Need Help With Production Pricing

Aaron Jones

Aaron Jones

Member
It seems I will be landing work with a TV station close by to perform production for talk shows that will be airing on their TV station. The talk shows are basically pastors talking about issues they want to address and I'm sure they will have guess on the show and all that. The TV Station is recommending me to the first pastor for his show then they said they have 4 more pastors that they are sending my way.

My question is what do I charge for the production? I'm sure the Recording will be one hour tops if that, but that will turn into about 2 hours of recording time with takes and stuff because they are new to broadcasting. Then there is the editing and preparation of the footage for TV broadcasting . I'm not sure how to put a price on this, but I'm excited to have the opportunity. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edited After Thinking About it: Just thinking about what I charge for PSA's... I charge a minimum of $400 for the shooting and then I charge for the editing separately. I'm sure each one is going to want a intro and maybe a outro. The way I see it is for the TV production talk show a minimum of $800 per episode including editing and delivery to TV station.

I will have 2 Cameras, 2 cameramen, Lighting, possibly Green Screen (if they do not already have a set), Lav mics, and etc. . Record footage sync in music, edit audio levels, and may even have to make sure it has Closed Caption. Not sure what all that is worth. i have to get it right up front because all these pastors know each other and i don't want to start low them realize I have to charge the next one more and the difference is found out. I also don't want to charge too much and eventually loose the work.
 
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I'm not sure what your market is like and I don't do 'turn key' productions, but what you're proposing is way too low. To give you an idea, the "going rate" to JUST shoot with gear(one photog/one camera)(2/3" HD camera or C300) is $1500 to $1800. Now granted, local stations don't have the money to throw around like nets and corporate clients, but at that rate you'd be making less than working at McDonalds.

Dont sell yourself short, brother.
 
I think you are going to find that no matter what you charge, it will be too much in their minds. Remember these are folks that get members to perform tasks for free.
 
Thank you for the replies, it is greatly appreciated. Now that I have a little more information from the TV station. They are sending out a member from their production team to train my team as to what angles and style of editing they want to see. Apparently The first person wants one hour shows which equates to 52 minute segments. Will be shooting 4 segments at a time. Which sounds like every bit of a 8 to 12 hour day seeing these people do not have any talk show experience. The second person they are sending me wants a reality show type of feel where i have to send a Cam Op to stage the settings ans capture the spontaneity of the situation. The third person is a up and coming gospel singer that will have a few different sets I'm told. There will be the kitchen, green house, and living room type of sets and will be switching during the segments. these segments will be 26 minute spots for a 30 minute show. The TV station will do the intros and outros I would be responsible for the content between them. I have a inside man at the TV station and he is going to get with the production team and find out for me what they normally charge for situations like these.
 
Let me be blunt: Do you have any clue what you are getting into? You want to produce one hour shows for 800$? For two cameramen and maybe green screen gigs?
Are you a student doing this in your free time? Please don´t take this as an offense, the more you tell us, the better.
Eg. if you are a student and rent, food, gear, tuition and all is paid by your parents, I might be able to see this as some kind of initialization phase to a later profession.
Otherwise, for a business, these number assumptions are just plain wrong.
And even from a students perspective: Your parents will end up paying for you underselling your skills (which I assume you have).
All the best!
 
Yes, sounds like it could be a potential nightmare if you do not protect yourself. From the initial reading it sounds like they are shopping for a cheap way to do this. As Spartacus said, know exactly what you are getting into and what is expected of you. Just because people "cheap out" does not mean they lower their expectations.
 
Thank you you all so much for your replies they are greatly appreciated. It is good to have this resource to gain more insight.

It looks likes a three cam production, lighting, green screen, a few props, and lav mics. I have a sound tech who has a degree in his trade and also functions as a cam op. I have a good friend that taught cinematography at the collegiate level who is great a editing. I myself can stand in as a cam op and I'm also pretty good at editing as well. I would rather not do the work. I want to hire instead and maybe I can fill in here and there is I have to. As It stands I still need a couple more editors on stand by and 6 total cam ops.

No I'm not a student. I just have no idea how to charge for this particular work load. I came from wedding videos and a few music videos. I'm strictly self taught. It took me a little bit to get my wedding video price up where it needs to be. With this I thought it would be best to come here ask professionals so that I'm in the right ball park and can stay consistent. I plan to grow into a full production studio in the near future but before I go out and invest that kind of capital I figure I better run this on location first to see how it all goes. If all goes well then I can get into a bigger building and begin to get all the tools for the trade.

