How Do You Set Limits On Your Time?

J

JonathanLB

Carbonite Member
If you're doing a project for a client, in my case producing and directing a lot of the time, how do you set limitations on what is your time and what is the client's time?

NOTE: The long rant below, if you don't have time, DON'T read it, just respond to the question above. I felt better ranting and that's enough. ;)

I've been having a very difficult time with this latest project, which remains a great opportunity for me that I was happy to have, but my level of frustration by some of the corporate handling of issues or lackthereof has really frustrated me. I'm not joking when I say there were times today where I felt so frustrated that I started questioning if filmmaking is even what I want to do, or more specifically if I ever want to work with clients or maybe just start producing content instead, risky though that may be.

Basically, when we did production on this project, we took a 20-day road trip, then came back and shot for two days after that, like right after that, so in 22 days we had 0 days off at all. Just working straight through. I had a few days "off" after that, which I still worked during, at least 4 hours a day, because I had to figure out how I wanted to edit these videos and draft basically a director's editing plan, so that when I sat down with my editor I could be organized about how much time to devote to what footage, how it should be structured, etc. I did other prep work as well like software installations for this project, paperwork, e-mailing, phone calls, whatever.

Now we are several weeks into post-production and while my editor has worked very hard too, in general when he finishes work for the day with me he can go home and relax while I still have way more to do that I have to use the computer for as well. For instance, I took it upon myself to watch their back and scan every photo / video / audio release in from filming at 14 locations, which took a lot of time even on auto feed from the document scanner, just overseeing all that. I've had to spend time researching for voiceover talent. On top of that trying to coordinate all types of details with corporate about what they want. We're putting this stuff up on their Websites, too, so it's really a full service production. Now I have even been tasked, despite their numerous marketing people being paid full time, with writing up all of the voiceover text based on my knowledge (however limit that is) of their properties / industry, and some commentary given by the marketing directors. I ended up basically volunteering to do this because corporate was running so slow there was no shot at all of us finishing at June's end, when the project is due, unless I took it upon myself to write the voiceover text. Even still it will take constant work to meet that deadline, but that's mainly because of how slow they've worked and the way we've had to work around them, basically. No feedback on our projects when we had rough cuts, waiting more than a week for that, etc. Meanwhile we did other work on the project but having to work in such a roundabout, circular way slows things down measurably.

In any case, so today I'm talking to one of the corporate contacts (another problem, they haven't given me one person to talk to, but instead about 5, often giving conflicting information / advice that I have to spend time sorting out, like hearing today that apparently they want a male voiceover, even though we heard from the start female voiceover), who happens to know me personally, long story that's not really relevant, and he asks if I can do a SIX HOUR conference call on Thursday morning from 9 a.m. through 3 p.m. so that we can get feedback from about 20 people, actually I think it's exactly 20 people, about all of these videos, even though I took the initiative over the weekend to e-mail these people individually (with the blessing of the lady who was one of my main corporate contacts) and ask for the comments / changes to the videos. I told this guy that I was unavailable after 1 p.m. on Thursday because a friend is coming to town for less than 48 hours, Thursday at 2 p.m. basically until Saturday at 1 p.m. This friend is in med school and I rarely see him, and made these plans long ago as it's the only week he has free for a long time. I knew I'd be busy with this project but I told him if it was for two days, that'd be fine, and we'd work around it. This guy was basically acting like how dare I have any sort of a personal life, I should focus on my work (!) and be there for their every demand, at any hour of the day or night, despite the fact they know we usually work until late at night on this project and then I work more until 2, 3, 4 a.m. They seem to have this impression that because they paid me, even though the pay wasn't what I consider that great all things considered (like having no life for two months, using $100,000 in my equipment to make this project happen, etc. etc.), they OWN me for all of June.

