Help with an exploitative contract 🙏
I recently got a job to shoot an influencer for a MASSIVE sports brand - like a brand that everyone apart from uncontacted tribes will know the name of.
I was not told the scope of the project nor the client before quoting for the job - in fact I was basically told nothing apart from the influencer it was for. I thought it was a cool collab so I didn’t quote super high - in fact I quoted super low because I wanted the job and thought it would be great exposure however in this instance money is not the issue for me. Just a by the by that I ran this shoot at a loss which I was willing to do.
However, they sent over a contract that with the following usage clause:
Royalty-free perpetual right to use (which includes without limitation commercial, advertising, marketing and press use), reproduce, adapt, alter, exploit, exhibit, promote, sell, duplicate, and distribute the Deliverables in connection with the Project, throughout the world. For the sake of clarity, this applies to Third Parties use of the deliverables.
Essentially everything possible but with no further payment apart from my original day rate I quoted. So I replied saying that the usage rights were very extreme but I would make an exception, they only thing I wanted is that I retain the copyright of the photos and that they take the word sell out. These are pretty basic.
They sent me back the same contract 3 times, intimating that these things had been changed when they hadn’t hoping I wouldn’t actually read it which is very coercive and manipulative.
Finally after the third time of me saying that the old contract had been reattached, they are finally saying they are not willing to do those things but not even really explicitly stating why. They are also saying I am holding up and jeopardising the whole campaign by not signing the contract when they are the ones who just kept sending the same contact without explanation and I genuinely just thought they were reattaching the wrong contract because no one was saying they had a problem with my requests.
The influencer was actually very sweet so I don’t want to let her down and want her to have the photos which are super cool but I really don’t want to sign this exploitative contract.
How would you recommend proceeding ?
Thanks for your advice 🙏