Thinking about saying goodbye to wedding filming...

T

Tass

Active member
Hi!

I am sitting here thinking about abandoning jobs such as filming weddings and so on... Just had a customer that all of a sudden wants to change a massive part of the movie and he simply wont leave me alone until I've done it. Of course he dosen't want to pay anything for it... Not only is the money not good enough in order to live on it (at least not if my customers gets to decide how much all my work is worth). It's waaaay to much work all in all. Currently my company offers both commercial work / music videos and also weddings as a "bonus" on the homepage. Is it wrong to offer both commercials and wedding movies on the same homepage, would that look a bit tacky and cheap to the customer (companies)?

Lately the main income for my company has been the weddings but the pay does not cover all the work I put down, and all the time spent fixing small details in the darn video could be used to send emails and call other companies for more "serious" jobs.
So what to do what do to....? Should I take a step away from it, potentially loose some money a while and focus more on the things I really want to work with or should I just like the situation and stop nagging? =)

I really could use some tips and opinions on my situation... Thanks!!
 
Do you have a editing clause in your contracts? If I choose to contract for a set amount of money, rather than an hourly editing fee, I build in a 3 pass system where I deliver an edit, the client gives changes, I deliver a second edit, the client gives final changes, and I deliver a final edit. I then write that if additionally changes are wanted after the 3rd and final edit, they will have to pay a (discounted) hourly editing rate.

I also write in safety where if I go a certain number of hours over our original estimated hours, I will have begin charging per hour. I had a client who I estimated 10 hours of editing time, because he didn't want to go hourly.. When I hit 15 hours, per our editing contract, I started charging him 2/3 of my normal editing hourly rate.

You just need to protect your time so you don't get burned. That being said, I don't envy people doing wedding films. If you truly don't enjoy it, then you shouldn't be doing it (or doing it so much of the time)
 
Instead of abandoning it -- raise your prices. Cheap clients are the worst. So raise your prices to where it's worth it to do it. If some of your potential customers leave, well -- you didn't want them anyway, right? Because you're already so fed up you're thinking of abandoning the whole thing, so -- raise your prices to where it's worth it. If you still get a client, that one will be paying enough that it's worth it to do it, right?

As for commercials and weddings on the same page, yeah, that's a big no-go. I'd recommend establishing two different sites if you want to service both markets.
 
Thank you so much for your input guys! You are right, I shouldn't always be so nice and take every single job to almost any price. Wedding films isn't what I really want to be doing, I want to be in the commercial / music video industry but it's damn hard to get into it full time. I will definitly remove any wedding video related content from the page and do a separate one, working on that right now!

So all in all... I shouldn't give up those jobs even if I don't enjoy it, but raise the price instead to make it feel more worth the job? At what point should you say "no more weddings", is it when you really fed' up with it or when you have that much other jobs to cover all the costs?
 
Barry_Green said:
Instead of abandoning it -- raise your prices. Cheap clients are the worst. So raise your prices to where it's worth it to do it. If some of your potential customers leave, well -- you didn't want them anyway, right? Because you're already so fed up you're thinking of abandoning the whole thing, so -- raise your prices to where it's worth it. If you still get a client, that one will be paying enough that it's worth it to do it, right?

As for commercials and weddings on the same page, yeah, that's a big no-go. I'd recommend establishing two different sites if you want to service both markets.
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This.
 
Tass said:
So all in all... I shouldn't give up those jobs even if I don't enjoy it, but raise the price instead to make it feel more worth the job?
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Well, it depends -- I mean, if you're doing weddings for $250, then yeah, it's a miserable and horrible existence and you should definitely stop doing it. But if you were getting paid $10,000 to do a wedding... all of a sudden it becomes a whole different animal, right? Now you've got the budget and the wherewithal to make something really artistic, and make a good living, and hire someone else to do the editing or some other part of it that you don't enjoy, etc.

At what point should you say "no more weddings", is it when you really fed' up with it or when you have that much other jobs to cover all the costs?
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Well, again, it depends on what you mean by weddings. I don't do weddings, haven't ever tried to do a wedding, and don't want to -- because I know that those folks work harder than anyone else in the video industry, and it takes a very special skillset to manage all the various personalities in an excruciatingly high-pressure crucible, which sums up today's modern wedding environment. On the other hand, I would say that the money that (good) wedding shooters make dwarfs the money that 98% of our membership here makes. People making $300 music videos can't possibly ever compare to the guy who charges $4,000 to do a wedding, shoots one day a week, edits two or three days, takes a few days off, and makes $200k per year.

