Shooting Only - Clients Edit

[Katie Fasel]

We recently got a request for a wedding this fall where the clients wanted to know if they can edit the footage themselves. They basically want to book us for the ceremony and reception and then get the footage. This is not something we've done before, and not something I prefer to do at all, but just wondering if anyone out there does?

We do give the option to buy all the original footage, once the edit is done for those who want to see what we've cut out, but we price it ridiculously high so that people are less inclined to do so. If we do this, wondering what people might suggest as to charging for it...I'm mostly inclined to just say "no" knowing that it would basically mean giving up copyright, etc...but just thought I would see what others' thoughts were.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Katie,

Originally Posted by Katie Fasel

This is not something we've done before, and not something I prefer to do at all...

What is your reasoning?

[Louis Maddalena]

I've done it.. I maintained copyright though and only gave them limited rights to edit their footage and to display it privately.. I charged $900 for the day of shooting and delivered all the footage to them on a drive later that week.

[Nigel Barker]

I think that the only issue with agreeing to give all the footage is some of it maybe even a lot of it will look like crap. It was very reassuring for me a while ago that Vincent Laforet's posted on his blog raw unedited clips from a project & they were all just as rough around the edges as mine i.e. wobbles at beginning or end of a clip, focus off then nails it then out of focus again. In fact pretty much all the stuff that gets left out of the finished edit. If the clients appreciate that raw footage can be very raw then that is OK but if they think that all they need to do is drop all the clips into iMovie & export to a DVD then they may be very unsatisfied with what they get.

[Jim Snow]

Nigel, I completely agree with your point. Clients who aren't professional editors do not know how to look at raw footage. As a result, the chances are 100 percent that your work will be criticized if not outright slammed when a client sees it. The other issue I have with this is that selling only the raw footage takes the 'leverage' out of your work. The bottom line is that you will be criticized for your work and get paid next to nothing for it!

Some of the best videograpers take a lot of chances to get some really good footage. I'm talking about those shots that turn out badly most of the time but when you get a good shot, it can be spectacular. Your client won't understand that concept. They will just look at the clips that didn't work out and roundly criticize you for it. No thank you very much!!

[John Knight]

Have done it once. Never again. Endless problems with explaining codecs, why I did this, why I did that. You become their defacto 'editor on call' when anything needs explaining.

Do it only if really really desparate for cash... hand over copyright with it, and get a written agreement that (a) your good name isn't attached to it and (b) no editing support is offered.

[Don Bloom]

My reason for not offering RAW footage only and letting them edit is generally they have no idea how to edit and generally do a pretty bad job but when the show it to their friends and the friends aren't smiling but ask "hey, who shot your wedding?" the couple answers "Oh, (insert your name here)" and then the friends think (thought bubble here) "No way in hell would we use that guy!"BAM! More business lost because then go go out for an evening with some other friends who are getting married and they talk about going to the other friends house and watching their wedding video which was terrible, see I told you we don't need to waste the money on video, and how it was (insert your name here) who did the job so now you just lost another potential client. And no the original couple never told anyone that they took perfectly good footage and screwed the pooch when they triedto edit it. Trust me that will never come up in the conversation.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Katie

I did it just once too and like most others never again!!! The clients really have no idea what raw footage is!!! I take one camera at the reception and do a round the tables session.. to make editing easier for me I shoot all the tables in one clip and as I move from table to table I point the cam at the floor which means as soon as I see downward motion on the footage a cut is coming up...might seem silly but I can edit say, 12 tables very quickly this way.....NOW the client had the footage and came back to me and said "This is total rubbish..half the time you are filming the carpet!!!"

If you are going to submit to raw footage then rather give them "trimmed" footage...at least take out the wobbly bits and any out of focus shots before handing it over!!!

I do find that the magic words "Panasonic AVCHD MTS files" usually scare them off nicely too!!!! Give them a sample camera file and see if they can actually read it on their computer..if they can't you might also be wasting even more time transcoding footage into something their computer can handle!!

Chris

[Katie Fasel]

Wow, thank you for all the opinions...they have further solidified my inclination to just say NO.

I have only had a few past clients ask me for raw footage after the edited version was presented to them...one was an insane mother of the groom, who we happen to be friends with personally, but she insisted she wanted to hear EVERY bit of audio from every part of the day...no matter how choppy it was or how horrible it sounded at different times, because let's be honest, all of those audio bytes smashed up against one another is not nice audio!...since she was a family friend, I very carefully explained to her how we do not want this to be shown as what we do, and it does not represent our final product, and if she must have it please do not show it around to everyone she knows...before giving (selling) it to her.

