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Fired! Client wants ALL project related material
How embarassing and professionally degrading. For, what I am told are creative diffrences, I was fired by my client after they watched the first cut of a short 11 minute doc I was editing for them.
I was working as an “at will” contractor hired by a video producer to edit and shoot some footage. My rate was good (80.00 / hr) and it was understood I was to edit on my own gear at my home studio.
My client (or boss as he states it) tells me that he wants all the work product turned over to him by end of day Tuesday – which he says should include all raw footage on tape, edited footage on tape, any graphics I created, any sound effects and music tracks I used or intended to use – and the actual project files from Premiere Pro which is what I edit with.
That’s quite a laundry list. Do I need to turn all of this over to him? Or is he just entitled to original tapes and the edited production. I purchased the royalty free music library for myself and many of the graphics and effects are pre-sets I created prior to this production.
His email to me is very specific: he wants everything associated with this production to be turned over so work can continue seamlessly with another editor.
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30 Replies
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From what you’ve stated so far it seems that you have no gripe with the client. If the client pays you everything you’re owed to this point at the time you hand over the goods, then it seems to me you should deliver. If he’s trying to get away without paying you for your time, then that’s another matter entirely.
DRW
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[shvr] “My client (or boss as he states it) tells me that he wants … any sound effects and music tracks I used or intended to use”
While I would honour most all of the points of this decision based on payment to date as pointed out by David Roth Weiss, I would take exception on sound effects and music tracks. Why? Because likely you are the owner of the music and the one holding the licenses for such and you cannot legally give away the license unless you are the one doing the work. I cannot recall any license that would allow you to give away stock photos, stock footage or sound files which are not part of a *finished* work, and do this legally. It must be a FINISHED work or else (chances are great) you have violated your license.
That’s a line I would not allow anyone to push me over.
Besides, if they do not like what you have come up with, then why are they wanting your third-party choices that are NOT part of the shoot you did, which is the real product in this scenario.
That’s my opinion and that’s what I would do in your circumstances.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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Do you then charge for all the time it takes to put all these requested materials together to hand over? How much do you charge for that?
I’ve had this happen where the client hired me to edit a weekly TV show. They shot it with two cameras and dropped off the camera tapes each week and I edited a program together adding graphics that included stock Digital Juice animated backgrounds/lower thirds that I owned.
I charged an higher price for the first episode that would include making the opening, closing and all the other graphics elements that would be used over in each new episode. All future episodes were edited at a lower fixed price.
They eventually got their own edit system and wanted to edit it themselves. I had done 27 episodes at that point and they had a DV master of each show but they wanted all the separate graphics elements also. I refused and told them everything they have is on the DV masters and they can use whatever is on those.
Randy Wheeler
DnRedit.com -
[Ron Lindeboom] “It must be a FINISHED work or else (chances are great) you have violated your license. That’s a line I would not allow anyone to push me over.”
Good point. I’m going to draw the line at supplying my music library and also my 3rd party plug-ins for Premiere Pro which he also asked if he could “borrow” for the duration of the rest of the edit.
I’m now convinced the producer is simply trying to cut costs since all this happened just a day after I submitted my first invoice to him. He probably has found some kid to cut the doc for 20.00 an hour.
I’m tempted to go back to the producer and offer my services for a reduced fee – I could use the work, but something in my gut is telling me just be done with this job and move on. What to do….
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“also my 3rd party plug-ins for Premiere Pro which he also asked if he could “borrow” for the duration of the rest of the edit.”
That’s a ridiculous request. Wonder why he didn’t just ask to borrow your entire edit system?
Randy Wheeler
DnRedit.com -
I wouldn’t waste my time with this guy’s requests for any stock anything that you own, purchased or created not on the clock for this edit, as Ron states.
Once your invoice is paid and the check clears…AND NOT BEFORE…I’d give him the data including the PPro project that will look for the third party plugs everytime the thing is launched on a system without them (I hope it’s Sapphire, or something nice and juicy that will be costly…)
This guy should also NOT be offered a discount. This will just continue if you do. It sounds like you’ve probably set the tone and pacing for the edit and some cheapo guy can just color by number most likely…
Ya gotta love these guys….
TimK,
Kolb Productions,
Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Yeah, what Tim says. ;o)
Don’t offer a reduced rate under any circumstances. Not all work is good work and starting down the discount trail will open a can of worms that you’ll have to eat day after day.
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
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“Forget it , Jake, It’s Chinatown…”
Even if this was a work for hire, there’s no way they can claim legal rights to your original paid-for Jump-Backs.
Ditto the other comments on not giving them the stock footage or music,or plug-ins, they can buy that themselves. YOU did.
Personally I wouldn’t even give them the project files, but only their original footage and a window dub of your version of the master,which is enough of a guide for your replacement to see where things were going, but not something they could rip off and use without paying you for it. If you take the view that the master is what they paid for and not just your time, then I guess you give them a master… but I would fight that, myself.
I had one of these happen once where the sessions all seemed to go fine, then the client turned around immediately and took the finished product to another place to re-edit it, saying something disparaging about it. I met that re-editor socially some time later, he seemed really apologetic and embarrased about it, kept telling me all he did was shave a frame off here and there, but he had kept about 98 percent of my edits the same, he thought my work was fine going in. The worst part was he felt bad he was ordered to take my name off the credits entirely. I said it didn’t make any difference to me, as I’d been paid.
Sometimes, clients don’t feel they’ve put enough of their own decisions into something, haven’t “put their own stink on it”, as we sometimes say around the office. It’s an ego thing. If you get one of these, sometimes they feel satisfied if you deliberately botch some simple thing like the end point of a dissolve and they can “catch” the mistake and correct you. Suddenly they feel more in control and more part of the process. The things we do to make clients happy!
I’ll tell you I think that you did one thing perfectly right: asking for extra money on the first one where you had to establish all the looks and the graphic templates, etc. That was very smart, and reasonable, if they were going to be re-used a lot in subsequent shows. That extra work on the first one makes the subsequent ones go much faster, saving them money.
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I think the problem is the miscommunication in what the client thinks he is paying for and owns and what you think he should get.
Does the client have a right to just the final master tape or to all the individual elements/images/files that were used in making that final master tape when this has not been agreed to in advance? I mean what do you do, give him your hard drive with all the hours of digitized video on it or transfer it all to his own hard drive? Do you normally bill for digitizing video onto your hard drive or transferring it to his? How much or does the client expect it for free?
Questions like that start to emerge when clients want everything that they supposedly “paid” for. Are you billing the correct amount in order for the client to get everything they want at the end of a project or if they decide to go somewhere else to finish it.
Randy Wheeler
DnRedit -
[Randy] “Questions like that start to emerge when clients want everything that they supposedly “paid” for. Are you billing the correct amount in order for the client to get everything they want at the end of a project or if they decide to go somewhere else to finish it.”
Well, I though my rate of 80/hr was good enough, but I didn’t anticipate having to wrap everything up and put a bow on it for this guy. I think the mistake I made was to work for hire, with a generic contract that simply states I’m an “at will” employee: “an employee
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