Let's be real about Pay $$$!

F

frostgfx

Active member
I've been on this forum since 2007 and it seems that many of the Job postings are for No or Low pay jobs. Recently I was 'offered' $50 for rental of my crane and HVX200 system for a day shoot.

Come on... I didn't spend upwards of $20,000 on camera, crane, car mount system, doorway dolly and top notch audio/lighting equipment/grip... to be paid $50 for the day.

Let's break this down... travel time is 1.5 hours each way = 3 hrs. or $12 in gas alone.

Then there's meals... @ $7.00 x 2 = $14.00

I bill my time at $50.00/hr whether I am doing audio, lighting, grip or camera work. Once I am set up and ready to shoot/record... the clock starts ticking...

I bill my HVX system out at $150/ 8 hour day

I bill my crane out at $75/day and that includes the 1.5hr. setup time for the crane/motor pan/tilt and mounting whatever camera is attached to head.

I would like to know how other users are charging for their time and equipment and whether it 'pays' to take these low ball jobs...

Namaste,
 
there is always someone willing to do it.... usually inexperienced younger folks... i dont do lo pay anymore unless its for a good friend.... in which case it may even be free... or if i like the project i will invest in the project..
 
That's how it works. No one cares how much you spent, and no one is going to feel sorry for you when they're writing out a budget. Some kid whose parents just bought them some new toys will do it for free, so why should they pay you when they don't need to?

I read something on a photographers forum about advertising, with people upset that the general consumer now considers photography to be a general and easily available commodity, implying that they just don't understand how wrong that is. But they're the customers. They're right in this case. They can easily find people, usually much less experienced, happy to practice their hobby for little or no pay. I live in a very low income county, so I see a lot of that. It may not be as fun to think of things that way, but that's reality.
 
Lairhair...

I would be charging more for the M2/Flip/Prime lenses

I think the hard part is selling your product to the client... rather than taking a lo-ball offer, I'd try to educate the client about the real costs involved. I've done jobs for nothing before...nothing ever came of it. LOL
 
One exception is doing pro bono work for non profits. I have done this and ended up with well paying jobs as a result. I have read other posters here say the same thing. Also, you could be helping a good cause- what goes around comes around.
 
Few people really get it, especially non-industry people, they REALLY don't get it. But it only takes one project where they pay amateurs and get bad results for them to understand.

I'm renting to someone tomorrow who basically knows very little about filmmaking, and he wants two HVX200s, four P2 cards, two tripods, a light kit, boom mic, laptop plus DuelAdapter, and some basic stuff (sand bags, etc.), and because he's a friend's dad, I said $570 for four days, so basically charging him for a one-day rental, and because I didn't know he needed the laptop that wasn't even included in the original price. I said I'd throw it in. At first he said, "Wow!" and went on to say he didn't expect it to be that much. I was like are you kidding me? I mean I was offering a RIDICULOUSlY good deal, I've easily seen HVX200s rent for $300/day and even if he got a two-day rate, Thursday and Friday as one day, Saturday and Sunday as one (that part is easy), it'd still be $1,200. Let's say they discount to $1,000. Anyway, point is, $570 is a steal. He asked if I could go lower. I said, no, absolutely not, that is already a great deal. He said fine, though, and that was that.

So sometimes you have to hold to your principles. It can be frustrating when you constantly get low-balled, though.

With professional video work, rather than just rentals, it's a lot easier to sell the services you offer in the sense of establishing yourself as someone who does very good work and explaining that you can get cheaper work elsewhere, but the quality won't be as good, etc.
 
I agree with sticking to your guns. People who take low paying projects do nothing but dilute the market and hurt other people. Bottom line, if you do quality work, people will be willing to pay for it.
 
a local music artist recently told me they need to go with someone for cheaper because she wanted a music video like beyonce, but when i told her how much the soundstage costed she said "wow you're expensive" (the soundstage at the rental place had set rates yet I'M expensive, lol) and that she wanted to use some old dance studio that looked nothing what she was asking me for. i had cut my rates in half because she was a friend and she still wanted to look for somebody lower, lol....i figure it wasn't worth the time and hassle anyway.

bottom line, like said above, most clients don't know sh&# about the worth of your equipment or don't care and when you try to educate them sometimes they think you're really just trying to upsell them and they resort to crap like "well what if you used a cheaper camera instead to film it?" "what if you edit on imovie instead of FCP?? "hey, i got it, instead of using a crane can we just use my ladder and a crew memeber?!" LOL....

the clients that don't hassle and are easiest to work with in my experience are the ones that have a budget (a company) where the funds aren't coming directly out of their pocket. mom and pop type of operations always want something for nothing.
 
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F*ck it! I'm going to buy a BIG shouldermount $100 VHS camcorder off eBay and show up to these lowballers productions. The HD camera will be in the trunk of my car. When they see I'm shooting with VHS and question it...yeah, you get the picture.

In all seriousness this boils down to educating our consumers. Perhaps we should find horribly shot "professional" videos off YouTube and put links on embeds on our websites/in our emails we send to low-balling potential clients?
 
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Can you please message me if you are in the LA area? $75 for a crane with a hothead seems pretty darn low - perhaps a typo or maybe it's an uknown budget type of crane? I will need one sometime this summer for a 35mm shoot. XYZ would be great, but I don't expect it for that price.

Not sure what you meant by meals. Isn't that part of the deal on movie shoots? "Free" chicken?

