Closed

Here's a quick one. I've been trying to keep my stories spaced a bit so, under the hopeful assumption that the human race will somehow get smarter, less skeezy, and more reliable in the course of mere months, I will still have stories to tell and keep the blog running in the future. However, this was my day, and I thought I'd put it in writing.

The freelance video work I do most frequently is pretty cut and dry. Travel a few hours, shoot a video, bring it home, cut it, turn it in for a pretty low-rent return, at least in the eyes of the average professional freelance videographer or editor. The company collects the clients, they arrange a shooting date, the shoots late two hours (hypothetically), I do the leg work, I turn it in, they do the final touches and get it back to the client. Clients are generally small businesses.

There've been a few snags. That happens when you bring living, breathing people into the mix. Some videos have taken hours extra because clients are unprepared, some clients are huge, ravenous hosebeasts bent on the domination of the cosmetic marketing world and my testicles

I never use them, if you want them that much, just have em and stop emailing me

And others are just clueless. Sometimes this is ok. There've been plenty of times where I've walked into a shoot and a client had no idea what the intended to say or do. No problem. A few times, I've walked into the office and the client would say, "oh, that's today?" That's fine, because generally, they are polite enough to realize they forgot, and the fault is on them. A few times, however, clients simply back out. They forget, something comes up last minute (by last minute I mean the landlord is doing renovations and they JUST realized that jackhammers are loud), or they just ate a whole Winchester House worth of lead paint a kid and it's starting to kick in.

I thought I'd be like Spiderman, instead I got a non-operable benign tumor the size of a caribou, but the plus side is I can do this

Actually, this happens so frequently that they actually have a clause for it: a $25 payout for a same-day cancellation. Sometimes that means they cancel while I'm still in bed, other times it means I'm in my car, driving, or even there already, when clients shit the proverbial bed.

I guess they could have cancelled while I was still in bed by shitting in it, but that seems premeditated

When I'm driving from WV to DC, the trouble with that is that this complimentary $25, the equivalent of a pair of Sketchers when the Green Iguanas get second place on Legends of the Hidden Temple, is that the consolation prize doesn't even cover gas if I'm already there.

Today was a new first. I traveled, I called the client on the road, and guess what? No answer. Whatever, I still have to make the appointment. I park and approach the business, located in the middle of a strip mall, and notice the sign on the door and darkened store front.

It was a dance studio, I don't know why I chose a photo with barred windows like an inner city pawn shop

I called the office to check in, and while it was a bummer, they didn't seem surprised. Clients like this crop up all the time. I think a few extra "remember the appointment, champ!" calls could fix this issue. But until then, I'll be driving really far for coffee from the high-priced bistro that always seems to be right next door. Thank God for them.

Note to self: fewer human clients.

Pardon me, but would you like the killing of all humans video-graphed?