Denise Quesnel
Forum Replies Created
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This entire thread is hilarious to read, and also pretty painful. I think we have all been there at some point.
John, you were asking what other would do in your situation, well its best to keep your business as a priority so I would absolutely charge a consulting fee for your assistance. Just make sure this is communicated before they receive an invoice or even agree to using your service. They need to understand you are not technical support. I give people the benefit of the doubt, as others have brought up some people are just not technically experienced or inclined. The worst would be the ones that think they are, yet they are absolute Luddites when it comes to this stuff.
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Hi Aaron, I agree that waiting to BE paid before paying contractors is a bad way of going about business. That is what business accounts are for, and good credit. Perhaps this company has neither, or maybe they are just slow to do things.
Because these people are your bread and butter I would be careful about irritating them but at the same time vocalizing the fact that you like invoices to be paid on a timely basis.
Do they have an accountant, or do they do their own books? Every company should have a bookkeeper/accountant at their disposal, even part time. I am one person in my company and I have a bookkeeper I see every 4 months. If they have an accountant or bookkeeper, you can try ‘can you please forward these unpaid invoices to your accountant?’
If they don’t have an accountant of any sort, then you can always say that YOUR bookkeeper needs to settle up the unpaid invoices to move forward. Don’t worry about the fact that you may not even have a bookkeeper! It is a white lie that won’t hurt. If for whatever reason they want info on your ‘bookkeeper’ just tell them that your finances are personal. I can guarantee that will motivate them into settling you invoices more routinely.
A tidbit I will share from my bookkeeper: put the date on the invoices the day that the work began, and not the day that you created the invoice (which for most people is after a two week period or end of the gig). That way if you are waiting and they say ‘get off our back, it is coming’ you can say ‘the date on the invoice is payable in 14 days, I would like it to be honored’.
I have one client that is a perpetual late payer. He is not out to get me, but rather has really bad organizational skills. You should see his desk!
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“I’ve done everything I can to look, sound, and appear professional, but I’ve found that being a very young looking 24yr old female has been a major hit towards my initial first impression.”
Alison, as one young looking 24 year old woman to another, I just want to say this: DO NOT give up on yourself. At least for the time being. It is true and I totally experience what you do in regards to first impression on a daily basis, and it has lost me jobs. Rarely do we get any competitive advantage. But I won’t let that get to me.
One thing that is super important though, and I hope you are listening, is to forget about the age/gender thing. It is hard to do, especially when it is a factor in getting work. However I have seen people get bitter and frustrated about this and you should not let that happen, at all costs. These people wait until they have aged some, got some experience, then they are a 28 year old young looking female, then they are a 33 year old young looking female, then they are a 38 year old young looking female… you know where I am going. If you carry the attitude, you ARE the attitude and soon enough you get stuck in a conundrum trying to make decisions such as whether or not you can afford/are still young enough to have kids etc.
Don’t look at this as a disadvantage, look at it as an advantage. You have the energy to work at multiple jobs, AND work on your own projects for clients too! That is the benefit of being young. People can pick up on attitudes, such as the fact that you think you are at a disadvantage due to your age and gender. So they will share your attitude, even if you are just feeling this way a LITTLE bit. If you have a ‘I have nothing to lose, nothing will stop me’ attitude, people will be drawn to the excitement of you and share that.
Don’t spend the best years of your life worrying about something you cannot control. Instead lets focus on breaking the stereotype of what people think younger women work like by leading with a great example. Forget about any disadvantage it has given you in the past, and move on from that. You will be ok!
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Douglas,
I think what is most difficult when you are young and first starting out is getting together a reel and website that is confidence inspiring to the market you wish to target.
What I mean is that if you have music videos/parties/sizzle reel type footage, a corporate type will be very unconvinced that you can make a video for them. Clients need to see the same type of footage that they want made. In order to get this type of footage, you need to work for free and take a pay cut. Clients don’t care if you say you can do it, they need to SEE it.
People on the Cow constantly talk about never working for grinders or working for nothing, but most will agree when you are first starting out and do not have experience in the market you wish to target, you need to get this experience in any way that it takes. I certainly had to do free projects, 24 hr film festivals etc to prove myself. I think we all do. Just make sure you and the client you are taking a pay cut for understands this and also realizes other commitments you have.
