How to get a client to approve a video edit

Almost every stalled approval comes down to the same few things, and none of them is craft. Notes arrive from three people who disagree with each other, so you split the difference and satisfy none of them. The notes themselves are feelings rather than instructions: “it feels long in the middle” sends you guessing, and a wrong guess is a whole round.

Underneath both is usually the same omission. Nothing ever said how many rounds there were, so there are infinitely many, and each one feels free to the person asking for it. And nobody was ever asked to approve anything, so the edit does not end. It only goes quiet.

1. 1

   Write down what a round is, before you start

   Not just how many, but what one is. The wording that does the work: “Two rounds of revisions are included. A round is one consolidated set of notes, delivered in one message, from one named contact. Additional rounds are billed at [rate] per hour, or [amount] per round.”

   This is not about being strict. It is so that when round three arrives you are quoting a line you both already agreed to, rather than inventing a boundary in the moment, which is much harder and reads as a complaint.

2. 2

   Make them name one decision-maker

   Ask at kickoff: who has final sign-off, and who is consolidating everyone else’s notes before they reach you? Ideally the same person. Clients never object to the question, and it removes the contradictory-feedback problem before it exists.

3. 3

   Send the cut with a specific ask and a date

   A link on its own gets opened last. Say what changed, what you need, and when you need it by.

   Subject: [Project] v2 for review — notes by Thu 25th please
   
   Hi [Name],
   
   v2 is here: [link]
   
   Changes from v1: tightened the open by 8 seconds, new music bed from 00:40, swapped the interview take at 01:12 as discussed.
   
   Could you leave notes directly on the video — click the moment you mean and type. If you can get them to me by Thursday the 25th, delivery stays on the 2nd.
   
   One thing to flag: this is round 2 of the 2 included, so if there is anything structural, now is the moment.
   
   Thanks,
   [You]

4. 4

   Make the notes land on the frame, then answer every one

   This is the single biggest reduction in rounds available to you, and it costs nothing to set up. A note attached to 01:14 cannot be misread; a paragraph about the middle bit is a guess with your evening attached to it. If your client insists on email, do the translation yourself: reply with a numbered list of timecoded items and ask them to confirm it before you touch the timeline.

   Then go back through the list and mark each one done, done differently, or not done and why. A client who sees their note addressed stops repeating it, and nothing guarantees another round like a note that appears to have been ignored.

5. 5

   Ask for the approval explicitly

   Do not wait for it to happen. Ask a closed question, name the version, and put a date on the silence.

   Subject: [Project] v3 — approve for delivery?
   
   Hi [Name],
   
   v3 is up: [link]
   
   All eight notes from round 2 are addressed — you can see my replies against each one.
   
   If you are happy, reply "approved" to this email and I will prepare the final deliverables. If I have not heard back by Friday the 3rd I will take v3 as approved and start delivery, so nothing slips.
   
   Thanks,
   [You]

It will, and it is not an insult. The answer is not no. It is a price and a date, offered warmly enough that saying yes is easy.

Happy to do that — it is outside the approved cut so it falls under additional work rather than the included rounds.

It is about 2 hours: [amount], delivered by Wednesday.

Say the word and I will get started.

Not for a dispute. For the ordinary conversation six weeks later, when someone new joins the client’s team and asks why the edit is like that. Three things are worth being able to show: which version was approved, by whom, and when. An email reply saying “approved” on a thread naming v3 does it. A verbal yes on a call does not, and neither does a general sense that the client seemed happy.

In three specific places, and the rest of this is process rather than software. The note lands on the frame, because your client clicks the moment they mean and types, with no account and no app in the way. That last part is what makes a non-technical client actually do it instead of writing a paragraph.

Everyone’s notes then arrive in one thread against one version, visible to each other, which solves half of the consolidation problem by geometry rather than by asking. And the history is kept for you: versions stack on the same project with their comment threads attached, so “what did we agree on v2” has an answer you do not have to reconstruct from your inbox.

When the approval lands, the invoice is on the same page, which is the next problem.