Would you sell your comps???

[Mark]

That is a tough question….

I know here at my work when we do work with outside Post houses that they provide us with their AE projects….but i am pretty sure that this is negociated before the project commences. Also the post houses generally format the project to make it easier for us to make changes.

In my business life, I would sell my projects, but I would not give them away. As you mentionned a programmer would not give away source codes, and of course most photographers would not give away negatives (unless that was negociated before the fact). That said, it would also depend on the client. If it is a good client that I could risk losing for the price of my projects, then maybe I would give it away this time, but mention that this type of thing needs to be included in the price of future contracts. I would definately not rework the project to make it easier for others to work in my project.

I would suggest posting this over in the Business forum, as there are some very smart business folks over there.

Best regards

Mark

Mark Harvey
Senior Editor
Le Réseau des sports

[Jan Sherlink]

Personally,
AE-projects don’t leave my computer,
unless they ask me to make templates.
If you know what they want, you can pre-render some backgrounds and stuff and you can convert expressions to keyframes.
That is… if you know it at the beginning of the project !

Demanding the source AEfiles after the project, always gets a no-go !

The only good pricing is what you feel comfortable with, and if they pay it, you’re still screwed cause it means they can make a lot more money out of it 😉

Knowledge is only a small part of your project, creativity is the biggest part.
So if they buy a part of your knowledge, they can only make the same thing over and over again !

cya,

Jan

[Christian Buettner]

Yes Jan, that´s what I mean.
If you look close enough everyone can reproduce the work of others and learn stuff (many many thanks to Dan here;) ) by just looking around and check what others do. In essence all that AE stuff is no secret. But the way you utilize all that knowledge to create work of your own is the creative part. And that is hard to put in money;)

So guys what would you say: let´s say the animation is worth about 5,000 dollar. What would you tend to charge if the client wants your AE files … AFTER the work is done? As it has been pointed out … at current stage my setup is just as I made it and it would be impossible for someone else to step in and understand whats going on. For that to happen I guess I´d need a couple of hours to clean up the project and convert expressions to keyframes etc.

[Jason Milligan]

There is also the concern of associated media, plug-ins, and fonts.
I’m sure what media you’ve used in your projects, but I’m sure lots of use stock photos and footage we aren’t legally allowed to distribute.

[Tom Scott]

As a former (freelance) software engineer, I consider the source code (or, in this case, the project files) to be worth, at least, ten times the finished program (or video file). Therefore, if the finished video file is worth $5000, your project files are worth $50000 plus.

Like a software engineers source code, your AE project files are your intellectual property. Just because you’ve used well known techniques and expressions, makes no difference, whatsoever. Software engineering is (basically) all about the creative use of common techniques and blocks of standard code. As you can see, the software/source code analogy is exactly the situation you have asked about.

If I were you, I’d offer the project files, with an appropriate price tag. If your clients client is unwilling to pay your price, they don’t have any right to expect to be provided with any project files.

Of course, I am assuming that you have provided them with everything that you were contracted to produce for your client, i.e. you were contracted to produce and deliver a finished video file (or a motion graphics package, or whatever), but not an After Effects template/project files.

[Christian Buettner]

I see it excactly as Tom does. Meanwhile I´ve spoken to some other designer guys around here. They gave me sort of a chart (distributed by a coalition of designers) that gives you a factor by which to multiply your contracted price. Tom, you nearly hit it … taking into account a couple of items such as rights, area (worldwide, national, etc.) and period of usage (in this case … eternal) it would give me a factor of 6.
But here comes, as usual, the odd part: my client is pointing the gun at me. I didn´t even mentioned the factor that is officially used to determine creative work pricing. The old and disgusting game of push and pull has started. I really really hate that.
I mean this agency I´ve been working now for quite some time … they should be considered as pros, but they act foolish all along the way. First: they promise the source files to their client (so the client will never come again with this project, so no more money can be made out of it). Second: agencies are so concerned about legal affairs most of the time, they even do rights management on 2 frames of stock footage and all that. But in my case they completely forgot about me:(, or they know that can somehow enslave me and pull the “more jobs or now jobs”-gun.
These are the time when I start to think that in my next life I´d better become a wild life ranger.

[Chris Poisson]

Christian,

I’m not a layer, but I do have an idea about this. Technically, what you are doing is called “work for hire.” Under the copyright ruling of 1968, work for hire is completely the property of whoever hires you. The agency owns everything. But, if you negotiate up front, you may get some extra compensation as described in this thread, but you must do it first and get it in writing.

Read all about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire

Have a wonderful day.

[Mark Grossardt]

Hi Christian,

We had a similar situation at our post facility where the client wanted all of the source files to a commercial so that they could update it themselves without having to involve us anymore. Our account exec unwittingly agreed to supply everything to the client, so what to do?

I packaged up the project neatly, but not too neatly (ie. I didn’t prerender any elements, didn’t convert expressions to keyframes, didn’t include documentation on how everything worked together, etc.), and sent it away. Fortunately for us, this project was fairly complex and would take even a skilled AE artist quite a while to deconstruct and figure out how to modify. Couple that with the fact that it required some specific plugs (Boris, 3D Invigorator, Trapcode), and we felt pretty confident that the client would be coming back to us for their updates. Two weeks later, they did.

Could they have ripped off certain elements for their own use? I guess so, but in our case it wouldn’t be much different from an AE artist seeing something on air and deciding to recreate it himself.

Bottom line, our approach was to overwhelm the client with the project (and there really wasn’t much of an alternative if they wanted it fully modifiable) and trust that they wouldn’t have the gear/software/knowhow/time to do what we do. We also made it clear that we weren’t going to be phone tech support to someone’s high school aged nephew who couldn’t understand our AE projects.

Hopefully, when/if the client receives your source files, they’ll take one look at them and decide your services are worth paying for.

[Christian Buettner]

Hey Chris,

I´m also not a lawyer. I´ve read the Wiki link you posted and I take it that way: the article mainly refers to an employer-employee relationship. Converted to my case would be: if one of my employees (got 2 at the moment)would have made this AE project, the legal rights would belong to me.
Or maybe it´s the famous thin line we´re walking on. Although Microsoft did hire a lot of people to code Windoze, they wouldn´t hand over all the code to you if you buy it in a store.

[Brendan Coots]

I have a slightly different view on this topic.

When you are a freelancer subcontracting for an ad agency, the situation is a little different than when you are working directly for an end client. In a standard subcontractor agreement, the agency isn’t necessarily paying you simply for some art, they are paying for assistance in completing the project. This almost always includes ownership of all project files, media and intellectual property.

BUT (and this is the key element here) if the agency didn’t ask you to sign a contract saying as much, then they are hosed and you are fully in the right. I would think they would laugh, point and never hire you again if you asked for $50k for After Effects project files they paid you to develop, but that’s a separate issue.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com