-
Waiver for technology shortcomings?
-
[Timothy J. Allen] “If the camera malfunctions for a moment, you use a clip from your spare. If that won’t work, you refund your fee.”
[Sebastian Alvarez] “Good, but let’s suppose you’re taping a school play. Your customer’s son has a small part in it. You put in a new tape in the camera, but you were unlucky enough that you had a drop just as he was saying his glorious lines. The customer will understandably be pissed off, but what do you do? Just give him the video for free? I would think that I would give him a big discount, but I couldn’t just refund my whole fee and still give him the edited video, because even if there was a blunder, there’s still a lot of value in what he’s getting, despite the one second missing from it.”
If you are not giving the client what they wanted, then you have not given them what they hired you for. How can you charge for that? The work that you did that was wasted — as well as their time in hiring you and hoping that you would be a pro — it’s all a waste. Therefore, as many have said here, it’s not something that you should charge for. You didn’t do your job and you are the one that chose to fly without a safety net.
Sorry, but that’s the black and white of it and all the machinations in the world are not going to change it.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-
[Sebastian Alvarez] “I don’t agree with that. As I said, there’s a difference between not taking steps to prevent a failure, such as not making a backup of the footage, and things that are out of your control, such as a brand new professional tape that caused a drop out.”
It doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not, Sebastian. The fact is, you are NOT a professional if you do not take the steps to assure that this doesn’t happen — in this case, using a second camera to guarantee that it doesn’t happen — and if you don’t take the step, you are a hobbyist, nothing more.
Charge accordingly.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-
[Ron Lindeboom] “you are NOT a professional if you do not take the steps to assure that this doesn’t happen — in this case, using a second camera to guarantee that it doesn’t happen — and if you don’t take the step, you are a hobbyist, nothing more.”
OK, let me ask you this. What if your first camera has a drop in a crucial place and your second camera chews the tape at the same time? I know I’m pushing it, that most likely that wouldn’t happen, but that was the point of my post, to talk about what happens when you take every possible step to prevent something going wrong and yet it happens.
-
[Sebastian Alvarez] “OK, but we’re talking about different things here, different sizes of companies. You are talking about a production center that probably has tens of thousands of dollars in equipment.”
I started out in the bedroom of my house with a single edit workstation. I was delivering corporate and broadcast material, but the deadlines and the pressure were the same. I could not miss a deadline and it did not matter if the technology failed. It had to get done. That’s why I go with reputable companies like AJA Video Systems for all my purchases. The technology simply cannot fail and if it does, I better have a good backup plan.
My current production facility has been built slowly over 8 years to allow us to keep up with client and broadcast demands. But I started out very small with a single workstation. If you are going to be a professional, it is up to you to purchase the proper equipment for your expected clients and to be able to provide any and all services you promise to that client.
You simply cannot blame technology for any shortcomings or issues that might occur during one of your projects. As Tim Kolb put it so nicely, the buck stops with you. The person who is providing the services.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
[Ron Lindeboom] “If you are not giving the client what they wanted, then you have not given them what they hired you for. How can you charge for that? The work that you did that was wasted — as well as their time in hiring you and hoping that you would be a pro — it’s all a waste. Therefore, as many have said here, it’s not something that you should charge for. You didn’t do your job and you are the one that chose to fly without a safety net.”
This doesn’t answer my question. You taped a whole school play, your tape had a drop and you’re missing one second from it. Are you supposed to still edit the whole thing and just give it to the customer for free? Is that what normally happens? I would find it hard to believe that any events’ videographer would just give the customer the whole finished product for free because he’s missing one second of it because of a bad tape.
-
[Sebastian Alvarez] “but that was the point of my post, to talk about what happens when you take every possible step to prevent something going wrong and yet it happens.”
You have to provide a make good to your client and hope that they will use you again and not trash your name to every other potential client in your market. If your equipment fails, you will be the person known as the guy who does not have quality equipment or cannot maintain it.
Not fair for sure, but if you fail to get a critical shot, people aren’t going to care that the camera failed. You failed as the operator. Cruel, but that’s how it works.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
I think we are beating a dead horse here.
Looks like most all of the world here (me included) is in agreement that delivering the product is what we are being paid for… glitches, gremlins, or technical problems aside, it’s our responsibility. Period.
