Expiration on Corrections to Edits

[Walter Biscardi]

What took them so long to find the problem?

I would consider that a re-edit, not a correction. Of course, unless they are a really good client, then use your discretion. If it’s an easy fix, maybe not charge them.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[David Roth weiss]

Bryce,

If you bring your car back to the mechanic after four years do you think he’ll fix it for free? Probably not…

Quality control (QC) is first the responsibility of the editor. However, once the editor hands the work product off to the client, it then becomes the client’s responsibilty to QC the work product. If the client chooses not to perform their QC, they are deemed to have “signed-off” once they pay the bill. After that, any fixes are technically their responsbility.

Barring any negligence on your part, you should definitely charge the client. You’re not running a charity, right?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Mark Suszko]

4 years or 4 weeks after the job is signed off, it is a new and distinct job to put new changes on it. You are not performing “warranty service” on a car.

Now if the files are all still in your drives and it really is a trivial thing, that might take you longer to dub off than to edit, you might bill it and then discount it to nothing out of goodwill if you want, but do not consider it part of the original job! That way lies the madness of grinders. People who never acknowledge the job is finally done to their satisfaction usually are the same ones who hold off payment until said satisfaction. For years sometimes.

Did they sign off on the master before?
Bill it as a separate job.

If errors are mine, like I misspelled a lower third, and they gave it to me right, I eat that. If they gave me the name wrong, that’s their fault and they have to pay, just as if they hire me to paint the house and hand me a can of paint they mixed, but later they decide they want another shade.

One other business rule: You don’t make the new changes unless all pervious edit jobs are fully paid for and accounts are up to date. Amazing how this little rule will geatly un-complicate your life.

[Bryce Leverich]

Thanks guys I appreciate it. Turns out things are really out of whack. Not only was my edit wrong, but the cover art was incorrect, the slate was incorrect and the menus were incorrect. Sounds like an internal problem to me. I have nothing to do with cover art, and that was WAY off as well.

It also turns out that the DVDs were not authored by my company, we started in late 2006, not 2004. That will definitely be a completely new bill for any authoring done.

As far as the editing goes, I am sure everyone has run into that client that says “It’s just text, you can change that REAL easily, right?” That’s the type of thing I am looking at right now. Yeah, text is easy, but I do not have any of my original project files for the open that was created in AE. So in order to change the text, it will be a completely new AE project, from scratch. To change the text will take 10-15 hours of motion graphics work and designing… Yes, all this to change a 3 into a 4.

Thanks again!

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bryce Leverich] “Yes, all this to change a 3 into a 4. “

Any way to simply cover the 3 tastefully and add the 4?

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Mark Suszko]

LOL, BT,DT for sure. Any time I want to hear from an old inactive client, all I have to do is erase a long disused but key file and the phone rings within 24 hours to request a change that would have been trivial had I not just deleted the files and backups.

What I have evovled into doing in the past five years of facing this more than once, is to save more incremental submaster copies off to tape via SDI.

For example, I always lay off a clean backup version of the master without any CG and with audio tracks separated, for just such eventualities. Any point of the project that takes it to a new “point of no return”, I make a backup so I don’t have to go back even to digitizing original footage.

With AE project files this is obviously harder to do, but I think it is worth it to keep the 5-hour re-build down to a more reasonable hour or so.

[Bryce Leverich]

That’s the first thing I am going to try to do. We usually use a CG background on the “title page” so maybe I can find the exact CG we used, and matte it out to cover the 3, then add the 4 on top. That would be the easiest route… I am keeping all of my extremities crossed.

[Mark Suszko]

If its not in motion, this is not too hard to cheat. I have used inscriber to make a fix like that: sampled the color of the BG around the offending character, gradient filled a box on a new layer, added in the replacement character over the top, easy. Also possible in Photoshop with greater precision, where it helps that you can grab an identical character from eleswhere in the frame and paste it into another layer, keeping colors and proportions all correct. If such band-aids are apropriate and look good, they sure save everyone some time and money.

[Steve Wargo]

My work carries a lifetime guarantee. If I screw up, I will fix it for free, FOREVER. Anything less is a copout.

Put yourself on the other side of the table.

Kind of like when people owe me money for a long time and think that I should forget about it because it’s been so long. I think that the debt has doubled, tripled or more because the jerk strung me along for such a long time.

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 .

[Mark Suszko]

I think Steve that we all see it that way, if the screw-up is ours. But when the product goes out the door 100 percent right according to the client, and THEN the client wants to make a change, or if they gave you a misspelled title they didn’t vet and you faithfully executed, that’s on them. And it should be.