Rates? 1 camera vs 2?

When adding a 2nd camera, I'm usually talking about adding more crew too, not just a one man band setting up an unmanned 2nd camera.
So a 1 camera shoot may be 1-2 crew
Whereas a 2 camera shoot being 2-4 crew.
I pay crew typically $20-$50 /hr.

I don't have any makeup or on cam talent in house so I have to hire those
 
I can only tell you my experience in the Houston market working as a crew member with other professional crew on mid and hugh budget projects. Most do half day, a few dont. HOWEVER, the half/full day/overtime ONLY applies to labor, not gear. Gear is always a full day, just like at a rental house. This can end up in situations where your half day rate and full are only separated by $100 which means less and less as the amount of gear youre billing that day goes up. You may have to explain all this to potential clients if they question your “outrageous” rates. They may not like what you tell them. That is fine, they dont have to work with you (and you probably dont want to work with them—-who wants to start off a new working relationship with the parties already resentful of each other?).

Editors do seem to bill “hourly” since we usually work from home. however usually “hourly” means you have estimated a number of hours an edit will take based on currrent project’s requirements and similar previous project edit times, with some agreement between you as to how to handle going over or under the estimate, number of revisions allowed, things like that. I have one client I literally bill hourly...clock starts on my invoice software when I start, stops when I take a break or finish project. Send bill. Many folks (especially new clients) think this your license to rob them blind, hence the aforementioned estimate/agreement.
 
DBP said:
Ahh the rates discussion. I'm still a bit torn on whether this is a futile industry or not. I spent many years suffering through the craigslist lower level rates, but this year I've gotten a number of better ones. Rates in line with what the more seasoned professionals on here will list.

So I do think that work is out there, there's just an endless supply of lower end waste of time stuff to sift through. Saying no to clients and chasing better clients has been *way* better than trying to convince lower end clients to pay decent rates. Some people just aren't going to value it, no matter what you do.

I'm also fine with half-day rates, provided they are decent. I mean, working a few hours is ultimately a day off compared to working 10-12, so getting decent money for those days is nice. When my rates were lower though, a half-day rate for those would've been worthless to even get out of bed.
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This. If you're going to do a half day rate, at least make it a half day rate of a proper full day rate. As to give a discount on top of what is already a discount is getting silly!
 
It's also about the circumstances and the relationships too.

Maybe 100 halfdays for $500 are better than 20 fulldays for $1000. Maybe not.

Maybe the travel/commute is only 15 minutes away rather than a 1.5 hour train into Manhattan (like in my case).

Maybe more work for a company will produce more opportunities to meet clients of clients (usually in the corporate field) whom are okay with sharing the "video guy". (This is an important one for me...HUGE opportunities present themselves just by making these small sacrifices and building rapport and long-lasting relationships.)

---

I've never taken myself too seriously in this field (besides the actual technical work) and I'm always super flexible.

For instance, a company/client (love how none of us ever mention who, obviously, lol) is paying me a decent amount of money for such easy work and once in a blue moon they ask for a second camera in an unmanned wide-angle position for static content. I include it in the regular rate; no questions asked. I am not going to break chops about an additional fee and spoil any good vibes, especially if I have an extra camera and tripod.

Or this one place who has been a blessing with references asks to include simple editing with the filming I do here and there...and I do it.

Maybe I'm a sucker, but this flexibility has truly paid off for me.

Too many people run this business (which isn't too glorified in the first place since we're just the "video guys" - and gals) like a military academy, ha.

I think flexibility and communication is super important, and you have to be smart and grow with people, IMO.

This advice goes the other way too...if you're in a market where you can't get more than $300-$500-whatever for the day and the competition is brutal, maybe it's time for a new career.

It's a tough industry.

We do know robots (AI) will replace almost all of us soon, yes? lol
 
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Agree with Norbro 100%
Though the key to doing this is to be charging enough in the first place.
Charge enough so you can be the nice guy
Many people run it like a military academy because they're barely scraping by and are already in the red at their standard rate, let alone add ons
 
Lots of great input from everyone. Thank you. Hopefully this thread will help others. I'd love to see the rates in our business generally go up closer to how it used to be.

