Corporate Video Costs

S

ShortStop

Active member
Hey there,
I was recently approached by a local business to make a video for them. The man i contacted told me that it was going to be 20-30 minutes long, with on site interviews, voice overs (done by me) and stock footage that i would film and edit myself. He then told me to get an estimate for him...and i had no clue how much i should charge for it. So heres where you guys/ladies come in, HOW MUCH SHOULD I CHARGE? I have all my own equipment, camera (DVX100B), editing suite, mics, etc.. So if you guys could help me price this out, that would be great.

Thanks!
 
You'll simply multiply your hourly rate by the time you feel it should take.
round up a bit.
I charge a flat 6,500 for videos averaging about 12 minutes long, if that helps.
This does not include travel.
 
Hmm, well, that's not exactly how I'd do it.

If you're doing all of this work yourself, you should have an hourly rate you charge plus a daily rate for equipment rentals, and that includes your editing suite.

On my last corporate project I underbilled for my time, but I was ok with the overall situation given that the project would keep me busy for a long time and I figured I'd make enough on my equipment rentals. So I'd charge like $350/day for equipment for most of the work, $900/day on a training video we did, then about $75/day for the editing suite loaded with software. Then added my time above that, and had additional expenses such as transportation, crew, food, etc.

The best way is to figure out how much time you think this will take, though, and add in at least something for your equipment rental fees to the shoot.
 
I would agree with Jonathan on what he said... but also make it clear that once you have finished the project to your satisfaction, if the client still wants changes (change this shot, put music here, change music, change font etc etc) that there will be additional charges for your time. I find that if I give a flat out price, the client can milk you for all your worth and that's not fair on you.
 
It depends on how elaborate the training dvd is to be. Is it about on-the-job training? What exactly does it entail? I've done a couple corporate videos here in Ontario, so if you'd like to shoot me a PM, I can give you some more details in regards to pricing and things to be wary of.

Good luck,

Kegan
 
mmm.... how exactly does that make sense when the client is paying you to make it look the way he wants it to? reason why I am asking is because I've had cases in which lets say I did a promo and well explaining and storyboarding only takes you so far and when the project was set and done and I showed it, it only requiered minor changes but never thought about charging him more due to me not living up to the client's vision 100% I don't know maybe there is something I am missing here but I have never charged a client extra for say changing the text to arial insted of futura, I guess this is on a case by case basis?

but then again, I have noticied when a client is trying to take advantage of the set price by wanting to incorporate things that
were not in the original deal and now I would have to put time and effort for free and it does not work that way

please elaborate on experiences, I know everyone in the thread will benefit from it

thanks


Zeakio said:
I would agree with Jonathan on what he said... but also make it clear that once you have finished the project to your satisfaction, if the client still wants changes (change this shot, put music here, change music, change font etc etc) that there will be additional charges for your time. I find that if I give a flat out price, the client can milk you for all your worth and that's not fair on you.
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This is the toughest part of the video business...Estimating. The client doesn't want an open-ended hourly rate. The incentive is for you to be slow and incompetant...you make more money that way! Naturally they want a package price, but as Zeakio said, then they will try to make tons of changes...For Free within that price. The challenge is to be constantly vigilante whenever the client wants to do that. I always want to say "YES, we can do whatever you want. HOWEVER, that is outside of our initial agreement, and so our pricing for those changes will be X"... That also smokes'em out as to whether or not the changes are really important. Be sure and smile when you say that.
 
because I am an editor, I make a good portion of my living from revisions. They pay the bills. If I didn't charge for them, I'd make half what I do today.
That said, the corporate video(s) being discussed... my very selling point to produce them turn-key was a flat rate bid of 6500 per video.
I estimated this budget by multiplying how long it would take by my hourly rate (not a daily rate)
I shoot for a day (or two). I travel for a day (or two). And I usually edit for about 4 days. Sometimes I come out waaaay ahead, streemlining my own operation. Sometimes these turn into bigger productions and I may take one on the chin. It balances out in my favor or I would not keep offering it.
Doing so much business with this client, I knew going into the bidding process that they usually pay well into five figures per video. I knew my flat price would garantee quantity. It did. Had I stuck to my hourly billing, they would have had much less incentive.
Now, I gained more than just a gig in doing this. I now get to shoot what I edit and edit what I shoot. This cures a boatload of burnout and I have truely enjoyed the creative freedoms and the travels.

