Or should I title this the cinema gaff instead? I wanted to write about it to both inform potential clients and also hopefully have a bit of fun with talking about the headspace that creators go through when we come across a client that obviously doesn’t understand what they want.
there it was, standing out at the top of the upwork que, a job from the Middle East, one that I should have maybe moved on from and ignored but it was right up my street build out some cinemagraphs quickly, it had just been posted a few minutes ago and so had less than five replies to it. I jumped on it and entered the race to get the client — I pushed a previously made playlist of cinemagraphs from youtube (power move) always have things ready to show to a client — they often wanna be in and out and done.
That sealed the deal, they could see that I could make cinemagraphs and we were on our way, the client sent me youtube links of videos that they wanted to turn parts of them into cinemagraphs and I left it there to pick up the next morning. I asked a few questions about what parts needed animation and what doesn’t, standard questions for cinemagraphs work — at this stage I did’nt ask the client if they had permission to use the video on youtube but it was question in the back of my mind I had at the time.
Previously I had used flixel and Cinemagraph pro but it’s gotten expensive all of a sudden for a year and I can no longer pay monthly so I had to use another piece of software, we got it on 30 days trial for a reduced price of $47 and it was terrible, it did the job and we got a refund, never go cheap on software or hardware if you can afford too — like my grandad once said to me, BUY CHEAP BUY TWICE, golden advice from a generational sage that I remember standing next to as a kid as he plucked his tomatoes that he had grown from Spanish seeds.
expectations vs actuality
So here’s where things need explaining both from my perspective but from the clients as well — from my perspective right now I realise that this is probably a client inside of a client job, that is that they are charging their client a lot more money for this job and they don’t know how to do it, at all. Like not a clue, they have seen it on the web and don’t know what’s involved to make them — no frame of reference, we are going in cold with a client that just wants the end result, not the technical stuff.
My client wants 10 cinemgraphs, they have provided source footage on youtube that I have no idea is there’s or they have permission to use (good idea to get clarification here before you start btw) and they have a requirement of the cinemagraphs in .gif format at a resolution of 400x400 and under 256kb. Ok, no pro. … whoa whoa whoa. HOLD UP, what. ..
Another major red flag that the client has no idea what they want, they just want what they want and this is where the rabbit hole for the creator comes in, where it becomes a time arms race, where things get more a battle of the brains rather than delivering on the clients needs, now we are in the phase I call ‘sounding out the client’ which becomes almost a battle of intelligence.
At this stage I’m sure a lot of creatives make the clients pay for their lack of intelligence at what they want, as long as they are on the clock, then they will take their time to deliver, meanwhile the client is confused as to what is going on because they have never actually stepped through the process of the creation part, that’s why they are asking us to do it because they don’t understand the requirements and even limitations of the format.
Also at this stage even thou I’ve been told the sources, the sizing of the output and the file size they are looking for they have not told me where it’s going to be used so I have no end point as to what it will be used for — this would be helpful to know as I can then tune or push the format, quality, speed to fit the platform it’s end destination - they decided to keep that as ‘in-house’ use, ok, but that can make things kinda difficult in the short term, I’m presuming they are just used as marker blocks or for news letters or something because of the sizing concerns. Again, as a creator. I’m in the dark and start to feel this a little more shifty than it needs to be.
the client often has no idea of the process
So it’s obvious at this stage that they don’t understand their source material. I’ve been sent 1920x1080 sources and we need to crop that to 400x400 — ok, where, what part. Ok, the fire, not a problem, that means that the rest of the scene it sits in won’t be present — after all, I’m not gonna deliver you a scaled image into 400x400 because obviously that’s not gonna work RIGHT? — also, file size, 256kb? What is this an amiga 500 boot loader demo of who can write a packer that unpacks a fully fledged c++ coded vector maths demo loader?
Anyway, in my usual ‘can do’ attitude I jump in to make some tests, I cut out what they want, I zone it out to 400x400 and I do an hour of testing, file sizes, colours, quality, load time, frames etc, stuff the client will never see or care about because it’s just a turn key drop it in and spit it out thing right? (The biggest issue with client and service relationships is education) nope that’s not how cinemagraphs work — we have frames of animation at a certain resolution with a certain amount of colours especially when working with an old format like .gif — you can’t have quality and speed together easily especially when you want a quality Cinemagraph under 256kb — aint’s gonna happen mate. ever.
explaining limitations creates bottlenecks
And this is where the nexus of the universal remote client relationship can be strained - we are now in the ‘fuckery’ phase where we have to decide on our strategy with the client, we have to evaluate some things. If we educate this $50 client will they be back, is it worth it, will their be repeat business, do we want to be the crank it out ten cinemagraphs for $50 Del Boy turn key these things out whilst educating the client who is obviously not interested in telling us if they have permission to use the clips or where they will be used.
we have to enter the ‘education or advice’ phase of informing the client the limitation of the request and this is where a lot of the time is wasted and where time is lost normally for the creator making the whole job seem worthless and questioning our own sanity for taking the damn job in the first place.
First my client wants quality, they won’t tell me where the end point is so I have to work inside of their limitations - they want a 400x400 sized .gif under 256kb - I already tell them I can’t do that as most sized gifs are gonna be around the 1mb at least mark, if you want that level of size then expect 16 colours, if you want full 256 colours in the gif optimised then expect much larger — the clients already asking for them to be delivered today instead of tomorrow when the original thing said, another red flag, urgency, means last minute, means often ill prepared which carries over uncertain to me the remote worker than you don’t have your shit on lock.