The question is, how can you prevent something like this? I'll be the first to admit I'm having a terrible time right now having any sort of balance in my life. I cannot even get on a regular workout schedule because I don't feel that I have any real free time where I'm not working on this or thinking about it, I have a few minutes here or there like right now I'm giving up sleep to rant here, but that's it. I don't, by the way, think that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is for me, I fully expect to and enjoy working longer hours and weeks, but you know... I think 60-70 hours a week should be enough, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to want to have SOME time for myself to at least keep myself healthy and in shape. I just can't do this type of thing over and over or I'll burn out at this rate, but working with bands, corporations, etc., it's the SAME thing every time so far. I'm getting so exhausted by it. Everyone, first of all, thinks they're an expert because they have two eyes and ears, so that makes them qualified to tell you something you did doesn't work even though you know what you did makes perfect sense and really does work, in fact you love it and you don't even have to care about the project! That has happened to me on this, one of the videos they are making complaints about I think is so spot-on that even though it's just a "boring" corporate video I love what we did with it. Their suggestions make no sense, and to a large extent I think if they're not going to give me the creative control to do my job they shouldn't have hired me as a director. They seem to actually think I'm just a laborer, that they've paid me more or less to follow their orders, despite not usually having any idea what they want themselves (so I do my own thing and try to play guessing games), but when they see something I do it's like they all of the sudden have these opinions about it that aren't even backed up by facts.

By the way, what makes this situation funnier is that (again don't ask) I know the president and owner, and he's supporting what I do and has been the only real supporter. At times I feel like the corporate guys are actively working against what I'm trying to accomplish, where I'm trying to make the owner happy because he's the one paying for it. So in some senses my attitude is like screw these corporate guys, what do I care what they think, if the owner who paid for it likes what I'm doing I'm just going to do it. It's the weirdest situation I swear...
 
I bill by the hour. This fixes all.
In select cases where I offer a flat bid for a turn-key production, I know to round up on time when constructing my bid because I know I'll have to eat if if I misbid the gig. You'll get better at guaging this as time goes on. Bid low only on the things you feel you can utilize later on. Bid high on the bill-payers.
 
As grinner said, I think billing by the hour would be the best way to sort through this. If they want to occupy all your time, they should have to pay for it.

Also, what kind of corporate video was it? What did you film for the 20 days you were away?
 
Basically we went to 7 states to film 14 virtual tour videos, and from the start of this project I figured the organization was going to be a major problem.

I think my main issue with this project is how much has been expected of me when nobody even twenty years older than me could possibly be an expert at all of this. Let me give you an example...

Before the projected started, we were asked if we could gather still photos as well, like that's no big deal as an additional service. First, I really take my work seriously and want to be professional, so when I hear still photos I think professional photography. I have a friend who is a semi-pro, he's studied under some of the best nature photographers around, and he's been doing photography as a hobby for many, many years. He takes amazing photos but has spent a lifetime learning his craft. Now my editor, who came along on the trip as a grip essentially and to manage data, is an amateur photographer with pro equipment, so I was able to go ahead with this demand but it required us buying Adobe Lightroom to do the photo work we wanted quickly and efficiently, and I put that into the budget under post-production work. No problem...

Next, though, I had to explain to them that you cannot just go around recording people without their permission in these properties, you'll need photo / video / audio releases. They have a legal firm they use, obviously, but I had to send them the forms I've been using. They modified them a bit for their purposes, which wasn't necessary but whatever. So I told them to send these release forms, one for employees and one for residents, to each of the communities and seek signatures in advance (these are elderly residents, so I wanted to avoid any hassles on the days of our filming). Instead, the first 8 properties claimed not to have even received any forms! Of course, being a well-prepared producer, I had plenty of copies on-hand in my briefcase and just had each property make copies and we took care of them on-site or we had them write down names and get signatures later, but get verbal agreements before we shot anything. It worked out ok but I felt like why am I the one, as a film producer, who is watching THEIR backs legally? It's really not my job! It's above and beyond the call of duty to care that much about your clients' potential issues down the road. But I aim to please.

