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dms666 posted:Does requesting work on DT go by the first people to request it for that day or by seniority? I guess there are also certain types that they don't let everyone do too. Have only got one file each of the past 2 weeks with nothing yet this week. Usually put in for 60 mins a day. It's just the time of year, as I recall it was like that last year around this time as well, just the nature of media work I think.
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Aug 23, 2013 06:10
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I noticed brief mention of copy typing a few pages back. I've done this sort of thing for friends in the past, and sporadically when I worked at a newspaper about a decade ago. I can type words I'm looking at for countless hours. It's like my brain is made for it. Does anyone know of any reputable sources for such work? I'm looking around a little bit, but I'd love to know if anyone has had good experiences with particular sources or whatever. Anyone know anything about DoNanza?
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Aug 23, 2013 11:28
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So I feel like a dummie. I sent my writing sample after my calculus exam on Tutor.com prematurely and now I have to wait for them to evaluate it for me to tell them, "It's poo poo! I know! Let me redo it please." Has this happened to anyone else? I know I can just tell them I messed up and do it again, but drat is it annoying.
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Aug 23, 2013 22:18
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Anorexic Sea Turtle posted:So I feel like a dummie. I sent my writing sample after my calculus exam on Tutor.com prematurely and now I have to wait for them to evaluate it for me to tell them, "It's poo poo! I know! Let me redo it please." Has this happened to anyone else? I know I can just tell them I messed up and do it again, but drat is it annoying. Hasn't happened to me, but you shouldn't have to wait long. I actually got my writing sample evaluated just two or three hours later.
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Aug 24, 2013 13:51
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Nighthand posted:I got into Zerys but apparently shot myself in the foot with a 3-star sample. The job board is completely barren. I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can get a couple things to move up to 4 or 5, but I'm not holding on to a lot of hope right now. It looks like the kind of site where, once you're established, you get work rolling in. The problem being there's not much posted openly so it's hard to get the initial contacts going. At least the prices on the recently-written assignments list are mostly reasonable. I was going to say this, but you already did in the edit. I too got 3 stars, but found a message on the message board that says it's pretty easy to get bumped up. I picked one of the 3 star projects and banged out for .7 cents a word, the client is happy and says he'll give me five stars once it goes though the process. How's the four star job boards? And I asked WA how long it takes, they said they're backed up and it could take 10-15 days.
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Aug 24, 2013 19:04
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Yeah WA still hasn't finished processing me, so that's good to know. So far the difference between 3 and 4 star hasn't been significant. It's all the same board, you just see assignments in the higher price brackets, if they're there. I've seen a couple for 2.1 cents sit there, but nothing above it. I haven't gained access to 5 star stuff yet, or favorite writer boards, since that one assignment I mentioned is the only thing I've done for them. One of my TB teams was inundated with work and I've been banging out a bunch for them.
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Aug 24, 2013 19:08
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Is it worth applying to WA if you don't have any "industry experience"? Should I just wait on textbroker, get some work done there, and then apply with those "paid projects" as samples? I'm happy to crank out samples, but the application is surprisingly intimidating.
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Aug 25, 2013 20:06
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Just crank out the samples. Writer Access isn't that hard to get into. I did, however, just get rejected from Scripted because apparently they understood the 'tone' I was going for in the article but didn't think I met it.
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Aug 26, 2013 08:46
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Finally happened. A Demand Studios editor kicked something back with "This is okay to publish, but..." and wanting a hundred more words of off-topic content added. I picked a fight. 
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Aug 27, 2013 00:00
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Alright, that's it. Consider me another person influenced by kazmeyer et al. I could always use some extra money, and I've become quite interested in transcription because of this thread. I write for Textbroker off and on, and have for about a year. The pickins are often slim if you don't login at the right times of day, though. Transcription just seems like a better gig. I figured I'd check out Rev, since (I think) Slightly Used Cake mentioned it being an open order kind of situation, and not getting screwed over by them. The thing is, and I feel like a goddamn fool for having this problem, I can't seem to get the formatting for their samples right. In their template, speaker IDs are aligned to the left margin. All other text is indented an inch. The style guide provided insists this is accomplished by using hanging indent. That is all. Just hanging indent. Hanging indent won't let me leave names to the left, and shove all other text over an inch. It does what hanging indent always does... it leaves the first lines of every paragraph aligned to the margin, and pushes the rest of each paragraph over. This doesn't produce anything like the alignment I'm seeing in their template. I'm pretty sure I'm having a problem with this due to my own stupidity, but can anyone explain to me how to make that format happen?
