How much do you charge for freelance/contract work?

Weddings are the most stressful, nerve racking shooting i have ever done. I tried it for about a year and I will never do it again. There is good money in it if you have talent, excellent people skills and the patience of Job.
 
Starshine Video said:
Weddings are the most stressful, nerve racking shooting i have ever done. I tried it for about a year and I will never do it again. There is good money in it if you have talent, excellent people skills and the patience of Job.
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Not good money - there's a high learning curve and you have to persevere a lot of BS and the flood of students/hobbyist that bring a handicam and charge 900 bucks for barely edited footage then have the bride/groom gawk at your 2-3K price tag even though you spent 40 more hours on it and have proper training.

Ok maybe a bit cynical but even if you have video experience, weddings can be a whole new world.
 
Starshine Video said:
Weddings are the most stressful, nerve racking shooting i have ever done. I tried it for about a year and I will never do it again. There is good money in it if you have talent, excellent people skills and the patience of Job.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%, having worked on a couple of wedding gigs it is truly horrible. Do what you have to for the money, but I would rather be laying concrete and brick than to do another wedding shoot.......
 
I was asked to do a wedding this weekend but i turned it down cause i had plans and it was to last minute. Honestly i would have likely turned it down anyway. I did some footage at a friends wedding just for fun a while back when i still had my D90. Good lord, dark noisy environent, flashes going off all over the place. In other words the worst possible environment imaginable for video. I told him id edit it togther for him and give him whatver i shot, but i still havent gotten to it.

Id rather not risk taking money to preserve such a special memory for someone and end up having it be less than perfect.

I did get approached to shoot a music video comming up. Again no rates were discussed, but its a friend of a friend so ill probably give him a low price if it comes down to it. Seeing how he is managing to either rent or talk his way into a circus as the location though, im hoping they have some $$$ to spend on shooting /editing.

Well see if this stuff pans out or not. Only bad thing for me, is i already have a day job thats not related to video or photography in any way, and im busy at least a few nights a week working on other stuff so my time is pretty limited.

jon
 
I ask because I do corporate video as my day job, but I'm not freelance. Times are a little tough even with a steady job. Seems I can only just get by these days. I need a way to pay for all these fancy new HDSLR's coming out. I don't own a camera myself anymore. So I figured I've pick up a couple T2i's and maybe do a couple free weddings to build a wedding portfolio. Then start doing them for regular price. Even if just to pay for my filmmaking habit.

One of the guys I work with does wedding photography on the side and asked me before if I'd ever be interested in doing video. He said several of his clients asked him for a reference to a good video guy but he didn't have one to give.

After watching that wedding video done on the 7D I'm starting to be convinced you can actually shoot even a wedding on an HDSLR. So long as what you're ending up with are about 3-4 five minute long videos rather then releasing the entire 30-60+ minute ceremony. Those are boring to watch anyway.

Just thinking about it. I just need a way to bring in some extra cash. Video is what I do and this is about the only kind of video I could do as side work without my employer getting upset and feeling like I'm stepping on their toes.
 
I once mentioned shooting weddings (I believe the phrase I used in the description was that I "whored myself out for weddings") to some pro photographers in L.A. and the look on their faces was priceless. You could see the "memories" come flooding back! One even said, "No way will I shoot weddings EVER again."

Funny enough, this conversation took place at a wedding (and no, none of us were working it).
 
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