Local Television Commercial Production Rates?

there are multiple meetings, handholding, script development. If you could just do the commercial it would be ok. But it usually is more time spent than what it is worth, especially if the client is really "hands on". I had one client that wanted to spend two days in post, full days not just an hour or so. Now I have a time limit in my contract with clients an exact amount of time for post. In addition, I have a time limit on acceptance of the final product with financial penalties for late acceptance after completion. I also found that I didn't want to act as an agent for clients, because I don't want to be responsible for their "non-payment" of the run fees. The only way I will act as an agent is for them to pay a month in advance. If they want a run in May for example, they will get billed the first of April with a due date of April 15, that way I can pull the commercial if they don't pay. It's a fine line between customer service and no bank for the production company for local spots.
 
I'm bringing back an old post. A few people on here mentioned Cable's VOD as having longer spots for clients to purchase (around 2-3 minute video segments), is this something they are doing? Do cable companies have a platform for short longform commercial projects?
 
ItsJanosz said:
Idea conception, production and post will be handled by us.
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When you make your bid, you should make the creative part separate from the production and the production separate from the post. It sounded like a lot of the numbers you are getting here are mostly for production (right?), and you may want your bill to reflect that you are doing more than just the production part (and hence charge more).

And you'll definitely want to look into buying media time for your client, it's a bit more work, but you can make a lot off the commisions. I know a few guys that run a mini ad agency here in LA and make more than their production fees off the commissions.

Garrett
 
My post is a two parter, ready? First off I'll mention a pricing situation I'm in currently so people can take it for what it's worth and maybe it'll help someone figure out their pricing. I work largely on the local broadcast level producing commercials for small shops and one location stores/service professionals. I do this freelance, and as a network affiliate producer/director. My stations cite production as "added value" which is sales spin for "we give it to you so you'll buy our airtime". If we were to actually bill clients for spots, they would range between $600 - $1175. There have been instances when we do bill out for production but the stations always lower the ball and cite services valued at $600 for just $450 (2 hour shoot & 1 hour edit).

If the stations were to pay outside freelancers rather than have an in-house production department I would venture to say that they would not want to pay over $300-$350 per spot.

I am currently doing some work with an agency and one of the spots is speculative to be a 3 hour shoot and a 2 hour edit coming in around $800.

OK, that's all of my helpful information. On to part two. There will always be kids with best buy computers and a sony handycam saying they can make professional commercials $350 and under, they undercut everyone by too large of a margin and they are not at all competitive. They see it as "wow I get money now", but they don't see that when they move out of their parents home's and have to pay rent that $300 per spot isn't going to cut it, and that they won't be able to raise their prices to a competitive rate card because they've lowered the market's perception of value on commercials to an all new low that will take years to repair... and that's if it can be repaired.

The reason for my mini-rant: How are you folks surviving, paying bills, or making a profit if the above described problem exists in your market? A.) Do you lower your prices to match, and try for quantity over message effectiveness/production value? B.) Do you let the smaller area businesses that are typically penny penchers have their cheap production through the other guys? And deal only with a slightly higher level of customer? C.) Do you close up shop, open a smoothie stand, and over charge the neighborhood Producer/College Student/Director/Lawn Mower on his strawberry, banana smoothie?

I could really find what you have to say useful, thank you.
 
Rick Pearson said:
How are you folks surviving, paying bills, or making a profit if the above described problem exists in your market? A.) Do you lower your prices to match, and try for quantity over message effectiveness/production value? B.) Do you let the smaller area businesses that are typically penny penchers have their cheap production through the other guys? And deal only with a slightly higher level of customer? C.) Do you close up shop, open a smoothie stand, and over charge the neighborhood Producer/College Student/Director/Lawn Mower on his strawberry, banana smoothie?
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As for myself, I just never shoot local ad spots.
 
NewYorkLion said:
As for myself, I just never shoot local ad spots.
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Hah! Sounds flippant, but it's actually great advice. Local commercials = hell. You just can't compete against the cable company giving it away for free.

Get in with a decent ad agency and get some $5,000 to $50,000 budgets. Or ditch advertising and go into corporate/industrial/training films. No kid with a Best Buy camcorder is going to be landing those jobs, and they can pay decently well. Not huge, but if you can charge $3,000 to $15,000 and get the job done in a week or two, you can do pretty well.

But local ads = pain.
 
Meet somebody. Talk to the president of the company, or the head of HR. I've done tons of these things, and they can actually be quite fun if you get a fun-loving exec to work with; I did these for a real estate company every year for I don't know how many years, we did Friends and Young Frankenstein and Star Trek and all sorts of things for them; I've also worked on a lot of them for one of the casino companies; my friend and collaborator there in Vegas had good ties with the company and so we got to do Cheers and the Wizard of Oz and Star Trek and Coneheads and Weekend Update and Church Lady and all sorts of other projects for them.

Pay can be decent, but they can be big producitons too. And there can even be a modicum of creative satisfaction with these things; you get them excited about a particular idea, then you get to work up a script and make the scenario fit the particular goal they have in mind for it.
 
If you are really aching to get into the corporate video world, and i'm not sure why you would be (I dabble and its so very boring compared to most of the rest of the industry) here's a few options. 1, get yourself into a big corporation's studio, they almost all have them and the pay is decent. Call human resources at all the big corps near you and see if they are hiring. worked for me.

2. become a notary and get into legal videography, it's not corporate, but its similar and it pays the bills

3. call the small corporations in the area and ask to talk to marketing. Then just sell yourself to them.
 
Wow, all great posts, guys. Very informative and timely reading for me. I'm just starting to get into shooting commercials. Honestly, I have just shot one (for the local video store where I work part-time) and I will post it on DVX as soon as it's finished. I shot it on the 100a and it looks good... OK, here's the thing with cable produced commercials: they generally don't give a rat's ass about the look/performance/quality of the production. They use available talent (see husband, wife, uncle Joey, and a cousin who own the local muffler shop, and will undoubtedly be standing in front of it waving at the end of the commercial) and most of these productions don't have a "look" as much as they are only required to "look" clean. As mentioned in an earlier post, they use ENG cameras and shoot 60i or 30p. But what really stands out is their lack of imagination; poorly conceived and written scripts with crappy performances. I think the edge we (as independent thinking writers, producers and directors) have is OUR IMAGINATIONS. The cable companies are simply interested in GETTING ACROSS INFORMATION... Why not convey information in an exciting and imaginative way? This is surely our best weapon and I'm sure we can convince clients of this if we try hard enough.
 
MaverickProds hit the nail on the head....
You will have to get in bed with the cable and local TV afffiliates, for a share of the airtime rates. If you buy several times with these folks, you can work a deal for a kick back or a reduction in Your cost.
 
Depends completely where you are. In the small'ish college city I grew up in ( ~80,000 population), the company that made most of the local commercials charged $200. I wish I was kidding. Obviously their commercials were complete crap, but it was extremely difficult to convince businesses to go above $500, when production value was seen as an unnecessary luxury.

In a bigger market, obviously depending on the size of crew needed and the number of shots, I wouldn't take any job under $2,000
 
On average what do most local markets need delivered to the station for broadcast, the commercial on Beta SP or Digibeta, or do they take a file these days?
 
ronin99 said:
On average what do most local markets need delivered to the station for broadcast, the commercial on Beta SP or Digibeta, or do they take a file these days?
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You should ask your local stations. They'll be glad to tell you what their deliverable requirements are.
 
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