[Mark Suszko]

The question is really too nebulous to answer effectively. Can you elaborate at all?

“Oh, you wanted to RECORD that?”

[Mark Suszko]

“With the right people, a contract is never needed. With the wrong people, it’s never enough.”
Words from a pro I respect.

I did one of these deals early in my career, a simple contract that stated our client would pay for all the gear and post rental directly, and we would split a portion of every tape sold.

Later we found out he was stiffing the rental company and also that he’d gone and ordered several hundred more tape dubs than we had agreed on without letting us know about it, or about how many MORE he was selling. Wound up having to take him to small claims, where we won eventually, but what a pain and months of delay to get back a few thousand bucks.

My take on these deals is, what business are you in; are you in the video production business or are you in the zero-interest loan business? Repeat to yourself: “I am not a bank! “Beginners are often targeted for these kinds of shady deals because they have not built up a healthy amount of distrust yet.

Get the whole thing on paper, notarized, get proof that money has changed hands as part of the agreement (in legal terms this is using the term “consideration” to prove you had a true contract in effect, that’s what made our case. A verbal agreement might get thrown out but stands a better chance if you can prove money changed hands).

Work out the costs based on standard practices and your day rate, and if he hasn’t got enough money, bill him in installments if you need to. Just make sure all your rentals and editor’s time are paid in full first, right off the top, before you hand anything over to the client. That way, if the deal goes bad, you are only out your profit an a little pride, not your expenses, and YOUR word in the local industry and your reputation is preserved. Not destroyed by association.

[Mark Suszko]

Rick, I once had a deal like the one you are in, when I was young and foolish, and I would say never do this kind of deal. Not the way you have it structured.

[Mark Suszko]

Bill, with utmost respect, you have not read this book, and so your opinion in this particular case may not carry its usual and rightful weight.

This book will show a producer how to become the kind of writer you’re talking about. If you decide you don’t want to write yourself, it will also help a non-writer to have the right tools to communicate with hired-gun writers with a capital “W”.

Fourteen dollars for a used copy is a very good gamble, considering where he’s starting from. I’ll stake my miniscule reputation on his satisfaction.

[Mark Suszko]

You don’t need luck, you need fourteen dollars and an Amazon.com membership:

https://www.amazon.com/Scriptwriting-High-Impact-Videos-Imaginative-information/dp/0595449387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206069914&sr=8-1

This corporate scriptwriting book book by John Morley is exactly what someone in your situation needs. Morley is to corporate TV production what Syd Field is to Film script writing. It’s helped me make a living at this ever since it came out. Fast, easy reading, excellent practical examples, case studies, checklists, etc. You can’t go wrong. I have TWO copies, one of my own at home, one at work, I consult it annually to refresh myself. This is your “secret weapon”. Don’t tell anybody else; it will just be our little secret

🙂

[Mark Suszko]

Bill, the sample looked pretty. That’s not your problem. IMO, what you have is a WRITING problem.

That presentation was basically written to be a person reading the brochure to you. I can read a heck of a lot faster than that lady can speak. THAT’s why it bores me. I don’t need to be read to in linear fashion, its boring and condescending. And the script is just kind of too passive and pedagogical.

For example it is also entirely too pedantic to use my time to get me up to speed with dictionary definitions in the way that video presented them. A better technique would be to super brief blurbs underneath or in a corner as the lady talks, so the people that already know what “social whateveitis”, IS, don’t have to wait for the newbies to catch up. Plus, you’ve just made the video that much shorter for everyone, always a good thing.

The presentation’s structure is the problem, not the eye candy and effects which look fine and professional. The presentation in the link would be more effective IMO if done as a .pdf file or hyperdocument than a video. At least the .pdf file or a web page is self-navigating: if I want to skip the dictionary definitions and get right to the part I need/want to know, I can go right to that page, in whatever order suits me. I think hypertext and self-navigated content are faster and better as well as cheaper and more efficient means for many such communication needs.

This video of yours maybe should not have been made in the first place because it is not leveraging much of what video is good for. This is an argument I make with clients all the time, when all they want to do is read over powerpoint slides and call it a video.

I have told clients before: “I may sound crazy to be turning down your money to make this video, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell you that IMO a video is not the best or most cost-effective way to tell this message, you should save your money and do this another way”. Surprisingly, they respect my honesty the times I’ve said this. I have never lost repeat business over it, even when I’ve been overruled, because I’m obviously working in their best interests as far as I’m concerned.

So anyway, regarding your videos, Is this just “radio with pictures, or a true synthesis of image and words? To get that synthesis requires much more work and commitment than to just write a lecture and then drop images over the audio track, cool as they may be, until it’s covered end-to-end and you are “finished”. Which is why too few people take the effort to do that extra work. And why so much content done this way is utterly forgettable.

