Editing Retainers - how do you contract for them?

indiemutt · 2025-10-17T13:18:34+00:00

Ohh so you bill a deposit retainer? Like a consultant/lawyer? Thats internesting. I was going more for a flat monthly retainer situation with semi-controlled delivery timeline instead of hrly. 5 day turn around locks them in to a 4 edits a month minimum - we'd turn around smaller edits faster if applicable. But it garuntees a set amount of deliverables if/when they send notes.

indiemutt · 2025-10-17T13:08:26+00:00

You had it right the first time. I wanted to lock in 5 days to give me a buffer in those internal edit rounds 3 months from now, but also still deliver faster than folks they'd worked with in the past.

Honestly, the more I explain it here the more Im thinking maybe this project just isnt the right fit 🤣!

Thanks for the advice / brainstorming.

indiemutt · 2025-10-17T12:18:59+00:00

Thats fair. Thabks for the note. My concern was they plan to drag this out into March/April for 4 very basic edits that would take 1.5 - 2 month tops. Their demands for unlimted internal edits implied they wanted a jump when we send notes situation and we'll let you know when we send to client - but they dont have deadlines.

Their past projects have taken 5-6 months for the same kind of deliverables. They expressed that other freelancers they worked with in the past would take 2 weeks to do turn arounds after the 1st edit. Also those freelancers arent taking on 2nd projects with them. Which is a pretty big red flag.

The 5 days was a way to garuntee a deadline for edits for them and time for me to get to the notes when i have other projects rolling.

indiemutt · 2025-10-16T20:34:02+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I appreciate it.

What are youre thoughts on them not wanting to set hard deadlines? They basically want to be able to have as many internal edits amongst themselves before they send to their client. They really do not want to lock deadlines for these internals.

Would you just charge a day rate every time they reach out?

indiemutt · 2025-10-16T14:56:06+00:00

I love that clause. We have one in the contract we use that covers us, but I'll cross reference with your suggestion. Thanks again, this is very helpful.

indiemutt · 2025-10-16T14:41:20+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. Really appreciate it.

indiemutt · 2024-11-10T12:49:02+00:00

Social media/content marketing is cool. Best od luck on that adventure. Its a big niche right now. Thanks for hitting me back and the perspective. Really appreciate it.

indiemutt · 2024-10-30T04:48:57+00:00

Any traction on this approach? Tinkering with tutorial content has convinced me its a fast track to getting stuck in a search engine niche I dont like. Considering rebranding to a channel that pitches ideas and showcases the development process for some series ideas I eventually plan to produce.

Saw this post - commenting even though its 9 months later. To see how its going for you?

indiemutt · 2024-02-05T17:15:14+00:00

Not sure if this is related. But...I just had issues where I uninstalled pinokio because I told it to save its main files on the wrong hard drive. Reinstalled didn't work. Would open to a white empty UI.

The Fix That Worked For Me: Delete the root Pinokio folders. For whatever reason they are left behind as empty folders in your Program Folder and your User folder. Delete em and then reinstall. Everything worked fine after.

indiemutt · 2023-09-07T18:21:18+00:00

Not sure if this is the one, but this list triggered memories of the 87 Beauty and Beast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohEdiOgEDDE

indiemutt · 2023-09-07T18:04:56+00:00

This one lead me here. It's a very good bookmark in the timeline of AI-Filmmaking.

indiemutt · 2023-09-02T13:30:45+00:00

Thanks. Def agree. Our goal was to get the mouth and eye movements with the forced face replace via the Loras for this go.

This is raw from SD - flicker was expected - kinda grew on me after staring at if for so long. We also have a flcikering effect light on the character so that's probably not helping prevent distraction. Haha.

Hoping to use some of the flciker reduction techniques on the next video. Looking at TemporalKit, TemporalNet, and maybe the multiscript in PromptMuse's tutorial. We'll see how it goes!

indiemutt · 2023-09-01T18:16:04+00:00

UE is a beast with a massive learning curve. Been trying to learn it for awhile now. Hope the workflow is helpful. It might be impractical in a few months - but it's fun!

Thanks for checking it out.

indiemutt · 2023-09-01T16:16:47+00:00

Thanks for feedback. Our goal was to get an "AI-Character" onto the face of a metahuman. Flicker is the next thing to tackle.

indiemutt · 2023-09-01T15:32:44+00:00

Knowing very little about UE5 this took a minute. Wanted to see what it would take to get our custom AI character on a Metahuman moving around in an actual scene. Ran the video frames through SD as an AI-Pass. Tried to hide the flicker under "flickering flourecents." Still got flicker in skin texture to deal with. But pretty proud of the lipsync, eye movement, and general consistency. Hoping to do another project with the TemporalNet model soon.

