Behind the job title

When people ask 'what do you do for work?', I usually respond with something along the lines of film producer, film maker etc.. which honestly is all I ever wanted to say. 14 year old me would be very proud.

But this got me thinking, what actually is my job and what does it actually entail? Yeah, there's lots of filming and editing but thinking about it, there's a shed load more to it that I can never be arsed explaining to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Being a one man band - most of the time at least - forced me to become and end-to-end 'production company' and functioning limited company also. So yeah, I make films. But here's a list of actually what I could be doing on any given day.

• Planning and creating video projects mentally - brainstorming and then listing out possible ideas and concepts. Thinking about whether certain ideas could be pitched to certain companies, or used by myself as a personal project. 
• Location scouting, mostly looking at and riding new locations to see what would be suitable.
• Building and digging tracks and trails to create exactly what we need to film. I spend a surprisingly large amount of time doing this.
• Communications with riders, whatsapping, instagram messaging, coordinating groups of riders to be together on the same day. Which at the moment is like platting fog.
• Emails and comms with brands, potential clients, giving quotes.
• Updating and maintaining my social media presence across Instagram and Facebook which combined has around 110k followers as well as my presence on LinkedIn and my website/blog here.
• Planning logistics of where to shoot and when, especially in the short winter days. Do I need to stay over the night before? I'll book that hotel then. Do I need an earlier flight? Do I need a hire car? A lot of the time the client will assist with this but it's always on the cards for me to be doing it.
• So I'm finally on a shoot. First things first is I'll make sure people have enough food, or tell them to bring food if we're shooting right through the day. Secondly I'll explain what we're going for, what type of trails, what I'm after and how long we'll be filming for. This is where it becomes a director / producer / runner role all in one. I'm a micro manager at heart, I like to make sure everyone is aware of what is going on, happy and enjoying theirselves.
• Make sure the batteries are charged, cards are formatted, settings are correct, got my food for the day alongside my tools.. and away we go. 
• Filming! Finally. I'll usually be the solo filmer on the day and have a list of shots I want to get, alongside different angles. I'll direct and explain everything as we're filming so the riders know exactly what we're working towards. They're all so switched on media wise these days anyway. Some of the time I'm drafted in as a second filmer to support Will Evans or Jacob Gibbins for example - which is way easier as then my job is to do as they say.
• Editing. Ingest the footage, organise it and import to Premiere. Sometimes it's a days worth, sometimes it's a weeks worth, it depends on the project. Begin to piece the video together until it's something I'm happy with, and then try to refine it and/or stylise it. Editing social cuts, reels, raw footage, extra cuts for the client etc..
• Drink lots of tea 
• Typography. Playing around with fonts, brand logos and designs to apply to the video. Sometimes digital and sometimes hand written and scanned/photographed. I won't design logos though usually - this is something I would get done by my good mates Jon Gregory or Danny Piercy.
• Colour grading. Not something I'm tremendous at but I'm lucky a lot of my past work never demanded heavy grading so it was always quite subtle and a bit less cinematic. But I do find myself playing with colour options a lot to suit a specific video or vibe and would say I'm fairly good at it now. Again, something I would contract out if budgets allow.
• Soundtrack research. And lots of it. Endlessly listening to songs and tracks to find the perfect fit. Be this on Spotify, Youtube, Artist or other libraries. If it's from a library then great. If it isn't then I'll contact the band or record label, usually agree on a price that works for both of us, complete the relevant paperwork and then pay the band / label. But this now means I have a great network of bands and labels who I know are easy enough to deal with and are happy to work with me every time.
• Deliver the project, make a few changes at the customers request, help launch the project across my channels as well as the brands channels. I used to do a lot of the article writing and creation on Pinkbike for my customers but that is a rarity now.
• Invoice for my projects, calculate expenses and inevitably chase invoices = more emails.
• Keep my accounts looking good, correspond with my accountant, pay tax and all the limited company stuff you have to do.
• Sourcing props, investing in new kit etc..

I'd love to have a person for each of these tasks that all work under Caldwell Visuals, but the fact is you need to be Cut Media sized for that to happen, and I'm relatively happy having control of most of these tasks as I'm very particular about things. Possibly, or probably, a hinderance but I know a bunch of others who make it work just like I do. So there's an explanation of what I actually do.