Sebastian Alvarez
Forum Replies Created
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[walter biscardi] “Just like in Post here at our shop. We have three full edit systems because we’re delivering to very hard deadlines. Technology breaks all the time, but with three edit systems we have redundancy. We also run all our storage in RAID 5 so if a hard drive fails, we can keep working.”
OK, but we’re talking about different things here, different sizes of companies. You are talking about a production center that probably has tens of thousands of dollars in equipment. I’m talking about a small events videographer, who would probably have to charge a wedding thousands of dollars because he has to recover the huge investment he made. I’m talking about a beginner events videographer with about $3500 in equipment between two HD cameras and a fast computer. And besides, it’s like I said in another post, I’m not talking about things that are preventable such as making backups, but those things that are impossible to prevent, such as a manufacturing defect in a professional tape that you just opened and was never used before. And I know I’m just being negative for the sake of discussion, I taped a high school play with a Canon HV20 a while ago with two of these Panasonic tapes and I didn’t get one drop in two full tapes. However, yesterday I opened another one of them and I got one drop while just filming in a lake to try my new camera. So that got me thinking, if this happened now, it may happen at a crucial moment, and what happens then?
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[Timothy J. Allen] “If the camera malfunctions for a moment, you use a clip from your spare. If that won’t work, you refund your fee.”
Good, but let’s suppose you’re taping a school play. Your customer’s son has a small part in it. You put in a new tape in the camera, but you were unlucky enough that you had a drop just as he was saying his glorious lines. The customer will understandably be pissed off, but what do you do? Just give him the video for free? I would think that I would give him a big discount, but I couldn’t just refund my whole fee and still give him the edited video, because even if there was a blunder, there’s still a lot of value in what he’s getting, despite the one second missing from it.
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[Bob Zelin] “Sebastian, is this a joke, or WHAT ?”
No, I just like to be prepared for when bad things happen, so when I saw that I had lost about half a second of footage on a decent quality tape, one from Panasonic and labeled “For Professional” that I had just opened, I started to wonder what would happen if that drop had occurred while taping the kiss between a just married couple, or a similar crucial moment, and how that works in the real world.
[Bob Zelin] “Let me assure you, one day soon – YOU will have a disk drive fail with all of your valuable media on it. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR WEDDING FOOTAGE, and when this happens, its YOUR FAULT. You must have backup.”
Ok, but we’re talking about different things here. If I have a wedding that I’m charging, let’s say, $1200 for, I will make sure that I burn the source footage to a couple of blu-ray discs as well as copy it to an external drive that I will keep disconnected from the computer. That means an initial investment in a Blu-ray burner, discs, and an external drive, which are paid off with the first wedding. So there’s a difference between losing all the footage from an event because you were not careful enough to make a backup and then a virus formatted your hard drive and you lost it all, as opposed to having a drop out in a just opened tape of good quality that happened in a crucial moment of the event. Let’s say you are cheap and keep using the same tape over and over for different events. If then you have drops in the footage then it’s your fault for being careless.
Still, I see your point and everybody else’s, the customer will not give a damn if it’s really your fault or the technology’s, even if you did your best. I know I would be really pissed off if I hire a guy to video tape my daughter’s school play and there’s a second missing right when she is doing her part. Knowing about how technology works I probably would understand it, if I know that he used a brand new tape of good quality, but I know most people don’t care about hearing about the technological shortcomings of HDV, or the tape manufacturing process.
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[Bill Dewald] “And, no, you can’t write off lost business due to your waiver.”
Not sure what you mean, or maybe I didn’t express myself correctly as to the purpose of the waiver. Let’s say that you had really bad luck one day at an event and technology failed you. A tape that had a manufacturing problem and made you lose several seconds of footage. An SDHC card that had been working great but suddenly went berserk and recorded green pixels all over the picture. You explain this to the customer, but they are obviously enraged because the fact is that you were supposed to video record his daughter’s graduation speech and ten seconds or even more of it are lost forever. Even though it’s not strictly your fault, the customer makes it your fault and then sues you because he hired you to videotape an event and you didn’t deliver the most important part. Sure, later a jury can believe your testimony and rule in your favor, but by then you’ve been though a nightmare and you’re in debt with a lawyer.
Sounds drastic, but everything can happen.
