DOC: Court Hell: One Filmmaker's Journey

adamr316

adamr316

Well-known member
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Contract Motion Graphic



"Think the real courts are like the ones on TV? Think again. Find out what happens when a filmmaker says, "No." to freebies and gets slapped with a lawsuit in retaliation. Will truth prevail?"

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Adam, The Filmmaker/Defendant

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Stu, The Technology Teddy-Bear™

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Featuring actual audio from the trial.

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The Plaintiff's Business


This is a DVXUser exclusive (for now). I'm calling it "beta 1.0" because it still needs more music and the audio is not mixed. Any and all feedback is much appreciated!



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County Circuit Court Building

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Protesting at the Courthouse

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Courthouse MS
 
I've had a few requests to make a condensed "ADHD version" of the documentary. So I'll definitely make one of those as well as a trailer/teaser before the official release. Part 3 coming later today...
 
Man, just my opinion but this whole documentary is a mistake.
I watched 3 parts and you even admit you told the judge you didn't deliver the products, so you lost a court case for a lousy 1600 bux.

Now to actually spend this kind of effort to create a doc that publicly defames a company that they could possibly come back and sue you again
for harming their reputation when a court found them to be in the right.

EVEN IF YOU'RE RIGHT is it really worth this?
If future clients see this doc, dont you think it could make them think "its not worth it to work with you" because it shows that youve had issues with clients in the past,
and when there is a disagreement with a client you go public with it?

Just my opinion of course, and you'll do what you want but I seriously see this thing doing way more harm to your business than good.
 
I'm sorry. I just watched the entire thing, instead of editing for a client, and I must say I'm not sure who was right. I agree it goes back to the truth the Tech Bear said communication. The one thing I know for sure is you were actually lucky your rates are so low. The amount would have been much larger if the your rates had been more inline industry standards. Although I guess it could be said that if you had asked for more money before any production had started they most likely would not have used your services and the end results would be my post count on DVXUser would be 515 not 517.

As far as critique of the actual video the story is hard to follow. I will not watch it again but if I did I may have a different opinion. Good Luck with your Bill and I agree in principle that the changes your documentary says are in the Bill are a good idea.

Now back to editing before I end up making one of these of my own.
 
Rippie said:
Man, just my opinion but this whole documentary is a mistake.
I watched 3 parts and you even admit you told the judge you didn't deliver the products, so you lost a court case for a lousy 1600 bux.

Now to actually spend this kind of effort to create a doc that publicly defames a company that they could possibly come back and sue you again
for harming their reputation when a court found them to be in the right.

EVEN IF YOU'RE RIGHT is it really worth this?
If future clients see this doc, dont you think it could make them think "its not worth it to work with you" because it shows that youve had issues with clients in the past,
and when there is a disagreement with a client you go public with it?

Just my opinion of course, and you'll do what you want but I seriously see this thing doing way more harm to your business than good.
Click to expand...

I see what you're saying. I'm actually considering getting out of this business with all the shady characters around. If you watched it you would see that I DID deliver them DVDs. The plaintiff even admitted it that they got the first, second and third films. But they were saying I never turned in the DVDs with the freebies (the slideshows). Because they hadn't given me photos they couldn't be turned in and that's also not what we agreed to. I told them I would give them DVDs with slideshows when they pay the balance for the fourth project. Again, because the owner threatened me in order to get the raw footage from me. If I would have tried to walk out of his studio a fight more than likely would have ensued. And yeah, I should have called the police.

The DVDs I told the judge I didn't give them were the ones with slideshows...what they kept calling the "final DVDs". The photos for the slideshows weren't sent until after the project deadlines (as shown by the emails) and about 20 days after the phone call one of the plaintiffs left me gushing about how much they loved the work and that the photos would be sent to me.

Since this has been posted I found out someone else who shot/edited videos for the company was screwed out of money. So they haven't changed a bit. I never mention the name of the company in the documentary, but if they want to sue me for defamation I'll gladly see them in court again and subpoena some witnesses this time around.

I have worked with at least 100 clients and have had disagreements. But none have sued me, tarnished my reputation and then won on the count of judges' incompetence. They're the ones who went public with the disagreement. I'm not going to be someone's slave and let them get away with it. Like I said after this experience I am really considering leaving this industry as a profession.
 