I won't go into all of the communication errors and general lack of organization at some places when we showed up (nobody to follow us around and make sure rooms were as they wanted them, make sure we filmed what they wanted, etc., we were left to our own devices much of the time so I even had to act as production designer or clean up their rooms before we shot them!).

Now, I've waited 7-10 days for feedback from the marketing staff at each property about the highlights of their communities, so that we could try to emphasize whatever is most important. Because they were so late on that information, and basically unresponsive to many requests for quick action because they gave us a deadline of the end of June, despite not helping us get there (which is really the problem, because they know their business, we don't know their business, so to make us guess along the way will make the projects weaker than they would be with more input).

So, and this is the real kicker and the reason I'm up at 4:25 a.m. despite having a conference call at 9 a.m. (I am taking a break from having worked the last 3 hours now, I got a bit of a nap in from 11 to 1 a.m., hehe), because of there being so much confusion about the voiceover text, *I* am writing all of the voiceovers! This is clearly a marketing person's job because I've spent one day at each of these properties basically, they work there full-time, so what I've done is take what I know from filming and visiting, what I know about the company as a whole, and the 5 points that the marketing department people have sent me finally about their properties, and written up voiceover text for each video. This has taken an immense amount of time because I have had to start with a sort of rough template, rewrite for the property (each one offers different services slightly or has something unique), then rewrite again for timing, then make notes of how the videos could be changed to improve the pacing with the voiceover, etc. It has taken a few all-nighters and not much sleep this week to get this done. But it was basically this -- 1) Be completely unable to deliver the project on time because corporate would never have their voiceover text ready, or 2) Do it myself and guarantee project completion on time and on budget, which is what I go for with my work.

The other problem I knew would happen if I let them do the voiceover text, because they aren't very organized, is they would all write completely different verbiage and come up with things that didn't work at all when looking at the whole body of work. That's why I suggested that each marketing department write their voiceover text, send it to the head of marketing at corporate, and have her rewrite them to conform them to the standard. I went one step beyond that, too -- I wrote a sample voiceover showing the structure and verbiage that would make the voiceovers effective, and told them what I needed from them is to write the voiceovers specifically because they know the most details and facts that I really wouldn't know.

Instead, that sample voiceover text (I had a bad feeling about this when I wrote it) became the impetus for them figuring I should just do it, because they were impressed with what I had and too slow moving to get anything done themselves, and they knew it. I have a background in professional writing with two published books as well, and I've taken writing for journalism, technical writing, creative writing, and all kinds of other classes besides being mostly self-taught, so certainly it's within my realm of expertise but it's outside of the scope of what was agreed upon for the project.

The reason I agreed to do this at all is not only to finish the project on time, but I know that based on what we're doing we'll have plenty of extra money in the post-production budget because we requested the money to redo the Websites, as they wanted (and we're not really Web pros, either, but my editor does some pro Web work), so initially I was being Mr. Nice Guy thinking, well heck, this isn't really fair, if there's like $5,000 left over in the Website budget I'll give it back. Now I'm like forget that, I've earned that money and put in 80 hour weeks at least, I'm not giving anything back. Plus I already know we saved them $35,000 from the other bid they got for this project and another $15,000 on the training video we're doing for them. That's the other project, by the way, the two days of filming we did when we got back. We've gotten no feedback about that one yet but it's done, minus the sound and music being perfect, and minus color correction. It's pretty much ready to go though, just needs some feedback for details.

Anyway maybe I'm crazy but it's not just the hours per day that's stressful to me it's the constant pressure of this deadline where I feel I have no life until this project is done, and that kind of dedication requires proper pay, which initially I didn't believe I was getting. But then again I didn't sign up for doing this much work, either. I saw myself initially as more of a supervisory role, even though I was "directing," you don't really "direct" much about virtual tours, you just have to know what the company wants and be able to give it to them, so I was a link between corporate and my crew to be able to figure that out.

