General Rates, break down or group

[Kastro]

Good day,

I know determining rates has been beaten to death, but I'd like to know how individuals who wear multiple hats handle their rates. Do you encapsulate shooting/editing/directing etc. into your hourly/day rate? Meaning 'I dont care as I need to make XXX per day, so I'll do everything under the sun during that timeframe' or Do you break it into individual function cost by hour/day and quote accordingly?

Shooting = XXhr/day
Directing = XXhr/day
Editing = XXhr/day
--------
Total?

If you do break it down individually, do you market those individual services? Do you present those costs and mark down if you are hired to perform those multiple functions so that the client has a breakdown and that is how you come up with your hourly/daily rate?

Also, do you market yourself as your company or a freelancer for your company? This would be directed to those who are building 'studios'. Do you only target certain markets?

My reasoning behind asking about being a freelancer for your company would be in case you are dipping your toes into multiple markets since 'shooting is shooting', but clients may not necessarily want to be associated with a market that you may present yourself as associated with. Hopefully I worded that properly. If not here's an extreme example:

You shoot for drug dealers
You also shoot for corporate

In bidding for a corporate gig, your company is known to shoot for drug dealers and therefore they wouldn't want to associate with you because of that association. So separating yourself as an individual working for the company could allow you to do both without tarnishing the companies reputation and therefore have the ability to acquire those corporate gigs since your company doesn't shoot for drug dealers, YOU do (on the side while working for the company).

Again that is extreme, but something that I've through about. Hopefully I'm making sense and not over analyzing.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts/questions, but hopefully I'll get some responses. rogar-Happy(DBG):

 

[wgzn]

for me its a client by client basis. some client like a production company just looking for a shooter likes a rate card that they can pick and choose from and others (usually corporate types) just want a flat, turn key, no worry, project rate.

and its funny. more often than not, the folks who ask for the rate card option usually get overwhelmed and end up asking for a flat rate project ; )

if someone calls point blank i generally have a few different approaches:

1. tell them that a simple "talking head, titles + b-roll" video averages $x.xx per finished minute and goes up from there based on their expectation and timeframe.
2. my hourly rate is $x.xx per hour and i'll show up and run the meter until you tell me to stop
3. turn the tables on them and ask "whats your budget? tell me what you have to spend and i'll deliver something within that budget" but then i follow that up with "but be honest with me. because if you NEED a $20k video and you can afford that - but you tell me your budget is $2k - im going to trust you and make you a $2k video. if a $20k video would have made you stand out in the market - you just saved $18k but you wasted the $2k and the overal effort will probably effect your business negatively"
4. just email them a rate card

another thing to consider is though some clients are more "respectable" than others. be careful who you get involved with. yes, you might shoot a porn and not put it on your reel or advertise that you shoot porn. but that big manufacturing client with the $100k budget might hear about it on the grapevine and decide you're not the kind of cat they want to associate with.

 

[sonofaresiii]

in the kinds of jobs i do, if someone is expecting me to wear multiple hats on the production end, it's usually because they don't know the difference between the jobs, so i'll just figure one rate for everything i'm doing ("X dollars to shoot your video"). i'll always have a separate rate for editing though, because ANYONE should know they're two different jobs (while someone may not know directing and DP, or camera op, are different)... and also because I hate editing, so I make sure i'm well paid for that or I'll skip it.

Unless, and this happens, they're offering a flat fee that's great and I need the money. I know I'm getting into trouble with those kinds of jobs, but sometimes you just really need to pay rent.

edit: and with the association thing you're talking about, I think you're overanalyzing it, at least for the examples you've shown. I highly doubt anyone will say "[your name here]? Isn't that the mafia videographer? We wash our hands of THAT situation!"
Now if you're talking about shooting music videos for rappers who are clearly drug dealers, that's a different story, and no I don't think it makes a difference since it's an artistic endeavor, so long as it's quality. However I AM suspicious of showing rap music videos as work examples for corporate gigs. Show corporate videos for corporate gigs, problem solved.

 

[ectobuilder]

3. turn the tables on them and ask "whats your budget? tell me what you have to spend and i'll deliver something within that budget" but then i follow that up with "but be honest with me. because if you NEED a $20k video and you can afford that - but you tell me your budget is $2k - im going to trust you and make you a $2k video. if a $20k video would have made you stand out in the market - you just saved $18k but you wasted the $2k and the overal effort will probably effect your business negatively"

In this case how do you determine the amount of impact your video has on your client's intended market/audience? For instance how would you differentiate a $2K video from a $20K video? As we all know, the true impact of a video is not always correlated with the amount of dollars spent on the video.

Or is it the case that you are not measuring the true market impact of your video but rather how closely the video matches the vision of your client (i.e. %budget = %[client's vision])

Also what percentage of the total budget do you attribute to time and material (i.e. time + material = 100% of budget)

 

[ectobuilder]

Good day,

I know determining rates has been beaten to death, but I'd like to know how individuals who wear multiple hats handle their rates. Do you encapsulate shooting/editing/directing etc. into your hourly/day rate? Meaning 'I dont care as I need to make XXX per day, so I'll do everything under the sun during that timeframe' or Do you break it into individual function cost by hour/day and quote accordingly?

Shooting = XXhr/day
Directing = XXhr/day
Editing = XXhr/day
--------
Total?

I would say that determining rates is an INDEPENDENT VARIABLE because it relies on the Cinematographer's overall goal and therefore strategy to achieve that goal.

And goals are determined by how you see yourself (self identity) and what it means to be a Cinematographer.

For me it means being the best artist I can be because I see myself as an Artist rather than a business man. And this is the prerequisite to my business strategy. My paradigm says that people love art because they become emotionally attached to it. And this connection results in the consumption of art. And my definition of art is a person's self expression. Therefore a person who self expresses his/her opinion through objects, activity or abstracts (i.e. cinematography) AND wants to grow within themselves and the craft of art is an artist.

Therefore my long term strategy is to not set a "rate" per se (like subscription services do, or cable companies do) but to ultimately grow into an artist that is indispensable, irreplaceable so that I become a commodity in my own exclusive league.

What is a Commodity in an Exclusive League? It is a market condition where there is 1 unit of supply to infinite demand. Therefore, eventually I am hoping that people will eventually see me for my art, rather than a "dime a dozen guy with a camera and a bunch of fancy equipment".

So to answer your question, I am having to take the necessary steps to get to where I want to be. And these steps mean that I have to hand pick the clients that will best fit the next stepping stone towards my ultimate goal.

Therefore the rate that I charge is the rate that the client can afford, ASSUMING the client is a good fit for me and my long term strategy. Often times the client won't offer up a sum without me putting up an offer first. So what I do is calculate an EXPECTED "living rate". A "living rate" is a rate calculated based on the Standard of Living for the client. So for instance if the client is a high school teacher, we then use an assumed annual gross income minus an assumed annual expense of the client to determine the most practical and affordable rate for the client. If it is a company then we look more at market size and assume a practical marketing budget that best fits their business.

If the client steps foward with a budget in mind, then that is a whole different discussion altogether.

NOTE: If you exptrapolate this theory a bit, you'll see that people will eventually pay in multiples of your time, therefore the growth of potential income will outgrow your time on this earth!