Task 1A: Report
Last year as part of the enterprise programme in college we created and ran a small media production business with the aim of making promotional videos and films for customers as well as producing dvd's of performances and shows put on by local theatre companies. Although the business was not perfect and we had a lot to learn we did manage to earn some cash and even get a few high profile pieces of work, such as making videos for the council. Some of the issues we had in the first year included not being paid, not distributing jobs properly and not having a proper brand. So we decided to take this into the second year and evolve the business, learning from any previous mistakes in order to refine our idea, we scrapped the old name, old logo and old attitude and formed Ufilms productions, a small, local, student run, film production business. The business is made up of all the students from our film & tv class here in college.
Structure: Firstly we decided that we needed proper leadership, one of the issues of last years business is that it felt like a free for all. With Ufilms we wanted this to be different, if we wanted a properly structured business that ran smoothly we'd had to have good leadership. So we decided that we would appoint one person to be CEO of Ufilms, we needed someone at the top who could properly delegate jobs, lead a team and handle the business aspect of things. In a business a CEO or 'Chief Executive Officer is usually responsible for; the company's direction and strategy, business model, leading a team and distribution of finances across the company. Obviously whomever we chose to be the CEO would have to be strong, confident and have a great business mind. In the end it was decided that Danniella Cooper would be our leader, our CEO, the woman at the top who we would all look to for guidance. In my opinion this was a great decision as Danniella is a very confident young woman with a fantastic mind for business.
We also came up with a hierarchical system for managing our projects. For example we designated a project manager for each project, the people working on the projected would be lead by the project manager and the project manager would answer too the CEO. Project managers would be responsible for choosing their team, organising their shoots, leasing with clients and even have an on set role. Project managers would have to be reliable and have the ability to lead a team. This structure meant that we could work efficiently and that multiple teams could simultaneously work on different projects allowing for a consistent work flow.
Income: As Ufilms we have made a profit in all our business ventures this year, earning money in many different ways. At the start of the year we came up with a pricing strategy for Ufilms, we tried to work out how much our time was worth and decided that we would charge clients for filming based upon that. After a long debate we concluded that if we were charging a client for filming we would charge £8 an hour per camera as well as this if the clients required their video editing we would charge £8 an hour for editing services. As well as this we produced DVD's for college shows which we sold to people, charging between £3 and £5 per DVD depending on what the show was. The lump sum of our income has come from larger jobs. We have used our standard rates to price multiple jobs over the year, for example we created 2 promotional videos for local theatre company page2stage, a promotional video for a local magician and many theatre shows for our friends on the acting course. More specialist jobs however may have been priced differently, recently we filmed a couples wedding from start to finish and were tasked with making them a lovely wedding video in order to help them forever remember their special day. For this projected we charged £250 which may seem like a lot but our services were actually a lot cheaper than those of professional wedding video producers and that's all part of our business model, at the end of the day we are students who charge lower rates than professional videographers or freelancers but still provide our clients with the same quality due to our access to kit. This makes us a very appealing option to local business owners whom want promotional videos making for their companies, we are seen as a reliable, quality and cost effective option and I believe that is what has made us successful this year. In terms of how we receive our income, all jobs are paid in cash, we have an invoice system and take deposits as well as drawing up contracts that legally bind when or fees have to be paid by. This is a big improvement from last year as one of our issues was not being paid properly, with the implementation of our new invoice and contract system.
Marketing: As Ufilms it was important that we got our marketing right, we had to create a company that people can remember and associate with quality video content. We needed an identity, a logo, a brand. We knew that our use of social media would be a huge factor in how successful we would be in marketing ourselves as a company, we create a company Twitter, Facebook page and later on an Instagram account to spread the news of our business. Our aim on these social media platforms was to build an audience by showing off what we can do on social media. We posted about what projects we were working on and tried to build some hype around that, as well as this I create a little video montage showcasing all the work we had done so far so that potential customers could see the quality of our content. This video was shared on all our social media platforms in older to reach as many people as possible. As young people we have quite a good grasp of the internet and social media and used this to spread the word of our page, making sure friends and family were getting involved with liking our social media accounts in order for more people to see it. Matthew Taylor has been our social media manager for Facebook and has done a great job in interacting with users on there and creating fun and interesting posts for people to see, the more posts people see from us the more likely they are to interact with them, there interaction in turn will mean that their Facebook friends will see that they have interacted with our page and thus spread our page around Facebook as much as possible. The more prominent we are on social media the more likely someone is to see our work and maybe consider hiring us to work on one of their projects. Our post on social media reach around 2000 people.