The other was a young bride who simply wanted more dancing footage from her reception...as we can't include the entire amount of dancing footage in a DVD, I didn't see harm in this, and she ended up buying one tape --back when we used tapes!--she was happy with it, but in the end admitted that we had chosen the best stuff to include on the DVD.

As I said before, our prices are high to discourage this...I had one bride ask and quickly change her mind once she found out how much it was....and just as another note, purchasing the raw footage is also something we outline in our contract too...both that our footage is our property, AND if they do want to purchase it what the price it would be and that it would only be presented to them in a playable DVD, not raw file form.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hmmm. Shoot and raw footage jobs have the highest per-hour profit by far. I'll take them every time. And the comments are always positive. A recent one: "We received the drive today and been sitting watching everything for hours!!! This is fantastic!!! Thank you so so much!!!!"

[Chris Harding]

I have to agree with Joel that purely from a business POV a shoot only is highly profitable...you are essentially working for around 10 hours and just hand over the tape/cards/drive.

For interest, very early in my career (around the 80's actually!! in the VHS days when linear edits were very time consuming) I used Panasonic's MS4 camera which took full size tapes and I used to pre-shoot an optical title at the start of the tape and then shoot the wedding ..however it was shot VERY carefully almost doing "edit in camera" with no wobbly bits and I would actually re-cue the tape if I had a bum shot. At the end of the reception you just eject the cassette and hand it to the Mother of the Bride and hold out your hand to get paid!!! Excellent profit timeline!!!!

I think if I was doing a "shoot only" I would be a lot more careful with my shots and try to produce clips that were a little more carefully planned so when watched the client would have no comeback regarding wobbly bits and such !!!

Their subsequent "edit" would purely be assemble editing the clips together!! For interest how would a client be able to manage syncing a two camera shoot....maybe for a shoot only, a single camera shoot would be a more practical arrangement????

Chris

[Corey Graham]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

I think if I was doing a "shoot only" I would be a lot more careful with my shots and try to produce clips that were a little more carefully planned so when watched the client would have no comeback regarding wobbly bits and such !!!

Exactly -- if I knew that I was handing over all my raw footage, I would shoot very differently. If I'm editing it, I shoot in such a way as to make editing easier for ME, knowing that most of what I shoot will end up on the cutting room floor.

If I were asked to just shoot and hand over all the raw footage, I would be all over it. Cash money. Just have to be smart about it.

[Tim Bakland]

A great discussion -- and it's going to come up more with the increased ease of hard drive delivery, storage, etc. Sure, most clients don't have the codecs, the editing software, etc., so a transcode to a more ubiquitous quicktime is certainly necessary (and needs to be factored in to the price).

Copied first footage to client drive a couple weeks ago (in addition to regular, full edit). It was a learning experience, but not a bad experience. Since I wasn't only filming for raw delivery, I still filmed my way -- so this meant that the delivery of "raw" footage meant my spending a couple hours "trimming" and "cleaning up" (shh don't tell the clients it wasn't technically "raw"). The couple hours of trimming isn't a big deal, of course, though now I know what to charge for it and that it's not just a simple matter of importing and copying to a hard drive. (And don't forget transcodes).

If I were ONLY shooting for raw delivery (and I agree with the folks who say it's the easiest way to make half of our selling price), I'd still factor in a couple hours of trimming/cleaning time -- because I just ain't givin' folks who don't understand the process all of the footage I'd actually shoot raw.

p.s. then there's the question of color correcting, pairing with sound, etc. Another whole can of worms.

[Don Bloom]

While I stated that I don't shoot RAW footage only, (no edit--hand to client) I am first of all only talking about weddings. Corporate work is something different. Many clients I shoot for have their own editor and since mmost of the corporate stuff I do are seminars with a bit of B footage and some talking heads it's pretty simple to edit. I could probably teach my 3 year old granddaughter to do it. No nothing done. Pretty much load it, render it, burn it. weddings on the other hand, totally different. I will sell the client the RAW footage on DVD after the dvds are delivered and they have them for the appointed 14 days. then I'll burn to dvd and send them off. I DO put a disclaimer on the face of the DVDs and on the menu of the DVD that the footage is RAW as it came from the camera with no editing of any kind, to include; color/exposure correction or audio sweeting of any kind. I DO make a quick pass thru the footage and remove the floors, ceilings, belly buttons and boobs (my term for stuff you don't want anyone to see) but other than that, it is RAW from the camera. Any more work and I might as well be editing it again. No on your life, once was enough.

[Michael Simons]

Most of my work comes from word of mouth from my brides. If they are editing it, they aren't going to be pushing my services. When they post their video on Facebook, I want my name on it and that will only happen if I edit it.