How would you quote this?

[Richard Herd]

For me, I would need to know the total running time (not the storage) of all the footage. 16 hours (as a guess) of footage has to be watched. Triple that time for the 10 minute video. Then you cut the shorter video from the 10-minute piece. and you can triple that again. This I feel is easily 50 hours–a whole week! Are you recording and editing voice over? What about music? These are both hard costs.

In general he has it backwards. It takes longer to make a short video, because the editor has to make more edit decisions.

I’d use his notes, of course, so that I can get a sense of what he likes, but that won’t make the edit shorter or save him money. When we put a shot next to a shot it creates a meaning and feeling. We can’t know that until we do it, and add the VO and music. So his notes of what he likes may or may not work in the edit.

You’re running a business and trying to make a profit and keep your customer happy–aren’t we all! After you agree to the price, you need 50% non-refundable deposit upfront. Then when you turn in the rough cut of the 10-minute piece, you get paid 25%. Then there will probably be changes. There are always changes. So you can cut those and that will inform you of what the 2-minute piece will be.

Please read this article: https://library.creativecow.net/wall_kylee/jane_tattersall_handmaids_tale_audio/1

and also this one: https://library.creativecow.net/lindeboom_ron/clients_or_grinders/1

[Rich Rubasch]

Hey Richard…..how successful are you with getting paid any money “up front” meaning a check in hand before you even start editing? I ask because I don’t think I can recall in 17 years that a client provided a check prior to the work being done/

Now I live in the Midwest and a gentleman’s handshake still means something, so maybe that plays into it, but not one of my clients would cut a check prior to the work being done. However they do let me send a “prebill invoice” which is send at the time the project starts but almost always has a net 30 on it.

In the studio I sometimes get a check at the end of the day after the shoot for out of town clients.

Hmmmm.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Richard Herd]

[Rich Rubasch] “how successful are you with getting paid any money “up front” meaning a check in hand before you even start editing? I”

That’s kind of a funny question. I’m 100% successful getting the deposit when clients agree to it. I’m 100% successful finding out which clients to avoid if they don’t agree to it.

If your business has a different risk position, then that’s cool too.

So I should revise my comment. Somehow, we need to implement a process to manage our risk position, and a deposit is one such way; a firm handshake is too.

For me, when Ms. Llamido mentioned he logged the footage in excel, that raised a flag. When he assumed a 10-minute video would cost more than a 2-minute video, that raised another flag. When it’s roughly 16 hours of footage, the flags waving in the breeze meant it’s time to bust out the Clients and Grinders article.

[Mike Smith]

That is quite old software: probably running on old hardware too …? Are you contemplating a refresh for other reasons? There is cheap or free software to run on stock hardware now that will do the job.

For this pitch, if you quote in a traditional “view and understand all of the footage before cutting” way, you are likely to end up with a very big number. The client has signalled to you that s/he is price sensitive, or at least price aware. A lot of footage from a pro outfit is one thing: sadly I’ve faced hours and hours of self-shot, amateur footage with nearly nothing usable … it would be helpful for you to have a sense of what kind of footage is available.

I might be inclined to consider using the meeting you have to try to assess the footage for overall quality, and for you to lead the client into showing you his or her idea of “the best bits”! A second strand for the meeting might be to try to nail down a story idea or script for the short version – s/he want that first – and get the client to use their logging notes to take you to appropriate footage.

If that works, you may have established that you can work together to the client’s brief, that the project is viable, and that you could cut a short to client desires without having to wade through all of the hours of footage, which might allow you to quote accordingly. Or it might show you and the client both that the footage is variable quality and a lot of editing time will be needed – paving the way for a higher figure (or a cancelled project) .

If you were a demolition company, what message might you want to be able to put over with your video – what would you need to show and say? And can you find the tools to do that with the footage you have, a short voice-over (maybe) and soubdbites from interviews (maybe) ..? And what commercial value to your company might a video represent …? A cleint is not likely to pay more than their perception of that added value in their sales process, however well justified your method might seem to you, me or anyone else ????

[Greg Ball]

Rich, I would agree with Richard. We get a deposit 100% of the time. No deposit, no booking.

Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com

[Mark Suszko]

I might ask the client, if he’s sensitive to costs, if there is any pre-prod work he wants to do on his own time/dime, before handing it off to you. If you can have him pre-filter that 1Tb of footage down to just his essentials, even if it’s just circling the best takes in his spreadsheet, maybe that would save him some money. For SURE it would teach him that what you do must take time and time is money.

I was going to also add that you make the long master first and then a cut-down using that as the source is faster and relatively trivial.

As far as your gear, I have no idea. You could, however, afford a new imac, external drive, and copy of FCPX or Premiere or Resolve, for what you should be billing this guy. Get the advance deposit before you whip out the credit card and call Cupertino 🙂

Added edit: Upon further thought, maybe you can offer him a deal where you don’t bill ANY time for this, but he bankrolls your equipment upgrade. There’s been times when I’ve seen that kind of deal work well for people.

[Elisa Llamido]

Thank you for your detailed response, Richard! Exactly what I was looking for. I was really on the fence about this because I would say that this guy is definitely in the upper part of the 70% from your article. I don’t think he will try to talk me down, but I do think that it would be possible to price myself out of what he is willing to pay.

You have given me very solid points to consider and I will definitely use them in coming up with my quote. It strongly defines the scope of work.

I also always get a 50% deposit up front, but I hadn’t thought to also invoice 25% at first deliverable. Very good call at this price point.

Thank you for taking the time to answer and share your thoughts!

Elisa

[Elisa Llamido]

Thank you for your thoughts, Mike.

My hardware is older, but robust enough to run whatever I need. I spent quite a pretty penny on it years ago and it’s still holding up well. Do you have any recommendations for the “cheap or free software” you mentioned if I can’t work with what I have?

The footage is very high quality, but you make a great point about getting a client brief that would eliminate a lot of the grunt work. That gives me a great option for making it cheaper by having him invest more of his time. That way he can decide which is more valuable: his time or his money.

In the end, it’s all about the hours and being able to offer the client options to cut down on my hours is very helpful.

Thank you!

Elisa

[Elisa Llamido]

Thanks, Mark!

I will definitely offer him the option of trading his time for his money. And thanks for seconding the long to short approach. That’s the way that I’ve worked before and it certainly makes more sense.

I will have to contemplate the software upgrade, but if I have to, I have to. We shall see.

Thank you for your comments!

Elisa

[Richard Herd]

You’re welcome.

Also, this is simply my opinion: I would not change editing platforms because the learning curve will eat your profit margin. None of the buttons will be where you’re used to. Some of the buttons will have different names than you’re used to and that makes it even more difficult to find answers in the manuals and tutorials.

Since you know the software you know, in my view, stick to it because “upgrading” has hidden costs everywhere. Plug-ins may or may not work. codecs may or may not work. File permissions may or may not work. So many things. You’ll be spending time chasing-down these problems instead of editing. It would then be natural to think “should I bill my client for me not knowing the software.” And, “I’m not a good editor.” And other negative stuff.

Lately, I have run into a bunch of editors who receive an amazing amount of coverage and then they wonder why their system struggles with the footage. They say I just spent $5,000 on the latest thing so why isn’t my computer working. What am I doing wrong? Their solution is old school and it is what Media Composer is very good at: transcode the selects into intraframe (DNxHD). These new editors seem to dislike that answer.

In other words, the files from your client, in my (perhaps controversial) view, should always be treated like “digital tapes.” Even though it sounds convenient to edit the “digital tape” on the timeline, with the amount of footage you have it is a nightmare. When a cut is made that is not on the I-frame, then the computer still has to render that picture-frame-color-data from the previous I-frame, store that information on your system, and render the footage that’s after it, storing the footage again. There is no way around this render-new-media problem. So even though “updated” editing software seems like it does fancy stuff, it really doesn’t change the fundamentals. I have not even mentioned color correction or cropping and reframing. Then when picture is locked, you render and compress…it can really take a long time.

You can be confident in Media Composer 5.5’s workflow and transcode the digital tape to DNxHD, like we should be doing with digital tape and definitely need to do with huge amounts of coverage. You won’t know how to treat the footage until you receive the footage. But you’ll be able to find the codec and search the Cow for “how do I get [codec] into DNxHD.” That’s an easy solve compared to learning a new software platform.

I hope this makes sense. Wrote more than I intended.