Ned Miller
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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due to the overall devaluing of people in general…
Well, that says it all. Couldn’t have said it better myself. There is a difference between the HR department not getting back to an applicant versus a prospect asking a vendor to take half their day, either morning or afternoon, get gussied up, drive in, do their dog ‘n pony show and pitch, then drive home and work an hour or more to send in a proposal, and then not respond when they follow up. You asked them to donate to you half of a work day to help you figure out which way to go with an upcoming video project, right? To me, it’s simply a matter of manners. And it does only take 10 seconds to respond. And it is generational. If I was to do a spreadsheet on this I’d say the below 31 or 32 crowd, give or take a year or so, are the ones who feel no guilt no getting back after asking you for half a day and picking your mind for free.
So…after I posted this around 10AM today I sent an acerbic, jocular email to one of the above mentioned people that said, “Was it something I said?”, realizing full well I would never work with her. That was her tipping point and she wrote back:
“It was great meeting you but after reviewing your pricing I am looking for more affordable solutions. My budget stinks!”
Now, was that so hard? Couldn’t she have written that eight weeks and several emails of mine ago? Maybe she wanted to avoid delivering bad news? Who knows. I referred her to Thumbtack.com My cheapest rate was above her maximum.
Being an old timer I have watched this decline in manners, where people in our biz will request something of others, in our case it’s holding out the carrot of possible work, ask us for our time (and often expertise with free consulting) and then feel no compunction to have the basic social courtesy of sending a reply to their inquiry. I can see my 29 and 30 year old not responding, but not my brother or sister. And going forward, I will be the Manners Police. If you ask me for a meeting and/or cost estimate, and you never respond, I’ll let you know you were not raised properly.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Hey Mark. You wrote:
“I finally saw the rest of the 84 Lumber ad online, and I’m still not quite sure what the message is.”
What I got out of it is that carpenters used lumber to make a large door in Trump’s Wall, thus allowing the mother and daughter to enter the US. Fox thought it was too controversial in that half the public is for the wall, so they did not wallow the ending to be aired.
My take is that there are a lot of Hispanics in residential construction, so they are appealing to their base.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Yes, I too am confused as to what they are looking for. Perhaps if you were to provide an hourly rate, and then they guesstimate it should take X amount of hours, they will contact you and ask you to come in at that price? Also, I don’t know what they mean by day rate because you can edit for as long as you want, until fatigued, or do an all-niter to meet a deadline, so that is a question mark.
However…I am mainly a DP and just the fact that they contacted you is worth salivating over. It means someone there thinks highly enough of you to ask for prices. So maybe it’s best to quote a slightly lower hourly rate than normal, you can make it up on a future project, to get that first gig, then reel them in. That’s how my cameraman mind would look at it. Get my foot in the door. Get them addicted to you.
I’d do research on them, their YT channel, and cut a quick sizzle reel of relevant samples and send to them. Tickle them up periodically. For them to reach out may imply that their present post service is on the bubble? Missed a deadline? Overcharged? Flirted with the boss’s wife at the Christmas party? We never know. But a request for rates is like when I’m fishing and I see the bobber twitch. Gotta set the hook!
Good luck,
Ned
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Hi Chip,
When I am considering an editor I may ask him or her what their rate is, which is actually totally meaningless to me as the producer. It merely tells me how they value their services, because only a fool, or someone incredibly wealthy, would hire an editor for a project and not have a good idea what the final bill would be. I wouldn’t hire a carpenter to make a new deck if he only told me his hourly wage, right? So if they quote an hourly rate that is too high or too low from the usual, that’s a red flag to me.
Assuming they quoted an hourly rate that was in the limits of normal rates for our market, (naturally high end TV commercials and other styles may be higher), assuming they quote a normal range rate, I would then describe the parameters of the project, graphics needed, music, what level of PITA the client may be, how many rounds or “reasonable” revisions there may be, etc., and then ask him or her what the “range will be”, best case and worse case price they will charge. I need to know this range so I can do the bid, I’ll take the worst case figure and add my mark up. If I feel it is too high for me to win the bid, or make a reasonable profit, I then need to shop it around to other capable editors who are comparable to the one I just got the range from.
I advise my clients who are DIY to never enter an edit situation where they don’t know the final cost. I know this because I am soooooo old, I used to have to sit with the editors back in the day to supervise, which is now unheard of, and I can attest that editors come in different speeds, and who knows how long they need to render, or visit Facebook. So in today’s world, where you don’t sit with the editor, what kind of fool would accept “an hourly rate”? Perhaps if my brother was editing I could trust him. When I first started to do a lot of international traveling my mentor taught me to never get in a cab that did not have a meter. This is the same thing. The editor’s hourly rate is meaningless because I have no idea if they are fast or slow. I’ve seen great and horrible editors who have both speeds.
So in sum, you can provide this rate card, which I find to be an anachronism, but to gain work from these prospects I think it’s better if you include a few sentences that state you can provide an estimate range based on the post parameters of their email of X date. To protect yourself I’d say you should state limits, such as once certain things are approved, such as fonts, colors, IDs, backgrounds, music tracks, etc., and then the clients want changes, that is naturally an additional charge. I find this very necessary with my non-profit clients who have to committee all decisions to death. Or if my corporate client is low level, we do an edit to their approval, and then some higher ups want massive changes, if you spell out the revisions charges in advance, you will be OK. I know of no one nowadays who goes into post and is willing to be charged an hourly rate with no cap. That’s business suicide.
