Twp second wedding edit = Two days work!

[Steve Shovlar]

I just took a phone call from a bride who received her DVDs earlier that day.

"Hi Steve it's ......... here. I got the DVDs this morning and I love it".

" That's great", I replied. " Glad you like them. I think they came out very well and it was a lovely day".

" Yes but there's something I don't like. In the speeches when the best man is speaking, you can hear me swear if you listen closely. I didn't realise how much I was drinking and don't want it on there".

" To be honest I never noticed it at all and I am sure no one else will", was my response.

" No you can definately hear it and I am embarressed by it" ( the F word)

Now she was knocking it back I have to say. 4 glass of wine during the speeches and ended up mooning with one of the bridesmaids to passing yachts ( which I filmed but didn't include!)

Now as we know, cutting two seconds of footage is more work than two seconds. It has taken me nearly two days to do this change. The re-rendering out of the DVD, the re-rendering out of the blu-ray, the burning of the disks and reprinting. I explained this to the bride but she didn't have a clue what was involved.

I have made the changes as a show of goodwill and the fact that there were many girls there who might book my services in the next coule of years. ( I gave out loads of cards) I don't want to be bad mouthed by the bride for not showing willing.

So, would you have done the same? Do you have in your contract that minor alterations need to be paid for before being undertaken?

In reality this alteration should have been charged a minimum £250 as it tied up the edit suite for hours on end and has delayed me getting onto the next wedding edit.

Perhaps I should add this into my contract immediately.

Thoughts?

[Philip Howells]

Steve, you have my sympathy. We get clients to complete a 17 page questionnaire, much of which gets them to think about and decide what they want in their programmes. I believe it's the reason over 70% of our clients approve the first edit. But it can't cover every eventuality.

In your instance, had I been aware of the matter - and I think in fairness the bridesmaids corporate moon might have made me doubly aware - I'd have asked whether she wanted any "embarrassing" things in the edit or not.

To cover any extreme cases of caprice in the edit, especially over sections already approved, we have in our contract the right to charge for at our usual editing suite rate of £110.00 per hour, plus VAT. We've only had to charge it once in all the time we've been doing weddings exclusively and that was when the bride's mother insisted on changes to a section that had already been changed once for her and the change approved by her. Her reaction was one of the customer questions that will be with us for ever, "You mean we only have one chance to say if it's right?"

Finally, if we ever reached the situation where fewer clients approved the first edit I think we'd change to chowing the approval edits via HD streamers rather than author DVDs/BDs

[Vito DeFilippo]

This is exactly why we provide an online approval video of the entire edit before making the final DVDs. Others are against this idea, and you can find several discussions of the issue on DVINFO, but there are times when it's a timesaver.

[Philip Howells]

With respect I don't think I could expect my clients to judge the quality of a programme from an online version. How can they tell a stutter in streaming from a glitch on the timecode?

[Vito DeFilippo]

It's got nothing to do with judging quality of image or smooth playback. It's so they can check for errors. They are made aware that watching it on the internet will not look as good as the final DVD. We used to make a quick DVD approval, but this is easier.

Of the hundreds we've done, I don't remember even one client compaining that playback wasn't smooth.

[Philip Howells]

I'm not questioning what satisfies your market Vito, merely stating that my market expects to see the quality they are buying and would not be satisfied with an online version, nor would I expect them to be.

In any case, presumably you will still have the time taken in producing the streaming version to account for; my suggestion of showing the clients the edit from an HD streamer uses the .MPG files we're producing anyway.

But hey, what works for you.....

[Vito DeFilippo]

Oh, I missed that suggestion in your first post. What do you mean by an HD streamer? Is that basically a higher res online stream?

[Philip Howells]

It's a little black box that converts mpg files on a HDD to a 1080p stream at an HDMI socket. We use two to show our programmes at wedding fairs - easy, small, quick and inexpensive. Ours are the first models by Western Digital though I believe there are other brands now. If I was in the situation Steve described I think I'd use one of them to show the programme at approval time, though it does mean that if you show the programmes in the clients' homes they have to have a TV with an HDMI input.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

I actually have a clause in my contract which says all the edit choices are solely mine but if the bride wants to be "picky" then she is more than welcome to sit down with me and go thru the footage with me, second by second (at, of course, $110 per hour) I did that after a bride back in 2008 wanted just about everything re-edited .. "A strand of hair has fallen across my forehead..cut that out...my husband is touching his nose..I don't like that" It took 8 hours straight just identifying and re-rendering each clip AND it wasn't in my contract in those days either!!

I normally edit anything out that might cause embarassment later and brides usually accept and appreciate that!! I think, despite the time involved, I would have also redone the swearing bit just so the bride never had something bad to say about my services!!

My brides will accept the first edit probably 99 times out of a hundred also because I do spend a fair amount of pre-wedding time with them...I guess it's hard to remember at the time but IF I had noticed the foul mouth I probably would have asked her whether I can remove it or not or pre-edit time give her a quick phone call??

I assume she is happy now????

Chris

[Denny Lajeunesse]

Here's what I do (and not just for weddings). I put up a copy on Exposure room. Passworded and with the option to allow downloads turned OFF.

Client then previews the copy and then I burn to DVD or whatever.

[Ben Longden]

Back on thread.... if there is a problem like the bride suggested, I'd do the first one for free, especially as she liked everything else.

But, if they want recut after recut, then an hourly rate plus materials would be fair.

One visit to the edit suite soon sorts them out, once they see the work that goes into it.

Ben