had a situation last week that kind of threw me off. did a commercial shoot for a construction company, ground stills plus aerial, fairly big job. we agreed on deliverables upfront, i sent the edited files, client was happy. then like four days later they email asking for the raw drone footage because they want to do their own edit internally.

i didnt have any language in my contract about this and honestly my contract is pretty barebones in general which i know is a problem. i dont really want to hand over the raws for a bunch of reasons, partly because they look rough ungraded and i dont want my work floating around in that state, partly because it feels like they should just pay for an additional deliverable if they want more than what we agreed.

ended up telling them i could provide a prores export at a higher res than i normally deliver for an additional fee, they seemed okay with it. but now im wondering how you all handle this in your contracts, do you explicitly say raws arent included or do you just not mention it and deal with it case by case

yeah get that contract sorted out, this exact scenario is super common especially with corporate clients who have in-house creative teams. i have a line in mine that just says something like "raw or unedited files are not included in deliverables unless explicitly stated in the project agreement and are subject to additional licensing fees." simple as that and ive never had anyone push back on it during signing.

the prores compromise you did was smart tbh. gives them flexibility without handing over your actual camera originals. i do something similar, i have a "production master" tier thats like a clean ungraded but color managed export that i can sell separately. clients feel like theyre getting something premium and you still control what goes out with your name sort of attached to it.

this is making me realize my contract has basically nothing in it either. been meaning to fix it forever. do you use a template you found somewhere or did you write yours from scratch? ive seen a few on etsy of all places but idk if those are actually legit for commercial work