My .02¢
Ned
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Hi Tom,
I think it all depends on WHY they want the project to go somewhere else. If Ken’s relationship is with an exec who can give him future work, yet due to circumstances out of his control this particular project is ordered to go to another video vendor, then Ken should be cooperative. I have been in that situation a few times and wanted to withhold any cooperation, out of spite but also my bruised pride.
I had a client who told me to send all materials to an out-of-state agency, I told my editor to remove the labels off of about 40 betacam tapes and not include any shot logs, releases, names of music tracks, project files etc. He talked me off the ceiling after giving me a couple of days to cool off, and I’m glad he did. My client had no control over this, execs way above him called the shots and had hired a new agency. One of the world’s largest credit card company so people do what they’re told to do.
Long story short, the project ended up coming back to us after a few months because the advertising agency that tried to re-edit our videos was extremely expensive, not too good and very slow. There were about 10 foreign languages and narrations involved, so no way they could figure out the mess!
In sum, it all depends on the circumstances, and yeah, you can pull the IP card, to me that’s a cry-baby move, but if they paid you what you had asked, then it’s polite to just let them have it all.
My .02¢
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Hello Ken,
I think the simplest thing to do is to tell him you bought them under your company’s name, therefore you are the licensee, and provide him with the track names and numbers so he can re-purchase them himself. After all, they will be $35-50, correct? So it’s a minor expense.
When I produce for large companies they will approve the music tracks and then purchase them for us to edit in. They do this so they can be the license holder of record so if there were any inquiries, they are kosher. Also, on YouTube they could prove they are the licensee. So in sum, perhaps next time when you are doing the bidding, explain that you will be the licensee and if they prefer, they can purchase the tracks themselves to be the licensee. I produce for a major hospital chain here and they insist upon it, probably prodded by their legal department.
Good luck,
Ned
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Well Todd, what I meant by “regulation” is Capital Punishment. A pruning of the herd so to speak.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Well Chris, I feel the penalties are very mild. If you didn’t show up to my daughter’s wedding, the police would never find your body.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Question: Did you, or was it in the agreement, that you get the editing part of the project? If so, then I would accommodate them somehow. After all, them choosing takes and providing numbers will make your life easier, the editing quicker and fewer revisions. Absorb the time or bury it in the invoice somewhere. I have various software that can make low rez MP4s with very little effort and processing power. You would want to make it so low rez that they could not do something unethical, such as do their own post.
I have often run into the client problems where I am hired to “just shoot”, and then they expect to be able to view the footage, but can’t. I then have a peeved client. It’s as if they think we shoot in formats they can view. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. Many clients want to watch all the b-roll. they’re curious and/or want to chooses specific takes.
So in sum, if you aren’t doing the editing, then you’d be in your rights to charge for making viewable files. It’s stick if they haven’t paid you for the shooting portion yet.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Hi,
• First, do a search on tax and start up topics on this forum, your questions have been answered many times. Otherwise you’ll upset us Old Farts.
• Avoid PayPal or at least have the clients’ payments go to a dedicated biz checking account via PayPal. They can send it electronically to your account but if they are local, it’s sometimes better to ask if you can come bye and “pick up my check”. That takes away the float and you get your hands on the money quicker. Even local electronic transfers may take four days. Also, do NOT use PayPal unless you jacked up your fee by 3.5% at the start when you gave them your estimate.
• You need to divide your life into two: Biz & Personal checking, Biz & Personal credit cards, Biz & Personal Debit Cards. Make up a business name for this.
• When starting your “business” checking account, don’t say it’s for business, the bank will charge you more. Come up with a name that won’t trigger them moving you to the higher fee biz account, or use an online bank that doesn’t care. You don’t want to have to get a FEIN number. Then the IRS will expect you to withhold taxes and your state may require you to carry the onerous Workers Comp policy.
• CPAs charge more, try to find a bookkeeper who works out of their home and uses TurboTax or QuickBooks. Someone who knows the small service business world. CAs are best if you are incorporated and/or making larger sums.
• You could register your name as a sole proprietor, the fees in Illinois are low, like $200, but it does put you into the attention of your state’s Dept of Revenue authorities, who then expect, now that they know about you, to send in certain forms, paperwork and fees by certain exact dates. So since you are making so “little”, I don’t know if your state requires official registration. Look it up. You may not have hit their threshold.
• As for “owing taxes”…I am from a family where every male on my father’s line had never had a “job”, from time immemorial. Rather, they all owned small service businesses. The present US tax codes favors the self employed. In our family, right before New Years, my dad would buy as much as possible that could be construed as a business expense, including our school supplies (anything from the office supply store!). Had you posted this in November I would have advised buying $5000 in business related expenses. Even Google Ads! They’re expensive so you can easily zip through $5K!
• Lastly, you can write off anything you want, the problem is what will happen if you’re audited. You aren’t making enough to be targeted but their computers randomly spit out taxpayers’ returns for audits. Be prudent. Save every receipt for business. Don’t try to write off meals. But from what you wrote, which is skimpy, I don’t know if in your state your “side business” is making enough money to be declared and registered. Why not join your town’s chamber of commerce for free advice? There’s lots of local accounting types at their networking meetings and you can pick their brain over cheese and wine for free. Which, to the self employed, is the best price. There’s also a group called SCORE, the local chapter will have free info:
Good luck,
Ned
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com