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kgimedia said:
I'm sorry. I just watched the entire thing, instead of editing for a client, and I must say I'm not sure who was right. I agree it goes back to the truth the Tech Bear said communication. The one thing I know for sure is you were actually lucky your rates are so low. The amount would have been much larger if the your rates had been more inline industry standards. Although I guess it could be said that if you had asked for more money before any production had started they most likely would not have used your services and the end results would be my post count on DVXUser would be 515 not 517.

As far as critique of the actual video the story is hard to follow. I will not watch it again but if I did I may have a different opinion. Good Luck with your Bill and I agree in principle that the changes your documentary says are in the Bill are a good idea.

Now back to editing before I end up making one of these of my own.
Click to expand...

LOL yeah I'm glad I got the tech teddy bear to talk because the documentary speaks to artists who are doing business. It's a big reminder to cover your ass in contracts and in communication.

The first few films were done for a low rate because they didn't have any samples to show clients. They sold me on my resume of working for national companies but they didn't have any short films that THEY produced with me. After that fourth film they were to start paying me industry rates. Obviously that never happened.

In hindsight I should have mailed the DVDs with slideshows directly to the clients. Then told the clients what was going on behind their backs (the delay was due to the company not providing me with materials and not me). But I was barred from contacting the clients per our contract. There's a lot of coulda woulda shouldas that I've lived to regret.

The thing that angered me the most though was during our first trial the judge allowed them to interrupt me over and over. I was doing a good job backing up my case with evidence until the judge allowed the plaintiffs to interrupt me. The ONE time I tried to interrupt their testimony the judge stopped me and I respectfully let them go on for 12 minutes to tell their side of the story. Ironically the "Judge Mathis Show"was interested in hearing the case and if they would have agreed to go on there and won they would have their money by now. But the outcome may have been different because it appears evidence matters more on those TV shows than it does in the real court rooms.
 
dude, i know you're only in your 20's but give it a rest. when you're forty-something, IF you have progressed both professionally and socially, you'll look back on this dead, bloated horse and say, "damn, i would've made better use of my time had i sat around playing Call of Duty instead blowing six months of my life making that horribly insipid documentary." as for fighting the "cause" in the political arena, even if your side of the story is squeaky clean (which seems suspect to me), you are a pupfish in a pond of piranhas. seriously, i'm not trying to bag on you, i'm just attempting to act as a voice of reason. give your focus a tune-up and move on.
 
gregstrange said:
dude, i know you're only in your 20's but give it a rest. when you're forty-something, IF you have progressed both professionally and socially, you'll look back on this dead, bloated horse and say, "damn, i would've made better use of my time had i sat around playing Call of Duty instead blowing six months of my life making that horribly insipid documentary." as for fighting the "cause" in the political arena, even if your side of the story is squeaky clean (which seems suspect to me), you are a pupfish in a pond of piranhas. seriously, i'm not trying to bag on you, i'm just attempting to act as a voice of reason. give your focus a tune-up and move on.
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It's cool man. You may be dead-on that 20 years from now I will look at it differently. But playing Call of Duty would not have been time better spent, LOL! It didn't take me six months to make this video. It took about 2 months of my otherwise free time to write shoot and edit. I do not take kindly to being messed with, so this video had to be made. Otherwise I may have done something not-so-legal like vandalize their property. If you ever have to go to court and have evidence ignored maybe you will feel differently.

Let's assume for a second that I am not squeeky clean, as you put it. And I said this at the end of the documentary. The ONLY thing in dispute with the case was turning over edited movies. They received all "75 GB" of raw video material. The lights and microphone was rented. They don't dispute that they were happy with the first film's edit and that a DVD was received. But they wanted to add credits 2 months after the fact. Credits that weren't available to me because they didn't get on their client to give them credits. And credits the client obviously didn't care about because they were in a rush to get their DVD for a casting call.

I have them on voicemail saying they "loved" the second film. They did not pay me to edit the fourth film. Again these are all their words not mine. The only contract/project/film that I do not have concrete proof of that was not finished to their satisfaction was the third one.

Of course I dispute that they didn't receive a DVD with what we agreed upon (an edited movie scene). They wanted me to add slideshows on these DVDs. No problem back in November 2008, slideshows are easy to edit together. I was sent the photos for film 1's slideshow two days after the film was shot. But for the second and third films I didn't receive photos until well after deadline, after they were promised to me in voicemail and email before deadline, and after we had a big argument/almost got into a fist fight. Them not sending photos is what delayed the post-production process.