IronFilm said:
This. If you're going to do a half day rate, at least make it a half day rate of a proper full day rate. As to give a discount on top of what is already a discount is getting silly!
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Are you referring directly to the rates I've shared? If so, would you mind sharing what a proper full day rate is? I'm trying to determine this and adjust if needed. Thank you
 
filmguy123 said:
Agree with Norbro 100%
Though the key to doing this is to be charging enough in the first place.
Charge enough so you can be the nice guy
Many people run it like a military academy because they're barely scraping by and are already in the red at their standard rate, let alone add ons
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Yes, I imagine we've all been in the situation where we've tried to give someone a break and been working on a job for way too cheap and then it starts to give you a bad attitude. wheras if the job has a healthy profit then you feel better about the whole thing. My experience is that people really don't appreciate you doing good work cheap. Even if you do it for free they still don't and respect you even less. The happiest clients I tend to have are the ones that I charge a healthy rate, do excellent work and thus I'm happier too.

I really don't want to contribute to this industry going down the toilet as I've seen in the past decade with cheap rates. My good clients pay my rates but new inquiries lately seem to be going for cheaper choices such as the guy with a camera and drone that just does this on the side.

About 2000-2009 in my city there was 1 main production house and they wouldn't even talk about doing less than 5 figures on a job. And they were shooting SD. In 2009 they had 1 720P camera but still mostly shot SD.
By 2009/2010 there were maybe a dozen other companies which were basically a "guy with a camera". From that point on it seemed to just get worse as far as rates. In 2018 the afore mentioned production house will now sometimes take on cheaper work and the "guys with a camera" have increased to several dozen.
I was surprised to hear from puredrifting about the LA rates. I would have thought rates would be higher due to cost of living but that makes sense. If there are a plethora of competitors and many are willing to work cheap, then it drags the industry down.
 
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firehawk said:
Lots of great input from everyone. Thank you. Hopefully this thread will help others. I'd love to see the rates in our business generally go up closer to how it used to be.


Are you referring directly to the rates I've shared? If so, would you mind sharing what a proper full day rate is? I'm trying to determine this and adjust if needed. Thank you
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No, I wasn't referring to you specifically.

And without knowing the kind of work you do, with what background/experience/gear, and where you're located, I really couldn't say what is a "proper day rate".
 
firehawk said:
1. shoot and turn over footage directly to company (end-user)
2. shoot and turn over footage to agency hiring you for their client (end-user)
How much if any do you discount for #2?

If a client calls and wants me to shoot an event or gather footage for 1 hr then I do hourly.
I realize that you can't do 2 half day jobs in a day so one booked half day eats up your chance for a full day. But I cannot charge full day rates for everything because many of my jobs only take a few hours and the clients won't pay it.

The gear I have is along the line of Sony FS cameras, Panasonic ENG cams, A7 cameras, Astra lights, Dracast lights, Lowel Lights, remote slider, gimbal, steadicam, Phantom drones, Inspire Drone, remote jib, Sennheiser, AT, Rode, Sony Mics, Tascam recorders... No RED or Arri caliber cameras. So I'm not a big time production house.
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Chopped up your post a little to answer a couple from my personal method.

For #1 and #2 I actually don't discount, I charge extra. I charge a footage licensing fee or footage purchase fee (work-for-hire). No reason to discount when someone else now owns what you shot (or has a license to it) and can use it for their portfolio, etc. I fully recognize this may not work for some, but since you too are an agency/production company (smaller company, like myself) it seems reasonable to charge a nominal fee to other production houses to own/use your talent and footage.

