[Mark Suszko]

IANAL,(to my mom’s everlasting sorrow), but I believe it is offer, acceptance, and “consideration”, i.e. some actual money changed hands.

You can prove that with xerox copies of the partial payment checks. I once won against a deadbeat cheating client because of that principle. He claimed the contract was void, never in effect but I proved he’d gone ahead and abided by it, paying for services, then suddenly stopping. Too late for him. Had he never paid a cent, he’d have had a better case, but proveable, partial payment sealed his doom with the judge, who then let us garnish his bank accounts.

While I think small claims could be worth pursuing, can I suggest one more “negotiating” tactic: your own version of the garage mechanic’s lien.

Call the station that airs the spots and ask to talk to their legal department about the fact that they are running copyrighted stuff without your permission, and that you really dont want to drag the station into the middle of a payment dispute with one client…

See: if you can get the station to not run the spots, THAT is going to get immediate attention from the car dealer. He sees himself winning all the way on this if he can still run your spots and bring in customers all at the same time he’s stringing you along on payment. It’s like he’s getting the ads – and the customers they bring in – for free.

Your truest leverage with a guy like this is that he is on a deadline to have something, and he wants what you have, and will have to give you what you want if you are to hand it over by that deadline. A Cash On Delivery service.

If you can get the station to suspend running those spots, (even if their only motivation is that THEY get to bill the guy to remake spots instead) the dealer either has to pay you fast to clear this up and stop losing customers, or he has to pay somebody ELSE to make a new spot, which he also doesn’t want to do unless it’s cheaper than paying you the outstanding balance. Plus you KNOW the station has a solid contract and is going to keep billing him for unused airtime spot or no spot, so you’re putting the guy in a pincer between the two of you.

Those kinds of guys do this kind of math in their head for every transaction and decision in daily life. We don’t have to because we don’t see everything in the world in terms of it’s immediate utility to us. We have learned and internalized a moral code of ethics and conduct and we have our religious tenets or philosophies as our moral guides. They don’t. It is all a zero-sum-game to them so you have to make this a mathematical argument, not a legalistic or even a moralistic one.

Numbers are your best weapon on these guys. Interfere with the bottom line, and they will pay you to go away. And pay quickly.

[Mark Suszko]

Welcome to the Group W bench:-)

[Mark Suszko]

You know that old saying: “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”? From the way you describe it, I think your computer IS the problem, not the camera.

But your world until now revolved around that box, so this frame of reference seems the norm to you and generally made sense for the way you worked.

Most times I’ve been on or seen others doing IMAG type work, it’s switcher-centric, even if the switcher is acomputer like a Tricaster or Toaster or similar… and the problem is getting the stuff out of the computer into the switcher for the final compositing and feeding of image to screen.

My dos centavos is you need to reimagine your traditionl flow. If this is a one-off job, rent a switcher and a studio-head-config camera with long-throw glass if you need that. Might help with the telephoto wobbles. Feed said camera into rented switcher, add your magic computer source to the switcher on another input. Genlock the whole thing and enjoy the show.

Unless I’m missing something?

[Mark Suszko]

Unfortunately reminds me of the ponytailed ne’er-do-wells at my local Apple-authorized service center in town. Next one I know of is 2.5 hours away in Grinnerland.

Bought a used white G3 macbook online for $250. It was actually in pretty good shape overall but two months afterwards, the LCD started getting intermittent and the laptop kept wanting to go into sleep mode, like it and Dorothy were in that field of poppies in Oz….

So I researched the problem and it’s a bad cable that gets worn at the hinge area. Cable carries a close/open signal from a magnetic reed switch that tells the laptop to go to sleep if the lid is down but power is on. Smalldog had a new cable for $15 and directions for taking the laptop apart and installing the cable.

Armed with this info, I go to the local PC paradise (not their actual name) that also is the annointed apple dealership/repair depot in town. Only one. That is always a bad sign.

Mister ponytail hipster counterman doesn’t want to even discuss it, he just signs them in and doesn’t talk about actual problems. OK. I’ll tell you what to write down on the ticket for the bench tech as the problem. I see what he writes after I tell him about the cable and the sleeping and 32 pictures with the lines an arrows(wait, that’s thanksgiving, tell that one another time when I have my guitar).

He writes on the ticket: “no pictures”

That’s all: it must go to the backroom and be “evaluated” for $50, which will be applied to the final bill if I authorize a repair post-diagnostic.