You can have the ugliest-looking content in the world, but if it is vital and unique information the audience actually wants, they will forgive and ignore the warts. Conversely, no amount of glitz will make an audience stay with a program that doesn’t engage their brain and gut at the same time. Video is good at emotions, subjective information. It conveys a perceptual framework. It is not very good for long grocery lists of objective data. Often the best synergy is a video that generalizes and ancillary materials that convey the detail.

I would say at this point,you already know how to shoot and edit the videos well; your best investment would be to find a real professional writer to collaborate with on the scripting process for future materials… and to help you focus on what messages are best served by which media.

Use the channel and format that best serves the communication need, and that is not always a video. This is why marketing happens on so many platforms, each customized for the specific task and audience.

[Mark Suszko]

I started doing video editing and production in the 80’s when the rooms were generally all so expensive it was de rigur to also trick them out with fine furniture and lots of themes and art. My corner office, which is away from the suites, has quite the tiki and polynesian/Hawaiiana thing goin’ on in it. “Early Jack Lord” I call it. Also a huge collection of pics of my kids on the walls to remind me what it’s really all in service of.

But my tastes for what to do to decorate a ***suite*** have changed over the years. Once upon a time I would welcome any number of little toys, totems, mascots, tchachkies, what-have-you. But nowadays, I’m about having the edit space itself be as neutral and nondistracting as possible. A back wall or corner with some award plaques as a shorthand to say I know my craft might be as far as I would want to go.

If it was always just my own edit room, and I never had clients in it, I might get more wild. Because it’s a shared team space, I don’t want it to polarize people too much in any one direction, or clash with the others I have to share the room with. Some of their tastes I don’t much care for, so if I don’t subject them to tolerating my various decorating tastes, neither must I endure their questionable choices. I’d rather all their attention, passive and active, be on the screen. So I like a very subtle, neutral, cozy but non-distracting scheme, and no major color or other art in the room to distort perceptions of the screen. Your basic technical batcave. Like OLD Mission Control at NASA Kennedy: they used to have it super-sterile in there with no non-business related decor or flair of any kind, and not even coffee. It was the chamber and kingdom of steely-eyed Missile Men with astronaut’s lives and billions of dollars worth of National prestige in their hands. “This is the Firing Room”, the head man would intone with deep seriousness: We launch rockets here”.

I DO have drinks and snacks in there, which is blasphemy to some, perhaps many fellow editors. I don’t pretend I can function well for long without those:-) And I can have to do lots of long hours on projects at times where I’ll have to have lunch and dinner while working, generally alone, with the ipod rocking away if I’m doing graphics and not mixing audio. I don’t put the food and drink and candy where it can hurt anything if spilled, but I have to have it there somewhere, preferably on its own table near to hand but off the actual workspace.

[Mark Suszko]

You don’t have a tech problem, you have a human relations and corporate culture problem. Which you are about to magnify by going over the boss’ head.

Consider updating the resume in any case, because you have no power to negotiate this issue or push your agenda unless you’re willing to walk, and if you tick off enough people, they may *ask* you to walk. Being a change agent is not a role that ensure security. You must at all costs refrain from making this at all personal in any way – keep it a simple numbers issue: time and money. You jumped on the tiger’s back, better dig in and ride it best as you can now.

Please fill us in later as to how things worked out, I am very curious.

[Mark Suszko]

As a public service, I have opened up a business specifcally for those of you that feel you are charging too much. Just send me the overage money and sleep like a baby tonight, with a clear conscience. I take PayPal.

🙂

I agree with Todd; your only “problem” is being afraid to call it like it is up front, and you really should be doing that, so as to eliminate any misunderstandings later that could be worse. You also need to formalize your OT policy, set one rate schedule with clear parameters and stick to it.

Clients can sniff out inconsistencies in your policy and that will lead either to bad feelings that you’re playing favorites, or to attempts to exploit you or bargain down your rate based on an earlier, lower rate. If you can’t point to a formal document or clause in your billing statements, you have a weaker bargaining position.

Your bottom line should be: it costs what it costs because its worth what its worth. I can buy a gallon of milk for three dollars at the Aldi’s if I wait until Saturday afternoon. If I need that gallon at 3 AM on a Sunday, the local quickiee mart has it and I know I’m paying an extra two dollars for the fact that they do and are open at that hour. The counterman there in no way feels guilty, I assure you. Sleepy, maybe, guilty, no.

[Mark Suszko]

That’s just some incredibly “meta” low-key deadpan comedy. There is no way in hell that’s a serious video or site. It has to be deliberately made that crude as an exercise in humor.

The whole time I was flashing back to old SCTV episodes with commercials for Tex and Edna Boil’s Antique Furniture Emporium, “”where you always geta free budgie with every purchase of a couch, and Ed will play the Wurlitzer organ for you” “That’s Right, Edna!”)

Those parody spots are based on real, bad locally-produced cable commercials. The small towns near me have one for a mom-and-pop furniture store that’s about as bad.