Regarding client calling and wanting a 1-hour shoot, I would never do hourly, personally. But I hear you - I get this request commonly. What I found works well is going to a quarter day. So you've got quarter day (which is your minimum buy-in), half day, full day. This comes back to my previous post on that, and really what you want to set your minimum at (IE I gave an example of $1000 up to 4 hours). But you could set a quarter-day minimum @ $500 so even if it's only an hour you get $500. I don't promote this but I offer it to clients with a lot of repeat work that want short things filmed. For example clients that want b-roll from 7-8 random different events around town on different dates. They are almost errand shoots and I am just snagging b-roll myself, so I do a quarter day.

As for your gear, its great. Rates seem generally in line with mine and i have EVA1, Milvus lens set, GH5 & GH5s, m43 lens set, senn mics and some lavs, aputure lights and general grip stuff, mavic pro, tripods/monopods/recoil rig/easy rig/gimbal, and tons of small things that I like but that clients don't pay for (edelkrone accessories, thinktank bags, fun little tools, xume adaptors, too much smallrig stuff, QR plates up the wazoo, etc.). Don't have the remote slider or a large slider at all, or fancy drones, wireless audio, and only have the 3 cameras I listed.
 
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ozmorphasis said:
nothing worse than being in the weeds at the editing stage and spending way too much time sweating workarounds because you weren't able to get all of the needed shots. So, I definitely agree with the sentiments above that the pricing needs to take into account a kind of overall wisdom about what it takes to deliver a good product
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Yeah, this x1000. I know this thread is focusing on the single day shoot rate but just wanted to add to this too how huge this is when doing things end-to-end. One of my worst experiences with this was a client who wanted to cut corners and see what they could get as cheap as possible. So they did all of the pre-produciton and "writing" in house, selected sets and talent etc. and I was to do the shooting and editing. Because they were on a budget they cut full days to half days, and requested a quote for hours that took into consideration revisions and everything up front. MY MISTAKE.

Also, fun fact, the last time I ever did and the moment I realized I am changing my entire billing structure.

I ended up spending almost 100 hours in post (I had bid 40) trying to fix the thing and not embarrass myself with the end result. Because I wasn't involved in pre-production, and because not enough budget was allocated to production time on top of that, the entire project basically felt like a massive "fix it in post" session. The end product was "ok" - I wasn't happy, I think the client was satisifed enough but not thrilled. It didn't go on my portfolio, it made me need a vacation just to recover, but it DID teach me to be the professional who doesn't accomodate every client budget. At a certain point, if there's not enough $$ to do it right, don't do it at all. I swear I would have been better served, as others said, to re-purpose all the time spent on that project towards pursuing a properly paying client and come out ahead but in terms of finances, but also in terms of life enjoyment.

Anyway, bit of a tangent I know, but bringing it full circie, my dad used to always say "if you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to find time to do it right the second time?". I learned that the answer was "in post." - HA! Sometimes part of being a good professional and a good filmmaker is protecting the client from themselves, and one way I have found of doing that is to hide hourly rates as much as possible and turn everything into a product, not an hourly bill session, because as soon as someone can see everything itemized they start trying to chop away at it. It'd be like a car dealership selling a car piece meal where the radiator system, brakes, fuel injector, windshield wipers, heater, etc. are all itemized out and up for potential negotiation.

It's also why I switched to billing editing time by the day or week VS by the hour... for some reason people freak when they hear their project will take 80 hours of editing but think it's totally reasonable when you quote 2 weeks of edit time.

End /tangent.
 
Good stuff! All true. Standing up for yourself with decent rates is difficult when you face the prospect of less to no work, but the other side is too much cheap work which will put you out of business in the end as well.
 
