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Negotiating with Clients: 10 Questions you Need to Ask–Part 2

Lesson 15 from: FAST CLASS: Business of Commercial Food Photography

Andrew Scrivani

Negotiating with Clients: 10 Questions you Need to Ask–Part 2

Lesson 15 from: FAST CLASS: Business of Commercial Food Photography

Andrew Scrivani

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Lesson Info

15. Negotiating with Clients: 10 Questions you Need to Ask–Part 2

Lesson Info

Negotiating with Clients: 10 Questions you Need to Ask–Part 2

This is a really essential aspect of that negotiation is how many shots do you want Because it influences everything as faras. How many days you're gonna be on set? How many days you gotta pay staff? How many days you got to rent things? How many? How many days you got to rent the studio, then the amount of usage on the imagery. This is one of the more influential questions you'll need answered when you're negotiating with a client. Because if I know what you all experience So what I would suggest to you is this negotiation needs to be about your workflow. What it takes for you to get the shot. If you budget an hour per dish, if you budget 15 minutes per dish, I don't care as long as you're comfortable with that flow. But if if you feel that you're being asked to do too much on a set, forget about the pricing, right. Forget about the idea that usage and all these other things and how many days it's gonna take. But that is, that is that key factor. The days Because if you're asked to be...

working on a day rate, they're gonna try to squash, inasmuch as humanly possible into your day. And if you don't understand that, forget the day rate. Yeah, the day rates for me to show up. What about the usage? Okay, well, making this many pictures where you're gonna pay for for how many pictures we're gonna make. That's what we're doing here. Um and you will influence how much work there is to be done by doing it regularly saying I'm used to shooting about seven dishes in a day, and that's for a 10 hour day and any any hours over. That is over time. And I built at this rate, when you come at people like that, they know they're dealing with a professional. So you need to be influenced by this. How many do you need? And then you start to say that's going to take two days. That's going to take three days. That's going to take five days. And then when you get the cookbook with 100 pictures in it, you say, Then I retire. So protect your art, protect your bankroll, you know, and and make your client happy by saying to them I know how I can make your work look great. But these are the guidelines were gonna go by and then negotiate off those guidelines. This question is the one that will influence just how much money is in it for you. Because aside from the idea of work for hire, which we're gonna kind of leave alone because I think that horse be dead, the usage is important in understanding. First of all, what? Who is the client, right? Does the client have the opportunity to use this to make money is in an editorial client. That's telling a story. That's one thing. Is it a new advertising client who is going to use it for a campaign? That's another thing. Is it a cookbook client who's going to sell a cookbook? That's a different kind of a client. So one day, understanding how the imagery will be used is essential is to how to build a negotiation around pricing the file formats. This is also one of those informed questions that can kind of prevent you from having one of these disasters where you spend a ton of time editing retouching, getting a package of photographs ready and you send them off his J pegs. And they say they wanted tiffs and they were like, Yeah, I was in that email, like, 20 emails into that chain one, You know, like you know what everyone was on. And there was 75 emails in that Cheney out. It was said that the editor wanted tips. You need to be clear. Ask the question. What file format do you want on J pegs? You want tips? You want C M Y que. You need to know how to deal with that situation because ultimately it matters. And it's also about your comfort level and how you like to process you work. And this is also leads to a little bit of a bonus question. Um, about files is who's retouching those files, you re touching them is someone else retouching them. And if that is someone else, who is that someone else? Because these are my files. I want them to look a certain way I process my pictures may be differently than you do. This is an important question to because, ah, the amount of lead time you need to prepare your images, especially if you're being asked to do the retouching, is depending how big the project is. Um, I would say whatever you think it's gonna take. Add two weeks, You know what I mean? And then you are Ah, One of my favorite phrases is, you know, under promise and over deliver. Because if you tell people it's going to take a month when you know it's going to take two weeks and you deliver in 10 days, you look like a hero. So this is an important question to ask up front. And then when they give you Ah, yeah, we need them tomorrow. Sorry. We're gonna need two days for that. So whatever it is, double it, you know, because a lot of people want it yesterday and I understand that. But if you want my best work, you need to give me the time to do my best work.

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