressure in three areas: Business, Technology, and Jobs.

BUSINESS TRENDS

The biggest business challenges in 2012 were the twin hammers of more competition creating smaller budgets. From my perspective, this translated into five business trends emerging over the last year:

• Barriers to entry continued to drop, which increased competition for available jobs, which meant jobs pay less
• Shrinking budgets are affecting all of us
• Being an early-adopter does not translate into increased revenue
• Deadlines are shorter and staff needs to be smaller
• Compared to phones and tablets, media production is a very niche market

One of the problems of being a niche market is that it is very hard for vendors to keep prices low with limited volume, yet it is very hard for filmmakers to pay high prices when budgets are getting squeezed. read more...