And...

Oops, I hit the send button too soon.

The thing that will keep you in business the longest with a long list of long term clients is "fairness". Yeah, you also have to offer a lot more things like great quality, on-time / on-budget delivery and an outstanding set of ethics. Bla bla bla. Some of my clients have been with me for over 20 years, starting with S-VHS production. One thing that I have never done is to claim copyright, except when I'm the victim of nonpayment.

There have been dozens of clients who's first question was "Who owns the copyright to my footage?" My answer is "You own everything that you pay for". Holding a client's footage hostage in order to get future work is professional suicide. Regardless of the intellectual property laws, to them, it looks like nothing more that trickery or greed.

I don't mean to come down on you hard on this but I run my business on the "100% referral" business model and charge what I call "The Happy Price". They're happy, I'm happy. Everybody's happy. As silly as it sounds, people love it when I say those words. Again, it's all about fairness.

Hire someone to chop that thing down to 3 minutes, today. Even if you lose a few bucks in the process.




Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It's a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD .