Delivering b-roll

QuickHitRecord

QuickHitRecord

New member
When preparing footage to deliver to a client, do you go through your footage and cut everything where the focus was missed or framing was off or nothing interesting happened? Or do you just send over raw files, straight out of camera? I have heard of people doing both. Curious to hear what everyone's reasoning is on this.
 
If I have to provide the footage (and not hand it off), I have done this since day 1 and have never charged a single penny more for it.

Fellow associates usually thought I was nuts (and rightfully so as it sometimes took me many hours for some shoots), but it was a business decision that paid off.

Not only because it made me look better, but I actually took the time to make people free 2-3 minute edits (as I was cleaning everything up) from what we had in this footage and what I knew about the project, which most of the time also provided me the opportunity to be the editor on the project after they were so excited about what they saw.
 
Agree with NorBro.

Ever had 100 people say something nice about you, and one person insult you? Which one do you remember more? We have a tendency to cling to the negative.

So, I cut out my errors and crap shots. The last thing I want is a client looking through all my mistakes and being surprised at how many bad or messed up shots there are, even if its only several. And haven't we all felt the frustration of messing up what would have been a perfect shot? Last thing I want is someone feeling that towards me.

Besides, depending on your arrangement, you could use the footage for your reel - so you've done the first pass of culling. Or for stock footage, depending on your contract. And aren't you curious to review how you did anyway? I'm usually excited to look through my stuff. This clean up takes some time, but it's extremely easy and usually at least a little entertaining to take a peek at your work. So grab a beer, throw on some music or background TV/YouTube, and run through it while its fresh.

I've also done the "here's some selects from the piece, or a quick sample" when delivering which has had two effects: one, safeguarding against someone mistreating your footage. I've delivered footage where someone screwed up the color correction with their knowledge of vlog, or didn't bother to put a power mask on something to make it look substantially better, etc. two, and tied to the first, becoming an editor for them as NorBro said. Doing this has occasionally begged the question why their editor was getting worse results with the footage than on my quick mockup, and I netted some more work.

Also, because of this and depending on your situation/client, you can account for this in your rate. I decided to charge more for shoots where I wasn't the editor, but that of course looks odd to charge MORE if someone hires you only to shoot, so instead, I set my day rate higher and then added an in-house discount per day if I am also the editor (I can take this mention off if I don't want to be the editor for a project, or big the project accordingly for what competition is budget wise). A little unconventional and YMMV depending on who your clients are, but it's an idea to help alleviate the few extra hours this will take.
 
The safeguarding is such an excellent point to mention.

99% of the time I shot LOG and delivered LOG, but I always made sure my sample edits were also color graded so they saw at least some color.

It was always thoroughly explained in the e-mail(s)/phone, but I felt like that was never enough.

[And I make sure to check Vimeo's analytics that they watched it. lol]
 
Lol NorBro, yup. I'd send the specific instructions on LUTs etc. And then I'd still see this AWFUL color grade, like the editor still didn't know what to do with it.
 
Thanks for the responses. I have always done it in the past for the reasons above. And now that I think of it, in some instances I have been able to leverage it into some editing work. Just wanted to take the temperature and see if I was in the minority. Occasionally, I produce out-of-state shoots for clients and I usually just get the raw files, so I was beginning to think that I was. I'm currently sitting on about four hours of footage from a doc shoot yesterday, so it seemed as good a time as any to take the temperature of the room. ; )
 
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If it's part of the deal I give them every bit of footages shot - BUT - 'every' does not include the waving around shots, the test zooms, the focus experiments, the hunt and peck looking around stuff, and anything that a video non-expert would consider as bad camerawork. One client said they were disappointed so much of my material was blurry or badly exposed and I was confused till I realised they were including all the shots never intended to be used as production material. So now, they get nothing that isn't stable and solid. It doesn't take long to top and tail sections so they might well be useless, but are quality useless, if you see what I mean. They can then have out of the camera quality material if that is what the deal is. I often let cameras run and I'll chop the static stuff out - and I also do this with the audio up, because often people behind the camera make comments that are best not shared. I remember well a member of client staff answering my question about the CEO's unusual headgear with "he always wears it, makes him look a right twat" Good job I noticed.
 
