so i've been doing real estate and construction progress shoots for about two years now and honestly the footage side of things i've got pretty dialed in. my issue is always the people side. had a job last week where the client sent me a revised shot list the morning of the shoot, like two hours before i was supposed to be on site. added three new angles they wanted, wanted a full orbit of the back building which they hadn't mentioned, and asked if i could 'just quickly' grab some interior stuff too which like... that's not even my thing and definitely wasn't in the quote.

i ended up doing most of it because i didn't want to rock the boat with a client who gives me pretty regular work, but i kind of resent that i did that. felt like i was being walked over a bit. do you guys have specific language in your contracts for this or do you just handle it on the fly? wondering if i should be building in a change fee or something. i dont really have a proper contract right now, more just email agreements which i know is probably bad.

oh man yeah email agreements will absolutely bite you eventually, been there. after a similar situation i put together a proper scope of work document that i send before every job, even the small ones. it just spells out exactly what's included ? number of locations, specific deliverables, turnaround time ? and then there's a line that says anything outside the agreed scope is billed at my hourly rate. i've never actually had to enforce it in a harsh way but just having it there means when i reference it the client usually backs off or says yeah okay let's add that to the invoice. the morning-of changes thing is so common with real estate clients especially, they're stressed and just keep thinking of stuff. doesn't make it okay but that's usually what's going on.

honestly i just started saying 'i can fit that in, i'll just add it to the invoice' in a totally calm cheerful way and most of the time they go oh actually never mind. the ones who do say go ahead are fine because then you're getting paid for it. the interior thing though that would have annoyed me too, thats a completely different skill set and kit and you should 100% not be doing that for free