$6000 for 20 hours of DVD content to me even seems low. If your company is thinking $1000 for the whole project, consider yourself a prostitute for doing it at that price. They obviously don't understand marketing costs.

If it's training and only one camera, I'd lock it right down if you can. You don't have a b-roll camera to use if you make a mistake. Of course it depends on the type of training, whether it's training to the camera or to an audience. Do you need to see the audience's reaction? Is the presenter using items in his presentation that warrant wider shots?

As for multiple sessions in a day, I will charge a full day's rate and then discount for down time if it's legitimate. If I'm shooting for 3 to 4 hours then striking my equipment and having to reset up somewhere else to finish out the day, the company will pay for the move time. That varies from project to project. When you agree to be there to when they agree you're done. That usually will constitute a work day. If you can't get other work during that day due to their commitement, then a full days pay is what they owe you.

Lansaedit's comments about live vs. edited presentations is a good one. Is this something that when on tape is done, no editing needed or will it need title cards, music, etc and require extra editing after the shoot?

Capturing time, editing time, rendering time, authoring time. All things to take in to consideration.

Will you be miking more than one person at a time? More than one speaker at a time?

Sounds like it could be a lucrative project if layed out properly.

there's the old adage, "Time, quality and cost. Pick any two"

You will need lighting and a wireless mic for the Instructor and perhaps a shotgun on a boom pole to pick up questions from the trainees. This means two man crew. I'd be charging at least 1350$ per day for production. My encoding rate to make MPEG2 then 85$/hour for authoring. This is with a DSR 570 at 16:9, Sony wireless and 672 shotgun. Rendering via Mainconcept and authoring with DVD-A (no need for Encore for this job).

Print on Verbatim white matte blanks.

If you do it for 1000$ you are going far beyond prostitution and entering the realm of performing an indecent act upon yourself.

Peter

Peter I agree. Under bidding can be a real nightmare. Especially when they know they got a steal and they even take more advantage of you by adding extra work on top of it. But I never blame the client they are just trying to get the most for their money .



Randini

Really fascinating & concerning post.

1 - Do you want the job? Why?

2 - What will it give you? Is it a sprat top catch a mackeral? Will it add to your CV? Will you get further work from it? Do you need the experience?

3 - Chances are that the "client" will be looking around at other suppliers too.

4 - Any chance of doing a "Staged Project Plan"? . .Something akin to "In stage 1 we will .. then in stage 2 . . " make it bite size and costed and agreed at each stage.

5 - Have you taken the client through the processes involved? Do they appreciate the amount of time and kit required? Have you educated them into the "qualities" you would bring to their product? YOU NEED to do this. YOU HAVE to manage the expectations. Often you will be dealing with individuals that have no idea to the costs and the production values you can BRING to their company. YOU have to not just sell your services THEY have to justify the expense .. something along the lines of "Hey this Guy does NLE and uses 3-Chip cameras AND he uses Chroma Keying" . . look we all know what all this means . . DON'T camoulflage your talents - Artistic OR technical YOU have had to learn and earn the respect.

6 - Have they had any experience of commissioning stuff like this before? Do you know of any videos they have had done before? Have they had a "bad" experience?

.. Look I could go on for a long time with this .. I just wish you were sitting here to have a chat about it . .

Also, I aint no bigshot myself. I've got an ItsyBitsy business doing hat I like for clients I like working for . . It is really hard to get a way forward sometimes . . I've turned work down becasue it was demanding I should move faster than I had the backup to do it .. then again I've had a client come to me , seen my work, compared this with work he hgad done from a much bigger firm - it was very good work too , , very pro .. very efficient - he likes my production values, my approach to the type of work I do, my presentation of a story and so on . . .

. .So, pricing? really hard . .You could get into major do-dos if you get it wrong . . be warned! $1000? no way .. . If you are contemplating this figure then STOP IT! . . . My advice, if I couldn't get something more realistic and have the project broken down to bite size pieces I would walk away .. I do . . maybe you could lay this off to another company who you know about. This WILL put you in good stead with this larger company when they think of you in the future.

. .hmmm .. keep us posted

Grazie

Lots of variables here,, first of all the company is bringing in training pros, before you even bid on the project show them you know what you are doing by asking if these pros have agreed to be part of a training video.
I doubt it.
Corporate training is very pricey,, 1000 dollars wouldnt cover these guys cell phone bill, so if the company really wants these training sessions on video, my guess is they are willing to pay for it.

My fear is that they were thinking maybe $1,000 would get the job done.