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Aug 27, 2013 16:05
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Looked at the sample, and it's the same format one of my clients uses. Try: Speaker:[TAB]Words and paste that into the template. It should automatically format. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 17:13
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Yep, that is literally it. :-)
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Aug 27, 2013 17:35
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 Good grief. I feel like a dumbass. Thanks, you guys. I completely appreciate it.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:26
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Heh. Don't worry, part of this job is figuring out how to use whatever dumbass template the client throws at you. Fortunately, once you work it out, you can just paste your work into an old document and resave it. It's always annoying when an old client talks me into coming back and picking up some work because I inevitably end up staring at a .doc from six months ago trying to remember what tricks I had to use to make it look right and not take forever.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:56
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I haven't used Word with any kind of regularity in years, so part of this will also be me relearning a bunch of things I'd happily forgotten.
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Aug 27, 2013 19:21
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Have any of you heard of Net Transcripts? I'm in talks with them for a contractor position, and, apparently, they require $55 or something up front to run their background checks on you, since part of their schtick is law enforcement transcription. They also haven't told me what their rates are. I've looked over the documentation and can't find anything. I've checked reviews online about it, and everyone so far has said that they are legit, that they do pay on time, I haven't seen any major complaints about pay, but I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience with them. The $55 to run your own background check makes me nervous.
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Aug 28, 2013 00:40
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It's not completely unheard of -- there are a few outfits out there that handle legal/criminal stuff and require background checks, which you usually have to pay for. I'd really want to know what their rates were before taking that leap, though, because you're not necessarily going to be making more than you would doing media work. It may be a steadier job, though. Unfortunately, I just don't know much about that end of things; TV and movies is pretty much all I do now.
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Aug 28, 2013 01:11
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I haven't heard anything bad about Net Transcripts, but if it involves transcribing wire taps I'd run the other way screaming. If you want to go ahead with it I don't think they'd have any problem with you asking for more info about them; you're both feeling each other out here. It could be interesting work. Definitely ask what their rates are. And if they don't want to give that info, then I guess you have your answer. You don't want to pay the fee and find out they don't pay enough. You could even find they're just not a good match for you.
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Aug 28, 2013 01:30
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AuntBuck posted:I haven't heard anything bad about Net Transcripts, but if it involves transcribing wire taps I'd run the other way screaming. If you want to go ahead with it I don't think they'd have any problem with you asking for more info about them; you're both feeling each other out here. It could be interesting work. Definitely ask what their rates are. And if they don't want to give that info, then I guess you have your answer. You don't want to pay the fee and find out they don't pay enough. You could even find they're just not a good match for you. Yeah, I sent back a query about that and now I'm just waiting to see what they have to say. I figured I'd see if anyone here had any experience with them, though, as sort of a 'just in case.' I'll let people know what the rates/etc are if I get an answer. If I end up backing out of it, I can at least post some of the details here to see if any of the other transcribers on this list are interested in it. fake edit: it sounds like they transcribe mostly court cases and interviews where it comes to the law enforcement stuff, rather than ill-gotten phone conversations. They've got the same scope as DT, with a tight schedule, but some of their methods are a little odd to me (15 min segments that need to be finished in an hour or so, which means you just get chunks of files instead of the entire thing, so for all I know, it's wire tapping). Overall, like I said, the reviews all point to them being legit, but, yeah, I'm leery. I'd prefer to stick around in media specifically, but I do need another source of income at the moment, so we'll see. Old Boot fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Aug 28, 2013 |
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Aug 28, 2013 02:30
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I hear ya, media is awesome, that sounds like a tight turnaround. Also, newbies using Inqscribe, I feel dumber than a bag of hammers for not noticing this for eight months, but snippets, they're macros, one but, and all the things are there, formatted as needed, like your file name, next to your timecode, above your speaker ID...yeah, I didn't realize this was a thing...anyway check it out :-)
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Aug 28, 2013 03:43
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If anyone here is working for Zerys, please make sure to check the clients for rejection rates before you do the work... and don't work for the HVAC client. You'll thank me later. Just thought I'd update you guys... I stopped working for Textbroker and instead picked up some eLance/oDesk work instead. I ended up at about $8000 for this month, which isn't what I wanted but I also dicked around a lot on the internet so I have no one to blame but myself for that.
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Aug 30, 2013 19:05
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I dick around on the internet more than work, so I barely make any money. Zerys doesn't seem that great, a lot of the jobs for 4 stars are 1.4 cents or .7 cents, which is less than Textbroker. And, it seems the clients take forever to approve things. Maybe I'll hear back from WritersAccess in a couple months. They like advertising their positions on Facebook, but don't seem to be able to approve anyone.
