I’m sure this has been going on everywhere forever, private or government employees using their employer’s gear to produce side projects for personal financial gain with zero cost to them. Or worse, govt or educational facilities knowingly renting out gear, post services or studio space at cut rates because they don’t know any better or they do and just don’t care. However, in the past but still wrong at a public entity, it wasn’t as much of a threat due to limited availability because alot of businesses or government operations didn’t have their own production facilities so they had to outsource to all of us.

In addition to many other things quickly eroding local independent production services, has anyone else noticed a dropoff in local work because of the significant emergence or increase in existing underground production in your area over the last decade because of the lure of affordable high quality cameras and turnkey, easy to use post suites tempting employees to use it for their own financial gain? Not to mention the acceptance of the "good enough" product created by lesser platforms when managers can’t or just won’t pay for more expensive but still affordable gear. The worst kind of scenerios are the operations within a private entity because even if notified, unless they care, there’s not much you can do about it. But if it’s a public entity, then there’s something to work with to try to get it stopped.

I highly suspect there is something going on in my area with someone that has a confirmed history of making supplemental production deals with their previous government & private sector employers that were supposed to produce in-house content only. Apparently when "negotiating" some of these full time positions, he believes the pay is not up to his level so he manages to convince them to allow him to produce outside content with their gear to make up for it. And because most upper management that have just created a video department don’t know any better, or not enough about the outside industry, they may think that’s a great deal. I heard at least one of those former private employers got a percentage of revenue for any outside production work because its gear & facility were used. However, it was getting a very low percentage and because of that employer’s ignorance to outside industry rates, it didn’t know it was getting the short end of the stick, but at least that one knew it was happening. For the last few years, this person has been at a government operated entity and some completely unrelated commercial content produced by him has been seen on cable and online. I do not know for sure if he’s made a deal with this current government entity for outside production but it should be noted that he is incredibly cheap and has never owned his own gear.

Up to now, his department has mostly produced simple boring interviews. In fact, they are so simplistic, as far as production requirements, that they could easily have been shot with any decent low cost digital still camera or any late model phone with video recording capability and still passed as acceptable for their needs. By the way, the viewcounts for their online content is next to none. But oh no, a $7K HD video camera was purchased to shoot this stuff along with a nice light kit and full post suite. Taxypayers sure are generous, aren’t they? Even though I don’t like it and it may seem unfair, if someone is able to use a private entity’s gear for outside work and that company is aware and approves it, then that’s their competitive edge. However, I do NOT think deals should be allowed for any reason at any government entity. What are your thoughts about this? Thanks.