Hi Alex, I’m very pleased to have an interview with you as a person who helped me also create Lumen Magazine. Tell me please for those who might not know, why did you create LIME ART GROUP and what your team is doing now??
Hi Eva, thank you and I want to congratulate you first with the first release of Lumen, you did a lot of good work.
Still, if I go back about 10 years ago, I created my first amateur video studio Dogma, which was engaged in video shooting. I really liked to shoot a short meter and learn the first programs, such as Adobe Premiere, then After Effects and 3D Software.
Time passed and the city developed. I remember that in 2008 the first Video boards appeared in our city and I started to make commercials for them. The advertising manager of the company New Project collected two Alexanders: me, who worked with After Effects, and the other Alexander, who created the animation in Flash and was a programmer. This is how LIMEART was created – it was a video production department of an advertising agency.
But how did you decide to leave advertising for Video Mapping?
In fact, we did not leave the advertising market. Today we create commercials on request. But in those days we just started to grow, we learned new tricks, plugins and animation techniques and I noticed that Video board was not enough. Local TV channels started to order ads from me. But most of all I started to be interested in VJing after some Polish VJs at our Festival Upfest, where we were engaged in video production, acquainted me with the Resolume Program. I really appreciated the advantage of video editing in real time and started creating free video mixes for our city dance clubs. Every week I did an hour and a half video mix and handed them over to the art director of the club for free.
You always say that Lime Art Group is an Austrian video mapping company
Yes, already in 2010 I knew that I would move to Austria for permanent residence and by that time I had already acquired a lot of clients and partners in Europe and the CIS, with whom I visited international projects, staged at music festivals and had a lot of big national clients in the Ukraine. But all this I had to give up and start all over again in another country. I registered the company in Austria, and began to build of a strong international affiliate network.
Who creates video content in Lime Art Group?
Starting from 2007 to 2017 all the content, including the motion graphics, video shooting was created by me personally in approximately 90% of cases. Sometimes I invited to our company a group of photographers, video operators for outsourcing or tried to give them an interest in the company, I would like us to develop the Limeartgroup brand together, but in a few years it just turned into such a passive expectation, which as though was telling me: Alexander, we are waiting for orders from you. On the other hand, I noticed that some partners simply began to parasitize on my works by giving them out for their own ones. After that I decided for myself that if we have a partnership in the company, then let it be partnership only on mutually beneficial terms and there will be no more international branches in other countries.
Today at LIMEART I have 1 motion designer, 1 graphic designer, 2 programmers, and 1 project manager working with me. But today we do not only solve the problems of video production, but also create audiovisual materials for other markets.
Why did you start creating Video Content for Projection Shows?
In 2011 I had a lot of video mapping orders and all customers wanted 3D Depth effects. I started creating 3D displace visuals which, with the subsequent video compositing, could be integrated into any architecture. If you ask me the question why, I will answer – because it helped to save time for the creation of the project in a large stream of orders. Besides, it can diversify the other authors content, which is used in the video show. It is also convenient, nice and fast.
How does LIMEART sell video content?
I have never sold video content. I have always showed what could be done with this content, how it could be used! People do not buy content, but an opportunity to create in their own free form! That is why I created special websites/brands every year with video content, which can be classified for the needs of the customers themselves, create video mapping tutorials for them, write big reviews in our blogs to help our clients better understand this and other content and its use.
What are the types of video content, which LIMEART presents and their peculiar features?
We create ready-made solutions and products for different requests of the markets, mainly video content for art and show events and also video materials for video compositing and post-production. Today there are a lot of markets, which are not occupied, for example, the market of Animated Typefaces. And we plan to create our own products there. The peculiar feature of our content is that we still try to get away from the template solutions and bring ART into the very concept of our work and created products.
Is there any competition in the market for VJ loops and what do you think about competitors?
In any market there is competition, but at the same time I am sure that absolutely every product will have its own client. I have never taken up an aggressive policy against competitors, because this in strategic development will only lead to minuses for everyone. We have always invited and still invite creative people to cooperate, even if they do the same things as we do. Many of our competitors, as well as their friends, write on Facebook that our prices for the products are too high. Ok, you want cheaper – get it – I created a new Brand – VJ Loops Farm, where I started the distribution of content, VJ loops in the lower price segment of the market. As a result, I took away a part of their clients to myself. They do not write anything else, and some of them have even left the market.
What should be the price for one Video Loop, and what are the components of the price of a digital video product?
It seems to me that the companies, which are responsible for the price formation at the video content market are companies, which do not only distribute video loops, video footages, but also create vj software for visual artists. I mean Resolume. Many people are guided by them and take an example. They are generally successful, and from our survey it is clear that Resolume is a leader in the market of VJ software.
But if we take up simple arithmetic, then the price is 80 euros for video pack (20 footages) is a little bit cheap.
Let’s count: the work of the VJ in the club for 2-6 hours will cost from 150 to 500 euros. And if we take, for example, the company’s VJ, the production studios, which create video mapping shows or work at large festivals, where the price is even higher. So why do you think that such people cannot afford to go beyond 100, 200 or even 500 euros to purchase digital content? On the Videohive service video footage of the golf sport will cost 12 dollars, while in the videostock pond5 is worth 50-60 dollars. And people buy it.
In our company, the loops pack costs on average 59-129 euros. I made an experiment on the last Halloween.
I created a very cool vj loops pack for Halloween with 22 footages and put 10 euros for such a pack. I started advertising it almost a month before the event. If at least 1000 clients bought such a package, then the turnover would be 10 000 euros. 1000 VJs is a real figure, and 10 euros is not such a big price for everyone, but I was not able to find even 100 VJs. So I realized for myself that price is not always important, it is more important how you treat customers and whether you have something that might interest them!
And finally, what are you planning to do and how are you planning to develop the VJ market
I would very much like VJing in all its forms to be valued in all universities of the world as a separate direction in art. I want to be a producer of a film that will tell you about VJing, about video show markets, and its trends on backstage. Soon I want to start traveling around the world in search of talented video artists, as well as to shoot a few new footages on the video.
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