TR014 - Samsung / Monday - 07/2017
~*~
updated: 2022-06-12
(wording)
This project to me is a very big lesson.
I had worked with Click Media before in previous project and known about them since Tiger Wall.
At the time I was working on a couple of ideas for feature film and pretty much don’t take in any work for editting. Despite that Duy offered me to be an assitant for an Editor class by a famous editor. I met X at the class. First I didn’t recognise her but then realised I have seen her around before at the old post house I used to work. (Not very close though because I rarely cut advert for Digipost.) Only then I knew X also work with my friend Hùng at Click. Sometime after this class, I got an email invitation to work for a project for Click but that didn’t work out.
Then again, I got a call from X stating things are very urgent and needed help since the client would not approve the film. We met at a coffee shop and I was greeted with a big bag of harddrives. X said they shot a sitcom with 8 episodes and none of them have been cut. She said they messed up the schedule and needed to cut the trailer first within 3 days. Sounded like a nightmare, so I said I couldn’t promise much. But the nagging kept comming. Also, I was curious what was my own processing speed limit so I took the job. I down another big black cup of coffee before take the bag of hard drives home.
At 6 p.m that day, I sat down the cutting table. The total amount of footage I had was 24 hours. I had to compressed that 24 hours down to 1 minute guessing which shot the editor for the main film will use. In about 12 hours later, I sent my first cut and said I had to sleep for 8 hours to recover. When I woke up my hair was all over my pillow. I was freaking out at that point.
But the good news was the client had better attitude and we will now move to adjustment phase. I kept at it for the next 2 days until the moment of publishing.
When there were time to work out the payment, X offered to pay me not even half a day of work. I couldn’t understand why because I had worked with them before and they were decent people so I asked X to check back with the office and offer to talk to the person in charge if there are more complication. We went back and forth emailing with another person that I shall name Z. They claimed that because they didn’t have the budget because they had negotiated with the client before hand like that was my problem. I again demanded X and Z to let me talk to whoever was in charge. But this time they got their cooperate lawyer into the conversation and stated that they had no obligation to pay me since I did not sign a contract.
Very fortunately, I worked with Juli from the other project and so called her to ask for help. Juli sent me a number of Hà - CEO of Click. Hà said she will talk to X to settle things. If there were still trouble, then we will arrange a meeting. At this point, I didn’t even care how much they would pay me at longer. Anyhow, they paid me for one day of work.
After this project, I am very cautous about project that are urgent even if it comes from a close friends.
A couple of years later, I heard some one lost his life on the cutting table because of overworked.