It doesn’t matter if you are a multi-million dollar facility with years of experience and a sterling reputation, or a newbi with his first $900 camcorder right out of the box. If you are getting paid for a gig, the same standards apply.
It looks like Sebastian is simply not buying into that, and is not going to, and efforts to convince him of such are wasted breath. A never ending search for “whoops insurance,” or a “hey it wasn’t really my fault” clause in a contract.
And those don’t exist.
And if they do… a client would be foolish to buy into it.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Sebastian Alvarez] “Not a bad idea, but an expensive one. The hard drive Sony makes for my camera, HVR-DR60, is selling for $1400 now, and even if I could buy it, attaching it to the camera would probably make it even more uncomfortable than it already is.”
In the world of professional videography and production, $1,400 is VERY inexpensive. At $8,000, the Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras are VERY inexpensive.
Professional video production is not cheap, though it’s much much cheaper than it was even 8 years ago when I started. I have to ask whether you’re fully prepared for all that is involved in this industry to truly work as a professional. The entire topic of this thread leads me to believe that the answer is no.
Sorry to be so direct, but you keep looking for a way to cover your backside in the event of a technology failure instead of looking at what you have to do in order to make sure you’re covered when that failure does happen. It will happen. All technology will fail. What will you have done to ensure that it does not bite you or your client when it happens?
I’ll tell you what we did recently on a television pilot shoot. We shot with Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras in the field and in a studio setting. In the Studio, we captured all footage to the on-board cards AND fed two Panasonic 1400 DVCPro HD decks via the HD-SDI output on those cameras.
For the field material, we immediately made backups of both cameras to both hard drive and to the 1400 decks.
So in every case, I have at least three copies of everything and we had everything covered from either two angles OR we watched playback of every scene if we just used one camera for that particular scene. If the technology failed in any one place, we had several backups to help us out and in fact we did have a critical issue with one of our interviews. The camera itself had an issue switching from one card to the next, but because we were rolling to the 1400 decks simultaneously, we were covered.
So the technology failed, but it did not affect us at all because we were prepared for that.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
[Sebastian Alvarez] “OK, let me ask you this. What if your first camera has a drop in a crucial place and your second camera chews the tape at the same time? I know I’m pushing it, that most likely that wouldn’t happen, but that was the point of my post, to talk about what happens when you take every possible step to prevent something going wrong and yet it happens.”
You are, to use a technical term, hosed.
But a creative type could cover their butt and still make something nice. How? Let’s use your wedding incident as a case study and let’s say you flubbed the kiss and didn’t get all of it.
Me, I’d call the bride and tell her that I had a great idea for the video that I would like to stage to get a close-in shot of the kiss and would she mind putting on her dress one more time to get the kiss.
“But Ron,” says our bride, “my hair is not done and it isn’t going to look the same.”
“But ah, Mrs. Bride, I am going to be shooting so tight in that we are only going to see part of it.”
Then, if she agreed, I’d shoot it and edit it in a blurred soft-focus around the edge so that the kiss is vignetted in the center — a move that would also hide the hair in great part, while drawing attention to the face, the eys and the lips — and I would render the frames in a time remap that would so accentuate the kiss on-screen that Mrs. Bride would not be the wiser as to what happened to the real kiss. (I would use the lead up and the pull away from the tape that was bad and all the rest would be me covering my tracks.)
These are the tricks that a pro uses and they cost you time to cover your tracks when you were too cheap to do what you should have done in the first place.
Give ’em what they want or don’t charge them. I can’t say it any clearer.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-
[Todd Terry] “It looks like Sebastian is simply not buying into that, and is not going to, and efforts to convince him of such are wasted breath. A never ending search for “whoops insurance,” or a “hey it wasn’t really my fault” clause in a contract.”
You obviously got me wrong. It’s not a matter of buying into anything. I do understand very well that even if in theory the technical malfunction is not your fault, the customer will always see it as your fault. Nobody has to convince that that’s the way it is. All I wanted to know was if there was some kind of waiver for these situations, or if you just sit there and hope the customer doesn’t sue you if the worst happens. And not that it will happen (again, I taped a two hour school play and didn’t have a single drop), but I simply like to know what to expect.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up