Vantaggi
Good start-up environment. Some fun teammates. They invest heavily in gear (ask for something and it's on your desk the next day). Studio was situated directly outside the red line and parking also available. Better benefits than many other production houses in the area.
Svantaggi
Along with other production staff I realised no matter what we shoot, how late we stay or how many great ideas we pitch doesn't make any difference to how successful our shows were. After a while it was very hard to care about filming material for Bitesize TV, film school teaches professionals to think of the audience but it was impossible to reach any audience as they were never loyal enough to stick with more than one episode unless a reminder was put on the homepage. It didn't matter if you crafted movies worthy of an Oscar or just some E! style showbiz garbage with no quality control, it will be down to management to decide if it ends up on the front page of Bitesize TV and Mevio. If management chose not to promote it then it literally got single digit views, if it went on the homepage the video would hit the million mark overnight and pats on the back all round. Nothing to do with my ideas, how hard my team worked or how well I performed as a filmmaker and editor; it was solely down to the San Francisco team to decide if we were homepage material or not. Of course when it comes to evaluating personal performance then production skill doesn't equate, your performance figures only relates to a single person deciding if they should promote your work or not ---- in other words they can cancel a show overnight if someone forgets to put you on the homepage. It is disheartening to any creative person to repeatedly be treated like this, knowing nothing you do makes a difference to how popular your video is . I'm giving them a poor business outlook rating as I think Bite size TV may lose a lot more staff in the L.A. studios if their performance is measured by things they have no control over. I can't see how this company will be appealing to advertisers if people visit the home page and never watch anything else on the site. Don't get me wrong, the first six months will be fun, you'll learn new skills and be challenged. But bottom line - if you have talent and are looking for recognition (most of us here are) then look elsewhere to a more established studio that will give you a proper platform and showcase for your work.