What has been frustrating I think is that we've had to guess what they want about 90% of the time. The lack of input has been scary but also weird, because you'd think if a company is spending a lot of money on something they'd be much more hands-on about it, but they seem to trust us to do whatever we want basically, until we show them something then they start making silly requests we can't honor (like can you make our grass green because it's a bit brown in this shot, or can you add in some greenery to this shot in post? I'm not joking one marketing lady asked us that). Or they just have terrible advice in general or commentary that makes no sense.

For instance, complaining that 25 meg videos take too long to load, 8 minutes is what one guy said, and I told him that I'd prepare a report on broadband Internet penetration for him because they were all skeptical all of the sudden about how accessible these videos will be. First off I said this is not a problem because we can offer dial-up versions of the videos too, so don't freak out, but second I wrote up an essay for them (!) citing numerous Internet studies indicating that 57% of users have broadband access and that 90% of active Internet users use broadband. Furthermore, higher income families, the kind they are catering to anyway, have broadband in much larger numbers, and 95% of workers have broadband from their officers. Then I further explained that even though most of us using cable get anywhere from 500 kbps to 1.2 megs per second (that's the speed of my downloads from a fast server like iTunes, for instance), even if you get 300 kbps which is almost the bottom of the barrel to be considered broadband still (it's actually 200 according to the definition I guess), you'd still load a 25 meg video in like 83 seconds I think, and the videos are 180 seconds long, so you should be loading faster than they are playing anyway, meaning a very short wait time of ten seconds or less to start playing initially.

The last part had me really pissed off because you don't just commission videos and THEN think about whether it's going to work or not for most people. This is research you do before you start the project, it's really not my job to convince them *after they've spent the money* that this will be fine.

They have me really aggravated now, I just can't wait to get this project over with and be done with it forever. I usually will give a project bid but I think next time we need to do a project bid through a certain date with a certain number of hours worked per week maximum, then if it exceeds that because of things out of our control like lack of cooperation the money has to be extra on a per-day basis. In this case we discussed that a bit, I told them the least I can charge them after June 30 is $600 per day for me, my editor, and our equipment, but that I really wanted to avoid that happening because in my opinion there's *no reason* to be behind schedule, i.e. they should act fast enough with our requests for information to make our process go smoothly.

Ok on that note back to work, I have to re-read voiceovers and then do some other stuff for them. I am taking about 48 hours off with a friend coming to town, while my editor works for half of that time, then I'll be back to work as soon as my friend leaves at noon on Saturday. But Thursday morning I have a conference call with these guys to talk about details I guess, I don't even know, frankly I don't have anything to talk about with them because they know what I need already and I got all of the other information they were going to give me, haha. I basically took control and started contacting marketing people individually, at the head marketing person's request / permission, so that sped things up.
 
Sadly this is the sort of exploitation of good will that happens on a daily basis in all kinds of productions. You have to walk away at some point and realize you are worth more than free- no matter what the prestige is. You've still got equity in what you've done so far. And it's all good lessons for the next time.

You bill hourly/daily or whatever but you don't ever bill per finished project.
You set limits to revisions in your contract.
And you hold firm when you've done what you feel is fulfillment- there's no shame in walking away. No court of law is going to uphold a breach of contract when there's no ongoing rate being paid.

-Noah
 
Yeah, I guess you live and learn huh? Haha.

I have been a bit shocked from the beginning of the project how little guidance was given, or even how little they seemed to know about what they wanted. It always changed, but never in a clear way. Not like me telling you, "Oh hey, I've changed my mind on this Website, I would also like you to add a section where I can put movie reviews alongside my professional reel," or something clear where it's obvious what I want. It was always more vague like, "Well we want some videos about the different levels of care we offer," so I had asked, "Ok, and how do you imagine those playing out? What footage is going to be used? Are we using actors / actresses? Voiceover?" I'm not joking the response was basically this: "Hehe, umm... I guess that's the question." I kind of pause, "Well... how about as we film the virtual tours we get some footage that we could use to cut together some videos that would work for general corporate overviews?" "Yeah... maybe something like that would work." But I never got an actual answer, so I just figured I'd take more control over the project and decide what I think would work best, and I did. Now they mostly like what I have, but they never gave any real guidance so it's still strange to me.

