Expert: Charles Taylor - 8/14/2006

Question
Hey Charles,
    First I want to thank you, and Fox, for the knowledge.  I have spent some time on the net now looking for answers, and the cyber gods has led me to this page.

    Now for my question, I have a small video production company doing short films,  weddings, bar mitxvahs, and promtional videos.  No big thing.  However, I met this guy who want to shoot some porn, and I have no idea what to charge him.

It's me, my partner, two 3 ccd cameras, a boom guy, and a P.A. or two.  My parner and I will set up the lights, and I'll do the editing.

I don't want to scare him away by over pricing, but it needs to be worth our while, of course.

Also, is asking for a small percentage of the sales a reasonable request?

Thanks again,
Nobear.  

Answer
Over pricing it will not be a problem for anyone who has tons of $$$ lying around wanting to spend it....kinda like a kid getting a few bucks from dad and its burning a hole in his or her pocket. The sad, sad truth to the matter is like in pretty much any business. You have too not only have your ass covered but watch your ass as well. When you get into profit sharing deals it is the most terrible thing to do with anyone unless you have an extremely tight friendship with this person bordering on blood relative, a great lawyer, a top notch accountant and a third party (neutral individuals) verification system to see that there is no monkey business going on.

Prime example not porn worthy but never the ness newsworthy. Pre 9/11 Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein had kicked out UN inspectors that were there to verify that he was in full compliance of certain UN resolutions. Well I am not going farther in elaboration on that one. But hopefully you kinda get the picture.


The porn business by its nature is inheritantly shady. Anyone who says different is on drugs. But then again let’s see Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, and HealthSouth are not all the paragons of professional and legitimate business ethics and operations either and all of those companies were in the “square” world (i.e., Listed on NYSE).