Another thing to consider for those of you who produce as well as shoot. Payroll service, workers comp and insurance. I just did a proposal yesterday, sending it today. In Southern California at least, there have been some recent rulings in the state about independent contractors versus employees. Basically, if you don't want to get sued or be dragged before the state franchise tax board and or IRS, you HAVE to now hire all crew via a payroll service that covers workers comp, FICA SS, FICA Medicare, FUTA, and SUTA. No more hiring a PA for cash. No more hiring anyone to do anything without making them an employee. There have been several recent prosecutions with huge fines and jail time handed out. If you hire someone and they work a day, then file an unemployment claim, guess who the State is now coming after because they have no record of you paying into unemployment? Basically, you now need to add 32%, give or take, to your bottom line expenses for labor. Period. The exceptions to this are true independent contractors who meet the criteria, which basically no crew do. They must be a corporation and perform all work on their equipment, at their time discretion, at their place of work. Might be okay for editors/motion graphics/audio post people, if they are incorporated. But as far as crew, you MUST do this. Not sure about other states, but here in California, being the center of the filmmaking universe in the U.S., this has become a big deal and the spotlight from the IRS amd State Franchise Tax board is on all producers to hire a employees only with payroll. Theyve been pushing this for decades but it is has finally come to fruition.

What this made me realize bidding this job, which has a crew of five and six actors, is that the payroll fees, which would have used to have been mostly profit, have reduced my overall profit on a project like this considerably. I make the payroll charges a pass through, I am not making any profit even for the hassle of administering and auditing it all. This puts my overall profit structure way down from where it would have been a few years ago. If you are large enough to pay the $15k to $20k insurance policy to have in-house workers comp and insurance for employees, yay! But most of us are not big enough to maintain that. I know this client and I produced a job similar to this five years ago. This project is smaller in scope than that one was and they are giving me hints that we "have to do this inexpensively" so I don't even know if they will go for this proposal, which is a third of the larger one I produced for them five years ago. Even if they do go for this, it won't be a very profitable project for me because my profit is mostly being eaten by the payroll services.

There is something to be said about joining the union and crewing on larger projects versus being a small time producer on your own, having to pay out all of this. I know exactly what this client will be able to budget for this project and having to hit that number, with the required parameters, means that the job just cannot be very profitable. There are no more corners to cut or editing days to trim to hit the number, it will take what it takes to do the job. I almost hope they don't approve it, even though I need the work. Even as a producer, not just as a DP or operator, it is a tough business.
 
Another reason to hate Kalifornia. I used to end up in CA once a year for work and everyone hated it, because CA would make the client take CA taxes out on everyone that worked. So not only did people have to pay Fed income tax on the money and their state income tax, but CA state income tax. There was actually an article the other year about how much money the players in the Super Bowl were being taxed by the state of CA for playing there.
 
Thanks for the good info puredrifting. Wow that stinks! Make things so much harder. If that happens here I may just sell out
 
I like the thing about quoting “weeks” of editing. Although honestly for me it might be more like days. I too usually “hide the numbers” and throw a lump sum for everything at them, only breaking down upon request and even lumping things together within the breakdown (“editing” instead of “x hours of editing”, “lighting” instead of “[specific lighting gear]”.

The only thing about the “1 hour shoot” bit mentioned above is that its pretty much never an hour shoot...unless you mean you are arriving, setting up, shooting, breaking down and leaving within an hour, cause all those things are billable time by pretty much any freelancer’s standards, even if youre not billing portal to portal. So a “1 hour shoot” is probably really a 2-3 hour shoot...which I would simply tell them is a half day...plus for that rate they get an extra 2-3 hours “free”, in case anything goes wrong/changes...which it often does. No awkward last minute renegotiating.
 
filmguy123 said:
It's also why I switched to billing editing time by the day or week VS by the hour... for some reason people freak when they hear their project will take 80 hours of editing but think it's totally reasonable when you quote 2 weeks of edit time.