I saw no reason to break down daily rates, rental rates, ect as I know the market. I know what a shooter goes for in a day with gear and I know what an edit suite with a great editor costs per day. I simply made a package deal that equalled less than an ala cart production. My selling point was there are no surprises in the budget... which ALWAYS happens when paying by the hour. They can plan knowing exactly what it'll cost.
 
I think it is important to establish what you are doing for the client at the very start of the production, as Zeakio was indicating, because if you are doing work that is above the scope of the original agreement you need to be charging extra. You can have your own discretion with this, like if the changes are extremely minor perhaps you just do it and keep the client happy, but if the client is constantly making unreasonable demands then it's up to you to lay your foot down and tell them they have to pay extra to get extra.

On my last corporate project, I gave them the rough cuts and gave them about a week to suggest changes, which they did to each video over 4.5 hours of conference calls, some e-mails, etc. My editor and I made all of these changes, then added the voiceover that we contracted out, and I sent final versions before color correction back to them and because of the tight deadline told them they have just two days to get back to me about whether there are any last-minute changes. They said no, good to go. Then long after the project was basically completed, and live on the Web, I mean a solid 10 days later but before final payment, they want one more video re-edited and the music changed near the end, and I told them I usually would not agree to such a request because when we picture-lock, that's it, there are no more changes unless you pay additional money. You were given ample opportunities, on two occasions, to make changes. You didn't request any. But I agreed to do this one video, out of the sixteen total, because the client wants more training videos (we did one of those for them too) in the future and I figured that we'd allow one more day for changes, so given that this doesn't make for more than one day of editing changes, I said yes. I've only withheld enough from my editor to pay him for one more day of editing basically, so that's why that came about. Then I only receive my final payment at the end, after everyone else is paid, haha.

So I would be careful in outlining at the start, in writing, what you are agreeing to doing.
 
From my experience in doing a corporate video last year, I asked the director of the project if I had creative control in regards to fonts, colours etc. They said yes and I went ahead and did about 1/2 of the rough cut, which had a lot of text and coloured banners (it was an instructional video for building cabinets) and then they came back and said "can you change the font to this and can you change the colour?" and to them it seemed very insignificant.. but that resulted in me going through each box one by one and changing it to the conventions they should have told me from the beginning. It all just adds up... they then went on to say that the video went too fast, which is fair enough... so I pad it out to make it longer. Now it is too long, cut some stuff out! Put music in, no, change the music.. etc etc. Then they needed me to travel back to their warehouse where we were shooting the video to re-shoot some stuff they forgot to get me to shoot the first time. Ultimately I ended up charging 20 hours of editing to them, which met the original budget, however I put in around 35-40 hours of work.. constantly re-uploading rough cuts for them to look at etc. Then I got a call earlier this year asking for a few more copies of the video on DVD, and no payment was even discussed... I realise I should have said that I charge for extra copies, but I didn't because during the project I asked for extra money to buy a hard drive (all my hard drives were full and I needed more space to complete the project), they said no because they didn't think they needed to pay for me to buy myself equipment... which I can see their point of view... but I guess I've just learned from the project that you have to think about things like disk space and extra time spent on the project and even extra DVD copies. Otherwise they think that just because they paid you a flat out price, that they can get anything they want and it's all included. In the end it all just starts to eat away at the profit I made... which wasn't much after all the work I put in. I guess I did undersell myself because I wanted this project to help build my resume... Oh well, I've learned from my experience.

Now I've moved away from corporate videos (I don't really have a client base for that kind of work anyway) and I do music videos now... and even though I don't get paid what I'm worth there either, I do enjoy making them! Plus I don't do video productions for a living... more of a hobby these days.

Hope that made some sense? I realise everyone charges different ways for different reasons. That's just how I would do it from my experience... if you feel you need to protect yourself and your time, charge by the hour. If you feel you can get everything done to a certain budget and will make enough money for your time, then charge a flat out price.
 
I guess that works for a single person. I have to take half upfront or I can't afford the overhead to do the project.
 
Giving a quote or an estimate is simply the wrong way to go about it in this business. You can do almost any job at almost any price level -- what changes is the quality.

So instead of trying to make up some sort of magical estimate, turn it around on the client and ask them what their budget is. Whatever their budget is, that's what you can do the job for -- but then you have to decide what you can include at that budget level.

