What to Charge - An Experience

Hey everyone;

I want to share a bit of philosophy about video-for-hire work, or videography. Videography is different than filmmaking. Filmmaking is art; videography is a business. A customer is buying a product and/or service from you, the videographer. That product has costs associated it with it, and you deserve to make money from it.

A recent experience highlights the difference between reality and perception regarding the cost of videography. It started with a note on a mailing list (note that names have been changed throughout, but the details of the job are as accurate as I can convey them) on a Thursday evening:

I am a member of a student organization, the Students Want Video society. We are organizing an event, SWV day 2011 on the XXth of Month (next Tuesday) from 5.30 pm to 9.45 pm, at the Big Hotel. We wanted to have video coverage for the event. I was wondering if you would be interested in doing it.

We do have some money allocated for this purpose, so we can pay you as well. However we have no expertise in any kind of video editing or video coverage. So we would like to hand it over to one person who could be in charge for the entire video, which will go up in youtube.

You can find more details about the SWV day event from our website : www.blahblahblah.com. Do let me know if you would be interested in taking up the job. We can negotiate the money involved as well.

Best,

Student Leader

I spoke to Student Leader about the job. It was a 4.5 hour conference with 100 attendees, with A) presentations to happen for the first hour, then B) break-out sessions where participants will prepare posters, followed by C) presentations of those posters to the group, and concluding with D) final remarks by the organizers. He wanted to capture the components A, C and D in their entirety, with a montage of activity from the break-out sessions. He wanted this edited and produced for display on the organization’s web site and on YouTube. Note that he was looking for someone to do this five days from when he sent the inquiry.

To properly capture this event would require a minimum staff of three: Two camera operators and an audio/grip.

One camera could be fixed on the stage and/or presenter, with a second to roam and capture b-roll footage. Given, one active cameraperson could do both, but the scale of the project really needs two. To accurately capture the stage presentations would require the fixed camera be operated, as presenters tend to move about. Normally, I'd want separate audio and grip workers, but for this job could likely get away combining the role.

To estimate what to charge for this job, I used the following: 4.5 hour job, plus 1 hour of setup and 30 minutes of cleanup; 15 hours of editing. (Note that a fully-edited piece requires about 1 hour editing per minute of finished video. As the customer wanted ‘let the camera roll’ footage for much of this event, the 2-hour video product would not require such intense editing.) I value labor as follows:

Camera operator: $50/hour

Audio operator: $25/hour

Grip: $15/hour

Editing: $100/hour

If these rates seem high, consider this: They are ‘charge-out’ rates the business charges to find, provide, organize and manage the skilled resources. These are not unskilled, minimum-wage jobs.

So, six hours on-site at a combined $125/hour (2 cameras plus audio) is $750. Plus 15 hours of editing for $1500, with a total ‘cost’ of $2250, not including travel time, meals, media costs, depreciation on equipment, etc. These are very real costs to a business.

Therefore, I estimated the job at $3,500. The customer choked. He was thinking ‘a few hundred dollars at the most.’ The quoted price is at a gross margin of only 36%. This is a bare minimum to most businesses in order to be successful. Many businesses strive for 50% or even 60% gross margin. The food service business scrapes by with about 33% margins (ask anyone who owns a restaurant about how rich they’re not).

The bottom line is this: Before jumping at a videography job because ‘a few hundred dollars’ sounds reasonable, do the math. Nothing is more valuable than your time, especially with your skills applied during that time. You deserve to be paid a fair rate for the work and product delivered.

As always, your mileage may vary. Happy Shooting!

-Rob.