For what it's worth

Recently a client contacted me wanting some editing work done. She had very specific ideas what she wanted which is always good, because it's always easier trying to achieve a goal than trying to discover if one exists at all. So we discussed the project for about half-an-hour and to be honest I was looking forward to doing it. It sounded like fun. But then we hit a snag.

It seems that most people don't realise what's involved in creating an editing project from scratch. I remember having one client tell me that her project would only take four hours to edit. She had four hours of raw footage. It usually takes me at least one-to-two hours to log and capture each hour of raw footage - and then I have to edit it (which took me the better part of a week). What she meant was that she only wanted to pay me for four hours work.

And that's the problem. Editing takes a long time. I can usually finish a typical half-hour runtime programme of broadcast quality in about a week. I can do it quicker but the quality suffers. If the project requires additional time intensive processes (such as animations) then the time increases accordingly. I'm only too happy to do such things but I'm not doing them for free. This is my job. If your boss only paid you for 4 hours for doing a 40 hours worth of work you wouldn't be happy.

This job would have taken at least a week and probably two. It required the conversion of some video from an old - no longer available - format to digital plus a massive animation. What the client initially offered me wouldn't have even covered the cost for the conversion - something I can't do because the format was so antiquated. So, I ended up not doing the job. Which is a pity. But I need to eat and pay the bills too.