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Tonight’s the night
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Hey Bill,
I have also observed that X is a bit quicker, but now I’m running into billing issues. That is a job that used to take an hour, now takes 15 minutes. For example, audio is way faster for me in X than it was in 7. Additionally, in some cases, I can finish an edit before the transcoding finishes (p2 mxf to mov). I finished a 4 hour job in 90 minutes. Client is just as happy. I mean uh, how are you personally dealing with the business side of your editing business? — if you don’t mind me asking.
(Additional context includes the notion that so-and-so has a nephew who can do the same thing for 25% of the rate, so there’s a trend to race to the bottom that has been widely discussed in the Cow’s business forum.)
Thanks!
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Can I suggest you start quoting so we know who you are talking to? “
Yes.
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[Richard Herd] “Yes.”
you’re a rockstar
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “This is an audio-visual medium in time, and interplay between all the elements is at the core of the challenges of editing – often one leads the other (video leading audio, or audio leading video) an often it is actually a more complex interplay. To restrict editing to “tweak audio after video” is a very limiting approach.”
Well said.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “[Franz Bieberkopf] “This is an audio-visual medium in time, and interplay between all the elements is at the core of the challenges of editing – often one leads the other (video leading audio, or audio leading video) an often it is actually a more complex interplay. To restrict editing to “tweak audio after video” is a very limiting approach.”
Well said.”
Agreed. I regularly reduce eight or ten syllables of dialog to four or five. I replace names with “his” or “she” stolen from other scenes. I compound different sentences from different bits of dialog. There is little or nothing I do that is not some form of J or L cut. All of this is being done while I’m working on about 12 other things and is an intimate part of the process of doing those 12 other things. So, for me, its not an afterthought, or something to do later.
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[Richard Herd] “Client is just as happy. I mean uh, how are you personally dealing with the business side of your editing business? — if you don’t mind me asking.”
Happy to address that – but understand this is my personal approach to business issues, not any standard.
I personally NEVER charge for things based on TIME if I can possibly avoid it.
Think about it, charging for time means that the worker who’s less-competent and therefore slow – makes MORE than the person who’s extremely competent – and therefore fast. It makes no sense to me at all.
I prefer to charge based on the quality of my solutions and the value they provide to my clients, not on the time and effort expended.
In other words, my billings are typically related to the size and scope of the problem I’m addressing. My billings are based on my capabilities, learning, and accumulated experience, not on the number of hours i put in.
Heck, anyone who does creative work and who’s honesty will admit that sometimes quality results are a huge struggle, and other times, good solutions come easily. But they only can come easily, because you’ve put in the years of hard work necessary to learn your craft. And I actually think that’s worth MORE than the number of hours you put in.
This isn’t perfect, or even always germane, and sometimes I’ll freely admit that “time and materials” billing has an unavoidable place in the world.
Just my 2 cents.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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“That would be very cool, even if it is just to turn off tracks/channels you don’t want to use.”
Already do-able. You can enable/disable embedded source tracks in the inspector. That’s how you “assign’ which tracks get cut into the timeline. For feature stuff I generally only enable the source dialog track and enable FX or whatever only if I need ’em. Turning off/muting things in the timeline is really simple if you’ve assigned roles, or you can just disable ’em with a single key stroke “V” which does the same thing as CNTRL-B in FCP 7. 🙂
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“Agreed. I regularly reduce eight or ten syllables of dialog to four or five. I replace names with “his” or “she” stolen from other scenes. I compound different sentences from different bits of dialog.”
FWIW, cheating dialog is really easy in X, mainly because you can freely move audio clips in subframe increments. Picture can still only move a frame at a time, for obvious reasons, but you can move audio clips however you want, not just the keyframes. Something I really miss when I’m in FCP 7…
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[Bill Davis] “my billings are typically related to the size and scope of the problem I’m addressing. My billings are based on my capabilities, learning, and accumulated experience”
And how, exactly, is that any different from the concept of billing for time? What if the client differs from your valuation of your capabilities, learning, and accumulated experience? And how do you codify that in a bill? How many times do clients ask you “how long will this take?” How may times do you ask yourself that question in trying to schedule your time? I bill my time based on intangibles as well. But I still bill for my time. Even if it’s a flat rate there is an understanding that that flat rate will only take up so much of my time. If it wasn’t that way then jobs could go on indefinitely. To say that time doesn’t fit into the billing equation is incomprehensible to me.
Tim
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[TImothy Auld] “And how, exactly, is that any different from the concept of billing for time?”
Think of it like this.
Say that in my market, I can hire a typical carpenter for anywhere from $15 an hour to $40 an hour and I think the job I need done is gonna take 10 hours.
But then there’s Dave.
Dave’s work in outstanding – everybody says that – but after a lot of years of outstanding work, Dave won’t take a job for less than $1000.
He promises that unless the job goes way outside the scope of work he’s agreed to in advance – his bill will be fist at that rate. $1000. Period.
You’ll never know how many hours it takes Dave. He might take 10 hours. Or not. He might spend 20 hours just THINKING about how he’s going to design and approach your job and only 1 hour doing it. But he still gets his $1000.
There will be clients for all the hourly rate carpenters.
And there will be clients who want Dave.
On his terms.
That’s the best way I can explain how I see hourly rates.
I’ve said many times here that I’m not a pure “editor.” I’m a video producer who edits his own projects.
My billing approach is to give my clients a firm quote. Not on the time, but on the value I can put into the whole project to align the work with their overall business purposes.
That’s what I’m selling. Not hours of pushing buttons, or running a camera. Those things, In my view – are incidentals to what I take responsibility for delivering.
Then again, as I’ve said here many times, I write, direct, shoot, and yes, edit most of my own projects – sometimes solo, sometimes working with a self-assembled crew.
But remember, this is Creative Cow – not Editors Cow. Editing is just one skill in the creative continuum.
So I probably tend to see things differently from those who self describe purely as editors.
Feel free to disagree, but that’s how I work.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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