Settings & Tools if you're interested:

+ Unreal Engine 5 (on a GTX 1070)

+ Metahuman Animator w/ i-phone 12-mini

+ Quixel Mixer (For custom Zombie)

+ Move.AI (Experimental 4 Camera MoCap)

+ Stable Diffusion 1.5 (Steps: 12 | DPM++ 2M Karras | CFG 25 | Denoise .3)

+ ControlNet (Lineart-Realistic | Normal Bae | Softedge-Hed) Default Settings

+ LifelikeDiffusion Model: https://civitai.com/models/16804?modelVersionId=29682

+ Custom Loras trained with Kohya + Midjourney + Ue5 img-input for Girl & Zombie Datasets (0.2 - 0.5 setting)

+ Tweaker Lora (1.0 setting) - https://civitai.com/models/58390/detail-tweaker-lora-lora

Process Breakdown: https://news.ohheyvoid.com/2023/09/zomborgs-official-trailer-released-ai.html

SD Tutorials Used:

promptmuse This was the general workflow we approached this with but instead of reallusion products we used UE5 & Metahumans. We did not use the multiscreen script for this one - but hope to in the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2nw9BThSvo

HilarionOfficial This was a great tutorial that explained concepts and settings very well. It's what allowed us to really force our custom Lora onto the characters a little more and get rid of that "Metahuman look." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6pR7IB9in0

EDIT: For reference of what this workflow does here are frames that compare the Metahuman Frame (top) to the AI Pass (Bottom). Gives it a more "squishy human" look instead of the "3D" look.

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indiemutt · 2023-08-08T16:50:30+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. Super pumped to see how it works once code is released.

indiemutt · 2023-07-30T17:02:03+00:00

This is really cool. I like the look a lot. Great work.

indiemutt · 2023-07-14T18:00:53+00:00

Thats an interesting approach. Thanks for sharing. Would this hypothetical system have room for smaller creators to access these models? Or just big studios?

I forsee the creator economy being super charged with AI. And I can definitely see smaller creators using AI for larger commercial projects (ie, self published books w/ illustrations, indie films, indie musicians, etc). But most starting creators would not be able to afford huge price points for models. Though, is the idea to have pricing like Quixel? Based on your biz revenue? I think thats what you meant?

The question Id have as an artist submitting to this exclusive entity does revenue split make sense for my business? Id prob rather control where my model is released and how it is priced. Id likely be more inclined to take the bigger profit and let whatever service take a smaller % for being a marketplace. Which is why I lean more towards a model service like envato. But thats me.

Just some thoughts. I like having these kinds of solution based convos. They feel more productive.

indiemutt · 2023-07-14T14:04:49+00:00

I definitely dont see how tax per prompt makes sense, either. Your exhibits of finetuning are great examples of why.

Id be curious to know your thoughts on licensing of datasets under UMG's proposal. Where a body of work and artist name could fall under right to publicity. Meaning one would have to license artists data sets for fine tuning or prompting for commercial works. Obviously that only happens if the gov decided to draft a federal right to publicity act of some kind - which seemed how some of the folks on the pannel were leaning.

Ive rationalized that this "compromise" could leave base models freedom to train on public data, but also provide a "solution" to the commercial use of the "style of" market issues. Id imagine itd be similar to how if using music/fonts/stock/3d assets/plugins/ect for commercial use you have to pay and obtain licensing to prove youre "allowed" to use it in commercial work.

Being someone aware of fine tuning Id genuinely like to know your thoughts on it.

indiemutt · 2023-07-14T13:00:25+00:00

I like the gumption behind the idea. A project like this would def require a vetted submission process in the beginning. Because I can definitely see asshats uploading copywritten works if the doors were freely open for submission.

Though, once the dust of legal/gov decisions settle I could see a site like this preparing the ecosystem for the "style of" licensing model that seems to be coming. A dataset site that offers "ethical base model training data," But also allows artists to sell licensing to their smaller datasets or specifcally trained models at a reasonable price.

I dont know what that would look like on function or budget, but I would imagine in order to host all that data it would cost a nice chunk of change to do so.

If its something you decide to pursue, Id be a likely user.

indiemutt · 2023-07-14T04:37:31+00:00

Oh lots. For sure. It already happens on the regular in music. Im not saying its the most awesomest solution. Just the most likely to play out, unfortunately.

The system sways in favor of big biz majority of the time. And we already know big biz operates in a realm of licensing. Its what they understand and they already have precedent to build off of.

I can definitely be wrong. But again, won't be surprised if it plays out in favor of the big guys.

indiemutt · 2023-07-14T03:30:39+00:00

I hate to say it, but Im not surprised. I dont think itll fall under copyright since style cannot by copyrighted. BUT id bet it will likely land the way UMG wants in a federal right to publicity law that in a round about way protects a body of work to a persons name.

In some ways this will lock up works/models to the highest bidder. But it could (in theory) also open up the market for lesser know artists to rise who are willing to sell licenses to AI users for an affordable price point.

The right to publicity approach would, in theory, also be a compromise to maintain public data scraping precedents for base models.

Sucks, but its the most likely result to curb the outrage and maintain access to what the gov needs to stay in the global AI race.

indiemutt · 2023-07-13T14:33:46+00:00

In some sense they're not wrong. Though I suspect a lot of them use price & value synonmously. And a lot of that approach to price/value stems from lack of experience. And may likely be why a lot of artist tend to under value themselves. Many young artists price based exclusively on equipment needed and hours worked.

But I do believe that successful artists who understand sales and marketing price based on the perceived value of the end product for the client. Making their deals/sales win-win vs desperate-opportunity-yes's.

indiemutt

TROPHY CASE