Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Brought this festive vision to life entirely from text using Seedance 2.5 in Adobe Firefly

This is cute.

I believe the concept of a "trial edit or project" exists as a complete logical fallacy. Think about this- in the hopes of finding the best fit for the job, you shortlist the best editors and production professionals you can find and offer them a beyond discounted rate (or sometimes no money at all) to assess the quality of their work. You're asking someone to produce their best work with little to no incentive and with a budget that doesn't allow them to dedicate their full focus on it. I don't know of any industry outside of the creative industry that allows this as a common business practice. This is not the industry where resumes matter. Only portfolios and I guess customer reviews hold any weight. If my portfolio isn't enough proof that I'm good at what I do, no trial project will ever be worth the time.

That's my soapbox for the day. Think i'll head down to my local bakeries and see if they'll let me have a trial cookie while I wave a carrot in their face about me potentially buying a full priced cookie from them in the future, but only if I like it better than all of the other bakeries in the area. 😉

The bakery analogy should honestly be pinned somewhere every client can see it. I'll push back slightly though, paid discovery calls or small paid pilots seem to work fine in consulting without anyone calling it exploitative. Is it the unpaid part that bothers you most, or the scale of work being asked for on spec?