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Synopsis of November 2000 Meeting

SWAN's annual fright night, titled "My Nightmare Project," took place the night after Halloween. Moderator Marcia Ringel grouped the stories she had received prior to the meeting according to topics and then called on contributors to tell their tales to the audience. 

Topics included: Art Meets Commerce, Meeting Madness, and the ever-popular Getting Stiffed (with an appendix on Rockin' Around the Clock and Getting Stiffed).

Although the group was on the small side, this was an extremely interactive meeting. Every horror story elicited similar tales from the audience - in one instance, in fact, two SWAN members came to the realization that they were sharing experiences with not only the same client, but the same project! 

We heard about:

• a client who critiqued copy, line by line, in the presence of the writer and others assembled at a meeting
• a web designer who was forced to shut down the client's website in order to get paid
• an agency that gave a graphic designer vague direction but refused him access to the client (and naturally did not pay him when the work was rejected)
• a client who accused a writer of exposing his company to a lawsuit when she made reference to a line in one of his currently-running ads
• and sadly, the all-too-familiar tale of a group of SWAN members forced into small claims court in pursuit of payment for work on an e-commerce website.

What did we learn from these experiences? Getting that letter of agreement topped the list of lessons, with a lively discussion about clear language to cover overtime pay for working nights and weekends "through no fault of our own" - in other words, not because we'd spent the afternoon at the Yankee game, but because the client was late with input or had imposed an impossible deadline. Also mentioned were avoiding exclusives, limiting meetings, renegotiating when project parameters change, posting websites to a staging site, and withholding a portion of the project until final payment.

Since most SWAN members work in isolation, this meeting served as a forum for us to connect with our fellow freelancers and realize that ñ in terms of "Nightmare Projects" - we are not alone. This makes the freelancing life a lot less scary!

Nightmares:

SWAN members reported having nightmares after hearing a client say:

• I know it's nowhere in our corporate graphics, but I really do like yellow.
• God will pay you.
• We'll go over the copy/layout in the coffee shop (nail salon, etc.)
• We'll pay you less than your fee and you can take the difference as a tax deduction.
• I could really do this (write copy, create graphics, take photos, etc.) myself.
• I don't really have the authority to approve your work.
• We only have a photo of the front of the machine, but you can adjust the photo to show the back in the brochure, can't you?

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Swan member Craig Berman recently storyboarded episodes of MTV's latest animated series "Spy Groove", which airs Monday evenings at 10:30 pm. The series is a clever spoof of James Bond, the 60's and Austin Powers and spins around the exploits of Agent #1 and Agent #2, whoc protect the world from nefarious villians and twisted fashion trends. Some of Craig's earlier storyboard credits included MTV's "Downtown", "Daria" and Nelvana Studio's "Ned's Newt".