[Mark Suszko]

I think Steve that we all see it that way, if the screw-up is ours. But when the product goes out the door 100 percent right according to the client, and THEN the client wants to make a change, or if they gave you a misspelled title they didn’t vet and you faithfully executed, that’s on them. And it should be.

[Mark Suszko]

If its not in motion, this is not too hard to cheat. I have used inscriber to make a fix like that: sampled the color of the BG around the offending character, gradient filled a box on a new layer, added in the replacement character over the top, easy. Also possible in Photoshop with greater precision, where it helps that you can grab an identical character from eleswhere in the frame and paste it into another layer, keeping colors and proportions all correct. If such band-aids are apropriate and look good, they sure save everyone some time and money.

[Mark Suszko]

LOL, BT,DT for sure. Any time I want to hear from an old inactive client, all I have to do is erase a long disused but key file and the phone rings within 24 hours to request a change that would have been trivial had I not just deleted the files and backups.

What I have evovled into doing in the past five years of facing this more than once, is to save more incremental submaster copies off to tape via SDI.

For example, I always lay off a clean backup version of the master without any CG and with audio tracks separated, for just such eventualities. Any point of the project that takes it to a new “point of no return”, I make a backup so I don’t have to go back even to digitizing original footage.

With AE project files this is obviously harder to do, but I think it is worth it to keep the 5-hour re-build down to a more reasonable hour or so.

[Mark Suszko]

Rush charges are fair if you have to work overtime to make the deadline, over weekends and holidays and the like, or if you have to over-extend yourself with a subcontractor or vendor, being on the hook for costs the client should have already handled, and settle accounts after the dust dies down. Never a good place to be, even with long trusted clients.

For me the question is along the lines of: does taking on the job under the special circumstances force me into a special hardship or does it prevent me from other work that could be bringing in money? Did I have to bump another client and was that a huge deal to do? Did I have to miss my kid’s school play debut AGAIN for this guy? Put off the long overdue dinner out with the wife? Time to charge a little more for the added annoyance and opportunity cost.

The huge mistake is to ever bill flat fixed price, IMO. You are always going to be way over or way under what you predicted for the time you put in a fixed fee job, especially with clients like this that hold needed elements until the last minute or are otherwise unprepared or unorganized. I would bill hourly for everything as much as possible. That way, you reward them for having their act together because it makes the work go faster and thus cost less each time they improve.

If you work so fast that you think you’re losing money billing by the hour, I think you probably need to re-evaluate your rates. You must be pretty darn good, and good is worth paying more for.

Alternately, slow down after the first version is done and re-evaluate the work, maybe take a breath and play around with alternate versions or added graphics or sound tweaking, etc. because maybe in all the rush you missed an opportunity to add some art, taking it to another level.

[Mark Suszko]

4 years or 4 weeks after the job is signed off, it is a new and distinct job to put new changes on it. You are not performing “warranty service” on a car.

Now if the files are all still in your drives and it really is a trivial thing, that might take you longer to dub off than to edit, you might bill it and then discount it to nothing out of goodwill if you want, but do not consider it part of the original job! That way lies the madness of grinders. People who never acknowledge the job is finally done to their satisfaction usually are the same ones who hold off payment until said satisfaction. For years sometimes.

Did they sign off on the master before?
Bill it as a separate job.

If errors are mine, like I misspelled a lower third, and they gave it to me right, I eat that. If they gave me the name wrong, that’s their fault and they have to pay, just as if they hire me to paint the house and hand me a can of paint they mixed, but later they decide they want another shade.

One other business rule: You don’t make the new changes unless all pervious edit jobs are fully paid for and accounts are up to date. Amazing how this little rule will geatly un-complicate your life.

[Mark Suszko]

“They’ll never find someone else, bi-ligual, or otherwise, to do what I do for less.”

I have 21 years observing the business that says this quote is not only inaccurate, but dangerously in denial of past, current and imminent future business realities and trends.

Everyone is ultimately replaceable, everyone, no matter how unique we think we are, and there is always someone that can do it cheaper and yes, better. The older I get, the truer it seems to me. With luck, I’ll never have to tell you “I told you so”. But I wouldn’t put money on it.

Keep your skills sharp, look for ways to always grow, try new things, stretch your boundaries – as a person as well as an editor; that’s the only way to even have a chance of staying ahead of the axe.

That’s my opinion, anyway.

[Mark Suszko]

Not a lawyer (as mom constantly reminds me).

I think yes, you own it until they pay for it, however, it is less clear that you can do anything WITH it. I hesitate to point you to it, just because it generated a lot of heat, but this is covered in some length both pro and con in the thread about Walmart and their former video production company, Flagler. Over-compressed Summary: Flagler seems to own the footage absent a written document saying otherwise, but Walmart can make a strong case several ways that Flagler is not allowed to re-sell the footage to documentary makers and the press as he’s tried to do.

Be aware, there is what is legal to do and what is ethical to do, and these are not always the same thing.

In your case your strongest position is that they might be able to recover raw footage they brought to you, but any elements that were created by you for them, you can hold until they pay for it. If they need to see samples of anything done, be sure to watermark them severely with your logo bug and time code window burns so as to make them useless to pirate.

[Mark Suszko]

Yes, this is easy to do. Actually many DVD players have a control right on the remote that lets you create a loop between two points, it’s often labeled as the a-b switch. Good for checking your golf swing or repeating a guitar part you’re trying to copy down, things like that. Or to loop a program onto a VHS dub.

But it is better to make the DVD do this on it’s own, because the machine’s temporary loop can be upset or lost and not everyone can re-establish it properly. So burn a self-starting, self-looping DVD. You’ll generally need some DVD authoring software, but nothing too sophisticated. You won’t need to study very hard to do this part.

What you’ll do is import the video as mpeg2 into the DVD authoring progam first. You won’t need to build any menus or interactivity. Set the actual video as “first play” in the authoring program, and insert a “loop back to start” command at the end of the program. On Apple’s DVDStudio pro, it takes as long to do as it just took you to read it. I’m sure it’s not too much more complicated in other systems. That’s it. Burn it and done.

Back in the day, we would have to play the program live, over and over onto a 8-hour long VHS tape to make a repeating “loop”. Thank God for DVD.

One other way to do this is to store the program as an MPEG2 file in a hard-drive-based playback system. These are made by many outfits including Sony and a company called Doremi. But considering a DVD player is $30, the blank DVD is a few pennies, that’s got to be the cheapest way to handle it. Thing might play till doomsday if you tape up the loading door so it auto-starts whenever the player sees power.

[Mark Suszko]

IMO you did a work for hire, each time, so no, you never had the right to link to it the way you did, in any automatic sense, regardless of your feelings of ownership.

Which could have come up in a conversation if one didn’t just assume permission.

[Mark Suszko]

We will be dealing with cut-off areas for many years yet, because not every TV magically gets replaced in 2009, so the safe bet IMO is to still honor safe title and action zones.