Freelance Fee question...

G

griffin

Well-known member
My buddy wants to start a production company and his cousin hooked him up with a gig to run cameras at a live concert. They are getting a switcher and he has a few people running camera ( 3-5, I will most likely be one). He isn't too sure on what to charge the place but from the little information that I have, it's a 12p-12a reggae concert. It's possible that this could be a 16+ hour day with setting stuff up and all of that.

The arena wants to hire people to shoot the concert... any suggestions on what he should charge and roughly what each camera man should get paid for this?

Thanks.
 
well, the concert biz varies wildly.
It depends on the size of the show and what they want you to deliver.
HD or SD, in house IMAG and/or webcast, 16x9 or 4x3, recording to DV tape and/or dvd-r, etc...

Have you and your buddy ever done a show like this before?
I'd recommend you do a show at a small club before you tackle a festival.
They are a whole different beast.
Plus, get yourself some solid biz insurance because your gear is going to take a pounding from the operators and environment.
One other tip...make sure you have your own power.
I can guarantee that if you plug into someone else's power, like the PA for example, you will suddenly find your monitors filled with images that have hum in them which is also what you are sending out to screens and/or recording.

As for your question....

He needs to charge them rental for the equipment, for the personnel, and then pad the budget by 10% for the "oh by the way.../holy ****!" fund to cover incidentals and disposables.

Rental rates start at 10% of the retail value.
Usually cam ops make a minimum of $300 per 10 hour day, time an half for OT. That said most festivals rip off the camera ops and usually pay them half of that because they know the cam ops will work for less in exchange for the glamour of working at a festival.
 
Cheesesailor77 said:
10%?!?!? I'd say they start at 2%, up to maybe 5% (although, hey, if you can them to do it, then yes, do it, lol)
Click to expand...


Well there's some strategy involved here.
Promoters are cheap and will always try to cut your budget.
So you start at 10% knowing that you'll really get 5%.
Then you have room to give them what they want, which is feeling like they
got a deal while protecting your margin.
 
Last edited:
RollItTakeIt said:
Well there's some strategy involved here.
Promoters are cheap and will always try to cut your budget.
So you start at 10% knowing that you'll really get 5%.
Then you have room to give them what they want, which is feeling like they
got a deal while protecting your margin.
Click to expand...

Ah, I get it. START at 10%. makes sense
 
Thanks.

According to the venues website, there are only two acts that are performing, which I find it hard to believe that it will last 12 hours. I've been trying to get my friend to find out as much as he can about the event before doing anything else.

They only want this for the monitors that are in the venue and there "will be work in the future" of our shoots being put on dvd.

We're basically going to be there just to shoot the concert & crowd and have it switched live over the monitors. I've shot about 20 or so concerts before when I was younger and had little experience with a video camera and they came out well. My experiences shooting other types of live events has increased dramatically since then and feel comfortable doing it.

Thanks for all the info and if you think of anything else, i'll be here to listen.
 
usually you wanna say you must be paid for your day not by hours cuz realisticly you cant schedule anything else to be shot in the same day. so i would charge the same no matter how short or long it goes as long as its one day of work
 
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