I recently had a major drama with a terrible videographer that managed to make my work a living hell. We had recorded footage for two clients and around 3 weeks after this freelance videographer, doing some work on the editing side of things, refused to contact me. Yes I had tried everything from tweeting him, turning up at his work (of which he used the excuse I have no phone or email)...and basically overall extremely pathetic excuses. I the meantime I was going through a nightmare as these two new clients had only just started working with us on SYT Media. So what a bad first impression...I have indirectly lost their footage!
There were many tears, sleepless nights and I finally just came to my wits end and openly told the clients what had happened. Both were more understanding than I thought and both took more of an attitude of... 'let's move on, screw him, lets re-record'. Not only was this ordeal extremely stressful but it allowed me to experience a worst case scenario. By being transparent with the clients they understood my efforts to work with them openly and honestly growing our relationship even more. I obviously compensated for the damage and put right what I previously couldn't and admitted my faults. Finally I managed to obtain the 'lost' footage and offered to take legal action if it was not returned which showed the depth of my support of both projects.
What I learned from this experience (other than an interview does not mean that you know someone), is that transparency and open honest communication, however bad, will gain you more respect than keeping it to yourself and trying to fix it behind closed doors.