Regardless of what you charge, you have to be willing to walk away from the job if they aren't going to pay enough. It never fails. They ask, "How much will it cost to make a video?" I tell them it depends. It's like asking a building contractor, "How much will it cost to build me a house?" Well, do you want a one-story house or two? A wooden house or a brick house? One bedroom or three? Garage? Carpeting or solid wood floors? Too many variables involved to give a pat answer! So now, I ask the client, right up front, what their budget is and then explain that we can design the production to fit their budget, within reason.

For example, I got a call recently from a law firm that wanted to produce a 60-minute DVD for other lawyers. Their buget was $10K. I said that would not be a problem. Cool. Ah, but there was a catch! They wanted 5000 DVDs. The cost of replicating, packaging and shipping 5000 DVDs was over $7000. That left only $3k for pre-production, production, and post (which would have been edit heavy, based on her description). When I explained the issues and that they might want to consider lowering the initial run on the DVDs to 1000 copies... Well, I haven't heard back from them.

Could have been a nice job, but it would not have been worth it in the end.

Jay

P.S. "Time, quality and cost. Pick any two." Excellent, Mike!

Just to clarify a few things, when I said my fear was that they were thinking that $1,000 would get the job done, I wasn't saying I was going to try charging that. Just that I gathered from brief talking that they weren't expeciting it to cost a whole lot.

When I figured up the quote, I came close to $3,500 at the bottom line cheapest. This will be the largest I've ever done, so I kind of wondered if I was being overly pricey or not.

From what you guys have kind of said, it's not. Makes me feel a little better.

JBJones

I think it goes "Good, cheap, quick, pick any two" but lets not quibble.
I'm slowly learning that what sets the men from the boys isn't what they've done it's what they haven't done.
Sounds like the client is clueless if you got the impression they were thinking aroung $1000. I'm learning whne thats the case if the're thinking $1,000 and you're thinking $5,000 I double it to $10K. Problem is they're not just clueless about your scope of work but also how much input you need from them. These are mostly the sort of jobs that go bad or overrun to blazes. If you can sit them down for a while and they sound like they're getting the idea of the input that you require then it sure might be a good job, if you start hearing a lot of 'well, you know....' get nervous.
They know their product, they might know what they want their video to say but I doubt you do and you can waste a lot of time just coming to grips with that.
Look at it this way, it's like two adjoining but alien worlds, you know one of them, how to shoot and edit. But there's the other one, their world and you can find understanding it can be more work than you realise. This applies no matter what they want from you.
If they've got a purpose built facility, I wouldn't be backwards in coming up with a figure of $10K, I bet the interior designer got way more than that.

Got that right Bob!

Now, the thing you might want to do is to go through the costing, educate them as to the wheres and why fors . .etc .. so they can have a better "view" as to what they could be spending their money on . . like the interior designer observation, I'll come back to that . . . you can ask them what they had in mind, tell them what you've doen already . . and like the interior edcorator, give yourself a "chance" to show them your "swatches" . . that's what an interiror designer does .. AND has photos of their previous work too. . .

At the end of the day, you have too "engage" with some form/type of communcation whereby you are both comfortable.

In another life, some years back now, I would be called in to assist an organisation in improvong its abilitiy in achieving its service targets. Sometimes this would mean the Design & Build of the building or office space .. the companies which would potentially be asked to "do" the work were asked to provide in a short meeting what and how they would deal with the space. This would mnean them coming back with all sorts of examples and drawn designs . . all the time we would be getting educated to the world of Design & Build and we were getting a view as to what it would cost . . I don't see any difference between that and the work I now do in getting the "type" of work that would work for me . . . . .

. . Grazie

I think even at $3,500., you're still way, way, way off base. Sure, it's your first "big job", but you have to be reasonable to YOURSELF. You DON'T owe this company an "act of charity", and they CERTAINLY have the money. Don't let them tell you otherwise!

Look at it this way - you need to shoot, edit and produce 18-20 hours of FINISHED video, assembled into an interactive environment, no less. How about taking a "per hour of finished video" approach? Start at $2k per hour x 20 hours = $40k (and believe me, even that $2k per finished hour is REALLY LOW!). Bottom line is that you want to start HIGH and work backwards from there. It's next to IMPOSSIBLE to start low and THEN tack on more.

