What would you charge?

S

SilverWolf

Veteran
I have a client that wants a 10-15 minute promotional video done for them.
The deadline that they are giving is around 1-2 weeks from start to completion.
- In this promotional video I will have to interview about 5-6 people in different locations each. The driving for these interviews is between 15 minutes ( for the people near me ) and 1 hour for the ones not near me.
It would be great to hear back from some people to compare rates for this type of job
 
If you're doing ALL the work and using ALL your own equipment I would charge between 6 - 10,000 for the job. Aim high. Its always better to aim high than to aim low that way you can negotiate down. I had a client call me up a few days ago asking me to cancel my new years eve and new years day to cut a 7 minute piece for the al hurra network on the rose bowl parade. Last year I did the same job for 3 five minute pieces and charged $850. I gave them a quote this year for $2200 and we settled on $1500. Its always better to start higher..
 
Number of days it'll take you to do the job? Number of editing days? Equipment rental? Cast? Crew?

Can't begin to answer until we know the scope of the job.

If it's a one-man thing where you're doing all the work, own all the equipment, and will spend one day of shooting and one day of post... minimum $2500. Ask for $3500.

If it involves a host and a prompter and all that, then you need to get the price up there substantially.
 
I'm not sure how many days it will take because this is the first time i've done a job like this before. I don't have any equipment rental or Cast and Crew. It also doesn't involve a host or prompter. Personally I would give myself a week to do the job because I don't fully know my capabilities , but you all being more skilled may have a better estimate of you own abilities. Another reason that i'm asking is because they are going to get quotes from other businesses to see what they charge and I wanted to get a feel for what they might find
 
I can't quote anything until I have a script or at least a written treatment. Otherwise, how can I know what the client expects? How can I know how long it will take to develop the questions for the interviews, or how to get the answers I want (to match the script)? What B-Roll do I need, and how many places do I have to go to get that? On a typical job like this for me, preproduction is 40-50%, production is 25%, and post is about 1/3. If I cheat on preproduction time, I would expect post to take 2-3x as long, doubling cost of project. It may also mean reshooting, or additional locations for B-Roll.

For simple interviews or run&gun b-roll, I would charge a daily rate (mine around $1000 includes all equioment). For non-interviews and script-type shooting, I add $250 for an assistant to help with lights and other stuff, saving the client money since I am more efficient.

You say it does not involve a "prompter"? What are you going to do, show up and roll tape and hope they say what you need them to say?

Also, a 10-15 minute length for a corporate promo sounds WAY too long. Back to the script/treatment issue again... I did a really long one that included interviews with 5 people, had three different stories in it, and at 7 minutes it was marginally too long. Eight minutes would have definitely been too long.

I hope this is helpful.
 
Ok it looks like i'm going to need to give some backstory. My mother is the chairperson of their organization and the other members on the committees have a tendancy to take a very long time to get projects done. What my mother would like to do is get this video done as soon as possible and to have it look good.
All of the people in the interview are being asked basically the same question. There are Three questions that they are being asked. Now in regards to the prompter I was under the impression that Barry was asking if I would be using a tele-prompter which would be no. The people will be asked question that they can respond to but the person asking the question isn't going to be included in the video. The main thing I was wanting to know was what the bare minimum you would charge for something like this or even remotely like this. I know that prices can differ greatly dependant upon what types of things they want to include in the video and that fine.

Also, Lets say that each interview not counting setting up takes 15-20 minutes to get what you need shot
 
Danger, Will Robinson!!!!

Since you are dealing with a committee that has proven indecisive and ineffective, preproduction and having a written AND APPROVED treatment becomes critical. Otherwise, I would charge $20,000 and hope I make money once everyone has had a year to criticize it and request changes that conflict with each other.

This sounds like a project I walked away from last year.
 
In order for something to be approved with the committee it require 4 votes.
My mother vote counts as 2 votes and she only needs two other votes which she has. The reason things don't get done in this organization is because people don't get them done. She is the one making sure this gets done so I know it will go through. She only needs votes to approve the decision. I never stated that the committee was ineffective or indecisive. I said that it takes them a while to get things completed ,but all that was before my mother was the chairperson. I really do appreciate you professional input. All i'm really looking for is a minimum price that I should go lower than when thinking about charging because I have a tendacy to underprice my work due to not having a wide array of other prices to compare with.
 
Well, you're going to lose either money or jobs at first, because you don't know yet how long it takes you to do things. So you'll either get jobs you underbid for, and lose money when it takes you twice as long to do them as you thought, or you'll lose the job because you overbid. Either one is bad but you should quickly learn how to avoid those mistakes in the future.

