R0BATO Media is owner-operated. Rob is on every shoot. Post and second-camera work is supported by a small bench of freelance editors, shooters, and pilots, and that bench is growing. This page exists so you can find out how the work actually runs before you spend time on an application — scope, money, terms, and paperwork, in that order.
Project by project, part time. A typical assignment runs 10 to 15 hours and is scoped that way on purpose — big enough to be worth taking, small enough to fit around whatever else you have on.
No weekly minimum. No hold on your calendar. No exclusivity, and no clause stopping you working for anyone else, including people who look like competitors. Take the ones that fit, pass on the ones that don't. Passing on an assignment does not take you off the list.
Honestly: it varies. Short-form work sits inside monthly retainers, so it is the most predictable — a steady handful of cuts a month rather than a flood. Project work is lumpier and follows the shoot calendar.
If you need guaranteed weekly hours to make your month work, this is not that, and it would be a waste of your time to pretend otherwise. If you have room for one or two well-specced projects a month alongside your other clients, it fits well.
Short version: per finished deliverable, agreed in writing before you open the file, invoiced on delivery, paid net 14.
The number is per finished piece. If a project runs longer than expected, that does not cost you the difference — that risk sits with the studio, where it belongs. It also means nobody is ever arguing about whether the eleventh hour was necessary.
The flip side is real and worth saying: if you are fast, you earn more per hour, and if you are slow, you earn less. Which is why the hours estimate above is stated up front rather than buried.
Invoice on delivery. Paid net 14. No chasing, no net-60, no waiting on the client to pay first. If a client is late, that is the studio's problem, not yours.
The fee is agreed in writing before work starts — not quoted after, not adjusted at invoice time. If scope genuinely changes mid-project, the number gets renegotiated before the extra work happens, not after.
You name the rate, and here is why. There is no published crew rate card on this page. That is deliberate rather than evasive, and the reason is that a rate card would make every assignment a negotiation against a number instead of a conversation about a job.
Work is not uniform. A two-minute testimonial cut from forty minutes of clean, well-lit interview is not the same job as a hero piece assembled from four hours of run-and-gun, and paying both the same would be either an insult or an overpay. So: tell us what you charge per finished piece, for the kinds of pieces you actually want to cut. If it fits what the project can carry, the answer is your number. If it doesn't, you get told what the project can carry and you decide from there. Nobody's time gets wasted and nobody has to guess.
The single most common complaint in freelance post is guessing at scope, then being told after delivery that it was not what they wanted. The fix is not better communication. It is writing it down first.
You are never asked to guess at scope, and you are never asked to read someone's mind about tone. If a piece of that is missing from a brief you receive, say so and it gets fixed before the clock starts.
Exact file specs — codec, frame rate, resolution, loudness target, naming convention, and where finished files go — travel on the spec sheet per project, because they follow the client's platform and the source footage rather than a house rule.
Revisions beyond the stated count are a scope change, which means they are a new number, not a favor. That protects you as much as it protects the studio.
The role with the most consistent volume, because it sits inside monthly retainers. Vertical cuts that hold retention — meaning you think about the first two seconds the way most editors think about the last twenty. Comfortable with burned-in captions, on-screen text, and cutting the same footage into meaningfully different pieces rather than trims of one another.
Interview and multi-cam. Testimonials, recruitment pieces, podcast episodes. You can build a story out of an hour of talking without leaning on music to do the work, and you can cut around the moment somebody says something twice.
Thumbnails first, because every long-form piece ships with one and a thumbnail is the only part of the work that has to succeed before anyone presses play. Beyond that: lower thirds, end cards, caption styling, and static social graphics that sit alongside the video. You work from a brand kit rather than inventing one each time, and you can tell the difference between a design that looks good in isolation and one that reads at thumbnail size on a phone.
Field work in the Poconos and Lehigh Valley. Comfortable on a job site, in a shop, or at an event where nothing is lit and nobody is going to stop what they are doing for you. Own kit preferred, and you get told the shot list in advance.
Current certification, own aircraft, own insurance. Real estate, job sites, and event coverage across the same region. Mostly booked as an add-on to an existing shoot day rather than standalone.
Field work is regional. Post can be anywhere. Shooting and flying assignments are Poconos and Lehigh Valley, because someone has to physically be there. Editing has no geography attached to it — if you can hit a spec sheet and a delivery date, where you sit is nobody's business.
All of this is standard. It is on this page rather than sprung on you at signing, because finding out about a contract term after you have already said yes is how good working relationships start badly.
Every offer we send includes a written assignment of copyright in the finished work to R0BATO Media, in the same packet as the 1099 contractor agreement. It arrives with the offer so you can read it before you say yes. This is not a trick and it is not unusual — it exists because the studio has to be able to license the finished piece to the client, and if a client later wants to run it as a paid ad or a brand partner asks for usage rights, that has to be clean.
You keep the right to show the work in your own reel and portfolio. That is written in, not a handshake. The only exception is a project under a client confidentiality agreement, which is rare and you would be told before you took it.
Send four things:
1. A reel, or two to three finished pieces closest to the work above. Closest matters more than best — a good short-form cut beats a beautiful wedding film if short-form is the role.
2. Your per-deliverable rates, for the kinds of pieces you want to cut.
3. Roughly how many hours a month you have open.
4. Where you are based, if you are applying for shooting or flying.
No cover letter. No portfolio site required. If the work fits, the first assignment is a paid test project at your full rate on a real deliverable with a real deadline — not spec work, not a free trial, and not an unpaid edit test.
You get a reply within five business days either way, including if the answer is no. Getting ignored after sending a reel is the other great complaint in this business, and it is an easy one to not do.