In the meantime don’t quit your day jobs, you will need some income to flow in while you build your business. You will also find that word of mouth gets you more business than anything else.
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Hi Aaron
I don’t think this as simple an answer as many may think it to be. You should ask yourself if the effort you decide to put into the project is reflective of how you feel, or due to actual business practice.
With every project we have to measure how much our time is worth, because time spent on a project is potential time marketing ourselves and getting more paid work. If you are currently allowing the time you are spending on an underpaid gig to take away from time you would otherwise spend on gigs that pay the bills (or marketing your company) then this isn’t an issue of ethics as much as it is in running a business appropriately.
However if you are not allowing the underpaid project to take away time from other work/potential work/sleep then there is possibly no reason to readjust the effort put into the work in conjunction with pay.
Does the client know that you are taking a pay cut on this?
In this kind of situation what I would suggest is to look out for your business first, and notify the client that in fact you would typically charge xxx$$$ for this project and you are taking a pay cut. In order to continue running your business and pay bills, you will have to take this project on as more of a ‘side’ project on weeknights/weekends etc. Make them understand that it will take longer to complete their work.
As a general rule:
1. Good + Fast = Expensive
2. Good + Cheap = Slow
3. Fast + Cheap = InferiorThis article at FreelanceSwitch details the above options and how to explain pricing to clients.
https://freelanceswitch.com/money/fast-good-cheap-pricing-freelance-work/If the client says “I don’t understand why it will take longer to complete my project- why, that isn’t fair at all!” Then you need to explain to them that you are running a BUSINESS, and that means you have bills etc to pay. SO you will need to take longer on their work so you can juggle other paid work at the same time.
Also as a general rule, no matter how the pay is for a job I want to work on, I will never sacrifice quality.
“Should I work as hard and as fast as I can at a job in which I am woefully underpaid? Or, should I work at a speed appropriot for what I’m getting paid? I’m a video editor/video production specialist.”
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I really don’t recommend doing bulk emailing, otherwise known as spamming. There is opt in newsletter programs out there but the receiver must ALWAYS opt in to it first. If you already have a good website, you would add the newsletter button and let it do its magic.
However, just spamming people is a really bad way of advertising your business and a really good way of getting yourself a bad name. I know of someone who spammed and it cost him a lot of money and out of hundreds of emails he sent out, none resulted in work, but hundreds of people who may have taken him seriously before did not anymore.
Like Mads said above, word of mouth is by far the best form of advertising, and by choosing a target market and providing excellent service to that market you will get repeat clients and referrals. It may take longer than other marketing methods but is by far the most effective.
My website has a blog attached and people can choose to have an RSS feed from the blog – it works similar to a newsletter and marketing material for me.
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There is a program called Automatic Duck that will translate a sequence from FCP or Avid into After Effects. The COW forum is here: https://forums.creativecow.net/forum/automaticduck
With the workflow you want that is the program you would need to make it happen. You could use the workflow Neil suggested, and that also works in some situations but I know of other scenarios where the entire FCP sequence needs to be visible in AE for a variety of reasons.
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Why don’t you just remove the entire clip from its place in the time line, move it to the end of the timeline, do your speed change, then adjust its length & move it back to its place in the timeline?
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Hi, you can export the reference video from FCP and import it into Adobe Flash Video Encoder. It comes with the CS3/CS4 suite. In the Encoder you can specify the settings of the video.
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What program are you using to export the video? What is the native resolution of your video?
Bit rate is the same thing as data rate. I suspect the 128 rate you are looking at is actually the audio rate – totally different from the entire video’s rate.
In compressor you should be able to find the MPEG4 setting, which is under formats. Click on the inspector window, > encoder > video tab to see the settings, I just looked at it and it appears the highest the bit rate can go with that setting is 2048 kbps. You can click on the geometry tab to find the resolution and size.
If you use MPEG Streamclip, you can choose mpeg4 and enter 2850 kbps. You can also custom change the resolution in there. Just make sure you import the uncompressed version of your film into both Compressor and MPEG Streamclip if that is what you are doing.
Did they have any specification for audio?
I would also test it all out before you send it to the festival, just in case.