In this situation, you have the advantage. You have a backer in your corner who wants to push the job through. So aim high. You'll either get the job and a nice profit, or she'll discreetly tell you, "No, we can't go that high" with no harm done. Resubmit a lower number and see what happens then.

So figure out what your day rate is. Until you do that, you can't do much else. There's plenty of articles online to help you do this, search or check out some of the freelance sites, no matter what industry. Once you have a day rate you can look and see that each of these interviews will take you half a day. Five days to edit. Two more days to edit after their comments. Will you keep doing edits after that, or are you going to charge an additional fee after a certain number of revisions? Galt is right, this is the sort of job that can drag on for months and months while internal politics keep flip-flopping. So make sure you get a healthy payment up front and a written contract clearly stating conditions for the rest.

Be really careful about this sort of working situation, though. When family is involved, things can get ugly. Your own personal relations can easily get strained, not to mention the resentment or suspicion you may face from others in the organization. I've dealt with this a lot with our clients, and learned that it's really best to take a hard-line approach. Unfortunately, you need options and experience before you can really pull that off, because as often as not it means losing the job.
 
You pretty much hit the nail on the head in regards to situation I am in. I've actually been doing some jobs for friends of mine for free ( Weddings, Music Videos ) to build up some experience. I've already have it in my mind though that i'm going to do this video even if it's below my cost ( I'm won't tell them this though ) because what else am I doing ? If I can make some money practicing doing the best job I can then I have no complaints for now.
 
I have no problems with working for non-profits for free or very cheap. But for-profit businesses are expected to pay me, and pay me what I am worth. The reality is that a free project will never get the attention and focus that it deserves, and if the client is paying you enough, they will focus on making the decisions that need to be made. If it is free, there is no incentive for them to help you, to save you time or aggravation, or to actually even define ahead of time what they want. These are all problems with non-profit work also, and it is why I do nothing for free. I have done jobs where their out-of-pocket costs barely covered my gas and cash expenses (for NPOs). I only do this when I am confident that the client will focus enough on the pre-production issues. But if they pay nothing, they value your work and your time at nothing. This same philosophy works well in the corporate world. Whenever I have a problem client, I just raise my rates until they get focused.

At this pont I am totally confused as to the point of this thread. Are you trying to keep your price up (what I thought at first), keep your price down (my second guess), or just feel good about giving something away? I guess I am caught by my own "working for free" issue in this one....

Good Luck.
 
Pretty much the purpose of this thread is to get a good sense of what people that have been doing this work longer than me would charge because I just don't know. Now doing the course of this thread other issue have come up such as whether I should do this type of job or not. Now I respect the advise and will most definitely weight that into any decision I make. You are absolutely correct in the fact that people definitely appreciate something more when they have to pay for it and really value things if they have to pay a substantial ammount for it. Pretty much I want to get the highest pay that I can get for this job , but I would rather do the job for less than not be able to do the job at all and the reason is because I will probably learn some very valuable things on this job that will allow me to be better prepared for a much higher paying job that may not be as forgiving.
 
Your mother is the Chairperson and she'd vote on hiring her son? It sounds like a conflict of interest. Your mother might suggest you do the work, but recuse herself from voting. We have no idea what the actual situation is here, but if you get paid a heap of money and come up with a piece of crap--it's going to make your mother look bad--very bad. Even if you do a good job--it will still come off like blatant nepotism. My point is that you should tread carefully in this situation because it might easilyappear that your mother is using her position for her family's financial gain.
 
It may appear that way from the outside , but her vote isn't the only vote that counts . It's not like being a judge were your vote is the only vote that is required. In order for something to be approved it requires other votes as well. If the other members on the committee don't agree or approve on an idea they don't vote on it and it can't be done whether she wants it to be done or not. My mother isn't stating that I have to do the work it just needs to be done by someone. They are also getting quotes from other companies that could possibly do the work as well. One is a local broadcasting station.
 
SilverWolf said:
I wish I could sell that price to them:grin:
Click to expand...
Well, $14,000 for a 15 minute video is pretty close. But $1k/min is a useless (IMHO) rule of thumb that is meaningless for any of my projects. That's like saying TV commercials cost $500 a spot to produce. Some do, but some cost $500,000 a spot, or $5 million.
 
WOW! Can i be like you when I grow up ? If i told somebody $1k/min right now I don't know if I could stop from giggling:cheesy:
 
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