End /tangent.
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Because of the weird psychological trick that 2 is less than 80
 
puredrifting said:
Another thing to consider for those of you who produce as well as shoot. Payroll service, workers comp and insurance. I just did a proposal yesterday, sending it today. In Southern California at least, there have been some recent rulings in the state about independent contractors versus employees. Basically, if you don't want to get sued or be dragged before the state franchise tax board and or IRS, you HAVE to now hire all crew via a payroll service that covers workers comp, FICA SS, FICA Medicare, FUTA, and SUTA. No more hiring a PA for cash. No more hiring anyone to do anything without making them an employee. There have been several recent prosecutions with huge fines and jail time handed out. If you hire someone and they work a day, then file an unemployment claim, guess who the State is now coming after because they have no record of you paying into unemployment? Basically, you now need to add 32%, give or take, to your bottom line expenses for labor. Period. The exceptions to this are true independent contractors who meet the criteria, which basically no crew do. They must be a corporation and perform all work on their equipment, at their time discretion, at their place of work. Might be okay for editors/motion graphics/audio post people, if they are incorporated. But as far as crew, you MUST do this. Not sure about other states, but here in California, being the center of the filmmaking universe in the U.S., this has become a big deal and the spotlight from the IRS amd State Franchise Tax board is on all producers to hire a employees only with payroll. Theyve been pushing this for decades but it is has finally come to fruition.

What this made me realize bidding this job, which has a crew of five and six actors, is that the payroll fees, which would have used to have been mostly profit, have reduced my overall profit on a project like this considerably. I make the payroll charges a pass through, I am not making any profit even for the hassle of administering and auditing it all. This puts my overall profit structure way down from where it would have been a few years ago. If you are large enough to pay the $15k to $20k insurance policy to have in-house workers comp and insurance for employees, yay! But most of us are not big enough to maintain that. I know this client and I produced a job similar to this five years ago. This project is smaller in scope than that one was and they are giving me hints that we "have to do this inexpensively" so I don't even know if they will go for this proposal, which is a third of the larger one I produced for them five years ago. Even if they do go for this, it won't be a very profitable project for me because my profit is mostly being eaten by the payroll services.

There is something to be said about joining the union and crewing on larger projects versus being a small time producer on your own, having to pay out all of this. I know exactly what this client will be able to budget for this project and having to hit that number, with the required parameters, means that the job just cannot be very profitable. There are no more corners to cut or editing days to trim to hit the number, it will take what it takes to do the job. I almost hope they don't approve it, even though I need the work. Even as a producer, not just as a DP or operator, it is a tough business.
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I hate California.
 
California is the only state I have ever heard of that actively pursues a systematic approach of driving business from it's borders, it's quite perplexing. We have the most entitlements of any state, the highest overhead and the most bloated budget yet the legislators seem to plot on ways to drive their tax base out of state, can't quite figure out the strategy? It's a wonder that any production is still performed here. If I were producing high end content, I would never shoot here, it's a complete rip-off with little to no tax credits, high costs, many business owners and residents who will hold you hostage for payoffs to not make noise, ruin takes and access property.

I predict that this payroll, workers comp situation will migrate to other states and keep in mind, the IRS is a big driver of this, not just the California State Franchise Tax Board. Just a matter of when.
 
IronFilm said:
Because of the weird psychological trick that 2 is less than 80
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Exactly, and it doesn't stop at billing daily/weekly on editing (vs hourly) but into the entire structure. Less (or at least the perception of less) really can be more.

It's why one rate for a 2nd camera (not billing it hourly or segmenting it down into 2nd camera + 2nd operator X hours) is IMHO preferable. It's cleaner and simpler and doesn't look over complicated to the client (even if I do these calculations internally). And it doesn't open the door for ("Oh, Jeff knows how to run a camera, can he be the second operator?" "we have a spare T2i, can we just use that?"). Flat Rate: "2nd matching camera & operator" "$XXX". Also leaves it a bit more a mystery and less privy to dissection for how to cut corners or question everything on your rates.

And even not being in California with that crazy proposed payroll expense, always factor in your own expense for what it takes (time and cost wise). Including time calling and chatting with your 2nd operator, running the risk of them getting sick last minute, insurance, extra footage offloading time (and associated additional editing requirements, if any), the taxes and paperwork admin for paying them at time plus at end of year, etc. Often this can take a couple hours and it's easy to let it go uncompensated, and it gets awkward to itemize it out.
 
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