Budget to write a 30 minute educational DVD

MikeyP

MikeyP

Well-known member
In past we've produced 30 minute (really 22-28 minute) educational DVDs released thru a catalog for use by High School teachers in class. Many of these were a series such as Human Nutrition (one on FATS, PROTEIN, VITAMINS, etc). The company proveded us with a script, we would do all the production work. Shoot b-roll & interviews, design animations, procure stills.... then edit the project together, finally producing a master of a close-captioned DVD, which they would then replicate and sell.

We would like to begin producing and bringing them to market on our own. We have several topics which could all be series. What is a fair rate for a writer to take on this project as a 'work for hire'?

[Im not looking for writers for this project at this point, just numbers so that I can forcast the budget better].

Any insight or comments would be appreciated.
 
Part of the cost for the writer I would think would depend on the writer's expertise, e.g. a professor or PhD or MD or whatever in the educational field of study for which the script content material pertains.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
Part of the cost for the writer I would think would depend on the writer's expertise, e.g. a professor or PhD or MD or whatever in the educational field of study for which the script content material pertains.
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Agreed, but is that $1000, $2000 or more. Looking for gut reations here, so that Im not trying to low-ball writers or pay thru the nose- just work out a fair price.
 
A newbie PhD at a college would be at the bottom of the salary schedule, making maybe $40-60k/year whereas someone with 20 years of teaching at a university is more at like $100k a year including summer teaching, so factor in such a teacher requiring maybe a week of their time to write the script. If you were looking for a PhD educator to write the script. Or maybe to give a rough script, then have a more experienced writer flesh it out more for the film medium, etc. I think you are in the ballpark at $2000. I always think after taxes myself. At $100,000 salary, $2000 for pay for a week's worth writing a script is really $1000 after taxes. So such teachers have to ask themselves is it worth it to do the project? Maybe. An extra grand or two after taxes can buy a nice weekend getaway vacation, or quite a few nice dinners at Red Lobster. :)

MikeyP said:
Agreed, but is that $1000, $2000 or more. Looking for gut reations here, so that Im not trying to low-ball writers or pay thru the nose- just work out a fair price.
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25 minutes = about 2500 words of narration (at a leisurely narration pace of 100 wpm, which includes space for visuals -- you don't want wall-to-wall talking.) That's about 10 pages.

Given source materials, it would take me one to two days to write and edit it, and I would charge probably around $1000-$2000 depending on how hard the topic is. If I didn't have time to write it myself I'd find a starving university student to write it and pay them $250-500.

You don't need a specialist writer to write about a specialized topic, just an "expert" in that topic to read it when it's done and make sure it's correct.

Non-specialists make better researchers and writers because they know nothing about it, and can more easily write it in a way that's easily understood by viewers. Stuff experts write is dreck and you'll spend more time editing it than writing from scratch.
 
I would agree if s specialist is hired s/he should have experience writing outside of academia. Too many academics are used to teaching and writing in the manner of taking 24 minutes to finally get to the last 1 minute of a 25 minute talk or essay to make the point that should have been made at the start and then backed up with explanation, etc.; extremely common in the sciences.

"If A then B then C then D... then Y so that we have Z!" Wow, how boring--but that is typical academia-speak. Why not "Look at Z, amazing, and this is how it relates to the real world, practical applications, and now let's take a more detailed look at Z...".
~r


pmark23 said:
...Non-specialists make better researchers and writers because they know nothing about it, and can more easily write it in a way that's easily understood by viewers. Stuff experts write is dreck and you'll spend more time editing it than writing from scratch.
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Randall_Oelerich said:
What sort of topics are you looking to produce material for? (health? anatomy? medical? art? other?) Curious.
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Great feedback. In past we produced topics on Early childhood development to be used by High School and college kids wanting to be teachers. Physical development, mental development, etc, -It give future teachers an idea of stages of development and what to look for.

The model had been to have someone write it, then offer $250 (+screen credits for vitae) to have a college proffessor double check.

The reality on these is that they are SPEC jobs, you never know if you'll sell 1 or 1000. I had heard from someone who said that they pulled info from WGA. They indicated that researching and writing the charge would be $7500+ for this, I thought this high. I just wanted to check with the masses and see what there thoughts were.
 
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