At the beginning of our first year in college we were required to start a small business as part of the 'enterprise' programme. Our small business was 'SRC Infinity Productions', a small media production company providing filming, editing and DVD production services to customers for a reasonable price. While this was successful and we created products for a few clients, it never took off as a real priority or felt like a serious business.
By the start of our second year of college, SRC Infinity Productions was not as prominent as we'd hoped amongst teachers and other students in the college. We had a team meeting to discuss the successes and failures of our first year as a small business and we decided what changes would be made to make the business even better in our second year. This meeting led to the agreement that we would re brand and use this as a sort of fresh start. We would already have the contacts we had previously made (informing them of the re brand) but we would be able to make the business look and feel more professional.
Our re brand started with brainstorming a new name. We wanted something short, memorable and that represented us as a group and the business itself. This led to the creation of 'Ufilms'. We completely re branded all of our social media with our new name, new logo and created an all round more professional looking social media presence.
While at the beginning of SRC Infinity Productions we had separate departments for filming, editing, DVD production and, occasionally, photography, this began to fall apart as people wanted to try different jobs in the business and there could sometimes be a lack of communication between departments. The hierarchy in Ufilms was fairly quickly decided, despite being only a small group of 11. Ufilms was a business made up of 11 Film & TV students, who would all hopefully take on an equal role, doing an equal amount of work and spreading the work amongst the group.
While we all hoped to work equally, we still needed certain positions to be filled in order to run as a successful unit. It was decided that Danniella would be put as the head of Ufilms, a job she was happy to take. Her job consisted of making sure everything in Ufilms worked smoothly and efficiently. If we were having meetings, they would be led by Danniella, guiding us through the points we needed to discuss. Anytime Ufilms needed to be represented, as leader, Danniella would usually attend such events with other members of the groups.
As we are were business and therefore would have money coming in, we needed a member of the team to act as our accountant. The decision was made that Jess would take on this role. This job involved writing and signing all invoices for clients and keeping track of the money coming in and going out of Ufilms.
Ufilms advertises itself as a reasonably priced media production company for hire. Our customers do pay much less for Ufilms than other production companies as we are college students but we aim to produce professional level products for everyone. Our prices start from £8 an hour as we work out our prices by the people working on a job. We charge £8 per person every hour of work. For example, a 3 hours shoot with 2 people working on it would cost £48, £24 per person.While the average minimum wage for 18 year olds is £5.60 (£4.05 for 16 - 17 year olds) we wanted to treat ourselves not as young workers but like adults working professionally, while still keeping a reasonable price.
Customers were usually required to pay a deposit towards the job we were to do for them, then pay in full afterwards. Our income from customers got to us one of two ways. We could be paid in cash which would go directly to our company money tin, this was the easiest way to be paid as we were receiving the money directly. The other way we were paid was through college. Some jobs we did required the college was paid the money, as we were still students and linked with the college. This money should then be passed down to us to be able to spend it on what the company needed. As for the rest of the group, everyone had an equal responsibility. People would be hired for different jobs depending on who had done the job previous or depending on who would put themselves forward to do a job. Everyone in the team had to manage at least one project, some people managed multiple. Managing a project meant being behind all the organisation and hiring people for the jobs.
Our main marketing has been through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As we are a young group of film makers who use social media ourselves, this was our best way of marketing Ufilms. We were already experienced in using social media so we transferred our understanding and experience of social media over to a Ufilms account on each platform. We put different people in front of each social media platform. Jess and I were in charge of the Ufilms Twitter account, Danniella and Taylor in charge of the Instagram and Danniella and Matthew in charge of Facebook (however the Facebook page was often updated by other members of the group too).
With social media being the main place most businesses market themselves nowadays, the more popular platforms offer business accounts, which rearrange and change certain aspects to make it easier to run an account for your business as opposed to a personal account.
As our business doesn't directly sell a product, our marketing was different to many other companies. We had to advertise our services as much as possible. Facebook made this easy as there was an option to put a list of services customers could view. Other than this and on other platforms our marketing was more down to us interacting with out customers. Our main focus of social media was to frequently post about projects we were working on, whether it was a paid job or a personal project. This would let the customers know we were very active film makers and we could be trusted to be on a paid job.
Ufilms illustrates the skills required to run a small business. This includes management, technical, financial and creative skills. We, as a business, use this skills in different aspects of running and working for Ufilms.
I've already spoken about how the business demonstrates management and financial skills.
The creative skills we show come in the form of ideas we have to come up with. Obviously, when we are hired for a job, the customer does not usually know the specifics of film making that we, as film students, do understand. This means that if we are given an event to film, like a wedding for example, it is our job to actually make the camera plan and decide on the shots we need to get to make out final product. The other way we have to come up with ideas is when we are hired to make something that isn't a set idea yet, and we are tasked with creating that idea from scratch. This is a skill all of our team have evidence for as we have all, outside of Ufilms, created short films, music videos and adverts from scratch, pitching out original ideas.
When hired for a job, we are also responsible for the footage we get and ensuring it comes out as professional looking as possible. This requires good knowledge of cameras and how to set them to get the best footage in different scenarios. While this isn't as common of a skill as others the business shows we have and not everyone necessarily understand the camera well enough to get the best footage possible, there are still people in the Ufilms team who know the ins and outs of the camera and are able to confidently go to a job knowing they will get great footage. The team also has confidence in members of the team to get the best footage possible without worrying how it will come back.
Ufilms has multiple resources and equipment. We obtained our resources via the college. We decided we could start a small media production company as we already had the cameras, editing software and various other equipment at our disposal. This meant we were able to use these at no cost on jobs we were hired out to do, this instantly made the jobs almost entirely profit, incredibly helpful for the business. The range of equipment the Film & TV course had to offer meant we were able to achieve a more professional look to our films. We are able to use equipment such as the dolly/track, the stabiliser wheel and the crane etc. We decide on the equipment and resources we will need on a job in the planning stage. We would first look at what the customer wants and whether various equipment would be necessary and then next we check if the equipment we wanted to use would work in the location we are in.
Ufilms, like any business, has had successes and failures since it started. We've learnt a lot of lessons about being a business and how a business needs to operate. We have successfully created various projects through Ufilms to the highest standard possible and had great feedback from customers confirming this. We have learnt valuable filming and business skills for the future that we can translate into the Film and TV industry. There have been multiple time when the business has failed on different aspects but these have mostly been trial and error situations.
Our communication with customers could sometimes be improved upon. There have been times when a deadline date for a project or a filming date has been miscommunicated which has led to problems with production. There have been times, due to being college students with college work as a high priority, when communication to a possible customer has been forgotten about or a job has had to be declined.
Another aspect of the business we have had issues with is the contribution to jobs and work amongst the entire team. Many people have done a lot more work than others but this isn't necessarily because people aren't willing to do the work. This is the case sometimes and this can be an issue as a successful business needs everyone to be hard working, especially with such a small team. Sometimes, this can be because people have taken on more work themselves instead of evenly distributing it to the team. This can be because people don't trust others to do the job right. This is sometimes we've tried to learn from as everyone in the team should be at the level we can trust them to do work.
Our biggest issue with the business, in my opinion, is with money. Not the management, as that is a successful aspect of Ufilms, but the actual income. This is a problem that was no fault of our own but still counts as a failure as a business. To be a successful business you need to have an income and a profit, this has been a huge issue for us as we have struggled to get the money from various jobs due to the money having to come through college on certain jobs. We have struggled to get the money from college not just for jobs but for competitions we have entered too. This has meant our overall income at the end of the year of around £1200, has been much lower and the money we worked out everyone would get has now had to change because of this.
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