I normally price my work based on finished MINUTES of video. I just got done with a series of 1-minute commercials for a major Japanese electronics company (I'm under NDA and can't mention their name or any details). The billing for EACH COMMERCIAL averaged $50k - which is considered VERY LOW for the NY market! Each spot involved art direction, design, copywriting, 3ds max elements AND original music (not to mention Vegas editing, of course!). The company got a "package deal' with me because I did everything myself.

Do yourself - and the industry - a favor by NOT lowballing the project. Hopefully this helps!

Yeah! That's it .. Spacesound . . you got it! - G

Thanks, Grazie. I'd be interested in hearing how this topic is approached on the Final Cut Pro forum. Enlightening indeed!

I'll add a view from down under. A lot of production companies for whom corporate work was the bread and butter have gone under the last few years. Everyone has a video camera these days so everyone can make a video and hey you can buy a DVD authoring app for under $100 and Windoz Movie Maker and iMovie are free.
I've done one corporate job where they'd had a go themselves, nothing serious and would have been a breeze to shoot in an hour but in the end it cost them as much as it would have for me to shoot it and edit it and it would have looked a bit better and sounded a whole lot better.
So, in my opinion these can be difficult times in this industry for anyone trying to make a living out of it. I'm pretty lucky, I don't depend on it and I've got some fairly hassle free work with good customers. It's only hack work but it pays for the new toys.

If a farmer lives by the sea, he will become a fisherman - when needed! Just another type of harvest . . . . . yes?

Very good point, farss. With the changing economy and the availability of low-cost hardware and software, there's still a craft involved. And it's the same in any industry. There's a huge difference, fortunately, between a manufactured home in a trailer park, and a custom-built home in the country. Look at cars - there's a huge difference between a Kia and an Audi (I drive an Audi, so I'm a little biased!). Michael Moore's Fahrenhet 9/11 cost $6m to produce. On the other hand, Spiderman 2 cost $200m to produce.

In the end, it's giving the client what they pay for, while being fair to ourseves, and above all, upholding "the craft".

Thanks to all who are involved in this post! I have yet to do anything of this magnitude, but you all have brought up variables that I would not have thought of, so Bravo on another enlightening day at the forum! :)

dave

You guys have no idea how much some of us learn from this forum. It's mind-blowing just thinking about all the angles of price structure. Heck, the easy part is setting up, shooting and striking.

Skywatcher

. . er . . , "You guys have no idea how much some of us learn from this forum." .. . I think we just might . . . that's because we don't wont other video chums making the mistakes - well I for one - have made previously. Look, I've made nbsiness mistakes in the past . . I try not to repeat them now .. in the future I'll try yto mitigate against them, BUT there will be times when soemthing "new" is gonna bite me in the bottom - I SH££T you not!

However, as I've typed quite a bit of the stuff above, I take your comments as a "thank you" . . yer very welcome . . It's just my hard-won business mistakes that have given me the scar tissue . . It aint been anything I would say is clever . . NOW when I see a smashing chroma key "effect" with synched in music OR getting back a narrative into a freely shot piece of footage - THAT is clever . . . ! The business stuff? . . Just boring really - however turning THAT around into an enjoyable time for both Customer and service provider is "cute"!

Best regards,

Grazie

it is important to find out what the client expects as a final product.
setup a preproduction meeting and walk them through the creative process.
scripting(if needed),shooting and editing. i have done industrial shoots like this before and it sounds like a basic shoot. shooter, grip, light kit, wireless mics. depending on the outcome of the preproduction meetings with the client you might want to have a audio op with field mixer, wireless mics and boom.
you need to bid accordingly. location shoot day rate, post hourly rate and the cost per dvd. "what the traffic will bare". this means what are the local rates where you do business. if you don't know then you'll need to do some research. when you find out what the local rates are then put a bid together.
a total bid don't itemize the bid because the client will try and nickle and dime you to death. speaking from 16 years of broadcast experience.
rfq's(request for quote) i always add quote is good for 30 days from date on
submitted quote. quote is plus or minus 15%.
rule of thumb, is $1,000.00 per finished minute.
in a nutshell if it was me: (3 man crew)
Location Shoot: $1,500.00 per day(10 hour day, no half day)
post: $75.00 per hour
duplication: $25.00ea for dvd's(cases and labels included)

i hope this helps a little, good luck!

Oftentimes small customers ask why our rates are so much higher than Joe Wannabe's. My repsonse is simple: anyone can go out and buy a welding rig (truck, welding machine, torch) and a box of tools but simply having the truck and Snap On tool set will not make the guy a welder/fitter. I sometimes substitute Carpenter for Welder. In my world these analogies hit home right away.

pb