Know if the project is worth your precious time!

To do a project which is worth is to look at how much you will profit from it and ofcourse the amount of time needed to spent on it. If something fun that take just a few minutes to just few hours it wouldn't have wasted too much time for you to do something which is more profitable. However the profit is not only in getting money but could also mean the experience or for certain people the fame but have to say for most people money is the best motivation of anything. But I have to say to do something for fun, there is a limit. As working your ass of for something and it is getting in you way of your true goals you wanted to reach or is just taking forever without seeing it finish or becoming a vicious circle of that people would ask you just to do everything for fun instead of actually getting paid for the work.

So best thing is actually to stop and look at certain projects you have done and wasted time on and actually see from what you have profited and which not. And also people who are just trying to use your skills or services for free. And I have to say there are allot of people out there who are profiting from free services which they just mark as a fun project while the main person would profit from it while other have just wasted their time or mislead into doing work for free.

Actually in the Dutch movie industry I saw allot of those, but have to say sometime you can fall under this trap without knowing it at all. As friends you think having fun doing a project is allot of fun to do, but even with friend you have to be careful with as most friend be friends but some are just to profit from being friend and get a friendly discount or just for free. So mainly a big tip is to keep busines and friends apart.

But also trying to live and survive, money is very important part of doing a project. But the thing is you have to look at how much you would earn from the project. Main thing is that when you need money you would take any project to survive which have money. But you also have to know not to get under paid. Cause sometimes there are clients or between persons who are ripping you off will low pays. The problem with it is that of you are known to be cheap you are cheap forever and it's a vicious circle that is hard to get out of. Or people who search jobs for you could be talking about the same project but one lowered the price or eating part of the price for them self. However if their eat the money for them self is not always a problem.

I have to say working under someone who found the project is not a problem. But you have to know if it's still worth the money to work for it. Cause my experience over the years now, is that you can work for a short amount of time, cause they are well planned and get allot of money which is a set amount but you don't know what the person self is getting it could be allot but you still get allot of money cause you know the set price.

But there are project which the person would say the budget allot but never said how much you would get and it not well planned and wasted too much time on. And in the end you only earned few hundred bucks and wasted several weeks working on it.

So I learned from is that it's the best to have a set price or basically know you are getting allot of money then being persuade by the budget especially the budget can be decided over allot of people sometimes or in the equipment. So make sure that you are getting a certain set price and also make sure you are getting paid that you know you would survive.

Time vs money
Make sure the time you used on a project is worth the money you are getting for it. Cause getting 200bucks for a full day filming without doing edits I would do that for sure. But if someone said 200buck filming a project I would first ask how is the project planned and time needed to spend on. Cause if you have to work a full week for 200bucks you won't be even able survive the whole week with that. So first make sure you can survive with the amount of money you are getting but also have enough to save or survive days you don't have anything to do.

Cause I had been working on projects before which I though would just take a few days of shoot but in the end became several months which wasted so much time and my own money to try and survive in the mean time which is just too crazy.

So have learned my lesson in life that you need to learn who to trust. And be careful not to take on projects, but to just find jobs with a set time and a set amount of money that is worth to do in the time.

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