How much do I say?

[Hans Moleman]

Ok, so after my night of filming the basketball team for my college, I'm approached by a man from the alumni association dealy thing. He wants to know if I can do a photo/video montage to be played at the end-of-season banquet and copies to be sold to players/students. He's (thankfully) providing the photos and video, so he just needs a quick cut-up of everything and it put to music that "The kids will enjoy." Now, he's paying me a flat fee, but he said we'd discuss it later. Now, because his first question to me was "Can you take pictures AND video and somehow put them together? WITH music?" I don't think he has much experience with hiring videographers, so I don't think he'll pay me, shall i say, accurately. If I'm looking at a 5-10 minute lil montage for a school organization, what kinda fee should I propose?

 

[Trademark]

I did that in HS for the hockey team, they told me 100 for one game and a photomontage. I actually got paid 150 cause they liked it so much, this was 5 years ago with a Canon GL-1.

 

[galt]

1. Alumni Associations have plenty of money.
2. If he is supplying video and photos and you are going to use any popular music, you are running afoul of a LOT of copyright laws.

A 10 min montage will likely be 100-200 photos, plus some video. Scanning and editing the whole thing to music is probably a 6-10 hour job. It could be 20 (or more) if you have to fool with the pics at all to clean them up.

I am assuming you are a student and will be around school for a while. So even tho Alumni group has money, you do not want to be too high since you will want other work. But the alumni group should also be your best work, so lots of other groups say ooh and ahhh and hire you in the future...

Typical photo montage pricing runs $2-$4 per photo, some higher. For 200 photos, that alone might be $400 to $800. Integrating video is another whole can of worms. As a student, I would probably charge $300-$500 for the project, plus $10 a copy. They can sell copies for $20 and make $10 back for their group to offset your cost or even add to their coffers if they sell enough.

Of course, there is still that copyright issue of using someone else's photos, video footage, and music without permission. Just because the alumni guy has them, it doe snot mean he has rights to copy them, repackage them, or set them to music. And music copyrights is another matter. Even for free, and certainly when getting paid it is an issue for me that might keep me away from the project. As a student, you have to make your ethical decision now. What goes around comes around is my philosophy.

 

[smithgallTV]

Galt is right about the music. Especially if they do as suggested and sell the copies. If its just for display that one time you are probably not going to have a problem. The difference is between what is technically illegal(civil, so no one is going to jail) and what is worth pursuing. A one time event at a school (charity and community citizen) function that is not considered a money making venture probably isnt going to excite lawyers too much. Now if you add the music and sell it then you are getting into someone losing money and the game is on.

As for the costs. If its mostly the copmpilation of pictures then project can be done all at home (assuming yoiu have scanner etc) then its just a matter of time. Affix an hourly rate to your time that you feel comfortable with. You are essentially editing. Now if you add video taping then you have a different hourly rate. I knwo you are looking for a hard number but its tough to say. What do you think is fair 20-30-40-50 an hour? they are all fine with me. You would probabloy spend 10 hours no problem. once you start going you'll get a rythym going and it will run along smoothly (meaning preparing the photos) then putting them on the time line can be easily done but difficult to stop tweaking. Most people will fall into some sort of pattern. Is it all the faculty shots together, is it more chrnonological, maybe you go by groups chronologically, such as all the staff from the 70's first. The idea is that there are a hundred ways you can choose to display 100-200 phtos. dont spedn days figuring it out. one way is as good as the next. the audience will probably never say "i wish you had arranged those picture according to XYZ" so choose a style or theme and go with it.

One example i had recently, a girl we have known since birth had a debut party (basically her 18th Bday) it wa s a big shindig with 150 guests. at one point they hade a picture montage. during it they played three songs so it ran about 9-10 min. each song was a phase, baby through 8ish, next song was elementary through middle school and last song was up to present day. We didnt know there was a theme so after 2.5 minutes of whitney houstin singing "the children are the future" i heard someone at our table comment "is this child ever going to age"....because we didnt know the plan we didnt know that the song had to end before the next age group of pictures. Of course this was one person so no matter how cutre you can only take so much. Im sure the alumi's are far more photogenic. The person that put this together probably could have put up some sort of title car that said "sarah the early years" then we may have guessed. Really it should have been done in one song. Less is more.

ok my $.02 is spent

 

[Hans Moleman]

Thanks for the input. Still unsure about the pricing though. I might just go low because I'm not too strapped right now. Also, as far as copyrights go, I know they took the pics because I've seen him at games, but music might be a challenge. I might end up putting in stuff I've composed. We'll see how it goes. So far i'm looking at about 100-150 pics and 4 raw tapes of game footage (shot with a sony handicam, yay)

 

[riggieri]

I just did a video like this and charged 750. That was going through 12 games of footage to find highlights of the players and all the editing and DVD authoring. If he is providing all the3 plays and photos i would say 500. I also wouldn't worry about copyright laws on any school/charity event. Like weddings, no record label is going to spend 10,000 on lawyers for something that won't net a profit of more than 1,000.