They're parasites and bottom dwellers empowered by the fact that online marketing lowered the entry bar into marketing.
During my 5-year experience with them, I quit in one where I worked full-time, worked with several dozen of these 'agencies', my ex works for one, and I am due payment tommorow by one. I'm drawing a line here (not nudged by this letter, I've come to that decision few weeks back) - I'll never work with them again.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients. They're never satisfied with the results, they won't pay the market rate, they abuse their employees. At first agency, I worked 120h a week, for several months, on several ocassions. Ended up in ER twice, lost an organ (gallbladder) and seriously damaged another (chronic gastritis) in short period of time, had micronap hallucinations regulary. Yes, I should've known better. Youthful energy got the best of me. It got best out of all their other employees, almost all who have left "violently". I was 27 at that point.
On a more lighter note - old school marketeers with vision, concept and drive now get even more respect from me. I didn't appreciate them enough when I started, thinking that they're not doing enough "numbers". Tough times for them and it's a shame. They'll be back on horse soon enough, I hope. There ought to be data-sucking ad-providing backlash at one point, right? Tell me it is so.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients.
Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing. I feel slightly sorry for this guy, but his failure to get any kind of deal memo or contract in place shows him to be an amateur.
EDIT: I extended my original comment as it was so brief as to be potentially confusing.
As for ripping off his design for the poster - nope. I recognized the visual concept immediately as a fan of Chan Wook Park's original Oldboy of which this is a remake. Here's a publicity still from the film: http://byt.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
So the notion of a man emerging from a packing case in an empty field is part of the scripted action of the film, not Mr Garcia's idea. The image of a woman in the background is also related to a story element (which I'd prefer not to explain lest it spoil the plot) and I'm willing to bet she appears with similar costuming in the film. The fonts, layout and content of the textual elements are wholly different And far more inspired by the publicity materials of the Korean original.
The marketing company should not be employing Mr Garcia's material on their social networking pages. However, it's unsurprising that whoever is in charge of the social media marketing would assume that any and all art assets were the products of a work-for-hire agreement as that is normal practice within the industry. however, this also has to viewed in the light of:
Early in the conversation the agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the “exposure” so since I knew I was not going to getting paid I put the posters in my portfolio.
This is a grey area. An industry portfolio is generally understood to be for exhibition to other clients. Standard practice for cinematographers, production designers and other keys etc. is to either a) negotiate a release for copyrighted materials to be part of a public demo reel or b) to limit access to the demo reel to potential clients, eg by using password-protected videos on vimeo or sending publicity stills privately through email, samples of recorded dialog (if you're a sound person, as I am). And so on. Again, this is the sort thing that is usually established in a deal memo, and such a normal situation that it's typically boilerplate.
Without such an agreement, any claim by Mr Garcia that the pictures in his portfolio were official key art in any capacity (even unused) verges on being an implicit appropriation of trademarks, publicity rights, and/copyrighted material (to they extent that they employed any elements from production stills etc.), as distinct from mere 'fan art.'
Now, it's bad that Mr Garcia got no contract in place but I really think there is a bit more to this story, because the first thing any producer learns on anything but the most amateur-hour production is to get legal releases for any and all performances or copyrighted material on a work-for-hire basis. contractual relations are the lifeblood of the film business and even small indie productions with budgets of only a few thousand dollars use boiler plate agreements.
I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked in this field for a decade and I've been party or witness to disputes about ownership of work from both sides of the table. I don't find Mr Garcia's version of events entirely persuasive.
Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing.
I'm sorry for you feel that way. You can opt-in in making a meaningful and fruitful business relations instead? Shame it's an opt-in, and not opt-out, though. I guess Bible's right on that one.
Producers want to pay as little as possible, for obvious economic reasons. Freelancers want to be paid as much as possible, likewise. If you're not operating under a union or guild contract of some sort (and paying part of your income in dues for the privilege of outsourcing and standardizing your rates and working conditions), then it's up to you to make the best deal you can for your services, and and part of that involves a willingness to walk.
On a couple of occasions I've rejected a job only to be called up several weeks later when the lower-cost provider the producer contracted with didn't perform, and in cases like that I ask for and get my full fee. It's a tough world.
No, I don't agree with that. It's a dog-eat-dog world if you make it. But world is so far and wide that you can bypass all that crap for the most part.
I am not (well, trying not too when I'm zen enough, unlike now with all this ranting) taking up working with anyone who doesn't see our collaboration as pure win-win situation, and will provide me with more than I ask for, and I provide him with more than he bargained for.
Stress-B-Gone, and life become a real page-turner!
That's the ideal way to work, but it doesn't always pan out - and relationships with heightened expectations but no formalities often make for the worst conflicts if they go south.
So long as the author/designer didn't have a contract in place to sell his work, then they don't own it and he retains copyright. As a result they're committing criminal copyright infringement and he should be referring this to the FBI for federal prosecution. They will have zero ability to prove that they own the work so I imagine it might go very well for the designer.
Surely copyright law isn't that difficult. Every person owns the copyright to everything that they make, even sans registration with the LoC. Okay, so the designer does retain copyright, provided that it wasn't work-for-hire.
There is no contract between the designer and the design company. And from what he says, he didn't get paid to develop on an hourly rate which means that it's not work-for-hire. And he hasn't been paid, which means that there wasn't an implicit contract or a verbal one that culminated in payment.
That means that the design company won't have any proof that it originated the art (and thus would have copyright of it), nor will it have any proof that it purchased or licensed the art (and thus would have some rights to use it). The designer could likely produce many design iterations that might be quite convincing to a jury that he was in fact the person who generated the designs.
Of course there's no way to be sure that the FBI would take the designer seriously. He's just a "normal guy" and his adversary is large and probably well funded. But that doesn't mean that the "normal guy" is wrong.
The designer should not have worked without a contract. What he did amounts to spec work. Next time, he will make sure that he and the agency sign a contract stating that when he gets paid, the transfer of copyright occurs.
Right, I agree with you 100% that he made a mistake. But the mistake that he made doesn't mean that the agency has a free pass to take his work and use it for free, no consequences.
Well, no what? You gave me a link and nothing more. That's not a rebuttal. It's very nearly as bad as saying "nuh uh!!" as if we're children on a playground.
They're parasites and bottom dwellers empowered by the fact that online marketing lowered the entry bar into marketing.
During my 5-year experience with them, I quit in one where I worked full-time, worked with several dozen of these 'agencies', my ex works for one, and I am due payment tommorow by one. I'm drawing a line here (not nudged by this letter, I've come to that decision few weeks back) - I'll never work with them again.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients. They're never satisfied with the results, they won't pay the market rate, they abuse their employees. At first agency, I worked 120h a week, for several months, on several ocassions. Ended up in ER twice, lost an organ (gallbladder) and seriously damaged another (chronic gastritis) in short period of time, had micronap hallucinations regulary. Yes, I should've known better. Youthful energy got the best of me. It got best out of all their other employees, almost all who have left "violently". I was 27 at that point.
On a more lighter note - old school marketeers with vision, concept and drive now get even more respect from me. I didn't appreciate them enough when I started, thinking that they're not doing enough "numbers". Tough times for them and it's a shame. They'll be back on horse soon enough, I hope. There ought to be data-sucking ad-providing backlash at one point, right? Tell me it is so.