If they won't tell you their budget, then you have to point out to them that answering a question like "what will it cost" is about equivalent to someone asking "what does a house cost?" Obviously it's going to depend highly on what kind of house they want, right? If they've got a million bucks to spend you can give them a mansion, if they've got $50,000 to spend then you can give them a mobile home/trailer.

Same with video. What's their budget? If they come back and say "let's keep it under $500" then you can say "er, goodbye." But they might say "no more than $10,000" and then you know what you have to work with and what you can spend and what you'll keep.

If they say "we simply have no idea what these things cost" then hit them with "typical video production costs range from $1,000 to $2,000 per finished minute, all things included."
 
That's a very good point Barry, we've run into that a lot where someone will ask, "What does a music video cost?" and I am just sitting there thinking, uhh, anywhere from free to $8 million?! lol. That's a field where I always ask, "What's your budget?" because otherwise I can't know what type of video I can give them.

With corporate work I may be able to make a better estimate depending on what they want, because there are less variables, but even then the more you pay, the more you get.
 
I also use the "what's your budget?" approach. Any organization that has done it's homework will already have a figure in their mind. If they get fidgity and start playing games because they want something cheap then I know that they'll likely be a nightmare client and I'll decline the job.

If someone wants a quick quote, I tell them anywhere from $750 to $1500 per finished minute. Most of my projects end up being $1000 to $1500 pfm.

After ONE meeting where we discuss the specs, I put them into a contract with the payment terms (up-front for small projects less than $8K, 50/50 or even 35,35,30 for larger ones). We might email the contract back and forth with changes, but usually within a few days we've wrangled it out.

I don't do anything until money is in my account. No storyboards, no "creative" meetings. Nothing. They don't see anything until it's done. Then we sit down and go through it, and I make detailed notes of all the required changes. I make the changes, then present them with the final version along with the final bill. If they want any changes it will cost them (though I usually make minor changes for free to keep them happy).


BTW, 20-30 minutes is really long. Nobody watches for longer than 10 minutes at the most -- 12 minutes if it's really good. I tell all my clients to cut their video down to 10 minutes or less to be more effective. 7-8 minutes is the sweet spot.
 
BTW, 20-30 minutes is really long. Nobody watches for longer than 10 minutes at the most -- 12 minutes if it's really good. I tell all my clients to cut their video down to 10 minutes or less to be more effective. 7-8 minutes is the sweet spot.
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Shouldn't that depend entirely on the subject? Afterall, in corporate settings, don't people routinely sit for hour-long seminars and presentations?
 
My last corp Video i charged 3500. One man team and used my own EQ. Ended up shooting about 6-7 hours- roughly 90 re-takes- one day shoot. Lunch was included. Video was a business presentation video for external customers. Final edit time was roughly 12 minutes. Two speakers, CEO and main speaker. Power point slides were added and inserted in the video at key spots highlighting focal points. Took me about 3 days to edit. reviewed final edits with my client for final approval and last minute changes. Slight changes were made at no extra cost on the spot. depending on how many changes were given i set up another final review. It was clear though that after video was burned to DVD there would be extra charge to make changes. final product was delivered at their request on single master copy DVD with full color label 100+ copies. Copies were not included in the 3500 original price. Of course, i was not told about the copies until i delivered the master DVD copy. Sure Mr Client this will cost you $$$ extra and can be delivered on x/xx/xx. Had my client wanted DVD cases for each DVD the price would have gone up considerably.

Story behind how i got this gig was through a friend of mine who is VP of the company and knew my skills and offered me the opportunity. This was my first job and wanted to do a favor for my friend so i practically did the job for free (under 1k) just to get in the door (remember this was my first corp video). Turned out the CEO like my work and on the spot changes i did in our final review that he told his assistance to cut me a check for my asking 3500 price.

Why did i originally charge under 1k for the job? This is a side job for me since i work in the Corp world. Since my first work i have been hired 2 additional times with the same client to produce other videos of the same caliber. 3500x2. No animation was included in the videos, etc that would have bumped up the price a bit. Now i have my foot in the door with Corp Vidoes and look forward to produce many more.

Im sure you will be fine and learn from your first work experience. cheers
 
mcgeedigital said:
Make sure you get 1/3rd down
1/3rd after shooting.
Final 3rd before final deliverable.
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This is very good advice. Definately make sure that you get a downpayment and be sure to charge an hourly rate. My experience with flat rate customers has been that they'll constantly find something to "tweak". It may seem small to them, but it costs you valuable time that you should be paid for.
 
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