When a client asks for "just one more version," where does your line actually sit?
Generative tools have made it cheap to produce another version of a shot, a cut, a color pass, whatever. What hasn't gotten cheaper is deciding when to stop.
On interview-heavy edits I used to have a hard rule: three cuts, then we lock picture and move to color. That rule doesn't really work anymore, because a client can now ask for a fourth, fifth, sixth pass and each one only costs an hour instead of a day, so there's no natural friction pushing toward a decision.
The strange part is that more options hasn't made clients happier, it's made them more anxious about missing a better version they didn't ask for. I've started explicitly pricing revision rounds again, not because the work is expensive, but because the round itself is the thing that forces a decision to get made.
Curious how others here are handling this, especially anyone doing post/motion/design work where a "version" is now nearly free to generate. Are you still capping rounds, or has the whole idea of a round stopped making sense?
Replies
I used to cap at three as well but now I build the lock point into the contract language. Has that worked for you or do clients still push past it?
this is such a real problem more version dont always mean better result sometimes having a clear stopping point is what actually gets the work shipped