Now I understand if you pay let's say an architect to design you a living room, and you tell him, "Well I just want it to be really nice looking," the architect could at least give you 3-4 sample ideas based on his extensive experience in design and have you pick. But this isn't like that! How can I, using my business and filmmaking experience, possibly know what a company in an entirely different field would want to express through a video? So I had to use what I had learned from reading about the company, going to their properties, etc. to do the best I could. I think it turned out pretty sweet all things considered, I'm really proud of it actually, both of the corporate videos in fact. But any discussion of details hasn't been very fruitful with them.

Fortunately I negotiated full pay upfront for the training video, so in many ways I don't really care what the "corporate minds" think of it because I had their corporate director of food and beverage services there, we both love what we did with it, it's entertaining, informative, plays like a short film more than a training video, and I'm very proud of it. So if ultimately the other corporate guys who don't know anything about food services say, "Well, we kind of think it has too many jokes, it's not serious enough," blah blah etc. I'm going to be like, "That's nice. Well, I guess next time you can read the script before we shoot and maybe talk to your corporate director of food and beverage services about that, since we were working together the whole time when you didn't say anything about it." Now I'm not meaning that in a rude way like, "I got my money, I don't care what they say," because I care much more about the quality of my work at this point in my career than a few bucks. But that's what I'm saying, I seriously love what we did on this video and it's remarkable to me a food services training video is actually as fun to watch as this one is, I think it does a great job of giving you information without beating you over the head with it. It's almost like you learn without consciously thinking, "Oh boy I'm learning about how to do this." I did strongly push them to make it funnier and more entertaining, however, and I worked hard to get the actor and actress who would make that work, to punch up the script myself to make it less corny and more entertaining, etc. I got a lot of positive feedback even from other lower-level employees about that, though, like the executive director of the property we filmed the training video at said she thinks it's so important that we do it this way because otherwise it'd just be too boring. I agreed and pushed this with corporate, that basically if you make a 20 minute training video that's not entertaining and not funny, people WILL zone out and they won't get anything out of it, especially when you're paying them seriously like $10 an hour. But if they enjoy watching it, and are wondering what's going to come next, they will pay attention. Plus, these guys need to realize, if they hire me to direct a project they're going to get my sensibilities and style. If they don't want that, honestly, hire another director next time. I brought the project in for $12,000, they were quoted $25,000 to $30,000 from two other companies to do the same thing, and I swear I did it just as well as those companies would have if not better because I honestly think they would have pocketed the money, ran with whatever script they were given, and probably not focused much on making it better than it was. Maybe it would have been 10% better technically, maybe they would have hired a slightly larger crew, I don't know, but I can guarantee based on my discussions with the company they were unwilling to pay that much money for a training video, so what they got is a heck of a lot better than not having anything, haha.

I think the mistake I made here is to assume that because I gave them my word, project done by June's end, an ambitious goal from the start (Website work, picture work, and 71 minutes of polished, completed footage in one month of post-production), that they would understand I needed more cooperation on their end to meet such an ambitious deadline. I also would not assume that they would just somehow think I was their slave for the entire month all hours of the day, every day. Again I'll work 60 hours a week no complaints, I have all of my life, that's how I am, and sometimes 70 isn't that bad at least if it's 12 hours a day for 6 days or so, one day off, I can live with that usually. But when you're pushing upwards of 80 to 90 hours, and the stress caused is enough I hardly can sleep sometimes, then I start to think, come on guys, I think I'm entitled to some personal time here too! I don't see any of them working more than 40-50 hours a week, and there has been some complaining from one or two of the corporate guys that the rest of the people aren't pulling their weight, haha, so for instance the food services guy has been after the rest of the people to get on the ball and help me out. He has been very helpful, but even he has made some unreasonable demands or requests that I had to straighten him out on.