So this brings me to my original question. What is a decent price for four 52 minute segments. Depending on the pastors that I'm working with it can take 8 hours to 16 hours. I'm not sure If I should be charging per segment, per hour, or per day. I was thinking per segment at $800 originally (I also had a typo in my first post - Not Including Editing - $800 for the Shooting the Production is what I meant to say). After reading your replies I'm interested in hearing what you think would be best.
 
Well, if shooting 4 segments turns into say a 16 hour day as you guessed, and you have 7 crew members including yourself as you mentioned in the first post ,you'll be making a grand $7 an hour per person.
 
If they are requiring you to do the closed caption then that is another job within itself where people make a living just doing closed captions. When I first started, I used to do closed captions for a church and the church underestimated how much it takes to do closed caption a hour show. I was severely underpaid when I was doing it and I just don't want anyone to make the same mistake I did.

As far as I know, the only program, Telestrem, that does closed captions that allow for broadcast will run you about 5k by itself. Looking at the website now, there is a cheaper edition but that's just for web delivery. You also gotta factor in who will be transcribing it which is time consuming.

You could also look into outsourcing it but when I was giving a quote for a 30 minute show, it was about $800 per show.
 
mainstreetprod said:
Well, if shooting 4 segments turns into say a 16 hour day as you guessed, and you have 7 crew members including yourself as you mentioned in the first post ,you'll be making a grand $7 an hour per person.
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...which is actually not too far off for small local broadcast stations. It's a rough market.

Imagine your worst case scenario of how long the days may be, how long the edit will take, figure in your normal day rate and your subcontractors' day rates for all that time, and go from there. If there are viable ways you can "cut corners" (i.e., if I don't need any camera movements, I can lock down 1-2 cameras and hire PA's to press a record button instead of hiring full-fledged camera ops; maybe I can buy three robocams and do live switching to pre-edit on site), then you can either pass the savings on to the client or take it as profit.
 
I agree about doing the switching live on site rather than shooting and post editing.

Have a producer on set running segment time, a chyron operator dropping in graphics and supers, and a TD punching the show. Way way less post time.

You have to wonder… If the TV station is handing it off, that means it is not profitable for them to produce even with their low pay.
 
Aaron Jones said:
I would rather not do the work. I want to hire instead and maybe I can fill in here and there is I have to. As It stands I still need a couple more editors on stand by and 6 total cam ops.
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And I thought slavery was abolished in the States!;)

Aaron Jones said:
Depending on the pastors that I'm working with it can take 8 hours to 16 hours. I'm not sure If I should be charging per segment, per hour, or per day. I was thinking per segment at $800 originally (I also had a typo in my first post - Not Including Editing - $800 for the Shooting the Production is what I meant to say). After reading your replies I'm interested in hearing what you think would be best.
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So you already own all the necessary equipment for the shoot? Or are the 7$ per hour mainstreetprod calculated including the equipment?
This would be kind of like flipping burgers and having to bring your own grill...
 
Cable stations in many markets will give away the production for "free" ie send out an intern to do the shoot if you by x hours of air time.

A pox on their houses.
 
Aaron Jones said:
Depending on the pastors that I'm working with it can take 8 hours to 16 hours. I'm not sure If I should be charging per segment, per hour, or per day. I was thinking per segment at $800 originally (I also had a typo in my first post - Not Including Editing - $800 for the Shooting the Production is what I meant to say). After reading your replies I'm interested in hearing what you think would be best.
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So let me say this again because I think the math did not get calculated right by some people. My thought was $800 for shooting per segment this does not include editing. Not sure how $7 / hour can be calculated out of that even with a 16 hour day. I was just trying to look at the worst case scenario as far as time it will take to shoot the segments if I did 4 segments at a time with a talk show host who has never done a talk show before. I'm not interested in being be littled by anyone and if you are going to do so at least read my entire post first before responding with factious numbers. It just shows you mean to be little and not help while the question I asked never got an answer. I asked a simple question. I get it, you are experienced and I am not. This is a given. I'm just trying to find out what would be a reasonable ball park. To the rest of you thank you for your replies... Just trying to get all my ducks in a row so i can solidify these deals and move forward.
 
I'm not sure where $7 per hour came from but that is not using the right math...

