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Client Dilemma…please read on.
Hi, I have a situation that I need some advice on: I use DPS’ Velocity to edit on, I have 3 raid arrays for which one is dedicated to one client and the others I use for my own projects. A client that I occassionally do work for now needs a few edits and I’m right in the middle of a few huge projects and I don’t have the hard drive space to bring the footage in. I offered to split the cost of the drives which are $1,200 so $600 each. They were not acceptable to this. I’m not sure what to do. The last time I did work for them, every few weeks they wanted changes, I can’t dedicate the drive space for a few thousand dollars a year. Am I wrong? I’m going to see if I get any feedback before I reply.
PS: I have an excellent relationship with these people
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
19 Replies
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Your rates are too low if you can’t afford the capital to expand for work for which you otherwise have the capacity and want to do.
IMO you need to purhchase these drives now or consider losing the project, which in many cases means you resign the client.
It’s perfectly reasonable for you to set a rate for a particular type of work, and to have a discussion with this client why their projects deserve this rate.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask the client to pay for your capital expansion directly. It is OK to have detailed discussions with them about the life of their project on your drives, and gauge cost accordingly.
Alternatives include coming up with a workflow that doesn’t require additional space, or negotiating a schedule acceptable to them that allows better timing for your drives. Have you thought about hot-warm-cold storage? Hot is on your raids, warm is on non-raid drives, cold is on tape. It’s pretty easy to move a project from hot to warm, and warm to hot, and expansion may cost less this way.
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You make some good points, I disagree about others. How much can you charge to make 5 simple edits? Point is whether its one edit or 50, its the same amount of work to restore the footage. I’m charging them $1,500 to $2,300 depending on the actual script changes, if I buy the drive, I basically do the job for nothing. True, once I finish the project, the drive is available for other projects. They called me on Friday and the deadline is in 3 weeks but I’m waiting for footage from out of state. The original project was done 2.5 years ago…these are just updates, which come up every 6 months or so. I use a SCSI system for my NLE so buying warm drives isn’t as cheap as IDE drives.
Honestly, I don’t care about losing this client, they are always on a tight budget with unreasonable timelines. If they gave me $10,000 a year in business, I wouldn’t think twice about buying a drive. On another message board, a guy posted that he needs to backup his footage to allow for other clients, and a few replies suggested that he charged the client for backup “warm” drives..that is where I got the idea to split the drive with them. I asked another client of mine the same thing who I work with 12 months a year and he gladly paid for the drive without question. I guess we just see things a little different but I appreciate your reply. There are other inuendos regarding the project that I didn’t share, which could possibly skew your opinion….or maybe those issues are clouding my opinion.
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
I use a SCSI system for my NLE so buying warm drives isn’t as cheap as IDE drives.
The idea would be to use the inexpensive IDE stuff, could be with an external FW or USB case. Archive to this, then transfer back to SCSI as needed.Honestly, I don’t care about losing this client, they are always on a tight budget with unreasonable timelines… There are other inuendos regarding the project that I didn’t share, which could possibly skew your opinion…
I think you’ve answered your own question.There are times you know that working extra or buying something extra is the right thing to do. And times you know it’s not worth it. If there’s a little voice inside saying “not this client, not this time” I’d go with that.
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That is what I was getting at with the inuendo comment. I don’t like this client. I don’t like the way they expect me to jump when they say so, like I have no other projects or clients. Like I said, if they gave me substantial business..I would jump. I have excellent relationships with my clients and we usually become friendly after the project. I just gave it more thought and decided to buy the drive, because in the long run, I will need it for other projects…your comments helped in a to change my mind. Guess you have to take a chance and hope it comes back to you. Thank you.
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
Forgot to mention that the computer my editing system is on, will not recognize fire wire or USB. I do backup the footage to my other computer which has lacie drives on it. It takes hours to move it back and forth. The issue is that they expect me to leave the project there for weeks or months while they fine tune the video, which is why I suggested they have their own dedicated drive.
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
Jeffrey,
You did ask, and Seth certainly does not deserve crap for telling you like it is.
Fact is, hardware is the responsibility of the facility unless the client requires something extraordinary. If they ask for something special like a PAL deck, or maybe Digibeta that’s something to charge them for, but hard drive space is certainly not extraordinary in the least. With ATA and SATA drives now at only $125 for 300gb you could easily move media off of your SCSI drives overnight while you sleep and without supervision. Its really no big deal, and the hours and hours you complain about are computer hours not man hours. There is a difference. Try to remember, this is a service business…
DRW
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Crap? whose post are you reading? I told him I agreed with him on a lot of points and in the end I decided to buy the drive. I already do what you suggested about IDE drives on another computer which I stated in a post.
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
I think the real issue with this client isn’t needing the additional storage at this time, but the time they leave their media on your drives. I’d explain to your client that drive space is basically, real estate – it’s leased to them for a reasonable amount of time during their project with you. However, this doesn’t mean because they book a job with you for a week they get to leave it on your system for 6 months. We had this issue with a client, we explained it to them, and they were fine paying a “storage fee” for the ability to call up & have it available for revisions. No need to get into the details of HOW you have it available (loading offline drives, tape, keeping it online, etc).
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Thank you Bob for seeing my point. I just wrote my client and told her that the footage itself is not an issue, as I can just swap it out to an IDE dive…it’s the time it’s on the drives. Based on history, they make changes once a month for a few months, then disappear for a few months…so I was just suggesting that I split the cost of the drive and everyone will be happy and I can work on their projects as they come up without transfer time. The woman who works for my client thinks I should just build it into the estimate, but I’m a really honest up front person and wanted to do it the right way.
Jeffrey S. Gould
Action Media Productions -
[Jeffrey Gould] “The woman who works for my client thinks I should just build it into the estimate, but I’m a really honest up front person and wanted to do it the right way.”
As usual, the woman is right. Why did you need to tell them they were buying you equipment? Not only is it an unappealing idea, but it might be a capital expenditure that they’re not allowed to make.
But I’m glad you posted this issue; it is a problem many of us face, and the hot-warm-cold idea is cool.
I’d settle for hot and cold storage. What do the experts here think about good options (and more important, good strategies) for “cold” storage? I use three computers for every project, and backing up a project always takes me far more time and hassle than I’d like. DRW’s comment about cheap IDE drives is interesting, but while the drives are cheap, the housings add expense. I’d really like to be able to pop in a drive or a tape, back up everything associated with a project (everything: scripts, graphics, After Effects projects, media, EDL’s, alternate edits, etc.), AND be able to reload it to the proper computers, drives, and directories automatically. If anybody has this mastered, I’d love to hear about it.
— Bob C
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