I will say an experience like this lets you know how to work in the future and it will help me safeguard my time more preciously going forward, on other projects. I'll know how to approach a company about the workflow and dictate basically what is reasonable to request of my time, how we can work effectively together, etc. I think that's really important. So hopefully in the future this type of thing can be avoided.

To be honest because I'm just starting my professional career, I feel that I'm taking it on the chin constantly because I don't have years of experience. In other words, it's easy for a company like this to think they're giving me such a great chance to do this work and build my reel that they don't really have to be "nice" about anything, because I'm the lucky one for doing this all. Yet I know for a fact I've saved them $50,000 cash, and that's a TON of money, maybe not for a huge company but still not bad. Also it's frustrating because if I were doing amateur-ish work and sort of "learning" on the job, without really knowing what I was doing, I would agree I don't deserve that much pay. But this work is fairly easy for my editor and I, we've done a lot more complicated stuff with the music videos we've done. So we've offered them the same professionalism that an experienced company would, only for a fraction of the price because we don't have a reel yet for this work, basically.

The same has been true with my music video experiences. Because I cannot tell a band, "Look I've done this 29 times before, so I think I know what I'm doing, ok?" I get taken advantage of. They make suggestions, 90% of the time I find them ridiculously stupid, but because I'm a younger director I'll run my editing room too much like a democracy and be like, "Well, ok let's try it," and we usually try stuff, it doesn't work just as I figured, and we end up wasting time. That's why I can't wait until I can be a bit more cocky about it, like, "Ok you guys are amazing at your music, and I love it, but I don't tell you how to write your music or how to play it. Please leave the directing and the editing up to me. If you notice something is out of sync, let me know, but as for the style of this video you hired me as the director because you believe in my work, so please trust me to deliver a high quality video." I just don't have the guts to say that right now, because despite the fact I think my music videos speak for themselves and I've been told by my crew that my last shoot ran like a standard record label shoot (it was indie, no label, but a crew of almost 20), I don't yet have that portfolio or experience to set my limits I guess.

I think this early going is going to be the toughest, I just hope that as I progress doing more and more professional work the quality of what I do will be enough to gain the trust of my clients so that they will not feel the need to be so hands on or critical of my decisions. With the corporate work, for instance, they sometimes seem to think I'm just sort of there to serve them, whenever, and do whatever they want. I don't see it that way and I did tell them so. I said you hired me as a director, and that means I'm going to argue with you over creative decisions if I think your suggestions are going to make the project worse. If you wanted just a laborer you shouldn't have hired me, because I care about my work and am passionate about giving you the best. That was actually appreciated, but I was taking a risk by sending that e-mail, I was worried about it. I just was annoyed because they wanted this section edited more slowly in the corporate video, and to slow it down more would ruin the excitement for their company that I wanted to create. Also if they aren't going to listen to me about the voiceover artist, which I'm still fighting for, then that's definitely going to annoy me. Especially when the marketing lady and I agree that we want a female voiceover artist, but some of the other guys are pushing for a male voiceover artist. It makes no sense, they want "warm," "caring," and "compassionate," and I just found them the perfect person who has her own studio and can meet our time demands and tight schedule I think, so I'm hoping they go for it.
 
Yes -- bill hourly!

Establish a personal hourly rate for meetings, conceptualizing .. etc, and also hourly rates for active production (acquisition, editing .. etc).

Also set standard work hours, such as 8 AM to 5 PM, as you are operating as a business and need to structure your business to balance with your personal life. If asked to do something after business hours, charge an additional fee or refuse and take up business the next day during your operating hours.