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Aug 30, 2013 20:04
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Kilo India posted:I stopped working for Textbroker and instead picked up some eLance/oDesk work instead. Does anyone here do freelance SEO? I'm curious as to what it entails and where I should look for a good reference book to read up on the subject.
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Sep 2, 2013 01:15
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Does anyone here have experience with Textmaster? Their per-word rates are much better than Textbroker, but their application reviewers are proving to be a terrible pain in the rear end (e.g. rejecting punctuation constructs that Strunk & White or Fowler explicitly permit).
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Sep 2, 2013 22:58
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S&W are full of hot poo poo so that may be part of your problem!  (I have no real advice, sorry.)
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Sep 3, 2013 01:09
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I'd never heard of them. I'll try to sign up too, and fail horribly. I think I need to go back to 3rd grade grammar or something. I'm quickly learning that I have no idea when to use a comma.
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Sep 3, 2013 07:55
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Any other Tutor.com tutor applicants having trouble getting their mock session? I keep getting cancelled on or declined. It's been a week now and I'm starting to get frustrated. You think it's due to the holiday weekend in the US?
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Sep 3, 2013 18:43
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Anything like textbroker for non-US nationals? The british version seems sadly closed for applicants now.
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Sep 3, 2013 19:04
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Kilo India posted:Here's the problem with Textbroker: once you get to 3 star you're pretty much screwed. Even if you write 3 star articles really well, they will virtually never get over a 3 star rating either due to their format or due to the editors. The only way you can get bumped to 4 star is by getting into a group and writing quality articles and then -- this is imperative -- just sitting there and waiting until you're rated a month later. The whole rating system in Textbroker is seriously broken and they seem completely uninterested in fixing it, which means they constantly have no 3 star articles and a huge amount of pending 4 star articles. Goons should create their own Something Awful Content Website and make it not dumb. Anyway I don't bother doing open orders for Textbroker at all anymore, it isn't worth the trouble. I'm very new at this, only having gotten accepted into Textbroker a couple weeks ago. I was accepted at 3 stars, wrote 5 articles, and now that my "probation" period or whatever is over, have been bumped up to 4 stars after my first review. Maybe they've gotten more lenient. Whatever the case, I only bring this up in case others are dissuaded, as I came close to being, by the prospect of a Scarlet Three. How long I can sustain a 4 is anyone's guess, though. And to echo one of your more recent posts, almost every editorial criticism was over commas. Commas commas commas. (And capitalizing "Internet," which I guess is a thing I'm supposed to do.) edit: Or are the later reviews much different from that first probationary review? 
Von Sloneker fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 22:51
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Von Sloneker posted:And to echo one of your more recent posts, almost every editorial criticism was over commas. Commas commas commas. (And capitalizing "Internet," which I guess is a thing I'm supposed to do.) Commas are where I gently caress up most often, too. Also using "there are" or "ing" verbs too often and passive voice. And yeah, Internet is capitalized, as is Web whenever it's stand-alone. Get yourself an AP guide because that's what most of em follow. But yeah. Commas, commas and more commas. (SEE I DID IT RIGHT THAT TIME EDITOR god dammit) Right now I'm trying to keep my blood pressure down due to a transcription job. Working for a studio, managing those clips that go into syndication advertisements. For each clip, I have to transcribe it as well as produce a line in a spreadsheet detailing characters present, description, subject, actions, time code and location. Normally, the clips are 30 seconds-2 minutes long, and an hour-long reel requires me to fill in about 60-80 lines. This one's full of clips averaging less than five seconds, and I'm on 350 lines halfway through. The client is aware if they ever send me something like this again I'm burning down the building.
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Sep 3, 2013 23:33
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Weird, I've written 25 articles for TB and haven't got a non-customer review yet. Yeah, "the Internet" is AP style. And, still haven't heard anything from WA.
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Sep 3, 2013 23:34
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TB depends entirely on the editor that you get. I have some editors that rate my work consistently at 4, but the problem is that every once in a while you get an editor that just comes through and rates you as all 3s. That would be fine, except they only rate once every six weeks or so. I was 4 star for months and then a single editor came in and rated me at a 3... I wrote some articles at 3 for a month, and then another editor came through and rated me as a 4... but then another editor came through and rated my level 3 articles as 3s, which put me back to 3... It essentially puts you on a seesaw because they rate so far behind that they're always rating you on the articles that you wrote two periods back.
