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Awkward
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I had this happen to me last year and the client has been bringing the raw footage to us for editing. After they figured out what it was costing for us to fix their work, the writing was on the wall. We are shooting their next two events next week.
Also, they shot something very expensive and then taped over what they shot with B-Roll.
Expensive lesson.
Always be the hero. We trained them to shoot, just like a surgeon could train you to do heart surgery. One serious mistake and jobs go out the door.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD .Ask me how to Market Yourself using Send Out Cards
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I think the idea that teachers would have any desire to take over the services you provide is laughable. Sure, they’ll go in, listen while you show them what you do, and then return to the previous state of being teachers. A wise teacher once told me “If you can’t do it, manage it, and if you can’t manage it, teach it.”
Your client relationship is very safe.
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I think your client relationship can be safe – but it will be different. Don’t sweat the loss of future income for video production services. It doesn’t sound like “that” income exists anymore. It’s not like they are paying another company to replace the same service that you provided.
Your professionalism in your previous production services role has paid off, as evidenced by the fact that they trust and value your expertise enough to offer you an opportunity in this new role. Even though you may not have proven yourself as an instructor yet, you earned enough professional “capital” that they believe you are the best person for the new role. That’s a credit to you. Don’t blow it by feeling hurt that the game is changing.
This is a great opportunity to diversify and grow. If you don’t like your new role once you try it, you don’t have to seek or take on other similar “training” jobs from other customers. But if you do, you already have your first paying customer lined up and probable testimonials and references for similar opportunities.
That’s a pretty good deal. Meanwhile, if you really enjoy educational productions like you were doing, it’s time to cultivate new clients while you continue to serve the older ones.
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what is funny about this post, is that no one has mentioned what the teachers will say “we don’t know how to do this, and now they want us to shoot and edit video ON TOP of our normal teaching duties”.
Many of the older teachers will refuse to do this, and some who are willing, will let other work slide and things won’t get done. Of course, younger more enegetic teachers may “do it all”. This is no different than when seasoned editors in our industry said “I don’t do audio, I don’t do graphics” – they either learned or were replaced by younger, more engegetic talent. This rule did not apply to “closed societies” like the LA production market, but it certainly applied to the rest of our business.So, you may get this client back, but from NOW ON, there are no more “safe jobs”. Everyone is looking to eliminate their expenses, and the # 1 enemy is the employees (they cost so much darn money, and they want health insurance – damn them all !).
If the teachers screw up their “new job”, you will be called back. But don’t count on it – they can find a new school graduate that will do your job for 1/4 the price.
Bob Zelin
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Bob’s got it exactly right.
This is short term corporate thinking and most of us who’ve been around for a while have seen it before.
Back in the early 1990s here in Phoenix, we used to have the corporate headquarters for Dial Soap. They bought a 20+ story building on Central Avenue. On one of the top floors they built a whole big, beautiful video studio. Top quality everything. They operated it for some months, then shut the whole thing down. For the next few years the thing sat vacant. Then they moved out to Scottsdale, and they literally THREW AWAY most of the big, expensive professional gear they had “invested” in for their fancy “in house” facility.
What companies didn’t get then, and STILL don’t get now, is that the equipment is always secondary to the people needed to run it. And people are EXPENSIVE. You have to pay the people every two weeks. Whether or not they’ve done anything productive for you in that time period.
After watching that, I’m NEVER worried about corporate clients taking their work “in house.” Because the economics of in-house video make no more sense today then they did back then.
It’s NOT “mission critical” spending for anyone other than a video producer. And anyone INSIDE a corporation who invests much in bringing work inside is really just training a few of their people to learn about production – without realizing that if those folks become GOOD – they immediately can LEAVE the company and earn more. Why? Because of the central reality that nobody ever talks about…
VIDEO PRODUCTION EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO DO REALLY WELL.
It requires painstaking attention to detail – while simultaneously keeping your eye on a BIG PICTURE. It requires dozens of “arts” such as writing, lighting, sound recording, and editing – that take a LONG time to learn to do competently. And if you do ANY of them incompetently – it drags down the work of everyone.
The other big truth is that in the corporate setting, video production can NEVER be anything other than an after-thought.
So to the OP. Take a deep breath. Help them to the extent they wish it. Charge what you feel fair. And be understanding when they come back after confronting the fact that there’s a WHOLE lot more to getting a good video program built than just pointing a camera at stuff.
FWIW.
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A client just asked me the same a couple of weeks ago. The problem was that the person I used to work was leaving the company and a new guy took the responsibility of the web page.
He was positively sure he can do it all and asked me for quick directions on what I did with their site.
I went to their office and answered all of their questions.
I know how much work it was for me to get that project done. I know doing and maintaining a site is not just about understanding basic HTML. Certainly, they’ll be able to update a couple of things, but sooner or later they’ll find a dead end. Who’ll they gonna call? Not the Ghost Busters.
The best thing I could do was Ron’s step number 5.
PS. New great clients arrived a week later.
*Always share a link to your site and rate the posts. This is a free service for you and for us.
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I agree that this may actually work out okay. One thing training the staff will do is raise their appreciation for what it is YOU have been doing.
While it is insulting to have someone ask you to teach them what took you four years of college and decades on the street to learn –in a day or two – there is nothing wrong with enlightening them on some of the inside details of what it takes to do the job well. And now they have handed you the context for that selling job, and are paying you to sell the idea to them. They just don’t know that’s what they are doing, yet.:-)
If they don’t care about doing it well, then you really don’t want that work anyhow. If they DO want to do it well, getting a taste of what kind of commitment and effort that takes, plus looking at the time that takes, and the costs of trying and failing, is going to eventually convince most of them to let you take on the big projects with the good margins.
And isn’t that what you really wanted to work on anyhow, not the flip cam home movie crap?
Charge a fair rate for the training. Let the dog try to drink from the fire hose. It is fun to watch.
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If they are a bread and butter client, ask them if they see a long term leadership role for you. They may not even realize they want you to run the entire depertmant yet.
Beyond that, train and train well. Keep yourself in an on-going active role through this process.
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Lots of assumptions are being made. My question: What is an educational client? A school? A publisher? A university?
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