I know it's too late for this project, but if you do give a capped total price for an entire project instead of billing hourly, the best thing you can do, and it will also lend to your credibility as a professional, is to demand a single representative from their company to take on the laborous tasks of organizing their end of meeting your needs. You should not need to edjucate them on what decisions are in their best interest and you should not have to walk them through an educational course on how they might want things produced. That singular representative of their company can bear the burdens of indeciseveness rather than you. By all means, you can help them to make educated decisions that are in their best interest, but in an advisory capacity and not in a deciding capacity. By insisting on an assigned project representative, you are making the statement that there is a need for them to take the responsibility for providing you with finalized decisions through the representative.
 
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In a large project you simply can't bill hourly, because you would end up with either a ridiculously large budget and they won't hire you, or you would end up with a ridiculously small hourly fee and be taken advantage of.

What you do is prepare a "scope of work" which outlines what will be done when, and tie that to a payment system based on milestones.

So the client pays a bit up front, then at the end of the main shoot you send another bill, then at the end of final cut the final bill. They sign-off at each milestone so it's clear that there's no turning back.

Dates are written in the contract, as well as penalties for missing dates (even if the penalties are trivial, they still do wonders for keeping your client's eye on the ball). I usually have a clause that allows for one last edit after the contract, in case they have any last-minute minor changes. THEN they pay per hour.

This system makes everyone happy because the client knows exactly what they're getting, when, and how much it'll cost, and I know that I have a steady income and steady workflow for the next couple months with no dicking around.
 
half down and half when done is the norm when bidding a flat rate project.
I don't leave the house unless I've gotten that half down. You will find half down quickly sifts the clients from the grinders.
Still, I try not to limit my income. I make my living by the hour.
 
I charged 50% upfront, of course I, too, wouldn't leave the house short of having that money upfront, in this case for obvious reasons -- I had employees to pay, and can't bear the cost of $20,000 in expenses from my personal finances without having any money upfront. We had lodging expenses, transportation, food costs, crew, etc.

John Froton - I think that's the best advice, what I learned from this and decided about a week ago is that next time I need to have ONE person at their company who represents them, just as at my company they only need to talk to me. I don't make them talk to my editor, my camera guy, etc. etc. So likewise the process of communications needs to be streamlined through one representative, who granted will not know the answers to every question I may have for them, but it will fall upon them to get the people who do and then get back to me with those answers.

Another thing I've tried to explain to clients so far, with limited success (some here, some there, usually later in the process when they begin to "get it"), is just how important it is that they see this as a TEAM effort. The best thing I can say in the future, a saying I thought of about this situation, is I am making something WITH you not making something FOR you. If I sold, let's say, baseball bats, then you tell me you want 25 of them, I make them. That's it. I'm making something FOR you. But with music videos, corporate work, industrials, whatever, I'm making something WITH the client, because it's not a product to be bought and sold or mass produced, I have to have their input to make it the best possible project for them. If I don't know exactly what they want, or don't have feedback along the way as I'm doing it, then I may come up with a still-very-professional, great project, but it may not be what they're looking for or it may have certain elements they regret weren't different.

PS: I don't think I'd ever really do the 8 to 5 thing, there's something my business partner said to a lady at Extra Storage that puts it very well. This lady said the storage opens at 6 a.m. in case we want to come early, and my business partner said, "I didn't come to Hollywood to get up at 6 a.m." Amen to that. If I'm doing post work, finding clients, or doing anything besides shooting I don't want to get up before about 11, if not noon. It's just not my style. If I wanted to get up at that time I'd work a desk job, seriously. I prefer to work noon to 10 p.m., 1 p.m. to midnight, something like that, and I also wouldn't want to work just 40 hours a week, that's not enough for me. I guess I'd do that if I were being paid very highly and then I could spend the rest of the time working on screenplays, etc., but I've never been good at 40 hours a week nor do I know how that's a standard. It seems, for one, very low to me. Also, I don't really function that way, I either don't work at all, or I work 60-80 hours a week, there's no in-between for me. I always have done things that way, I just prefer it. I can't hum along at a medium level like that because I prefer to focus entirely on one thing.
 
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