Do I charge for this?

[Kevin Randolph]

I know this should probably be posted in "Taking Care of Business," but I know that this part of the board gets more traffic, so here goes...

I got hired to edit together a spot for a local company. There was Voice Over work to be done, so naturally I offered up my services to record it and to get my usual Voice Over guy to do it. I played a demo of previous voice over work for the guy I'm working with - a marketing guy - and he said to go ahead.

So now the marketing guy plays a draft of the spot for the actual client and he doesn't care for the quality of the Voice Over - "Sounds too old." So they're going to have another guy do the Voice Over.

I know the client has the final say, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but do I still bill the marketing guy for the recording time?

Any input would be helpful...

Thanks,
Kevin

[Mark Bournes]

Kevin, It's purely up to you, Not sure how much time you spent recording?
I do a "scratch" vo for 1 show, and I do not charge for it, "helping out a friend of mine" It only takes me 5-10 minutes to do it so I do it as a favor. However for another show which my vo is used I do charge for it. So ultimately it's up to you. In this case depending on time, if it was quick I wouldn't charge him for it. If it took you an hour or so then maybe you should charge him something.

[Kevin Randolph]

My voice over guy is really quite the perfectionist and doesn't like to stop until he thinks that he's nailed it. So we had done about 30 takes over about two hours. Then I noticed that the copy had a typo. The name of the company was put in the copy, by the marketing guy, wrong. My Voice Over guy and I went to dinner, came back and put about another 15 takes on tape in about an hour. So I guess that it was about three hours total recording time.

[Chris Hurd]

Moved from Open DV to Taking Care of Business.

[Scott Anderson]

It depend on the circumstances of who's in charge. If the "marketing guy" is your client, then yes, you should charge. He, after all, gave you the go-ahead to do the work after hearing a sample.

If, however, you feel that you should have run the v/o demo past the "actual client" before recording it, then no - you've just got to eat that time.

If the marketing guy couldn't reach the actual client in time, or made a judgment call to okay the voice talent before clearing it with the client, then it's his mistake and he should pay for it.

I always build in reasonable revisions into a job, such as a second-draft re-edit, or tweaking to the graphics/logos, but this is a bit of a different situation. You've basically sub-contacted with the talent to do work, based on the go-ahead from the marketing guy. It seems to me that one way or the other, the voice talent needs to be paid for his time.

If you've made a reasonable effort to clear a creative decision with the client, then the client changes their mind, that falls outside the bounds of reasonable revisions, and additional costs will occur. I recently had a PSA that was completely approved, mastered to tape for broadcast and duplicated on DVD, then the client decided to add multiple additional logos to a splash screen. Should I go back to the dupe house and ask for another run for free because of the clients late change? Of course not. Should you scramble for a new vo talent to do the job for free because the client wants a revision? Good luck.

It's up to you, of course to give away or discount your own services in the name of goodwill, but I would never short change someone who did work on my behalf.

I would approach it this way: If you feel on shaky ground about this, offer your own time free for the recording, but insist that the talent be paid.

EDIT: after re-reading your posts, it seems the issue is your own time, not the talent. Again, it all comes down to if the marketing guy was the one to clear you to do the work. If he was, then you should get paid for your time.

[Kevin Randolph]

Thanks for the reply Scott. I guess the whole thing is a series of sub-contracting and I think that is what has got me wondering about what to charge. I am use to dealing with the actual client myself. But in this case the marketing guy is my client, and I sub-contracted with the voice over guy.

I definately think that the voice over guy gets paid for his time. He was asked to do a job, based on his sample, and he did it. End of story. So reguardless of what I get paid, he'll get his share.

I have never even seen the "actual client," so for me the marketing guy is my client. As far as I knew the marketing guy had the power to make decissions. So I guess there's my answer.

Thanks for helping me think it through. I'm not sure why being a sub-contractor threw me for a loop...

Thanks,
Kevin

[Mark Kenfield]

Hi Kevin,

Having done a small amount of voice-over work myself I would say you should definitely charge for the recording you did for the client. I've done hour-long test recordings (multiple accents, cadences, intonations etc.) that haven't been used and was still paid $60 for my time.

I don't believe your client should get freebies just because they changed their mind.

Hope that helps.

[Bill Davis]

Having done well over a thousand voiceovers in my career, here are a few comments.

a.) Whenever you call someone in to do work that will financially benefit you, you need to pay them for that work. Period.

b. If you're acting as the "producer" you're assuming some risk in exchange for a financial reward elevated from a simple "worker". You need to judge your role and whether you need to eat some of the cost overrun. That's a BIG variable in stuff like this.

c. finally, that fact that your VO guy took HOURS to get a spot nailed - regardless of copy change/do-overs - tells me you're not using real talent, but just someone who does this as a sideline/lark. If I had EVER taken three hours in a studio to record a professional level VO spot track, I'd expect NEVER to have gotten a call from that producer again. The expectation for a real VO talent is that they'll zero in on the read the client wants in a handfull of takes. After that it's shading and interp and possible a quest for a take that's qualititatively superior to another good one already in the can. Dinking around for HOURS on a spot VO is totally un-professional, IMO.

For what it's worth.

[Kevin Randolph]

Thanks for your input and opinion Bill.