The next big red flag is the content itself — they want lovely zoned out frozen time cinemagraphs of places in the Middle East, I’m sure for a travel blog or a newsletter or some kind of client to get a good deal thing, they want speed and they want the attention, retention of a potential user clicking through — that’s obvious. But they have a major stumbling block, they don’t understand what kind of video footage works as a Cinemagraph and what does.
The golden rule here for a Cinemagraph, the contents inside the video can move but the actual camera and shot itself should not move. That is, the camera should be fixed, stable, not shaky, no zooms, no pulls, no rotates, the shot is fixed, and the movement happens inside the frame.
No movement behind movement, you can’t zone our something where someone is waving with something happening behind that person, you can’t zone our someones waving arms, for that it’s a frame by frame thing and even then you might not even get that — the source shot, if say on a drone of it going up and turning won’t work - the camera is moving and that’s where you kill a Cinemagraph.
protecting yourself as the creator
as the creator the biggest thing is time. Time to converse, time to go over and educate the client, for $50, being $38 after taxes and all that I really don’t have the time to spend educating the client each time about what the sources to be and how they look like — and this the rub because If the client knew that then they would be part way there to understand how to do it so why not go the whole way? Well, supply and demand, pass it over someone that can and does this full time, someone else’s problem, let them sort it out without any regards for the process - the client often just wants the deliverable without any regard how it’s made or how it got there, remember they want what they want when they want it! :)
As the creator, have everything locked down, deliver what they want, in the restraints that the client sets, be reasonable where you can, try and eliminate and head off the problems before they start, make sure you pull up at the project cross roads and look both ways - you and the client and try and get to a resolution. If the client wants it today, delivery exactly what they want, which I did which obviously they came back about quality and why some of the shots didn’t look very good. I still delivered on time and on budget and after a bit of a fuss it was paid (the milestone) — for god sake people use damn milestones, it’s important that you both know what to expect from each other right?
protecting yourself as the client
Understand what you are asking for — in this instance understand a little bit about the format — high quality cinemagraphs, properly polished and super hd often have online hosting services so size is not an issue. Asking someone to take a guess of what part of a 1920x1080 source and cut out a 400x400 part of a potentially moving scene means that it’s near on impossible to get a good Cinemagraph — good cinemagraphs require often lots of smooth frames to make them look silky smooth.
lots of frames equals big file size and the whole 16:9 shot is the reason why your eye gets pulled into a space, maybe a Cinemagraph at 400x400 and attempting to be under 256kb is totally unrealistic, understand what you are asking for or always expect to get something completely different from what your vision is, do a bit of research about the services you are wanting to acquire. you could quite easily just put up a cheap $5/10 task to get advice before assigning that job to someone.
I would have been quite happy to give a advice about it before we got started but then maybe I might not have got the job if they client did’nt want education but just the result, understand that your remote worker also has time constraints, location constraints maybe if a digital nomad and other clients — when we go on the clock we do so to get the task done and out the door, the more information you give us, the more exact the specs, the closer we will get to the reality of your request.
timescales, delivery and communications
Set realistic outcomes, don’t ask for 10 cinemagraphs and then I could 15 and you want it today, not tomorrow like your milestone says, you are instantly shifting over your lack of organising over to us and giving us limited resources to deliver on your request — if I was on the clock I would have to spend time trying to get inside of your limited dimension or file sizes because that’s what you wanted from me. If you set a time limitation you can expect me to deliver something to you but it might be wrong when it get’s there — not sure what’s worse, it being wrong after the deadline or having something and being able to iterate, either way we are both wasting precious time where we can be doing something else!
hopefully AI will be our friend
I’m kinda hoping that a lot of these questions and answers will fail away in time and that a lot of it will be sorted by AI, do you want to do this, will it require this, do you know that etc style of questions that will eliminate frustrations on both sides of the transaction so that both client and worker feel like they are in the loop and that the AI glue in the middle is taking out some of those pain points.
Of course every client is different, when you find a good client they are all over this, they have their style guide on lockdown, they understand or are willing to listen to how things work and they don’t want you to increase the quality of the content while trying to maintain a small file size (impossible btw) maybe your client is more willing to meet you half way ;)
conclusion
the moral to this story is that I did have the client come back to me on the second day asking for the quality to be improved and we did go through a back and forth about how cinemgraphs work and what to expect, they were a little unforthcoming about how the assets would be used so I felt I could not truly deliver to their needs but it was a relatively quick job — I’m guessing I spent way more than a few hours on it so at $25 an hour you have to balance our your time.
I could have quite easily spent many more hours outside for the $50 (which ended up as $38 don’t forget that) educating, back and forth, tuning etc, but I knew this was a one shot deal, the client was probably charging someone else $200 for my work anyway, another thing to consider when doing digital work is how much of your sweat equity you are willing to put in to get the funds and allocation of your time — because I’m kinda in a desperate needing to push funds situation right now I’m taking even the potentially difficult jobs because I know how to deal with them on a communication level — understand how to wield comms with remote clients is an art form and that can take many hours of frustration until you find your remote working feet.
I hope this helped someone out there improve their client and customer relations, I’d love to hear your stories below of how you dealt with remote clients, what techniques you put in place to inform and keep retention of your clients, do you use a CRM setup, how do you keep existing clients engaged?
Ok, we out, time to do some video recording! ;)
