Local commercial... What to charge...???

J

jcapurro

Member
Hi Everyone,
I have been approached to film a commercial for a local dentist's office. Nothing too fancy, just a normal local spot. All of my experience thus far has been putting together 2 indi-features and I have absolutely no concept of what to charge. I don't want to be shafted but at the same time I don't want to grossly overbid and lose the contract.

I'm figuring the thing will only take one day of shooting (roughly 2 hours of setup and 4-5 of shooting scenes). Then a day or two in the editing room to get it polished up nice and shiny.

What should I bid for something small like this?

I'll be using just myself and one assistant, one camera, minimal lighting, and a couple lav's. And possibly one other person brought in at the end to do a bit of voiceover work.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Jeremy
 
hard to say, what are you shooting it on?
do you have to rent a lot of gear? are you paying your pa much? how much for your VO? i'd make a quick budget first, getting quotes from all of the resources you need to use.
if you have all your own gear, you can still turn a decent profit by charging 1500 for 2 days of work. but dion't forget you need to pay your VO and PA, depends how much do you want to make off this?
 
I did some of these local TV adds.
Going rate in this market is 12 to 15 hundred CDN.
I no longer do them, as the clients feel they should be getting the quality of a national spot.
Trust me. That ain't gonna happen on that budget.
Overall I found the client expectations too high.
If you don't depend on this craft for your livelihood it's good practice.
But there are betters ways to make a buck. Fewer hours spent for more cash.
IMHO.
 
is that 1200 to 1500 hundred for the production of the spot ?. I suggest asking how much money is available for airtime, cause i once did a spot for 10k, then found out they had 40k for airtime, never again haha. But i would agree for 1200 bucks its really not worth it at all.

gt
 
We produced quite a number of local spots. We start at $1500. The problem is that all of the companies, Adelphia, Time Warner, Comcast and so forth will do them for free as long as the business signs a year contract for airing.
we always pitch the idea that the quality and service is better. The client will get a commercial that actually has a script and bells and whistles. Most of our spots were budgeted around $2000. -$2500.
These things are usually a pain in the butt though. The time spent selling, then meeting, then writing, then shooting and editing is a lot compared to the money brought in.
 
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