Most Asked Questions About Client Work

I run through 10 client work questions that come up nonstop for photo and video pros: scope creep, revisions, contracts, pricing, raw files, licensing, and delivery. Use this as a checklist before your next project so expectations stay clear and you stay paid.

Show Notes: 
00:00: The $3,700 reality check
00:21 What this episode covers
01:00 Q1 Scope creep (without sounding rude)
03:03 Q2 Revisions (rounds & what happens after)
06:10 Q3 Simple contract essentials (not legal advice)
19:15 Q4 Pricing “quick” jobs with vague asks
20:57 Q5 Slow feedback, slipping timelines
22:24 Q6 Too many note givers, no decider
23:36 Q7 Raw footage and project files
25:59 Q8 Rights and licensing basics (US context)
27:06 Q9 File naming and version control
28:42 Q10 Deliverables and exports (no confusion)
29:48 Wrap

Video Version:

https://youtu.be/Uc08PxPpN-c

Blog Article: http://grenierdave.com/blog/most-asked-questions-about-client-work

Produced by:
124 Productions

Transcript

0:00

Do you charge them a percentage or just a flat rate because now you can't count on that? You are still owed $3,700. How much of that are you gonna charge off because now you're not getting that work? You were counting on that and you lost out on other opportunities. So it's important to keep that in mind. to the Dave Grenier podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the top 10 questions that I see in the photo and video community when it comes to client relations, how to deliver files, what should you put in a contract, that kind of stuff. It kind of tacks on to the conversation that we were having last week about client relations. So in the show notes for this episode, I'm going to put all the different questions as chapters. So if there's one thing that you're particularly interested in, you can just jump right over into that question. And I apologize to people that are watching me. because I'm to be looking at my notes. This has a lot of stuff that I'm going to cover in this. So I want to make sure that I go down the list and make sure that I don't miss anything. All right. So let's start off with question number one, which is how do I stop scope creep without sounding rude? This is a delicate one or can be for those that don't know what scope creep is. It's when you've agreed to the client and you say, hey, I'm going to deliver you, let's say, 50 photos and they ask for more, whether that be Photoshopping things that you weren't expecting or uh You know, they want an additional 50 photos or just one more photo or whatever it is You've delivered or they're asking for more and they're not looking to compensate you that's scope creep This can be a dangerous hole to start digging because usually one little ask turns into another little ask which turns into more and then all of a sudden you've done 20 or more hours and you're not getting paid for it, so the way that I usually handle this especially with a new client is That's not really part of the purview. That's not really part of our scope. I'll do it for you this time, but just know going forward that if I need to do this, there's going to be additional charge. We're going to have to change order. So setting firm boundaries and saying, I will help you. Yes, absolutely. We'll do what we can, but just know going forward that these are the regular, you know, we're going to have to charge you more. We're going to have to charge double. We're to have to charge triple, whatever the monetary value is to help keeping them from from continuing to reach for that branch, right? Because you need to protect your time. hey, if they come back and it's like an emergency turnaround, like within 12 hours, and you get paid triple the amount, great. Like that's a good paycheck. So it makes it beneficial mutually for you too, but it also keeps them from constantly coming at you with little things. So keep that in mind. It also sets you up as a professional. people that aren't really looking to interact with professionals will probably balk at that and they might not wanna work with you again and you might not wanna work with them again, depending on how much they're abusing their relationship with you. All right, question number two, how many revision rounds do you include and what happens after that? This is really good, so this has to do kinda with what we just talked about, but usually what I include is three. So we have the first draft, second draft and then the final. Anything past the final is considered an hourly rate, so we can do much more. So if they want to keep making adjustments, then sure. But the budget that we have agreed to is for three versions. If we can't dial in exactly what we're trying to dial in within that third final draft, then there's a there's a lack of communication happening. There's a miscommunication someplace down the line. And And we didn't discuss enough of what we needed to discuss and get the idea before signing the contract. That's really what it comes down to, because you and I or me and the client should be lockstep. I need to know what their vision is. I need to know what their storyboards are. If they have storyboards, if they don't, that's OK. But I want to one of my questions I always ask the client is give me give me something that