One of my more popular “products” are two-minute short videos. They can be for broadcast advertising, a presentation for sales or an on-line You Tube demo, etc. Now when I shoot these videos it takes a lot of time to put the whole thing together. I have to do pre-production for the shoot, do the shoot and of course prepare the final edit just for those two “perfect” minutes. It can also take up as much as 20 to 30 gigs (of raw footage) on my hard drive.

Often after the delivery of the “final product” people ask me for the raw footage as well. I have to explain that this is not a common practice and here is why. If I were to use an analogy I’d say; it would be like going to a restaurant and asking for an item on the menu. Then after you finish your plate, you also want all the left over ingredients in the kitchen. Obviously, that is not going to happen.

A restaurants signature dishes are their brand, not the ingredients and thus the equivalent between your final video and the raw footage. Much in the same way, that finished video is my brand – the raw footage is not. I will not release the raw footage (unless pre-arranged) because that is also an extra bill-able product on top of the cost of the final cut of your video.

If you know ahead of time that you will want or need all the raw footage, on top of the final cut, please ask me before we start the shoot and then we will negotiate the price for that. Then, I can deliver both the raw footage and the final cut to you to you to be downloaded directly on to your hard drive.