How much should i charge

L

Loren Simons

DVXuser Sponsor
I will be shooting a 5 hour long bar mitzvah.
3 Canon A1s, and i will be editing it as well as making a personal dvd menu and authoring them myself. My question is..what should i be charging for the event+post time? thanks!
 
Lots of factors. Will all three Cameras have operators? If so, then their hourly rate + percentage of it + your hourly rate + equipment fee + editing fees (flexible) + output/delivery fee. There's your itemized invoice, missing a couple things that may apply.
 
Friends who do wedding videography tell me that they charge around $250/camera plus up to $600 for their editing time, depending on how much footage they have to edit. For something like that, I would guess anything under $1000 and you're selling yourself short. With three cams for a 5 hour shoot plus edit off of HDV, I'd probably charge $1500 myself... but then, I don't have background in wedding videography, so I may be pricing it way high...
 
davbeisner said:
Friends who do wedding videography tell me that they charge around $250/camera plus up to $600 for their editing time, depending on how much footage they have to edit. For something like that, I would guess anything under $1000 and you're selling yourself short. With three cams for a 5 hour shoot plus edit off of HDV, I'd probably charge $1500 myself... but then, I don't have background in wedding videography, so I may be pricing it way high...
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For a shoot like that, you'd be underselling yourself considerably at $1500. Just my two cents. Different markets and all.
 
While this is a $5k production, your starting out.
I'd say a flat 2k is fair. Thats a heck of a deal for them and some good experience for you.
 
grinner said:
While this is a $5k production, your starting out.
I'd say a flat 2k is fair. Thats a heck of a deal for them and some good experience for you.
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I'd bill them for the full price, in this example $5k, but give them a one time discount or something to reduce the price to $2k. It's easier to bring your rate down than to raise it up.


-A
 
I would say at least 2.5k or 3k. Five hours with three cameras, editing and DVD authoring? That's a huge amount of work.

We just shot a four hour event (though only needed to shoot about 2.5 hours of it) with 2 cameras, SD (DVX100A) and some lights. I'm editing and DVD authoring as well, and we charged a bit over 2.5k, and I think that should really have come in around 5k.

If you have time, I would prepare a very detailed estimate and break down everything that will factor into the shoot and editing/DVD; hourly fee of the camera operators, rental prices (including tax) for any equipment you need to rent, gas mileage, cost per tape, cost per DVD, prep work, etc. and make it conform to an overall price that you think is fair. It will give you, and the client, a good sense of how little you're charging for a large amount of work.

We did this for the event we just shot and included some items that we weren't charging them for, like the tripods, travel time to and from the venue (though we did charge mileage) - so we showed them that we were giving them a deal by throwing in some things for free, and it still came to more than the 2k they wanted to pay. How can they argue when you're so clearly giving them a great deal and its all clearly documented?

Well, they can and probably will, but at least they have an idea of how you're arriving at your price and what goes into creating the quality video that they want to commemorate this special day.
 
wow thats a lot of really high numbers. hahaha thanks for all of your input, for this ONE time offer i quoted them at 1100 flat, although i told them that this was a one time deal, since they were my first customers, and im friends with the daughter. I've also decided that this would be good first time price being im 15 and i wouldn't want to scare them away with such a high number when i dont have anything in this certain department to show them!
thanks for everyones help and input, it makes me feel more confident that i wasn't over charging them, that being my fear, and looking like a d**che bag. thanks to all!
 
Macaholic262 said:
wow thats a lot of really high numbers. hahaha thanks for all of your input, for this ONE time offer i quoted them at 1100 flat, although i told them that this was a one time deal, since they were my first customers, and im friends with the daughter. I've also decided that this would be good first time price being im 15 and i wouldn't want to scare them away with such a high number when i dont have anything in this certain department to show them!
thanks for everyones help and input, it makes me feel more confident that i wasn't over charging them, that being my fear, and looking like a d**che bag. thanks to all!
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3 cameras, 5 hours - that's 15 hours of editing time at the very least just to review and log the footage. Need to work on your math skills, matey. At the rate you quoted, you'd be doing better financially working at MacDonalds for student minimum wage.
 
I'll share with you a pricing optimization tool I've written in Mathematica, which is a very powerful math tool from Wolfram. They recently came out with a player which lets those without a Mathematica license run Mathematica applications. The example given is for wedding services so it should be easy to see how to apply it to your situation.

To use the pricing tool you'll need to:

1. Download the player which you can find at http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/download.cgi - it will run on your choice of OS.

2. Install the player

3. Download the pricing tool from http://10squaredcorp.com/analysis/ProductProfitabilityOptimization1.nbp
NOTE: RIGHT/CTL CLICK THIS LINK AND SAVE THE FILE

4. Start the player and open the nbp file you downloaded in step 3.

5. Read the example and make adjustments for your products.

6. Profit!

Good luck with your new business. I would carefully log the times it takes for different tasks so that your next estimates are more accurate.
 
I just verified that the process is correct. A number of folks have successfully used the app. Feel free to pm me if you would like help with it.

Jim
 
adkimery said:
I'd bill them for the full price, in this example $5k, but give them a one time discount or something to reduce the price to $2k. It's easier to bring your rate down than to raise it up.


-A
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How are you gonna go from 5k to 2k.
People will never buy that they'll think your just hustling them.
 
i don't exactly live in a wealthy market but I can see that I sell myself short considering all the post time I put in. No wonder i can never afford to upgrade my equipment. The only reason I was even able to get a DVX100B was because I came into a bit of cash elsewhere. I need to seriously rethink things. Anyway, all this info. is great. This is my favorite site on the net, now.
 
Macaholic262 said:
wow thats a lot of really high numbers. hahaha thanks for all of your input, for this ONE time offer i quoted them at 1100 flat, although i told them that this was a one time deal, since they were my first customers, and im friends with the daughter. I've also decided that this would be good first time price being im 15 and i wouldn't want to scare them away with such a high number when i dont have anything in this certain department to show them!
thanks for everyones help and input, it makes me feel more confident that i wasn't over charging them, that being my fear, and looking like a d**che bag. thanks to all!
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If it's your first real job and you feel comfortable making that much, more power to you. If you do a hell of a job it'll likely work out great for you. If you do a mediocre job that you charged a mediocre price for, well, eh.
 
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