had a weird situation last week. did a commercial shoot for a small construction company, buildings and site progress stuff, pretty standard gig. delivered everything, client was happy, then a few days later they emailed asking if they could have the raw LOG footage because their in-house guy wants to recolor it differently for some internal presentation. i didn't have anything in the contract about raw files specifically.

part of me wants to just send it over because it's not a huge deal and i want repeat business from these guys. but also it feels like a slippery slope? like now they might not need me to do the editing next time. not sure how to handle this, ive never been asked this before. do you normally put raw file clauses in contracts or just deal with it case by case

i actually charge for raw files as a separate line item now, specifically because of situations like this. not a huge fee, usually $75-100, but it signals that there's value in what you captured and it's not just automatically included. if they want to do their own color work that's totally fine but you're still licensing that footage to them.

for this specific situation since you don't have a contract clause about it - honestly i'd probably give it to them this once and just be friendly about it, but mention casually that going forward raw deliverables are something you can offer as an add-on. turns an awkward moment into a future upsell. and yeah definitely update your contract template, i learned the same way

ive had this come up a couple times and it really depends on the client relationship for me. a one-off client, maybe I hold the line a bit more. a repeat client who might book quarterly site progress shoots? i'd hand it over and just make sure my contract covers it going forward. losing that retainer relationship over raw files would be a bad trade.