This was our fourth shoot at this large software company in the north Dallas area. The other three had all been pretty much "talking heads" shoots with teleprompter, greenscreened so we could drop in a background in post.
This one was different. There was a script. It was supposed to be humorous, and a few minor special effects would be required, like speeding up our "talent" at times and dropping a clock on the wall behind him so we could change the times during post.
Problem was, the person who wrote the script, and whose project this was, at the last minute decided to stay out on the west coast and trust that her written instructions would suffice. We were hired by their publicity firm who sent a contact person to work with us. This person decided to rewrite the script a bit, so we shot everything in the first script AND the extras and changes sought by the contact lady.
Although they'd only envisioned a single camera shoot with a single operator, shot in 4:3, we shot with two ops and two hi-def cameras in 16:9, after telling them about all the web video sites that have gone widescreen or even hi-def in the past couple of months. I (as always) made suggestions here and there and whenever there was dialog, I miked everyone. The shoot went well and finished just as our time was up.
Back at the office, I captured as downconverted standard widescreen (this was for web display). While editing, I guessed that the original script-writer and project head would be making the decisions, so I followed her script to the letter except where the contact lady's ideas worked with the original script alright, in which case I added those also.
Oh, I forgot to mention that while the shoot lasted four hours and we each got a full hour's worth of tape (plus a little extra), the contact lady gave us a strict three minute limit for the edited video.
This meant that two of the three dialog scenes (that were not in the original script) had to be left out, as they ran over thirty seconds each and I nearly had to use a chain saw to chop the video down to 03:20.
As I finished the edit, the recent Sonicfire 5 article in Event DV came to mind and I figured it was about time I learned to do their new mood-mapping stuff. I found a good track, bought it and set music and some subtle sound effects to time with the action. Sonic 5 is great stuff and the mood-mapping was the perfect thing to enhance this video.
So I upload and send the link to my contact person. 24hrs, no feedback. Then it came, an email with dozens of change requests and basically a whole new script, which included the two deleted dialog scenes and extended the video to five minutes or more!
This was a flat-fee project, but with a "moving target" script, I could be editing this one for the rest of my life!
What saved my rear, is my contract. It states that "up to one hour of editing changes can be requested after viewing the approval copy, at no extra charge." It also states that there is only one approval copy and only one free hour of changes. After that, all editing is done at our normal hourly rate and that prepayment may be required.
I explained to the gal that I'd included a link to the two scripts - the original script and the one with the changes she added on "shoot day". I told her I could go by the original, or by her changes or any combination of them, all within the one hour limit, but that thirty separate, custom changes would likely take at least a half day, if not more and I would have to charge an extra $700.
I also explained that without limits on changes, an editor could spend the rest of his life editing a single project as more and more change requests came in, thus the necessity of having limits in our agreement and for spelling out the charges per hour for changes that exceed those limits.
At the beginning of the project, she'd said they had their own editor and preferred to edit themselves, but on the shoot day, she decided to "allow" us to do the editing. I'd sent them tapes right after I captured. Since they didn't think they could handle hdv, I did a "copy to tape" from my AVI files.
So now she said they'd just go back to Plan A and a DIY edit. Fine. I asked if she was absolutely positive, because I had my computer set to upgrade to Vista 64, CS4 and change of RAID, which all meant that all files would be zapped and gone.
Several days later, I get an "URGENT" message that they have just 24 hours left to complete the project and their editor hasn't gotten the first minute, of what will now be a five minute plus video, edited. They wanted me to send a clip/timecode list.
Hmmm. I edited that piece in just one day, from scratch and their guy has gotten nowhere in several days and now wants to try and copy what I did?
Well, I had to explain that the time codes will be different on their tapes, so that wouldn't work even if I still had the project files to export from. And that due to copyright laws, I couldn't send them my music track (which due to mood-mapping, wouldn't work well if they changed my edits), and that the reason the clock isn't on the wall in their tapes is because it was added in post. Also, the corny sunrise/sunset clips couldn't be sent because the copyright allows me to include them in an edited video, but not as standalone clips.
I didn't get into further details like telling them how to split the audio tracks and do fills so that each person can be heard on both left and right tracks, etc., because if he didn't know those other things, it was looking like their editor might be in over his head anyway.
I'll add a link to the video as soon as it finishes uploading.
The moral of this story is to never give a client a blank check on your services. Either go by the hour, or set limits of a reasonable sort to flat rate projects. This may cost me a client but at least I won't lose my sanity. Also, I've lost clients over pricing issues before that eventually returned, apparently figuring that quality counts more than cost sometimes.
OK, here's the promised link..
Sample 863