inspires you. Like what would you like to kind of mimic? And not to copy, like what it kind of gets an idea of their style. So if they have a Pinterest board, if they have a video that they really like, so let's say they're hiring you for a video and. And they say, oh, we're doing a we'll just say corporate video, right? Talking head corporate video. Send me something that you enjoy, like send me something that you want us to kind of mimic and we're not going to copy it, but but I it gets me an idea of what do they like about it? Do you like the transitions? Do you like the intro? Like, do you like how they're sitting? Do you like, you know what, do you like the lighting? Do you like that they're dressed up or versus not being dressed up? Maybe they're very casual. So what is it that speaks to you? These are the things I'm asking the client. What is it about this video that you like? And so then that way, when we get to the point of review, it's just, we like this, let's just trim this down. the first draft should be pretty close, right? It should be pretty darn right there. And so they'll say, can you change out this clip for that clip maybe? Or uh Steve said this and we really don't wanna include that because, and so you have to kind of dial that in. So then you have the second version, they come back, the second version should be like 90% there. And then they might say, yeah, no, that's perfect. uh Can you change the color grade? Or can you change these couple words? We didn't catch that last time. And that's it. And that's the final version. And that's simple, easy as pie. Kind of. uh But this is client relations, so nothing as simple as easy as pie. Sometimes you'll get great clients that are very easy to work with, and other times you'll get clients that aren't. Or you'll have project managers that are involved and it might be project managers on your side and project managers on their side. And people don't really talk. And we're going to talk about that in another question later on. Question number three. is what needs to be in a simple contract even for small gigs. This is not legal advice. Okay. Hashtag not legal advice. Okay. Got it. Good. All right. So these are the things that I make sure that I include in every single one of my contracts, big or small parties and projects summary. This is about who's hiring who and what the project is. It gets very legalese, but it says, you know, one 24 productions. And then in parentheses, it'll say contractor or I don't remember exactly how we phrased it, but you go contractor, and then it'll say one, two, three industries, client. And so now anytime the client is defined or it says client later on in the contract, we know that's one, two, three industries. And then one 24 productions is, you know, the, the contractor, the video specialist that's doing this photo, whatever it is. Okay. And then you also have scope and deliverables, which are exactly what you're providing formats. So is it MP4? Are they PNGs? Are you gonna be delivering RAWs, which we'll get into later? uh The lengths, so is it a three minute video? Is it a 20 minute documentary? What is it that you're delivering? Quantities, so is it 500 videos or 500 photos? One photo? What are the quantities that you have? Platforms, are you going to be delivering to Instagram for them? or are you gonna be delivering it via, let's say Google Drive or Dropbox, and then they take it from there. So what platforms are you using? It's very important to get that out of the way so that everybody knows, and they can't come back and say, oh, we were expecting Dropbox because that's what we have for an account on or whatever, right? Timeline and key dates. This is really important. So this is shoot date, draft delivery, review windows, and final delivery. This we'll also get into a little bit further on down in the list, but the shoot date, you agree that it's gonna be January 1st, right? And what time, and not only what time is the shoot, what time are you gonna be on site? And so 124 has to be on site, the shoot is at 9 a.m., which means that I need to be there at 630 because I need to set up. I need to have a site access. need to be able to bring all my stuff up to the floor that we need to go up to. And I need to set up my lights and I need to make sure that I have everything set up the way that it needs to be set up properly. And they need to know that that's what I need. I can't be rolling in at eight thirty, so that needs to be spelt out in the contract. Draft delivery is afterwards. You know, how long will it take for you to deliver a draft? Maybe that's two weeks. Maybe it's two months. This is where you get to give yourself flexibility and say, what is reasonable? Rather than just, yeah, I'll have this draft for you tomorrow and you just did the shoot today, right? So you need to make sure that you have that stuff set up so that it gives you professional breathing room. This is your opportunity so that you don't succumb to abuse. Right, so you set the guardrails. So that's what this whole contract thing is for. So make sure you set yourself up right for success. uh Review windows, right? So you say, hey, I'm going to give you the first delivery or the first draft on, you know, February 1st. And you have up until February 14th