I completely understand peoples' frustrations. I suffer from low rates myself as an AC which I don't do much of anymore (not cuz of the rates). But often times, as a DP, I want very much to get a job done well for a budget that doesn't offer any luxuries, and so I am glad that there are people and equipment that can be had for very reduced non union rates - rates that are even lower now because of depressed conditions. Personally, I won't work on shoots that abuse or exploit their crews - it's bad karma and the shoot becomes a total drag. It's a fine line making that distinction sometimes, especially since I'm straddling the needs of production and the welfare of the crew. Turn around time is one of the issues where I draw the line and have to fight production over it on non union shoots.


frostgfx said:
I bill my HVX system out at $150/ 8 hour day

I bill my crane out at $75/day and that includes the 1.5hr. setup time for the crane/motor pan/tilt and mounting whatever camera is attached to head.

I would like to know how other users are charging for their time and equipment and whether it 'pays' to take these low ball jobs...

Namaste,
Click to expand...
 
adamr316 said:
F*ck it! I'm going to buy a BIG shouldermount $100 VHS camcorder off eBay and show up to these lowballers productions. The HD camera will be in the trunk of my car. When they see I'm shooting with VHS and question it...yeah, you get the picture.
Click to expand...

LOL.

-Nate
 
Mickey Munday said:
hey that's from my 2009 demo reel...i shot on RED with a 35mm adapter so that automatically makes it acceptable, not sure why the quality came out like that :beer:
Click to expand...

It must have been youtube. It has that effect on video signals. The video I shoot on my 5 megapixel camera looks the same and it is also Red.
 
Personally for me, and I don't want to color anyone's opinion, but at the :37 mark, when Sharon really makes her appearance and lets us get a good gander at her, I just get all drippy.
 
Mickey Munday said:
a local music artist recently told me they need to go with someone for cheaper because she wanted a music video like beyonce, but when i told her how much the soundstage costed she said "wow you're expensive" (the soundstage at the rental place had set rates yet I'M expensive, lol) and that she wanted to use some old dance studio that looked nothing what she was asking me for. i had cut my rates in half because she was a friend and she still wanted to look for somebody lower, lol....i figure it wasn't worth the time and hassle anyway.

bottom line, like said above, most clients don't know sh&# about the worth of your equipment or don't care and when you try to educate them sometimes they think you're really just trying to upsell them and they resort to crap like "well what if you used a cheaper camera instead to film it?" "what if you edit on imovie instead of FCP?? "hey, i got it, instead of using a crane can we just use my ladder and a crew memeber?!" LOL....

the clients that don't hassle and are easiest to work with in my experience are the ones that have a budget (a company) where the funds aren't coming directly out of their pocket. mom and pop type of operations always want something for nothing.
Click to expand...

To be honest that is one of the things that just pisses me off the most. Look it's one thing to be like, "You know, we just can't really afford a professional production, I understand the work and professionalism that goes into that, but we're just too small of a business to have the funds for your services." But when people are like, "Wow that's what it's going to cost? Jeez that's a lot of money, I never would have expected that. Man I'm in the wrong business" or crap like that, even when you give them a GREAT deal.

Like musicians thinking you can make them a music video for $500 or $1,000. Get out of here. I can't make anything decent for less than $5,000 and that's taking NO profit for myself whatsoever, or for my equipment. But the problem is I'm not an amateur, I'm not a videographer, and I'm not a hobbyist. I'm a Hollywood-style professional, which means I hire a full crew to do professional projects and believe in quality. You get what you pay for, and I can guarantee quality work, but I can't do it for super cheap. Yet what I charge is very cheap compared to what a large company would charge. I can keep costs way below that, but they just don't seem to "get it," the cost of my equipment, the storage costs for the equipment, my insurance costs, my overhead for the company, the crew required, etc.

It's very frustrating to deal with clients like that.

I have a little bit of trouble not losing confidence in myself / my business when I see such amateurs offering cheap rates, because I guess I just am not confident that businesses all understand the value of quality. I hope there are at least enough who do. For instance, I'm going to a conference to offer my video services for virtual tours, and when I do virtual tours it's not me there shooting with a tripod. I have no idea how to use a camera or setup lights, I'm just a director / producer, so I hire a small crew, no reason to have more than 3 of us total and I'm happy to grip basically and help setup equipment, but we use a nice dolly, a jib, setup great lighting for each part, and I integrate activities into the virtual tours, show life and energy in the places, then we add music and voiceover later so it's like a full mini-movie of the property and entices visitors / potential clients. It has been very effective for the properties we've done so far, and a few of them have reported people reserving units sight unseen, like just having seen the virtual tours, never having been to the properties at all, so they were really pleased with that. BUT I charge real money for this service, and offer complete Website integration (also Website redesign for extra, maintenance contracts, etc.). There is another company going to this conference, who I won't mention, that does lousy picture virtual tours, which is basically circa 1999, their technology is a joke and their photographers come with a camera and that's about it, they aren't highly paid so they're obviously hobbyists and amateurs, at best struggling professionals, but they offer this service extremely cheap. Probably charge 8-10 times less than I do. I don't think it works at all for this industry, it only works for residential housing, and at that, CHEAP residential housing, like under $500,000, any houses that are actually nice wouldn't benefit from such bad presentations. So in my mind, I know exactly what to say to tell these companies why they should choose me, but at the same time I know there are a lot of cheapskates who just pick whatever is the least expensive option and figure "good enough." So what I'm hoping, fingers crossed, is that there are enough companies out there, at least 1 in 5 or so, that believe in value and quality, and would prefer to stand out from their competition with superior virtual tours that really showcase their properties.

I always get a bit nervous about the amateurs undercutting, though, because a lot of clients really don't get it. They don't know how much goes into it, so they have to learn from their mistakes first by hiring n00bs, getting bad results, and then realizing why those of us who are professionals charge money to do what we do.
 
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