paulears said:
If it's part of the deal I give them every bit of footages shot - BUT - 'every' does not include the waving around shots, the test zooms, the focus experiments, the hunt and peck looking around stuff, and anything that a video non-expert would consider as bad camerawork. One client said they were disappointed so much of my material was blurry or badly exposed and I was confused till I realised they were including all the shots never intended to be used as production material.
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Oh god, if I was an editor I would hate to get your footage after you just rolled and rolled and rolled. I'm curious to hear why you'd even want roll on that nonsense in the first place? Focusing? Framing? Setting exposure? Why are you rolling on that? Why are you wasting your time cleaning it up in post? Nobody wants to sift through all that garbage in post, let alone have to archive and backup tons of useless data. Storage is cheap but it ain't free. My B-roll already looks like a rough cut right out of the camera because I treat video as I would treat film stock and I only roll when the shot is ready. Sure, there will still be some blown shots and a lot of rough edges at the heads and tails, but 90% is solid stuff. That is what a client expects to see in raw footage -- thus justifing the scolding you got from them. I hope you took it as a learning moment. Every camera has pause button and it should be used all the time. With most of my Sony cameras, the Last Clip Delete button is a great tool to have. Really bad stuff just disappears as if it never even happened. For anyone who is shooting with discipline, a rough edit before delivery should not be necessary and it just a waste of YOUR time. Time that could be better spent actually earning more money someplace else.
 
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Wow...this is crazy to me.

As an editor, if someone shoots footage for me i want to see EVERY frame that was shot...EVERY frame. That is my job as the editor to sift through the footage and determine what lives and what doesn't. I do not want a shooter giving me a selects reel. There probably isn't an piece that i've cut where i haven't found some little nugget(s) that you wouldn't think ended up in the piece...but did. You need to see that stuff to find it. Is it a pain in the ass at times to scrub through a shit ton of footage...yes, but part of the job in my opinion.
 
I think everyone would definitely see your point about your own perspective, but the people here are also providing the footage so they have different ulterior motives.

It really depends on the footage: When I do it, I understand to leave in certain content even if the operation is questionable - maybe something out-of-focus and shaky - because that's all there is and you never know what they might do with it like maybe putting on a blur filter over the entire clip and just using the audio.

But there are other times when you might accidentally hit record and you don't want your client seeing a shot of your feet for 2 minutes as you walk around with the camera, or a shot of the wall when you were testing something, etc.

It's moot as most people don't care...they just hand over everything and go home.
 
NorBro said:
But there are other times when you might accidentally hit record and you don't want your client seeing a shot of your feet for 2 minutes as you walk around with the camera, or a shot of the wall when you were testing something, etc.
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For that once in a hundred shoots type of accident, you just delete the clip from the card right onboard the camera as soon as you realize the error. Fixed. You don't take all the footage into post and trim everything you shot as a routine order of business. It is not that hard to deliver fairly clean b-roll. In the old days of shooting on tape or film stock the kind of sloppiness being talked about here as a routine way of shooting would never be tolerated. And it's still not acceptable now, in my opinion, because storage isn't free and anything that wastes time in post is money lost one way or another.
 
Doug Jensen said:
For that once in a hundred shoots type of accident, you just delete the clip from the card right onboard the camera as soon as you realize the error. Fixed. You don't take all the footage into post and trim everything you shot as a routine order of business. It is not that hard to deliver fairly clean b-roll. In the old days of shooting on tape or film stock the kind of sloppiness being talked about here as a routine way of shooting would never be tolerated. And it's still not acceptable now, in my opinion, because storage isn't free and anything that wastes time in post is money lost one way or another.
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Everyone knows that. Because as you mentioned that can be a once in a hundred shoots type of accident.

BUT not everyone works like Doug or has Doug's brain, and people have different production circumstances and business relationships.

Personally, I make it my routine order of business because it's not always about money and going through my footage and learning from the work is just as rewarding, even if it's perfectly perfect and ready as a final product straight from the card.
 