to give me your feedback. Draft two will be delivered one week from then. And then you have another week to give your feedback. and then your final delivery will be March 1st, let's say. It's good to put in there something along the lines of if review is delayed, then it pushes everything back. So if you take an extra week to get back to me or an extra day to get back to me for review, so if I give you February 14th and you don't get back to me till February 15th, that might not just push it back a day, that might push it back a week. Who knows? Because I have allocated this time to work on your stuff. And if you wait an extra day to give me your feedback and you've had two weeks, one, that's not respectful of my time, but two, uh I'm not just sitting here waiting for you, right? I got other stuff that I've allocated. So setting that ahead of time is really important. Okay, so next point is client responsibilities. So that's access permissions, point of contact, releases, providing brand assets, and approvals on time. So this, kinda talked about access permission just in the last one, but point of contact, so who are you talking with? Who's your primary point of contact? We're gonna get into this later on in one of the other questions. Who's in charge of giving you the feedback? Because you might have a lot of people, a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but who is the ultimate chef, right, that's gonna say, this is what we want? Now, we're gonna get into that later, so hold on. OK, so who's your point of contact releases? Do you need any photo releases, video releases uh to to have someone's likeness on the camera? Providing brand assets so they need to give you their brand assets, so their logo, their typeface, their font, any regulations that they have surrounding their brand. They need to give that to you and then approvals on time. So is this one of those things where they just pay the lump sum? and it's broken up into installment payments, deposit and installment payments, or is this an hourly thing and who's in charge of approving the time? So fees and payment terms, this is total cost, deposit amount, due dates, late fees, accepted payment methods. So the total cost is, let's say it's a $5,000 to do this shoot. How much are you gonna need for deposit and by what date? My deposit amount varies, but let's say it's a third, okay? But I always make sure that before I set foot, On the shoot, I have a deposit in my bank account. It is cleared. I've run into issues with this because I was a little too flexible in my early days, but it's really good to either be on a retainer if it's something that's very long term or to have a deposit. If it's like one shot and you're doing the shoot and then you're done, but just figure out what that means for you and make sure that you have that. And before you set foot on on the shoot date, you have that money paid and it's already cleared. due dates, so that's gonna be when do they have to pay you by? So if you give them an invoice on the first, is it net 15, which is 15 days from when you sent out the invoice, is it net 30, 60, 90? A lot of times it's on the longer end of that, no matter how much you try to push for an earlier, know, let's say net 30 is pretty typical for what I do. That doesn't always mean that I get paid within 30 days, but if you have it in your contract where you say, hey, it's net 30, but I have late fees, so anything after the 30 days, you're going to accrue a 1 % penalty. This can get a little tricky, but if it's in the contract, you guys have agreed to it ahead of time. That's why you do the contract. Again, it's not to hold someone's feet over the fire. I discussed this in the last episode. It's about making sure that everybody agrees and understands what's expected on every realm of this project. And an accepted payment method. So is it going to be a direct deposit into your bank account? Is it going to be a check? Is it gonna be cash? Is it gonna be uh Venmo or something? Whatever it is that you want paid, make sure that they agree to it because they might not have the ability to pay you cash. The next one we kind of discussed already, which is revision policy. Number of revision rounds included. What counts as a revision versus a new request? Rate for additional work. Like I told you, I usually do about three rounds. We're gonna get into kind of name conventions towards the last of the questions. and that kind of gets into drafts versus versions. It's three drafts for that project. So I give them something and I say, hey, this is your vision, here's draft one. And they say, okay, great. And you could do that draft one, two, and then final. If they come back and they say, actually, now that we've seen this, instead of doing this sit down type of interview, we're gonna do like Instagram reels, right? So that's a different scope. So that's a change order. That's a completely different version thing. So include that in your contract, just that language of like, hey, so this is based off of, this number is based off of all these expectations. This is what becomes not just another draft version. I don't know if I'm explaining that well. And then rate for additional work ends. That to me, like I said, is after the third round. So what I would expect