Sorry to say, the only eventual fix I reached was a full computer reformat. (I had other reasons too, but honestly, it was primarily to fix this. At least it identifies it as a software, not hardware issue)

I have no idea what might have prompted this, but just recently, the audio clips in my movie file cannot be moved by clicking and dragging the mouse on them, as I was able to previously. Trying to do so simply shows a cursor icon with a circle and line through it.
I have tried toggling the "lock" icon on the audio layer, but it doesn't seem to have an effect. I can still delete audio, resize it, and modify the clips in various other ways, but it won't let me move them.

Do you know if the framerate is consistent between your imported animation and the scene you're in? Try to keep everything at 24 fps.

I think you're going to find most people here work on SFM as a hobby, so it may be difficult to impose the limitations or expectations of a job on it. If you really want to consider it a "job" when paying animators, consider the obvious: Are you providing technical support, health insurance, dental, and other things they may need? Chances are you're not, which is why it may be unreasonable to expect people to devote work hours to an animation.

I'm certainly not saying that asking for help is unreasonable, and I'd love to see more collaboration. In fact, I don't think you'd need to pay people if you both like the idea of the movie you're making. It's just that that sort of contractual obligation sometimes causes unintended friction.

Thank you very much for the help!
I've just tried out that feature - pretty newfangled considering that a Google search for the term: sfm "paste connect mode" turns up nothing. I was, of course, able to copy over Graph Editor keyframes, and I had that option selected. However, when I tried to change one of the keyframes, I didn't see the change reflected in its repetition. Is there some part I'm missing, or is that not how it's meant to work? (Just trying to figure out what that feature does)

This isn't quite so helpful, but maybe if you could switch to game mode, equip Sniper with jarate, and then throw it at a bot, you could then analyze the shot's parts and see what it is exactly that makes it up?
I actually haven't figured out how one could equip newer items on the characters, so that would be the main obstacle.

So, say for a 20-second-long scene, you want to have someone waving in the background the entire time. You've accomplished the animation for one wave, but some issues:
-If you're using copy/paste, how can you be sure the starting point is the same as the endpoint, rather than just eyeballing it on the timeline?
-Is there any easy way of extending the length of the animation (via looping) rather than just copying/pasting a bunch of times?
-Less likely: Let's say late in your moviemaking, you decide that the wave doesn't quite look right, so you make one change. Would you have to redo all your duplication work?

The best way I can think about what I'm looking for is like the Repeat effect in Audacity. You select a strip of audio, then tell it to Repeat, say, 10 times. The audio will continue end-to-end in a loop that way.

This is easily handled if you're taking in a Sequence from the game animations, but not if you're doing the animation in the motion editor.

Just to clarify, you have an idea (of which everyone has plenty) and you want someone else to do the work for you?
All these video creators are here learning all this stuff that, several months ago, was all Greek to them - because they all have the commitment and dedication to getting their ideas onscreen. We all had no knowledge of SFM pretty recently, and we learned. This is true for any project; if you want to be involved in one, you have to bring a lot more to the table than just an idea, because everyone has lots of those.

One thing some people have done to skip out on some of the manual animation of moving around is to use motion capture. Hardware like a Kinect may help you out there, though it will definitely take work to set up.

I am trying to work on this right now. I'm no mapper, but I'm just following a tutorial off the Valve Developer Wiki. I'll put it in the shared google drive if it works.