Chris Santucci
Veteran
Thought I'd share some recent stories as a warning to others:
See one day cam op gig posted, no mention of camera, very brief information. Respond with rate, get a very delayed response, find out they want FS7, tell them I don't have FS7, would have to rent.
Producer says she'll call me (which means, she's going to try and get my rate lower.) She calls, I try to find out what the work entails, she says it's really more of a half day BUT company requires 12 hours and rate is $500. She says to achieve the full 12 hours I can include travel, file transfer, etc. She says she can't reach the supervising video guy to find out what the work actually entails (3 days after posting the gig). She also says she didn't know I am sans FS7. I pass, and recommend 2 other ops.
Get email contact from foreign producer who sets up simple half day interview and b-roll gig. She shows me previous work which appears to be simple one camera-one position interviews (with ONE subject) and minimal b-roll. They want me to provide edit, which seems so simple, I just include it.
I travel to remote location and work with field producer. He sets up about 4 or 5 interviews, and I shoot any b-roll I can manage with little to no direction. Then I also find out they have a drone guy there, AND they want me to use pre-existing footage the company had shot.
I email the producer who contacted me initially about, you guessed it, more money. I explain that the work involved is greater than what was originally suggested. She responds along with the field producer who both basically tell me I'm wrong and that the work is very simple, and that they have no more money.
I produce about 3 rough edits, each time getting feedback from the two (non native English speaking) producers giving me contradictory notes. On about the 4th revision request, I tell them I will not be performing any more unpaid post-production work and that they should pay me, after which they can pay my hourly editing rate for more revisions. They pay up and apparently used previous edits to cobble together what they wanted.
Get email contact from producer, says she has two simple "four hour shoots" (each a week apart) "a couple interviews along with b-roll of the office." I give her my estimate, she says they only offer [insert embarrassingly low number here], I have nothing going on so I say ok since it seems simple enough. Then she sends me prior work they produced and I see slider and/or stabilizer used, AND 2-camera interview setups.
I tell her I need an assistant at $250 because I won't be able to get through the work in 4 hours. She cries poor and then sends shot list which is long.
I proceed with the work, and about half way through, become pretty incensed that the shot list is so long and that they expect quality in 4 hours. I email her from my car when leaving to tell he she needs to find someone else for the work the following week.
The commonality in my experience seems to be lack of information which coincides nicely with lack of budget. Many producers seem to play dumb in these instances and deliberately withhold information. When you're used to shorter "production speak," and just a reasonable amount of consideration and respect, I think it's easy to expect that an agreement would be based on what's reasonable in an effort to avoid lengthy communications. There were enough red flags in the first incident I posted above for me to just say no right off the bat.
See one day cam op gig posted, no mention of camera, very brief information. Respond with rate, get a very delayed response, find out they want FS7, tell them I don't have FS7, would have to rent.
Producer says she'll call me (which means, she's going to try and get my rate lower.) She calls, I try to find out what the work entails, she says it's really more of a half day BUT company requires 12 hours and rate is $500. She says to achieve the full 12 hours I can include travel, file transfer, etc. She says she can't reach the supervising video guy to find out what the work actually entails (3 days after posting the gig). She also says she didn't know I am sans FS7. I pass, and recommend 2 other ops.
Get email contact from foreign producer who sets up simple half day interview and b-roll gig. She shows me previous work which appears to be simple one camera-one position interviews (with ONE subject) and minimal b-roll. They want me to provide edit, which seems so simple, I just include it.
I travel to remote location and work with field producer. He sets up about 4 or 5 interviews, and I shoot any b-roll I can manage with little to no direction. Then I also find out they have a drone guy there, AND they want me to use pre-existing footage the company had shot.
I email the producer who contacted me initially about, you guessed it, more money. I explain that the work involved is greater than what was originally suggested. She responds along with the field producer who both basically tell me I'm wrong and that the work is very simple, and that they have no more money.
I produce about 3 rough edits, each time getting feedback from the two (non native English speaking) producers giving me contradictory notes. On about the 4th revision request, I tell them I will not be performing any more unpaid post-production work and that they should pay me, after which they can pay my hourly editing rate for more revisions. They pay up and apparently used previous edits to cobble together what they wanted.
Get email contact from producer, says she has two simple "four hour shoots" (each a week apart) "a couple interviews along with b-roll of the office." I give her my estimate, she says they only offer [insert embarrassingly low number here], I have nothing going on so I say ok since it seems simple enough. Then she sends me prior work they produced and I see slider and/or stabilizer used, AND 2-camera interview setups.
I tell her I need an assistant at $250 because I won't be able to get through the work in 4 hours. She cries poor and then sends shot list which is long.
I proceed with the work, and about half way through, become pretty incensed that the shot list is so long and that they expect quality in 4 hours. I email her from my car when leaving to tell he she needs to find someone else for the work the following week.
The commonality in my experience seems to be lack of information which coincides nicely with lack of budget. Many producers seem to play dumb in these instances and deliberately withhold information. When you're used to shorter "production speak," and just a reasonable amount of consideration and respect, I think it's easy to expect that an agreement would be based on what's reasonable in an effort to avoid lengthy communications. There were enough red flags in the first incident I posted above for me to just say no right off the bat.