NorBro said:
. . . going through my footage and learning from the work is just as rewarding, even if it's perfectly perfect and ready as a final product straight from the card.
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Slightly off topic, but one thing I love about my Z750 is that I can record 1080p proxy files to an SD card while the main files are being recorded to the SxS card -- that might leave my hands the second it comes out of the camera. I can even roll on the proxy card without rolling on the SxS card when I want to. If you want to be able to review your footage at your own leisure (I like doing that too), this is a great way to be able to have a copy of almost everything without anyone being the wiser.
 
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ha, I would hope most people know that's possible to do in cameras...

But the 'last clip delete' function (and I said this in another thread when you brought it up a few months ago) is such an excellent feature and should be in every single camera ever made. And it's much easier than putting a camera in its playback mode and possibly delete the wrong clip/take out of multiple bad clips/takes within a short period of time.

I guess you can also mark bad takes and then delete them, but still not as good as 'last clip delete'.
 
Interesting on the takes on this. Most of my stuff is centred on entertainment, and it's quite common to have maybe 15 minutes the audience side of a safety curtain, or tab set, just in case. Most times the camera op will get to the camera in plenty of time, but occasionally - and admittedly not remotely common - pre-show things happen that are worth ensuring they get shot. So my solution is to get them recording early. Often this means people walking in front of the cameras, and sometimes standing there sorting seating issue, often with the camera audio recording what they say. I might have a camera in the wings and I certainly will want these private areas closely controlled before that footage leaves me to go to a client. Editors understand framing and other things like focus checks, but again, clients don't. If I'm doing something for a broadcaster who WILL have a proper editor, then I'll be happy to give them everything, and on these types of shoots I'll work more orthodoxly - starting and stopping the camera(s) normally - but for my own shot and edited products, I'll often leave the camera running just in case something gets captured accidentally. I'd have to think and view the material before I sent it to an external destination.

I did one a couple of years back where we were waiting for a machine to enter a factory for the first time. What should have been a 3 minute process turned in to over 3 hours worth of "it's coming" - "no, sorry, it's jammed again"

This was going to the client and then to their agency who were editing it. I removed most of it before it went.
 
paulears said:
I did one a couple of years back where we were waiting for a machine to enter a factory for the first time. What should have been a 3 minute process turned in to over 3 hours worth of "it's coming" - "no, sorry, it's jammed again
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Picture Cache to the rescue.
 
There is one situation where I do pre-edit the footage prior to turning over to a client. When I'm shooting a rocket launch I will have as many as 5-6 cameras covering it, but only actually operating one or two of them, so I have to start the lock-down cameras rolling a minute or two before liftoff. When those cameras are rolling at 120 fps in 4K I've already rolled off 5-10 minutes of footage before anything even happens in the frame. And then it might be 5-10 minutes after launch before I can turn off recording. That is another 20 - 30 minutes of raw footage for each camera where there is really only about 4-5 minutes of actual footage in the middle that that anyone cares about. My F55 records RAW at 1.2 Gbps so that is a huge file. So I will bring the clips from those cameras into Catalyst Browse and set an in point about 10 seconds before launch, an out point about 30 seconds after the rocket clears the frame, and then have Catalyst make a clone of just that section. It doesn't re-encode or change the footage in anyway so there is no damage and all the metadata is exactly the same. It is like taking a 30' length of rope and cutting 1' out of the middle and throwing the rest away. The rope is still exactly the same, just less of it. I then trash the original clips. That saves a TON of storage space and also transfer time if I'm uploading stuff.
 
thirdyearff said:
Wow...this is crazy to me.

As an editor, if someone shoots footage for me i want to see EVERY frame that was shot...EVERY frame. That is my job as the editor to sift through the footage and determine what lives and what doesn't. I do not want a shooter giving me a selects reel. There probably isn't an piece that i've cut where i haven't found some little nugget(s) that you wouldn't think ended up in the piece...but did. You need to see that stuff to find it. Is it a pain in the ass at times to scrub through a shit ton of footage...yes, but part of the job in my opinion.
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100% this.

I think the best way to safeguard your footage is to shoot less.
 
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