Successes and Failures: This process has been a learning process for all of us and while we have had our highs we have also had our lows. Firstly I think one of our biggest successes has been getting jobs and making money, over the last year we have made £1200 in profit from various Ufilms related jobs and as we have no costs or expenses to pay this is a good amount of money. More than I think we could have predicted we'd make at the start of the process. On the other hand a failure would be that we are still owed some money by a couple of clients, believe it or not our own local council still owes us money for a video we made for them and as well as this we created a social action video called 'educating granddad' which won first place in the equality and diversity competition however we are still yet to see our £150 prize despite chasing it up often. Another success would be the commitment and work ethic of part of the team, the majority of the team are very professional and committed 100% to the Ufilms cause, giving up there own time to help run the business. Myself, Danniella, Jess, Chloe, Matthew, Matty and Kane have been grinding away all year to help keep Ufilms going, taking jobs and volunteering to do extra work that no one else wanted to do. I've been impressed by the commitment of these people especially considering we are not paid a wage, and instead the money is shared or put towards our end of year projects. On the other hand I would say that at times delegation of work and what I would describe as 'dead weight' has been one of our biggest failures. Some team members who I will not name have put in a lot less effort than others, not volunteering for work and at times performing poorly. It was agreed that these team members would not see an equal share of our money at the end of the year but I'm really disappointed in their lack of consideration for their team members who were at times overworking because of them.
Skills required to run a small business: There are many skills required to run and manage a small business, managing this business for a year has been a learning experience for all of us and we have had to develop these skills overtime. The first skills we developed were in marketing and branding, these skills are important as a business because you need to be able to build a brand people recognise and trust, this can be done in many ways. To establish our brand we came up with a name and logo giving us a sense of identity, as well as this we created social media accounts under the name of our business. Social media is a great way to help market your product, it helps you build an audience and lets you interact with them as well as being able to share all the content you produce online. As a media production company it is important that we share our work on social media that way people and potential customers can see it and see its quality. As part of our branding we put our logo on all the videos we produce this means people will see our logo and associate it with quality. Skills in management are also important, having a strong and clear management system is important to success.
Managing people and tasks can be very difficult when there is a lot going on so putting people in charge of certain areas of the business and making them managers is the best way to share the responsibility. In our business we tried to gave everyone a role, we had people managing; finances, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, human resources, the website, marketing, graphics and meeting with clients. Whilst everyone worked together on production teams to make content we all also had these management roles.
When running a business it is vital that you have some knowledge of finances, the whole point of a business is to make money and if your spending more on resources than your earning from Jobs then your not going to do that. Here at Ufilms as we are a student run enterprise we do not take a wage, instead all the money we have made will be shared between us at the end of the year or used to help fund our productions. This means that we do not have any money going out of the business to pay people meaning that we make a larger profit. As well as this we use equipment lent to us by the college meaning we have next to no expenses, this means that most of the money we earn is pure profit.
Creativity is important to us as a media production company, as well as making corporate videos we have also tried to produce our own content for our YouTube channel. Over this years film award season we launched a series of videos under the label 'Ufilms Oscars Rundown' the videos featured ourselves talking about the upcoming academy awards, we made videos before and after the event to give our views and reactions on what was happening. We used our social media platforms to spread these videos to our audience as much as possible and managed to get quite a few views. This original content shows potential customers that we are series about video production and helps grow our brand.