[Bill Dewald] “Here’s what you do – bid on jobs that you can confidently execute with your given level of skill and equipment. In time, that list will grow. Don’t bite off more than you can chew – in business, your reputation is your livelihood.”
That’s a good rule to work by, but it’s not what I was asking. You bid on jobs that you can confidently etc etc, as long as the equipment behaves as it should and doesn’t fail. My point is, what happens when the worst happens and you have to face an irate customer. Wouldn’t it be safer to briefly explain these things to the customer beforehand and be covered in case the worse happens?
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[walter biscardi] “I have never heard of anything like this. I believe this is why most wedding videographers work in pairs so there is a cross-roll. That’s how I’ve always handled live events. We either have two cameras or multiple tape decks so there is always a cross-roll tape somewhere.”
Right, but that’s a matter of budget for the groom and the bride. Hiring a two people team to video a wedding will obviously be more expensive than hiring one guy. And besides the drop outs there’s the other stuff, like the length of the tape, SDHC card and/or battery. My question is more directed towards the beginner level event videographer who has the basic elements, but not much more. I, for example, could buy a portable hard drive that goes well with my Sony video camera, the HVR-DR60, which as of now is $1400, slightly less than what I just spent on my camera. But it’s going to be a long time before I can afford something like that.
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[Steve Rhoden] “Maybe another issue that needs to be ironed out.”
I think Sony Creative Software needs to be ironed out. I just installed 8.0c and it does smart-render to the final file. So what’s the point of having paid Microsoft $11 for the 64 bit Vista DVD and gone through the long process of converting my system to 64 bit when now I have to keep using the same old chock full of bugs 8.0c? Simply pathetic.
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[Mark Suszko] “At the risk of scratching open a healing wound, I can think of one area where he might be able to ‘write off’ the hours, though not necesarily in IRS terms; If it was donated to a political campaign or organization under the heading, “In-Kind Contribution”.”
That’s the term my organization used for it, and I think that’s what it says on the form they gave me. Today I’m home sick, but hopefully tomorrow I will go back and get the form and see.
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Finally we’re getting to something productive, so thank you Mike, and also David. Mike, I’m not rude to people trying to help me, in any case Terence was rude and twisting my post, so I had to address that. I don’t have a problem with any of the other posters in this thread, and I appreciate your advice.
You bring some interesting points.
[Mike Smith] “As a beginner, an hourly rate is tricky concept: as you are learning on the job, what proportion of your hours spent are truly and fairly chargeable? Would you pay a carpenter to learn how to perform his (her) trade, on your time? You’ll want to balance out an appropriate “pro” rate with the extra time you are spending – or your client will want to.Or more directly, if one person takes 2 days to edit 2 hours of material into a polished 5 minutes, and another person takes 30 days to do the same thing, can the person who takes longer expect to charge more and keep customers coming back?”
I suppose that, as in any other business, you start by charging less than others in part because you’re not among the best or fastest in your trade. Of course if it takes a person 30 days to do what a highly experienced person does in 2 days I think probably that person is not in the right profession. But yes, let’s say what took me about 50 hours, an experienced videographer could’ve done in 40, but the experienced one would’ve charged so much more either per hour or for the full project that in the end the customer would’ve paid a lot less for my work, if it would have been a paid job and not a donation.
One question that arises from this is, what happens when instead of charging the customer an hourly rate you mutually agree to set up a price up front, then you request either one third or half of the payment up front, but then the customer changes or adds new content to the project, or changes their mind about what has to be included and what not? How does that work exactly if you already set up a price for the whole project? Does it have to show somewhere in the contract that if the customer introduces changes that will cause an increase in either videotaping or editing time, then he will have to pay more? I would think this is pretty obvious, but I would like to know how it works in the real world.
Thanks
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Whatever, dude. Even if what you say is the way it is, you’re a prick for being offensive towards someone who simply asked how much to value his services because he doesn’t have the experience to do so. I don’t even care to waste time responding to your rude comments anymore, and I’m glad I do not work with you or know you personally.
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[David Roth Weiss] “Rates vary all over the country and by experience and equipment, so no one can give you exact amounts. However, a day rate between $350 to $550 seems about right for a person who has has not yet established themselves.”
Well, that’s a start. At least it’s a helpful post. When you say day rate, how many hours would you include in that rate? I’m trying to determine what would be a proper hourly rate for a beginner.