Explainer Script Gig gone wrong - but where?

[Guest voicetex]

Hi,
I just received a delivery that I had to send into revision right away.
I thought I had done everything I could in advance:
Read the Gig descriptions (this buyer has multiple Gigs on similar topic), read the reviews she got and finally decided to contact her.

The Gig I bought was: "I will write your professional Whiteboard Explainer Video Script"
I explained to her that I needed a 90s script about me. I gave her my URL and told her that I do not only need the VO part, but the full visuals, too (like scene descriptions, on-screen text, transitions).
My target audience is animators, whiteboard guys and marketeers who are all looking for a VO artist and possibly translator for German.

She told she could do it and asked what my budget was. I offered more than her usual Gig was, because I needed it done well and I wanted her to do a little extra work.
I told her, I am in no hurry and she can take her time.

She offered a custom quote for the amount I offered with a 2-day delivery. I thought: “Cool, I’ll get this back earlier than I had hoped”.

So today she delivered. 132 words, separated into 7 paragraphs. No sign of scenes description, etc.
And she used my exact words for more than 75% of the text.
And she was 5 hours late (not a problem, but annoying no less)

Now - where did I go wrong?
I will need explainer scripts in the future and I want to order them from you guys. And I do not want to make that same mistake again, but I am too blind to see it right now.

If you see it, tell me and we’ll all learn something from it.

Regards,
Christina

[emasonwrites]

Explainer Script Gig GONE WRONG GONE s****l GONE ILLEGAL (I’m sorry, the meme was too strong within me)

On a serious note: looking at the profile of the seller you used, I see a few red flags, including typos in her little bio and in the descriptions of her gigs. Someone who is serious about selling their writing wouldn’t want a single letter or punctuation mark out of place. I’d never order from a writer that had made simple mistakes on their marketing copy, and hadn’t bothered to at least read it over.

The fact that there are different word counts in the descriptions and in the packages tells me that either she copied those descriptions from somewhere else or, more benignly, just changed her word counts recently but isn’t detail oriented enough to go through and make sure all of the information on the gigs is correct.

It’s possible she didn’t know what you meant when you said you wanted scene descriptions. In your screencap, it’s mentioned, but you don’t circle back to it and give any explanation. Obviously, we’re not seeing the whole conversation. If it were me, I would need more explanation, but also if it were me, I would have asked for it, so I guess it’s not an issue to assume she understood what it meant and just ignored that bit of instruction (or didn’t know what it meant and still just ignored it). shrug

The only other thing I could suggest would to be to look at her reviews, specifically where she actually types out a response to reviews left for her. For example, she writes, “hey i did a great work with the script you provided why these i must confess am dissapointed i thought you were commending my work. This is certainly unfair you just wanna spoil my profile,” in response to someone who left her a 2.5 star review. So, uh, yeah. This leads me to believe that her gig descriptions were either copied from another seller or she paid someone with slightly better English than her own to write them, because they’re at least semi-coherent.

Anyway, your instructions were clear. I don’t think your instructions were the problem at all. I think the seller was the issue here and there were a few red flags on her profile/gigs that could have steered you away.

[Guest voicetex]

Thank you very much for your opinion.
Yes, I have noticed the typos and actually told her about the word count (I am a proofreader by nature and profession, too).
For me, Fiverr has failed to update the word count before (probably user-related mistake, tho). So yeah, warning lights did go off, but I thought I was too picky…
Well, thanks again.
This will surely be a lesson for us all.

[Guest voicetex]

Update:
I have just received the revised version and am happy with it. It’s not 100% what I would expect from a PROFESSIONAL script writer, but I now have an idea and I can work with it in the future.

[cyaxrex]

To be honest, this whole idea of getting 3rd parties to write video scripts just confuses and upsets me. I say in my video creation gigs that I provide the script, simply because whenever I take orders from people who supply their own, they are impossible to actually animate.

For example, I take receipt of an order where someone sends me a script saying that their first scene needs to say, “Hi, I’m Michael,” accompanied by a WWII Spitfire skywriting the words before the camera zooms into the cockpit and Michael himself gives a wave.

Now that kind of direction is fine if you are willing to get animation done at a professional design studio and pay at leat $100 for just that one scene. After all, you’re talking about creating, coloring, texturing and animating several props completely from scratch before even putting just 1 scene together.

In like regard, things like text & scene transitions and all kinds of visuals differ from animation suite to video animation suite. In this case, it simply doesn’t make sense to me to have someone not involved with the animation/design process create a script, as that script will usually be unusable/impossible for many animators on Fiverr to actually render into a video. In fact, this is especially true since 90% of whiteboard and explainer video sellers on Fiverr all use exactly the same or very similar software.

The above being the case, I’d recommend only ever ordering animation work from sellers who offer gig extras or packages where they themselves provide the script. Also, this isn’t any kind of self-promotion. I don’t do whiteboard videos and actually, despise them. As someone in the field, though, this would be my best advice for avoiding the problems outlined in your original post.