Spartacus said:
And I thought slavery was abolished in the States!;)


So you already own all the necessary equipment for the shoot? Or are the 7$ per hour mainstreetprod calculated including the equipment?
This would be kind of like flipping burgers and having to bring your own grill...
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Yes, I do have 90% of the equipment needed. This will not be a problem. @ 16 hours it would be $28/hour on average per man at 8 hours it would be $57/hour on average per man for a 7 man crew of course if we look at it in this light. If you read my post this would not include editing. I just want to know if this in the ball park to where I should be.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Cable stations in many markets will give away the production for "free" ie send out an intern to do the shoot if you by x hours of air time.

A pox on their houses.
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In this case the cable station is recommending these pastors to me for their production because it would cost them more to travel to our city and set up production here. So they advised the pastors to contact me as i reside in the same city to handle their production.
 
David W. Jones said:
I agree about doing the switching live on site rather than shooting and post editing.

Have a producer on set running segment time, a chyron operator dropping in graphics and supers, and a TD punching the show. Way way less post time.

You have to wonder… If the TV station is handing it off, that means it is not profitable for them to produce even with their low pay.
Click to expand...

This would be the plan if all works out. I would actually get a bigger building and set up the studio with better live editing equipment. Right now I'm just getting started and I want to make sure that we will land the contracts with these individuals first.
 
NeoSlashX said:
If they are requiring you to do the closed caption then that is another job within itself where people make a living just doing closed captions. When I first started, I used to do closed captions for a church and the church underestimated how much it takes to do closed caption a hour show. I was severely underpaid when I was doing it and I just don't want anyone to make the same mistake I did.

As far as I know, the only program, Telestrem, that does closed captions that allow for broadcast will run you about 5k by itself. Looking at the website now, there is a cheaper edition but that's just for web delivery. You also gotta factor in who will be transcribing it which is time consuming.

You could also look into outsourcing it but when I was giving a quote for a 30 minute show, it was about $800 per show.
Click to expand...


Thank you for that. That is helpful.
 
Cant advise on the overall scheme of things cause something of this scale is out of my league, but i can at least say to think about the crew in terms of day rates rather than hourly/segment etc. thats how most freelancers around here work (if youre using freelancers). So rather than hourly, think $500/day for a camera guy (for example) a "day" being no more than 10 hours, ot incurred after that.
 
Also… You have to factor the equipment into the cost of the production. Just because you already own it, doesn't mean you should give it away. As I said before, I don't do turn-key productions like that, so it's hard for me to say what to really charge for doing something that involved(it's never as simple as it sounds or is "supposed to be").

What I'm about to throw out is from the perspective of someone that shoots mostly network TV(and the budgets that go with it). Occasionally I'll do multi-cam shoots, BUT I'm not producing them(and the extra associated headaches that go with it), I'm just shooting them, more or less. Here's is my latest example of a three camera shoot from earlier this year that I put together. It was for a national show that I shoot for. 10x four-five minute self contained segments with four subjects. Producer on-site and all editing would be done "back at the ranch". Three cameras(2/3" HD P2), one on a dolly, two on sticks. Three dedicated shooters(I was one). Audio guy/gaffer. Multi-track back-up recording. Grip/gaffer. We built the "set" in a conference room. I had to rent flooring(over $800 alone) to cover the carpet and the net paid another company to provide the 'pipe n drape'. I provided all the equipment except for one of the cameras.

3 cam packages(op's, cams, gear): $5400(3x $1800) (I'm throwing out the package price because lighting, etc. was included as would be normal. You could break it down more to just cam op rate and camera rate, but then you're going to have to add back in for lighting if you didn't have any and had to roll a grip truck in)
1 audio/gaffer: $450
1 grip/gaffer: $400
Flooring: $850(ballpark)
Pipe n Drape: ???

Also, it was a very efficient production because the producer "knows his $hit" and the subjects were all TV talent, we were able to knock this out(the actual time to shoot it, not set it up) in probably two hours or less.

So, without counting the things that I didn't pay for or bill for, that shoot was over $7K. Not counting what the producer was making or the editing time after the fact. And I didn't make an extra penny on any of it. A lot of people that put together whole shows mark up and add in fees.

Now I don't expect a local TV station to spend that kind of money, but I think you're severely underestimating it currently.

I know that you're worried about "losing" them or scaring them off with a higher price, but it is very hard to raise your rates once you start low.

Good luck and let us know how things turn out.
 
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