to be the final, we might have to have a discussion about hourly rate. And it's. Not necessarily a cheap hourly rate. It might be a premium hourly rate because I'm not expecting to have to do that. Right. So it's not part of like a package deal, which maybe you guys can have a conversation and you say, OK, well, it's five thousand dollars. The hourly rate is going to be one hundred dollars. uh Normally my rate is one hundred fifty dollars an hour. But because we're already doing this work, you you can have that conversation. But just. You know, always respect yourself because you just you don't want to be your own worst enemy. All right. Next up is reschedule and cancellation. So what are the notice requirements, uh whether contingency, the kill fee, how deposits apply. So with deposits, if the thing gets canceled, whether you cancel it or they cancel it, what's your return policy? So if they cancel the shoot, do you give them back their deposit? Only you can tell them that. You know, I'm not going to tell you one way or the other. If you cancel it, do you give them the deposit back? The notice requirements are it has to be within writing. So is it within writing within 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 10 days, whatever? And the weather contingency, that's usually like, the weather wasn't good. So we're going to go out next week if you have the ability to do that. And it's not for a specific event on a specific day. Are you on deck for that? Are you scheduled for that or is that not within your purview? Are you already booked for something else? So that's important to keep in there. Is there a kill fee? So if they cancel it, do you charge them a percentage or just a flat rate? Because now you can't count on that. So you were counting on the five thousand dollars. Maybe you got the deposit already, but you are still owed thirty seven hundred dollars. How much of that are you going to charge off? Because now you're not getting that work. You're counting on that. and you lost out on other opportunities. So it's important to keep that in there. Next is usage rights and licensing. So where can they use it? For how long? Paid ads versus organic, whether you can use it in your portfolio. All of this that I'm giving is US-based knowledge. Again, it's not legal advice. So at least in the US, typically the rights to the photos or the videos, the assets, are on the person that captured them, the production company that... that captured it or the freelancer that captured it. Sometimes it's not. Look that up, okay, for your particular use case. It depends on the client, but I just did this last year for a client where I gave them the rights in perpetuity. They can use it for commercial use. It's important to know commercial use versus personal use. They're my photos, they're my videos. You having the rights means that you should be able to... share it however you like. There's a caveat to that though. And that's why we have this stipulation in the contract. There might be sensitive information or there might be timeline information that they don't want you putting that out until the project goes live. Maybe it's for an event that's happening that they don't want all the information out there yet. And if you post that on your portfolio ahead of time, you might spoil something that they're looking forward to sharing or there's just a timeline. So they might say, yeah, you can share it to your portfolio, but it has to be after this date. And then you're fine, you're clear. And that's an hour in writing. Raw files and project files. This is a question we're going to kind of dive into a little bit more later on, but make sure that you put in there whether it's available, the raw files and the project files or what's included, the transfer fee, if any, and no credit clause if other edits. We're going to get into that in a minute. So put a pin in that audio and music responsibility. Who is responsible for licensing music? voiceover, third party assets, which also includes things like graphics. Are you using third party graphics? Do you go to someplace like Envato and download the stuff or are they giving it to you? So that's important to just kind of have in there. Liability and limitations. So reasonable limits, force majeure. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly. Not responsible for things outside your control. I'm really not gonna touch this too much, but just make sure that you have your liability stuff. sign off and acceptance. how final approval works, what delivered means and when the project is considered complete. That's all we're to get into as far as the contract stuff. Again, not legal advice and is mostly US based stuff. We'll get into that conversation later on another episode. So question number four is how do you price quick jobs when the ask is vague? This can be tough. I like to probe and then give a range and I do not ever give a range. In the moment because I'm not just trying to win the gig. There's a lot of stuff that I just need to process and doing it in the moment ends up kind of taking your ability away to do that. So try to probe as much as you can. You say you need a two minute video, but what are the details? What's involved? How many people are involved in the approval process