day rate question

Jason Miller

Jason Miller

Veteran
I'm just wondering how everyone works their day rate. I work mine depending on the gear used, and i pretty much keep it close to the cost of rental of same, so i tend to chage between 250 and 1200 a day depending on what gear is needed. I'm thinking about reeworking the way I do things, and I'm wondering how the rest of you go about this.

I'm also wondering where you advertise, and how you go about finding you non word of mouth or repeats?

Thank you
Jason Miller
 
I charge by the hour. In very select cases, I'll offer a flat bid for a turn key project.
My sales force is my clientele. You'll never have a better salesperson than a happy client.
 
Thanks for that link to robstar's thread. The temptation to buy more and more equipment before I've established a steady cashflow is something I fight every day. I've put together a basic studio but believe me, it's no where near what i envision for the future.
Sometimes I get a bit intimidated by the gear people discuss on here. My main concern is my lowly eMac, which I've upgraded as much as I could but it's no Power Mac.. But heck, it runs Final Cut reasonably well and does what i need it to do, for now.
I did splurge on a DVX100B but I think I really wanted to get a good camera in order to practice the shooting techniques that I've read about.
Robstar isn't the first person I've read say it's possible and even preferable to build the business without investing $ 100,000 on equipment. That's just what I plan on doing now. I've got a reasonable level of quality to show and now I will get out and show it. But I will do that only after studying the potential client base, of course.
Again, awesome thread and website!
 
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the robstar thread is nice, but that only really applies if you're a production company, I'm a camera man/dp, I have no wish to book clients, produce videos, or even direct other people projects. if you need something DPed, gaffed, or so on thats me, but I don't wan't to write your script, direct your project, find your actors or locations, nore do I really want to edit your project. i want to light and shoot it. if you need vfx, you I might hire on for that to.


and yes a DP needs his own equipment, at the very least you need gels, a few lights, and yes if you have a good camera package, it helps.


but my question still remains, how do you decide your rates, and were do you advertise as a Dp, for producers and directors, and others who would hire a dp as part of a larger crew to see.

Thank you
Jason Miller
 
I run a small production company so I'm not really like Jason in that respect. I'm also struggling with the finding clients bit. I think I'll just have to start sending out mailings to companies in the area and see what works. I am for now doing more work, though, to build up my company portfolio further. It has a decent start but I want to be fully prepared before I become more aggressive with further clients. I charge based on the project scope and the equipment needed, essentially. I come up with a budget as a producer, then I figure out what my cut will be, 15% production company markup for one, equipment rentals are in there for my own equipment as well as additional equipment needed (and, yeah, I'm guilty of buying about $100K in production equipment, haha), then I charge for the days of work I'm going to have to do as director and producer, etc.

Jason, as for your services, I don't know how it is in SF but around here DPs sort of get attached to certain working directors and get hired back. I have two DPs I really like working with now, but probably need further contacts because you never know if they're both booked. Also budget decides some things, I almost hate to call either of my DPs and be like, "Uhh, yeah, we have this tiny project, the budget is $200 for a day, so... are you interested?" Because I don't really think they are $200/day guys, and I've never paid them that low, so I'd probably be too embarrassed to call and would just find someone else on Craigslist. Who knows if I would even do a project like that at this point, though, I'd probably tell the client I don't think their pay is sufficient to give them a fully professional result and I'd rather not be involved unless the budget is increased. Who knows, though, sometimes you gotta make do.
 
Yea I do have a couple of repeat directors, but they don't work that often. I get a few gigs off Craigslist. and a few from flyers I post at the local film schools, I've been thinking about Mandy, but I've been looking over the site from time to time, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of movement.
 
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