Patrick Ortman
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COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Nice!
Mine’s just got here in time to use on the last projects of the year- a new SSD MacPro with 16GB RAM and a new SSD RAID card to make our editing/render lives a lot less painful in FCP and Adobe.
Maybe not as fancy as Walter’s list 😉
P
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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design -
Go Walter!
>>It’s fun for me to work with green folks who have absolutely no clue what it takes to produce a project and see what they come up with. That’s why all of my contracts include a line like “based on the information available,” or “the figures quoted in this contract are an estimate and subject to change based on client requested changes.”<>I’ll hold the master until we receive final payment. Nothing like holding on to a project that is scheduled to be shown tomorrow and they don’t have it in their hands because you didn’t get paid..<< Here's where I have gotten screwed this year. Stupid me, releasing masters without final payment. Hopefully it'll all work out OK, though. Never again. Happy Holidays, eh? P --------------------- http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design -
Oh, Ted, man this looks like EXACTLY what I need. THANK YOU!
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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design -
I agree, and it’s tough when clients have been trained on a “per minute” basis. I think it’s easier to estimate on a per minute basis when you have a very straightforward project (talking heads, interview footage, and some b-roll), but once you step into a more vague (creative?) world, my experience is you get beat up on the per minute rate. What’s worse is clients- even the best- almost always need changes. A per minute of finished work rate kills you, then.
We moved away from quoting that way over the past two years. We lost one existing client (who really was bleeding us dry, so good riddance) and probably a few other opportunities because of that decision. But, all for the best. Now we estimate like Mark suggests: per-hour, with a detailed description. Sometimes we’ll give a per-project estimate but we make it very clear exactly what’s included in that estimate (number of revisions, etc).
Another thing a lot of guys starting out forget to factor in: overhead. Yes, you may own your edit bay and software, but you’re supposed to look at that equipment as an investment that pays for itself, otherwise you may find yourself unable to pay for the future upgrades you’ll need. Either build this into your main hourly rate or make sure you have line items for equipment rentals and overhead/admin. I learned this the hard way many years ago.
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http://www.patrickortman.com
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True and good points. However, back to the hourly/per project thing…
My experience says that a per project pricing is the way to go when a client is giving you a well-defined project. It makes them happy, and if you kick butt it will make you happier. It does indeed keep one from being a plumber.
However, sometimes you get dealt a mess, and if they’re a good client you need to help them out even if you’d normally run screaming. If a client is, as in this case, relying on us to be their ad agency, video production company, post house, and so forth and proceeding without a script then not going hourly is a suicide mission.
I will say that even in a case where you go hourly, it’s nice to be able to tell the client a rough idea of the total cost of the project, of course.
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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design -
I have to add my 2 cents to this thread, too. We just got through a very unhappy three months with a sales/biz dev person I hired. It really did not work out well at all, and she brought us absolutely nothing.
In the end, we do well by doing pretty much what Walter suggests. I’d add social media to that list, too- we make sure we post photos and update our status on the various social media sites regularly. Anything to let people know we’re around, we’re active, and we’re fun to work with. That’s gotten us several good leads that I’ve converted into clients.
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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design -
Agree, and it’s VERY hard to give a client a hard estimate sometimes. For instance, right now we’re editing a project that does not have a script. Seriously. It’s a little crazy, so it means a lot more time spent figuring out what we have, what the story should be, etc.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to bill more, or go to an hourly model if you find yourself in this situation.
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http://www.patrickortman.com
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True, yes- it’s easy to assume a client is an evil troll when they pay slowly or stop paying, especially with today’s economy. Sadly, pretty much 80% of the clients who seem like trolls turned out to be, in fact, trolls :-). Still, vital to get the real story whenever possible.
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http://www.patrickortman.com
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That train one sparked my creative juices, thanks for posting!!!
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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design