that changes the game a lot? So if it's just you and the client, just the one person and they're the person that makes the calls and they're not looking for a lot of back and forth, the price is going to be a lot cheaper than if they have 15 people that it has to go through and then it's a lot of stuff that goes back and forth. So probe to get as much information as you can about what you need to know to actually do the job. Consider the opportunity cost. And the opportunity cost means you might lose out. So don't just try to race to the bottom and get the gig because if you're kind of underselling yourself and just trying to get this quick job, you might lose out on other opportunities, other jobs. that you could have been getting that are gonna pay you far better and just be a better fit for you. A lot of times the people that are just looking for quote unquote quick work, they have a low budget and there's nothing wrong with low budget, but they have a cheap budget and so they usually have a cheap budget with wine tastes and so the people that wanna pay the least ask for the most. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at this and is it actually a good opportunity? Because a good opportunity is only good opportunity when it's a good opportunity. So question number five, what do you do when the client is slow to give feedback and the timeline slips? Before the timeline is going to slip, give them a heads up. Let's say in the example of you, you sent the first draft and they have till the 14th. Just give them a gentle nudge, say, hey, here's the video, there's first draft. Don't forget to give me your feedback by the 14th so we can stay on track. And that's two weeks away. So if you don't hear back within a week, ping them again and maybe call them. because maybe they lost access to their email or they're just buried with emails and they didn't see it. So maybe give them a call or a text, whatever your relationship is with them. This is where you hold their butt to the fire because if they still don't get back to you by the 13th, it's like, hey, so just don't forget to give me your feedback by tomorrow. Otherwise we're going to lose the timeline. If they still don't give it to you after the 14th, you can send, but hey, so sorry you weren't able to give me your feedback. Just let me know. when you're thinking you might give me the feedback so that we can continue to work on this project and restructure the timeline. You want to make sure that you put that in the email or in the communication and you want to have a paper trail. It's very clear that they've missed it. It's on them. You're happy to work on it, but it's going to adjust things, right? You're not still going to hit that May 1st or March 1st deadline because now they've held it back. Now, maybe you can still pull it out, but don't sign up for it because they dropped the ball. OK. Number six, what do you do when multiple people are giving notes and nobody can decide? So this is what I was talking about earlier. I've had this happen when I was part of an agency. I had a project manager on our side that gave me the work and then they would act as the filter and they would send it to the client and then the client would review it. And they had, I think, six people. The six people would send feedback individually and then the project manager would send me the information like, hey, these are the edits that need to get done. OK, great. So I start doing the edits and then they send me another round of edits because person two now chimed in and then person three. And all of a sudden you're doing six revisions and nobody is talking to each other. Make sure and this is where in the contract you have that point of contact. Who's in charge of giving you the distilled information? So on their side, on the client side, you have those six people that are trying to figure out what they want to make, who you're to pay attention to because they have to wrangle up their own team. And then that goes down to your project manager or maybe just strictly to you, whatever your situation is. But make sure that that's very clear. Who's the head chef? So number seven, this uh is a contentious subject. uh What if the clients ask for all the raw footage or project files? Now, I might get my ass handed to me in the comment section because I have read so many things about what people do for raw, never give raw, only give raw in this circumstance. I'm not saying that you should just give your raw away for free. Usually clients, unless you're working with like a media company that understands what raw actually means, usually they just mean the clip's unedited, so. they can do their own editing or maybe they do want the color correction like they're expecting JPEGs versus RAW photos. And so they expect that they're gonna be the coloring is gonna be decent. Whereas a RAW photo is going to be very washed out because you have all that flexibility, but they don't know that. A lot of clients can't even open up RAWs. You know, if they have a Windows and they don't have the plugin, they can't open a RAW file. One of the things that I like to do if I'm asked for either the RAW video, I haven't really shot RAW. raw video I use log and that's been pretty damn good for everything I need. But even