Shooting A 10-day Documentary

A

andybiz_2005

Well-known member
Dear friends,

I would appreciate some advice from you all, including those who have successfully produced documentary videos.

I met up with the client the other day. They company specializes in producing comic (including Manga) magazines.

Here are their requirements :

This company is going to have 2 large booths at an exhibition hall where in a day, 1500 visitors can attend & over 1 million visitors are expected to visit over the 10-day exhibition starting 27 April & ending 6 May 2007.

They want me to shoot visitors at their booths browsing through their comics & also shoot a 1 hour long concert performance organised & performed by their company on a stage nearby.

The final DVD will be a documentary showcasing their booth & their concert & duration they want it is 2 hours.

The client wants me to send them a price & detailed specs quotation with a few options for them to choose the best option.

The first option will include me being there full-day for all 10 days to capture everything.

The second option will include be being there only at important events & highlights on their booth & concert. So I don't have to waste time sitting around when there're no happening events going on. Ofcourse the second option will be cheaper than the first option.

Bear in mind that as of yet, I have no idea how the exhibition will turn out, so I can't actually draft a script or story line for my documentary beforehand. Most probably I'll have to shoot as much as I can over the 10 days & from there flesh out a story while I'm editing the video.

How much should I quote my client per-day of shooting, assuming that I'll be there from morning until evening till around 8:00pm?

I suspect this client has money to spend because the 2 managers that briefed me on the shoot are from the Middle-east, so their company might have a relatively big budget for videography.

Any advice on how to price my quotation & the options I can include? Thank you in advance.

Andrew
 
Well, first, the disclaimer - I've only made short documentaries and promotional / fundraising videos for non-profits, and have yet to get paid the full worth of my work. However...

You didn't mention whether you will also be doing the editing and DVD authoring.

For just shooting, I would say $30.00/hour. Assuming you'll be there 12 hours a day (from your description), that would be $360.00 a day.

But if you are doing the full meal deal; shooting, editing, authoring - then I would go with the standard quote of $1,000.00 per finished minute - which would bring you a nice $120,000.00!

That may be more than they're willing to spend, even if they do have lot's of money - but it wouldn't hurt to let them know that this is pretty much the industry standard and it might help them to come up with a more realistic idea of what their video should be. Two hours of exhibition booth and a show put on by their company? Who the hell is going to want to sit through that? But if that is what they really want, then they are asking you to do a huge amount of work and you could be compensated accordingly.
 
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Hi Bus No. 8,

Thank you for providing some helpful suggestions. I'll be doing the whole full meal deal; shooting, editing, putting in their company's theme song, some titling, designing navigatible menus for DVD & giving them two master DVD copies.

The first option would be to be stationed at the exhibition hall for 8 hours everyday for the 10 days.

The second option would be to be stationed at the exhibition hall for 4 hours everyday for the 10 days.

I would think that $120,000 for option 1 would be too much for them, even if they had the budget to spend. It would be hard to justify that amount to them. I'm looking at a region around $10,000. Would that sound reasonable for the amount of shooting & editing I'll be doing?

Thank you,

Andrew
 
For this documentary, I plan to shoot in 4:3 & later add the black bars to make it 16:9 in post. This is so that if my client prefers the final DVD to be in the 4:3 format, I can revert to that without any problems. Also, I'll be shooting 25 progressive.

Andrew
 
For short corporate pieces from start to finish our low end is 5-10k. These are 5-7 minute pieces (I too wonder whos going to watch 2 hours, but thats not important here). We use the 1000 dollar a minute as a rough guess many times, but for something of this length I'd be cutting them a break, but not that much. 50 - 60k sounds good to me. We charge by the day to shoot and by the hour to edit. 1500 a day to shoot, 200 an hour to edit. Covers our overhead and pays the editor well (me). Extras like voice over work and dvd replication are farmed out and marked up 15%. These are our "standard" charges though and we never have really used them as none of our customers seem to be standard....
 
andybiz_2005 said:
I'm looking at a region around $10,000. Would that sound reasonable for the amount of shooting & editing I'll be doing?
Click to expand...

I think it depends on your experience. Seriously, where I'm at with all of this, I would be pretty happy with 10k. That doesn't mean, though, that it's anywhere near sufficient for the amount of work involved.

jdajda's quote really seems much more reasonable, but it also sounds like they are a well established production company. If you are one guy, just starting out, then I would say start with 15k and go from there. I mean - how much did it cost you to purchase all of the equipment you'll be using to produce this video? Probably at least that much. 15k is not at all unreasonable for a lucrative business to invest in their own promotion. My problem is that I've been dicking around with noble and well meaning - but poor - non-profits.
 
