Client wants copy of all the footage, what do I do???

I would be very cautious about being an A-hole with regards to your clients requests.
It's your choice:

Scenario A
You play hardball, tell them that you own the footage and they can't have it.

Scenario B
You play hardball, tell them that you own the footage and they can have it for a buy out price.

Scenario C
Give them the footage and tell them that you hope to work with them again some day.

With scenarios A & B there's absolutely no chance that this client will ever work with you again, none. You're labeled as the hard a$$ that held back their footage despite being paid for the gig. Don't expect this client to recommend your services to any of their friends. Word of mouth can both help and hurt a business.

With scenario C there's an outside chance that the client could return. Chances are they are giving the footage to cousin Timmy because he thinks he can edit and he's free. It may turn out that Timmy can edit rather well so you've lost that business. But maybe Timmy stinks at editing and the end result is less than satisfying. In which case your client comes back to have the project edited properly. There's also no reason for the client to speak poorly of your company.

From reading other posts here it looks like scratchpatchfilms is just starting to get a foothold. From a start up position the last thing you want to do is toss out clients or soil your reputation.
 
If your client has paid you the agreed upon sum, and there was no prior agreement that you own the tapes, then they do and you must give them to them. It's their problem to figure out how to play them, if they ever do. Otherwise, it's simply their property.

You should ask them for permission to keep a full or partial copy for yourself for demonstration (reel) purposes only. Most people won't have a problem with that, but some more paranoid types will.

Under the above circumstances, the key thing to remember is that the tapes belong to them, not you.

I encounter this situation daily, mainly with audio tapes and files from my recording studio business. The more typical problem for me is what to do with tapes/files people simply leave and forget about. After a project is done, most people will just let the source materials sit...forever. I've found that asking people to collect them doesn't work. If I hired someone to make calls and keep after people until they pick up their tapes it would be a full time position.

So...I don't. Unfinished projects get special treatment, but finished ones often don't. With audio tapes particularly, which are relatively bulky (and mostly not being used anymore), after a *very* reasonable time, like about 8-10 years, if no one asks for them they go into the trash. Yes, you read that right...

Strange thing, no?
 
Shows you what I know! I have only done corporate work, and work on spec. So the idea of handing over materials at the end of the shoot is new, and quite foreign to me. But if that is industry accepted practice, as it seems to be, then I understand your issue, and I learned something.

As to what they are paying you for, they are paying you labor costs to film, paying for you to light, paying you to record sound (if you did that), paying you to edit, paying you to produce a final.

As for how to give them several tapes worth of data, you've gotten some good advice. I master to full size DV. That's 4 tapes worth if you get the 276 minute tapes like I do.

Best of luck with your dilemna and solution.


scratchpatchfilms said:
they paid me to film them, so i don't see why it's wrong for me to provide them with the original footage. otherwise, what are they paying for?

they paid an additional fee for me to edit that footage... i'm not gonna put a watermark on it...

but i was just wondering if giving them dv tapes is a normal thing to do, considering that unless they have a video camera to put them in, these tapes would be useless!
Click to expand...
 
3 hours of footage = 3 high quality DVDs.
Not as big a deal as you seem to think.
Cinemacraft Encoder can author the entire footage in under 3 hours.
 
thank you all for your tips on this subject!! i'm surprised how many people had something to say.

the band says they are cool with me giving the 3 mini dv tapes, so it's all good!!!

that was easy. :)
 
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