Obtaining, Deploying and maintain resources: Here at Ufilms we are very lucky with resources, like I mentioned before as a student run company we can borrow kit from college, meaning when it comes to cameras and other equipment that we do not have to pay any expenses. As well as this we have our own facilities, a computer room to edit and a green room to store equipment and also make videos in. All these things are provided by the college meaning our business headquarters is free. We have access to our facilities five days a week and as we are one of the only classes that use the room we are always allowed in. Our room is a vital facility as it is the only room in the college that has premier pro in, premier pro is the video editing software we use to cut our productions together and if it wasn't provided by the college we would not be able to make such high quality content. We have professional support from our Tutor Kelly who is an ex industry professional who has a lot of experience and guidance to offer us, as a new business she has helped us greatly. In terms of scope for expansion we have many plans for the business, including handing this section of it other to the students below us who are not leaving for university in the summer, as well as this as we are all going to different university's we have spoken about having different branches of Ufilms for example having a Ufilms Manchester branch or a Ufilms Hertfordshire branch. This would help us spread around brand to a wider range of people and allow those leaving to still be involved in our company.
Skills required to run a small business: There are many skills required to run and manage a small business, managing this business for a year has been a learning experience for all of us and we have had to develop these skills overtime. The first skills we developed were in marketing and branding, these skills are important as a business because you need to be able to build a brand people recognise and trust, this can be done in many ways. To establish our brand we came up with a name and logo giving us a sense of identity, as well as this we created social media accounts under the name of our business. Social media is a great way to help market your product, it helps you build an audience and lets you interact with them as well as being able to share all the content you produce online. As a media production company it is important that we share our work on social media that way people and potential customers can see it and see its quality. As part of our branding we put our logo on all the videos we produce this means people will see our logo and associate it with quality. Skills in management are also important, having a strong and clear management system is important to success.
Managing people and tasks can be very difficult when there is a lot going on so putting people in charge of certain areas of the business and making them managers is the best way to share the responsibility. In our business we tried to gave everyone a role, we had people managing; finances, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, human resources, the website, marketing, graphics and meeting with clients. Whilst everyone worked together on production teams to make content we all also had these management roles.
When running a business it is vital that you have some knowledge of finances, the whole point of a business is to make money and if your spending more on resources than your earning from Jobs then your not going to do that. Here at Ufilms as we are a student run enterprise we do not take a wage, instead all the money we have made will be shared between us at the end of the year or used to help fund our productions. This means that we do not have any money going out of the business to pay people meaning that we make a larger profit. As well as this we use equipment lent to us by the college meaning we have next to no expenses, this means that most of the money we earn is pure profit.
Creativity is important to us as a media production company, as well as making corporate videos we have also tried to produce our own content for our YouTube channel. Over this years film award season we launched a series of videos under the label 'Ufilms Oscars Rundown' the videos featured ourselves talking about the upcoming academy awards, we made videos before and after the event to give our views and reactions on what was happening. We used our social media platforms to spread these videos to our audience as much as possible and managed to get quite a few views. This original content shows potential customers that we are series about video production and helps grow our brand.
Obtaining, Deploying and maintain resources: Here at Ufilms we are very lucky with resources, like I mentioned before as a student run company we can borrow kit from college, meaning when it comes to cameras and other equipment that we do not have to pay any expenses. As well as this we have our own facilities, a computer room to edit and a green room to store equipment and also make videos in. All these things are provided by the college meaning our business headquarters is free. We have access to our facilities five days a week and as we are one of the only classes that use the room we are always allowed in. Our room is a vital facility as it is the only room in the college that has premier pro in, premier pro is the video editing software we use to cut our productions together and if it wasn't provided by the college we would not be able to make such high quality content. We have professional support from our Tutor Kelly who is an ex industry professional who has a lot of experience and guidance to offer us, as a new business she has helped us greatly. In terms of scope for expansion we have many plans for the business, including handing this section of it other to the students below us who are not leaving for university in the summer, as well as this as we are all going to different university's we have spoken about having different branches of Ufilms for example having a Ufilms Manchester branch or a Ufilms Hertfordshire branch. This would help us spread around brand to a wider range of people and allow those leaving to still be involved in our company.
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