that, they're gonna look at that washed out footage, not gonna know what to do with it. Depending on the client, I try to educate. You're asking for raw footage, this is what that means. Do you have somebody that understands how to do the color grading and do you have the capability of opening it? And some people say, no, that's not what we're talking about. We don't want the final edit, we want all the clips that you took on the days so we can kind of work on it. or reuse it for Instagram later in the future. Now, this is where people are probably gonna be like, Dave, what the heck are you doing? Typically, depending on what the ask is, I'm happy to give it to them. but, I'm just gonna say basically what I say. This is not verbatim, but I wrote this down, okay? I can provide the raw footage, but I treat it as separate deliverable. That's because raw files take time to organize and transfer, and they can include material that I would normally filter out during editing. If you or your team edits the raw, I'm happy to help you get what you need, but edits made by others should not be presented as my work. Some version of that is how I phrase it. I don't want them to present something as 124 productions if it isn't. So like they might have really saturated, terrible color grading, and that's fine if that's what they want to do, but that's not me. So I don't want my name attached to that. So question number eight is who owns the work and what does rights or licensing Actually mean we kind of went over this already and again, this is us-based So the rights and licensing like I said in most cases the person that's hired to capture the photos or the video actually owns the photo and video and what I do is I give Licensing rights to the client and I say, okay one two three industries You can use all the stuff that I gave you in perpetuity for commercial use And so and that's what this means. And there's some jargon that goes along with it. It might be a temporary licensing thing saying, hey, you can use this for only 30 days. That's all you paid me for. It's cheap money. You know, whatever. I don't know what your what your specifics are, but that's what licensing is. I am giving you the ability to use this how you want within these regulations. Maybe you say, you know, you can't use this. And I don't know, on Instagram, you get to choose what the licensing is. And they may push back, but that's why you do this in the contract ahead of time. So question number nine is how do you keep versions organized so you don't lose your mind? It's easy. It's simple. Final, final, final done. That's the name of it. It's pretty simple for me. So let's say it's called Dave's Awesome Photo Shoot. If I do deliver the first draft, everything is a draft unless it's a change, a complete change. That's how I run it. So if I give them a version, version one and They say, great, yeah, I like this, but let's just change out these couple clips and let's change out some of this text. Great, that's draft two is gonna be the next version of that. using the word version, I shouldn't use the word version. Draft two is gonna be the next iteration of that. And so it's Dave's awesome photo shoot, D1. D for draft one. And then same thing for draft two is now D2. And then. If I go to draft three and it's not final or a lot of times I will do draft three, but I'll I'll do final at the end afterwards. So it'll be Dave's office from photoshoot draft three. Now, if they say, you know what? Complete redirection. We we don't want that that sit down level of interview. know that you caught other footage while we were there. So can we kind of change this? So now it's it's got a different tempo to it. It's got a different messaging to it. Now that's version. That's a version change. So it'll be Dave's Awesome Photo Shoot V2, D1. So now it's version two, draft one. Version two, draft three. So D3 and whatever. And so then that leads into the last question, which is how do you handle deliverables and exports so clients do not get confused? Now with all these different file names with D1 and V3 and whatever, it's very easy for them to use the wrong one. On their end, they might give it to their team member and they didn't realize that draft for a version two is the right one. So they did the wrong version. They uploaded that and that's not the one that they wanted. And so what I do is this is where final comes in the word final. And I always put it in caps right at the end. It'll be Dave's awesome photo shoot draft three dash final. That's how you know this one has actually been approved. And that's, you know, it'll be draft three was the final version. that I expected there to be. But when I gave it to them, it just said D3. And so I'll just rename it on my end and send it back oftentimes just so that it's the exact same thing. But I want to make sure that it says final on it. So it's just a duplicate of draft three. But now they know and I know that's it. That's the one that got that went live. And with that, that's the 10 questions that I saw as I scoured the Internet. What's your take on the raw footage? Should you give it to them? How much should you charge to give them raw footage? I'd love to hear what your feedback is. Just be kind, okay? So until next time, be good to each other.