So -- when do you say "no more weddings"? I'd change it to "when do you say 'no more cheap weddings?'" And that, you answer, by saying that yeah, cheap weddings (or cheap ANY clients) are the first ones to be cut off. But if you can get high-end work, if your work and your sales skills are good enough, and you can get it, why turn down $4,000 or $7,000 or $10,000 jobs? You'd have to be doing really pretty well before you start saying "meh, I can't be bothered to work two days for $5,000..." :)

It's all dependent on your situation. If you want to be a commercial producer, and that's all you want to be, and you can make enough work happen in that field now to keep yourself afloat, then sure, cut the weddings loose. But if you're trying to make a living in the video field, weddings can be an important component of a full-service video provider's business. And those who disrespect or denigrate wedding shooters are really unfair, because those are some of the hardest working people in the video business.
 
Barry_Green said:
Instead of abandoning it -- raise your prices. Cheap clients are the worst. So raise your prices to where it's worth it to do it.
If some of your potential customers leave, well -- you didn't want them anyway, right?
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Green's Rule of Rates and Clients :thumbsup:
 
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I am so glad to be a member of this forum, this has helped me so much right now, BIG thanks!
 
Ive shot a lot of corporate clients and I think that they will be always there to substitute my other activities. Barry raises alot of good point (as usual) The problem is everytime I get a coporate job the easier it seems to pull-off the harder the job always ends up in the end. The market you are talking about is a dangerous one because you are dealing with people who don't have much exposure to video so they tend to not know what they want, hence lots of changes. My best advice (learnt through very hard lessons) when dealing with other people and not your own work is...At the start of the project sit down and lay everything out from everyones p.o.v. agree as a group on what to do(<<<key point) and then do the job. People are more likley to accept final results because they have been part of the process. Plus put your wages up! :)

Jp.
 
jpbankesmercer said:
Ive shot a lot of corporate clients and I think that they will be always there to substitute my other activities. Barry raises alot of good point (as usual) The problem is everytime I get a coporate job the easier it seems to pull-off the harder the job always ends up in the end. The market you are talking about is a dangerous one because you are dealing with people who don't have much exposure to video so they tend to not know what they want, hence lots of changes. My best advice (learnt through very hard lessons) when dealing with other people and not your own work is...At the start of the project sit down and lay everything out from everyones p.o.v. agree as a group on what to do(<<<key point) and then do the job. People are more likley to accept final results because they have been part of the process. Plus put your wages up! :)Jp.
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Yea this client I have now want to change quite a lot of stuff, he dosen't care that he first said one thing how he wanted it and now totally changed his opinion... Not only that, he wants me to put in 20+ photos at the end of the film as a "bonus", this demand came in this morning. That's when I got really mad and said that things aren't for free and that he has to pay for it, and it came like a total shock to him "umm... pay, how do you mean... pay........?". Those things makes me so angry that I feel that I'd rather be without all the money I get from wedding films and just focus on selling more commerical / music video stuff.

One thing is for sure, I won't do any more cheap jobs, I have just learned it the hard way. I need to learn to stand up for my price, if you would go in to a store and say "hey I'll give you half the money for this coke, oh and yeah throw in some chips" you would probably get laughed at or even worse... I have so much respect for people that only does wedding videos...
 
Yeah, weddings can be a nightmare when you get a wacky client who wants a great video for nothing. Weddings really are an odd sort of thing sometimes. I've had strange experiences where once a client raved and praised a video I did that I thought wasn't on par with my best work, and had some problems due to logistical things at the wedding getting in my way, bland decor, etc... while another time I had a client freak out and chew me out demanding changes for a video that was one of my better pieces of work, and the problems were a couple of minor things out of my control (again, logistics, things the DJ did like having the sound system putting out feedback during the toasts). This person also complained about the photographer and somehow tried to tie those complaints to the video, which was silly because I had no control over the photographer and couldn't have done anything about said photographer's work either which way. You never know what kind of crazy you might stir up, even when you do a good job or give the client what they ask for*

Also, if you don't enjoy weddings, then I agree that you should try to get away from them. Maybe you can't just drop them completely yet, but as you get more commercial and music video work, you can start to phase out the weddings a bit. That is kind of where I am now, trying to move towards other types of production, but still keeping the weddings to continue making $$$$. Otherwise, at least for me, it is flipping burgers or something along those lines. As of now, the job market still isn't all that great, so I don't envy anyone looking for a 9-5 hourly wage job.


* Note that sometimes what the client asks for is different than what they actually want. Sometimes they tell you one thing, when they really want something different, but just don't know how to articulate it. I haven't seen this type of thing in weddings/events so much as in commercial type work. The best you can do is protect yourself in your contract and not undercharge, as well as being thorough during the pre-production and writing/outlining stage of the project. There is nothing worse than sitting in the edit bay pulling an all-nighter and realizing you shot yourself in the foot and are spending tons of time on a project for little pay all for an ungrateful client who breaths down your neck 24/7. It is part of the learning process, so don't feel too bad. I've made similar mistakes as well.