They used that delay to "prove their case." What they got February 22, 2009 is what we had previously agreed upon. And it's also what they told me to bring them. "Bring us what you got." The plaintiff knew she hadn't sent me photos. So the DVDs they got for films 2 and 3 had no slideshow and no custom DVD menu. And on 2/22/2009 they got raw footage as XDCam EX files and .m2t files of the three edited films they paid for along with the rough cut of film 4. They weren't happy with the kid's interviews that we shot (because the kids were nervous and monotone) and mentioned re-shooting them but they wouldn't compensate me for my time. It's the equivalent of an actor not doing their job and when a re-shoot happens the crew won't be paid. B.S.

Those new interviews I think is what they paid the new company to shoot in addition to re-editing three of the movies and adding credits to the first. This wasn't admitted until the second trial. The company invoice doesn't mention this either I had to pull it out of the plaintiff and surprisingly she coughed up the info. It's this type of garbage that makes me wish I had a camera crew following me around. So no one can dispute what was said and what was done.

I am not going down without a fight. Maybe laying down and "taking it up the butt" would be the more socially acceptable thing to but to me that's sad. That's why bad people get away with the stuff they do. Because not enough people stand up against it. People are too much of wimps and afraid of confrontation. That's not how I was raised.

Most court stuff unless it involves murder or lost people is usually insipid. Sorry about that. This documentary was also a test run of sorts. So for future projects that are a bit more lively/broader the technical production stuff is done. But I had to get this off my chest because it was eating away at my psyche. Posting this up here was somewhat of a relief and once it's public that will give me a relatively clear head.

In the mean time I will be working on becoming a piranha. Everybody has to start somewhere. I've already contacted some judicial watch groups about the video and may be interviewing some people about issues they've had with local judges. So my one voice is tiny but collectively this school of fish (our many voices) will take on those piranhas.
 
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Just to back up what I said above, here is audio from the case, the second film's contract (to indicate the client's name) and the fourth contract to show payment was made to edit the film.

http://6dft.com/courthell/courtaudio-phonecalls.mp3 - In the context of the whole trial my defense was that they were late in sending me photos and credits for the films and DVD...that's why they weren't turned in on deadline. And I had videos on Vimeo with datestamps proving I had videos edited/completed prior to the deadline. And had they sent me the photos/credits in a timely manner like the first film the DVDs would have been to them before or on the deadline. Their counter to the argument was that before they sent the photos or credits they had to approve the edit. The audio clip disputes that they never approved the edits.

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So again four films in total. One they admit in court to being happy with. The second (the contract image shows a portion of the client's name for ID purposes) they admit in a voicemail. The fourth they didn't pay me to edit (as shown on the contract image).

Then I also shot other videos for them that they threw into the case. This is all layed out in the documentary and I won't repeat it here. All told they paid me approx. $1,658 for everything.

They sued for the small claims' max of $5,000, stating under penalty of perjury on the lawsuit particulars form that they took a loss of $3,000 from the company they hired to re-edit all the films.

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As it turns out that amount was actually a lot less.

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Notice there aren't specifics on the invoice with what services were provided, just client names. A little strange and it's why I asked them at the appeals trial what exactly the new editor was paid for (line 15): trial2transcript-023.jpg

Notice the judge tried to answer the witness' question for her. But she answered the question anyway and admitted that not only had they paid the new person to re-edit everything (except film 1) but also to shoot extra things. Not cool.
 
Is your time is worth nothing? Does it bother you that if that even if justice is ever served, nobody will really care except for you? I think a documentary is the wrong forum.

Some things aren't worth fighting over. Not worth the time.

As far as how I'd change the documentary? The problem is the subject matter of the doc. Your project is right about as interesting as watching a colon cleansing infomercial. I just don't really care and you haven't created a compelling hook. Based on what happened, you simply can't!

To me, your story plays like Little Billy Bobby stole my cookie money, and I really wanted cookies, but I couldn't buy any so I was sad! I told his dad but his dad snickered and said, "Little Billy Bobby shared one of those ill-gotten cookies with me, and it was a fine cookie." So I went home and cried. Those cookies would have been yummy!

Just move on..
 
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