There seems no way around this. I allow the “diagnostic”.

(on the phone)

“Your video processor is shot, it’s welded to the motherboard, gotta pull it and give you whole new motherboard… it’s $500”.
“No, it isn’t, I hooked a scan converter to this baby’s VGA port and it pumps out a screen image just fine before it goes to sleep. Did you even READ my attached note about the…”
(cutting me off) “We’ll get back to you”

(another phone call three days later)
“Your entire lid and screen need to be replaced, it’s only $350, and we’ll take fifty off that from your diagnostic fee.”
“Put it back together, I’m coming to pick it up”.

I get there and of course it’s not put together. They can’t believe I’m not going for it. With supernatural quietude similar to the calm before Steven Segal unleashes a blizzard of fists, I levelly state: “You want me to pay between $300 and $500 to fix a computer that cost me $200, even though the repair I want you to make takes a $15 part I was willing to pay you to put in. I can buy an identical used laptop for $250, or a newer one for that $500. Is this what Cupertino tells you to do to customers? I don’t begrudge the labor cost…”

“That’s EXPERT labor and diagnostic service!”

“Bolt.
It.
Up.

*now*.

(gabbling noise)

“Bolt that thing back up, and I am never stepping inside this building again. Like the prophet Jeremiah, I shake the dust of your store from my feet as I depart. Never again.”

Bought the $15 cable online. Bought a fifth of Jack and a torx screwdriver set. Printed out the directions and took everything to an engineer friend’s house. Next day he’s hung over and the laptop works fine.

The secret is to give them the Jack AFTER the repair though. If you want the repair to last.

[Mark Suszko]

The money’s likely too impractical to recover. But the music can be re-sold and perhaps make back more than the outstanding amount. And if the other clients are stupid enough, once they lose the rights to the music, they can’t use the program anymore as it is.

[Mark Suszko]

I like everything about Tim’s answer to this.

I have to say the first thing I did when reading Clyde’s question was smile broadly as I recalled what the definitions used to be for “major” and “minor” back when everything was edited linearly. You younger guys don’t know how much easier you have it using NLE systems.

Still, time is time, whether it’s an easy fix or something complicated. I have some idea of how complicated AfterEffects work can get and the need to re-render things adds more time. But frankly, “major” and “minor” are abstracts to the client who doesn’t have to execute them. They don’t wanna know how hard it is to build the watch, they just want to know what time it is. Client’s don’t think major-minor, they think “acceptable- not acceptable”. Just as with any other service. Do you really give a hoot how hard the laundry worked to get that stain out of your shirt, or do you just care if it is clean or dirty?

Now my 9-5 situation is not necessarily like most of yours; my clients all are on a revolving fund type system, it’s mostly “monopoly money” we’re talking about as a way to keep score, except for billing for expendables or things outside the norm. So when I want to tell a client this proposed change is too big for what they initially “paid for”, what it equates to in our case is not billing cash, it is the currency of time, of access. If the new changes are going to take me too long to execute, and I have other clients in the pipeline (always do) and drive space I have to free up, the threat to the client is not that we’ll bill them more, (except indirectly by me charging for overtime) but that the project goes on an archival shelf unfinished until we can get back around to reloading it and helping them, since the other waiting clients can’t be re-scheduled. Nor should they.

The delay could be anything from 48 hours to a month, depending on just how busy we are. If the client wants to meet a deadline their boss set, they better have their act together going into the project, and I am there to help them in every step of that. I advise in advance how to set up each stage of the job so they know what is being done and what their responsibilities are in bringing me elements or whatever. If they suddenly get a wild hair during the final conforming of the dubbing master to make significant changes for a weird reason, it’s the clock and calendar that decide if I agree, more than enything else. They get a window of access, and they have to work within that window or go to the back of the line behind the other folks who have their ducks in a row.

After having situations like this happen to me in the old days, I have always told clients what to expect for their “money” up front. I tell them that when I present them the first rough cut, that is an approval stage where anything that’s wrong or needs a change is covered, no extra charges. I will go back and fix everything on their written list, even make re-orderings of pre-made segments. NLE’s make this job cake compared to the bad old days. After the next screening, the only changes are going to be me fixing something I messed up like a word spelled wrong in a CG title. I don’t bill overtime for fixing such mistakes if I was the one that made them. Likewise if I made a bad estimate on something I proposed, I eat the overage. If they gave the information for a lower third to me on paper and it was their mistake that I faithfully copied into the program, that’s on them, and I bill.

Back to Tim’s answer, if the changes are truly huge revampings of the program, rather than just issues of adjusting the timing of what’s there or swapping the order of sub-segments or tweaking music beds or the audio balance, it points to a massive communication and expectations problem before the project started. This is why I am such huge advocate for the creative treatment process as the guiding document for a project. With it, you can point out that what you did at every stage was what was asked for and agreed to, and that at this point any really stupendous change is outside the scope of the original agrement and subject to a new billing arrngement.

[Mark Suszko]

Getting back the rights to your music seems the more important and easier thing to do.

Trying to get more money out of them now could take a lot of time away from your work, fir just a few grand more… which is probably what they counted on. If it becomes a question of fighting over the unpaid balance and trying to collect afer small claims, or just having them sign over the rights, the latter seems easiest for everybody.

If you take back the rights, does that or will you preclude them still selling their old program, do you mean to make the rights nonexclusive? If you push hard on this, taking back the rights to your music means they’d have to re-edit the piece to be able to sell it any more. You may want that and like that, but if they realize that they’ll probably resist you. If they see it as a free way to get out of making you any more payments, while still selling their product, they’d probably jump at the chance to sign, and put the financial problem behind them.

So how clever are they, and are they more greedy than clever?

[Mark Suszko]

I agree with much you’ve said.

Another way to look at one aspect of this is, you can be a highly specialized group of people in a very small but exciting niche area. Say aerospace, but it could be something else. You would think that working around rockets and jets all day never gets old, and in one sense you’re right.

However, if you are the world’s biggest aviation nut and working in an aviation heaven like NASA itself or one of these contractors, and you are not allowed to work on or express certain enthusiasms of yours “inside the box”, coming to work can become very frustrating and maddening too. Like a diabetic working in a candy store. Or living next door to Jessica Alba and trying to be cool about it.

Imagine knowing a certain project really, really well and knowing you could make something epic about it, but you can’t because of budgets, security or company policy direction or legal issues or the like. But you get to come within feet of it every day. That’s got to dent a man’s soul.

Hopefully, you find outlets after five and on weekends to let some of that steam out in other ways. Pro bono work or freelance. Or self-funded.

[Mark Suszko]

If you want to boil this issue down to Ferengi Rules of Aquisition, it would be:

The client pays you for everything, that’s the very definition of a “Client”.

You may have to front money from time to time but only with the understanding you are passing these costs on to the client. If they don’t agree, they are not a client (see definition).

[Mark Suszko]

I think Todd and I are on the same page here, I didn’t bother addressing the alternate method because he covered it well already.

And obviously, as Todd says, it is easier to lay guide audio first and then cut video to it, than the other way around. You should just be careful that you don’t miss opportunities to make the video and audio synergize, to let the video sometimes lead or trail but say what the audio track leaves unspoken, for a heightened effect. Otherwise what you get is so stultifyingly literal and blatant, nobody pays it much attention.

Sometimes this cannot be avoided, as in the case of a training piece that’s literally about how to insert tab “A” into slot “B”. In that case, yes, you pace a good sound track and cut video into it and collect your check. But for more artful projects than that, things that are more “conceptual”, you might want to look at making video and audio deliberately clash at times, to point something up or just wake up an audience.

A good test of your visual-auditory synergy is to watch the thing with the sound off and see if you can still understand at least the basic narrative thread with visuals alone. Then go back and try listening without seeing any visuals. This may uncover areas where your story, structure, or script is especially weak and needs tweaking. Since you know more about the project than most people, it is good to have someone walk in with no preconceived notions and screen this with you… see if THEY get it or not.

I mostly work in very short form projects, PSA’s and promos and short news VNR’s and then some longer-form training pieces. Now not all, okay, not most, of it is “artful”. 🙂 Still… When shaping a story, even one as short as a PSA, I try to think in terms of an overall general visual metaphor first. If I can come up with a clear one, I try to arrange everything including the narrative, around it, or to leverage off of it. Such a setup can make the piece able to communicate despite language or cultural barriers. For more on this, try a google or wiki search on “semiotics”.

“Oh, you wanted to RECORD that?”