Oh, and another reason not to take a job for low pay is that the client might change things at the last minute. I did a commercial/marketing project once for low pay, partly so as to add to my sample reel, but also because the client wooed me with the notion that I'd be able to do all kinds of awesome creative stuff and that they didn't want a boring conventional commercial. So I write up a script and a couple days before we are set to shoot, the client changes their mind and says they want to go with a different concept. This something different was the most boring standard run of the mill thing you could imagine. So I was stuck there making a boring commercial with no real creative juice to it, for low pay. It wouldn't have been so bad had I charged accordingly in the first place, to take some of the sting out of the last minute conceptual change in the project.

Then there is also the dreaded, "hey, do this first video for us for free, and we'll have a ton of work for you in the coming weeks/months/year if it turns out good." Run away from those people (hint: there is no other work down the line, just the first freebie the cheapskates want you to write, produce, cater, shoot, and edit out of your own pocket).
 
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The thing I've noticed with weddings, is that people won't hire you unless you've done several already. No matter how good your camera is, people want to see samples of previous weddings. That means the first few weddings probably will end up getting done for free. And because of this you won't be able to do multi-camera, and that means your final edit will still not look as good as the competition's. That puts you at the low end of the market for a while, until you are able to do multi-camera then you can aspire to the mid-range ( where you could stay for life ). I don't know anyone who charges more than $3000 for weddings these days. For that kind of money people rather buy a pro DSLR or Video camera and shoot it themselves.
My point is, high end weddings are a good career goal, which can take you many years to get to, and a lot of hassle. If that is what you really enjoy, go for it, but chances are you'll have to start at the bottom, doing weddings for free.
Not really much different than high end music videos when you think of it.
 
Without reading all the responses, my opinion, though somewhat harsh is that you should stop complaining for lack of a more gentle way of putting it. Weddings are tough, that is for sure, but you have work, and if you aren't making enough per wedding then that is really only your fault, gradually raise your prices or before you offered them you should have created your prices based on the amount of work.

As far as the client you are dealing with, I think it is safe to say there are "those clients" in any kind of video, or really in any line of work for that matter, this is where the importance of a good contract comes in. If you don't have a contracting outlining exactly what you deliver and all the other good things inherent in a contract, then you will get taken advantage or or put in a situation where you either need to deliver what the client wants or face a lawsuit, damaging reviews, etc.

Also, in my opinion having commercial and wedding on the same page might not be "tacky" exactly, but those websites are targeting completely different markets, I would seperate them for the sake of making it easier for potential clients to gather the info they want, as well as for SEO reasons.

Hope that helps
 
If there's one things weddings have taught me, its that you should ALWAYS get it on paper.

Put some time into a solid contract (videographer's rights, prices, payment, deadlines, etc.), a work order (tentative invoice), and project brief (description of agreed-upon services). That way if you get another unruly client who doesn't know what they want (but want it for free), you can protect yourself from getting screwed. If they sign the contract, then they agree that any work beyond the pre-established amount will cost extra, meaning you have no obligation to do it for free.

After doing weddings for three years, I threw in the towel. I just couldn't deal with the massive amount of work to please people who didn't know what they wanted. And in the best case scenario the client was pleased and everything went smoothly, but I got no artistic satisfaction out of it (and deep down I would be embarrassed of my creation). I'll be darned if wedding videography isn't the most soul-sucking field of video...
 
I worked a few years as the second shooter for a guy whose starting rate was $10,000 a wedding. I wasn't the guy dealing with the clients, so I don't know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but they were always much easier to work with than the clients of shooters who charged less.

This is a sort of obvious point to make, but if you're really good at your work, it's unlikely the clients are going to be unhappy. I don't think wedding clients are inherently that hard to work with. The only time I've heard of the aforementioned videographer having to make any changes once the final product was delivered was when there was a too-drunk aunt in the background dancing inappropriately.
 
I have a clause in my contract that all editing and style decisions are mine. Yes I will remove the drunk Aunt and the dude that they don't even know but it clearly states final decision is mine in the contract.
 
I'll be darned if wedding videography isn't the most soul-sucking field of video...
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Can I buy you your drink of choice? :beer:

I hated shooting weddings. 2006-2011….I want those years back, dammit! (Thank God that's not all I was working on)

If you enjoy this sort of thing, by all means, keep doing the wedding thing. But if you are like righteous and myself, plan an exit strategy. You'll be glad you did.
 
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