Another easy pricing method is the: how much is this going to cost me to do this + how much money do you want to make over this time frame. So add up every last thing right down to lunch if you have to be there all day. If you own your own equipment then charge the appropriate "rental fee". Seems like HVXs rented for 400 a day last I looked, but I could be off. And dont forget tapes and batteries and gas to drive there. I'm not saying nickel and dime them but dont forget about your overhead costs either. Or just see how much they are willing to pay and charge them that. Things are only worth what people are willing to pay in the end.
 
Hi dear friends,

Just to update you all on my 10-day doc shoot that started on 27 April, I've been shooting from Friday (27 Apr) till yesterday (Sat) & will be shooting again the whole of today (Sun).

The exhibition center is huge with in excess of 650 booths on 3 levels. The client I'm shooting the doc for has one booth & they specialise in printing, designing & producing super-hero comic mags, T-shirts, caps, bookmarks, posters with pictures of super-hero comic characters, etc. Friday was not so packed, but yesterday, the crowd came out in full force.

At the booth, I shot medium close up to extreme close ups of children & some adults conversing with sales representatives. I made sure to stand as close to them as possible to capture what they're saying as there're also other booths around & the ambient/background noise of the crowd & from other booths are quite loud. I had no choice but to shoot in close proximity to the visitors of the booth. Saturday was very large crowd.

I shot a nice external view of the exhibition building from a nearby multi-level carpark where I could see an elevated view of the exhibition building. Though I did not straight away come out of the exhibition biulding into the searing heat. I waited about 15 minutes in a buffer zone where the temperature was between the aircon inside & searing heat outside. I'm very careful about condensation on my camera. After taking the external shots I needed, I again went into the buffer zone for about 15 mins to a-climatize my DVX to the air con inside.

I also positioned my DVX on tripod where the busiest crowd was & just recorded for about 10-12 mins which I later plan to speed the crowd footage up in post for dramatic effect, or slow it down if need be. Also took shots of crowd getting off & on escalator (just a close up of many walking legs) then a medium shot of crowd getting off & on escalator.

My client also hosts 2 concerts each day, so I recorded the same concert 3 times from different camera angles so that I can incorporate a variety of interesting angles during post, though I'm only shooting with one DVX throughout the 10-day exhibition.

So far the 2 days have gone very well, got all the nice, quality footage I need for my doc. Any other suggestions about what other things I should shoot at the exhibition is welcome.

Regards,

Andrew
 
Hi All,

The 10-day exhibition shoot is nearly over. Now I will need to consider suitable music I can put in for this International Book Fair Exhibition. Do you have any suggestions on song titles (upbeat, funky & lively) I can put in as background music as I flash out a variety of scenes from the exhibition as highlights? Please provide me some good song suggestions. Thanks.

Andrew
 
Royalty Free tracks are always good ;) I'm a smartsound fan myself, there's always something there for whatever it is we are doing. There are quite a few funkadelic tracks to choose from.
 
Hi All,

The 10-day documentary shoot is over & now I've uploaded all the miniDV tapes to my PC's harddisk.

However, the client I'm doing this 2 hour long documentary video for is very fussy & insists that I have to bring my camcorder & all my miniDV tapes (total of 8 tapes) to his office & play the tapes for him to see what I've shot. From there he will point out which footage he wants to be included in the final edited documenatry. I know this sounds unreasonable as he wants control of what content goes in.

Here's my question. I have a smaller, consumer Sony DCR-PC3E (PAL) camcorder that I've shot footage on using only & all Sony miniDV tapes. I'm planning to use my small Sony camcorder to play back the documentary footage so I can save my DVX100A's recording head from wear & tear. However, on my DVX100A, I'm using only Panasonic quality tapes. Would playing my Panasonic miniDV tapes in my consumer Sony camcorder & later playing the same miniDV tapes back in my DVX100A dirty my DVX100A's recording head? This is my concern as I hope by doing this, it doesn't ruin my DVX100A's recording head. I have to show my client all the footage, even if it means sitting 8 hours previewing the footage with him.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew
 
I assume you know about restrictions on music? If so groovy.

I have a canon xh-a1 and am planning to get a smaller cam to playback etc.
I recommend this as yes if you play a tape in a cam thats reasonably old and then throw it to another cam it can dirty the heads.

ALSO- NEVER CHANGE TAPE STOCK!
If you use panasonic tapes in you pana cam keep it like that. Do not switch brands as the different chemicals used in each tape may screw the heads.
 
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