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Sep 4, 2013 00:26
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thylacine posted:Weird, I've written 25 articles for TB and haven't got a non-customer review yet. After submitting your first five, you weren't locked out from accepting more tasks until those five were rated? That was my experience. Kilo India posted:TB depends entirely on the editor that you get. I have some editors that rate my work consistently at 4, but the problem is that every once in a while you get an editor that just comes through and rates you as all 3s. That would be fine, except they only rate once every six weeks or so. I was 4 star for months and then a single editor came in and rated me at a 3... I wrote some articles at 3 for a month, and then another editor came through and rated me as a 4... but then another editor came through and rated my level 3 articles as 3s, which put me back to 3... It essentially puts you on a seesaw because they rate so far behind that they're always rating you on the articles that you wrote two periods back. Oh joy. Every writer's dream. Well, despite all the vagaries of this weird industry, I'm glad I found this thread and that there are people willing to share their experiences. Getting paid actual money for writing Flash game instructions while sprawled on the couch is cool if somewhat surreal. kazmeyer posted:Get yourself an AP guide because that's what most of em follow. Yeah I'm realizing I need to do this.
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Sep 4, 2013 00:47
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99% of my TB editor comments are commas, and a lot of those dropped out when I stopped using the serial comma. Oh right, and "percent" instead if "%" tripped me up a bit at the beginning.
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Sep 4, 2013 02:57
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Von Sloneker posted:Oh joy. Every writer's dream. Well, despite all the vagaries of this weird industry, I'm glad I found this thread and that there are people willing to share their experiences. Getting paid actual money for writing Flash game instructions while sprawled on the couch is cool if somewhat surreal. I sent this guy into a mental breakdown when I was telling people about my education and using Facebook for marketing. Unable to process the concept that this happens, I saw him hunched over clenching at his face and hair mumbling "people. get. paid. facebook. arrrrgghhh." What rates do ya'll set on oDesk/etc.? I'd like to do some work that isn't SEO internet filler. I have an integrated marketing communication degree (hurrrr), a couple years working at a non-profit doing everything related to marketing and have plenty of adobe experience. I'm thinking around $30/hour. Are clients there into that or do they go for the $2/hour dude in the Phillipines?
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Sep 4, 2013 04:40
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How feasible is it for someone without any relevant experience/education to jump into writing for TextBroker et al? I washed my hands of English after GCSEs (UK High School) and while I may sound pretty articulate in real life I expect my writing will be very poor on a technical level, containing mistakes that are immediately obvious to any actual writer. Am I overestimating the standards of Content Mill sites? I'm just not sure how much of a disadvantage I'm at versus, say an English graduate when it comes to mashing out these kind of articles.
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Sep 5, 2013 18:20
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It really depends on what you mean by poor on a technical level. If you're misusing words and punctuation, you probably won't get far, but if your sins are more like overuse of passive voice and the Oxford comma, those are probably survivable. A good way to kind of test yourself is to write an article, turn on every option in the grammar checker in Word, and see how much of a seizure it has. That won't catch everything, but if the screen doesn't fill up with red and green lines you may not be as bad as you think. I didn't have any relevant experience or education when I got on with Demand Studios years ago, but things have changed somewhat. It's harder to get in the door without experience or credentials, but skill is always the determining factor in freelance work. If you can do the job, you will get there. On a related note, I got approved for Writer Access. 3 stars to begin with (sigh) but I did get Industry Elite due to my experience. Not much on the slate today, but I did apply to a casting call that sounds interesting and I'll keep watching the board.
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Sep 5, 2013 19:11
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WA approved me as well today, 4 star and also Industry Elite. I read on the Freedom with Writing site that the best time to snag new assignments is 5am EST. Kilo India, your experience certainly makes it sound like assignments can be found whenever, but do you find assignments easier to find in the mornings?
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Sep 5, 2013 20:32
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"Hey kazmeyer, remember that tape you just turned in that was five times the work for the going rate? Well, you screwed up on one second of the 65-minute tape and the client is annoyed with you. I should dock you for this mistake, but I won't. By the way, I have more reels so let me know if you want to take another one." "I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count."
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Sep 5, 2013 22:50
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Detailed ABS, fine, sure...and then I watched it. Jump cuts for EVERYONE! Special rate project, so I agred to take it before I watched it. And then I would feel bad if I dropped it, because I specifically asked for it, and I went by the sample, which is nowehre near as detailed as they're actually asking for. Going to be a QC nightmare with the newbies who picked this one up. Bleh. Hate you certain three lettered station aimed at a certain demographic who must be stoned all the time to tolerate watching this drivel.
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Sep 6, 2013 00:12
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