Nobody cares that you used Vegas, aside from final delivery format (raw elements and/or final discs) if you're doing contract work, nor which plug-ins. Ultimate S and the like are simply time-saving tools, hopefully making one more productive than someone that doesn't have those tools (making you either more competitive or more profitable).

Having done 3-camera dance recital edits, and knowing how much time they can take simply to edit, much less compile, build a decent DVD menu, etc, I think you're in the $5K/DVD range, minimum. Which puts your 12-disc job at $60,000 for a starting point. If that was 4 months of your life at %70, in terms of billable hours that would probably be about right.

Frankly, I'm likely on the low side. The hours spent are key, I think, but it's not un reasonable to price based on the entire job (which still usually has some relationship to the number of hours invested).

My $0.02.

Is this for something you did or for a client?

It's for his own company.

Here are some rules "of thumb" based on what you wrote -
this is not all going to be pretty...

Talent fees - $350 to $500/day each for on camera talent
Shooting crew - 3 man crew with all equipment $1200 to $2500/day depending on experience and equipment
Scripts $500 to $3500 per disc depending on research and writing ability
Editing (10 hr days) $30 to $125/hr including equipment, depending on experience and speed - that includes everything from syncing dailes to cutting to effects to titling - no one cares how hard it all was - if syncing the three cameras was "a bear" you didn't shoot it right. Planned and shot correctly you should have been able to sync three cameras in maybe 15 minutes for setup and an hour (Max) for slipped sync and other problems - definitely not "a bear".
Music - $500 to $2,000 for ACID or stock
DVD layout and completion - same range of pricing, by the hour
Then the whole schmazoo should be marked up anywhere from 10% to 30% for overhead and profit - what you get paid to work is your FEE - what your company makes on your effort is your PROFIT. They are NOT the same.

If you've got a piece of the action, your markup is less or none, and you take your profit from that.

An experienced editor can put together a "live" three camera one hour shoot in three or four days max.

In reatlity you probably should have shot it and live cut it though a switcher, using your camera footage to fix little mistakes.
That way you would have totally eliminated syncing and most of your editing problems before they even began. I recently did a one hour training video for Sears and gave it to them titled, mixed and completed two days after the shoot.

You clearly have sweated bullets making this project, but so has every other pro on this site - tough poops, Ken, that's called paying dues. Your client does not pay your dues (they should help, but it's YOUR dues).

Face it, knowing THEN what you know NOW, you'd never do the job the same way. (None of us would) And that's got to be reflected in your pricing.

The more you know - the more you can legitmately charge.
When I left commercials I charged WAY less for corporate work. Not only because that's what the market will bear, but also because I had to LEARN new techniques (ugh... more dues-- uh yup!)

But there is one more unidentifiable multiplier to all this.
That's called "talent".
I've seen some of your stuff on-line, and you've got it. The balls, the energy and the follow through to actually complete these large scale projects. Not everyone can do that. And very few can really do it to the audience that you've selected to market to. And that's worth money - maybe.

In the end, they, your audience will determine the value of what you've created. If you can sell a million copies and make a buck on each, then your project is worth a million bucks. If you can only sell a thousand copies and make $15 bucks each, then your project is worth fiteen grand. If you have 500 copies sitting out in your garage, and can't sell one, then you've lost four months of your life and any cash you invested.

That's show business.

Note to lurkers:
I never met Ken Calhoun, but I've seen some of his work and read many of his comments and questions right here on this site. He's smart and strong and has a super thick skin. He can take criticism and learn from it - that's why he asks. There is no doubt in my mind that he will be a major success in this business. Good luck Ken, and everyone else out there who has "the dream".

Don't be afraid of failure. It's just another lesson.

v

The only figures of importance are the number of weeks you worked on this -- 16 -- and the number of hours you worked per week -- 70% of 40 hours = 28 hours per 40 hour week, a total of 448 hours.

Our company charges $75 per hour for editing (which would include DVD authoring and disc art design) -- $33,600 for the amount of time you describe.

However, I don't think it would require the 37 hours per disc that you spent on this project. I just finished editing and creating a DVD for a two camera two-hour shoot which took 16 hours to edit and a couple of hours to color correct and sweeten the audio.

I'd bid on your editing job for between 20k and 25k -- figuring about 25 hours per disc x 12 discs at $75 per hour.

Hope this helps in your calculations.

Jack

Hi everyone -- thanks for the terrific comments (and thx especially Vic, your post made my weekend!..appreciate the kind words..).

And thanks too, Vic for the superb breakout of fees, that's good to know. Agree re using a switcher sounds like a great idea, thanks -- I'll do that for the next ones.. I'm still learning all this, re what's available. (btw Sears was a client of mine too... (Ala Moana - Honolulu) great people to work with, for mgmt training back I did in '99).

You've all provided some excellent benchmark data on costs for shoots + editing, which I deeply appreciate. It will be a big help to my colleaugue and myself. Of course I would just bill at whatever "wholesale" is, no profit, for the editing work, since my partner and I are splitting the profits of the video sales; main thing is how to expense out the project fairly, using industry standard pricing. You've all given me a wealth of data - thanks!

The last one we did (tradingvideos.com), brought in topline over $400,000 in less than 24 months, so it's well worth it, the time, and will be a success; the challenge is in figuring out what I should bill to the project as a fair amount, eg what how much I should ask my partner for, for the video editing work I did.

Right grh, good analysis.

Sounds like the project range quote so far, is 25K on the low end, 60K on the high end...

I'll be forwarding this thread to my colleaugue, so we can work together to figure out what a fair half of the amount is, that we should bill to initial sales from the project. The situation is, ok Ken did all the editing, took 4+ months, how much should he be paid for all the editing work?

I'll post more re screencaps of timelines + sample video clips in the week or two ahead. This was by far the most aggressive, professionally done product of my life, I'm very proud of the final product..glad it's all "in the box".

Truth be told, it was like giving birth. To triplets. In the back of a taxi. In a Manhattan rush hour. (*Not* that I've ever done that lol).... It'll produce 6-7 figure profits like the last one... though I still have to script and shoot the infomercial for it... sigh. Hard work, though worth it.

any other figures?


Thanks very much, you guys are terrific -


Ken Calhoun

Ken, as Vic said, it does take a lot of persistence to complete a project this size - well done.

But my curiosity makes me ask this. If the aim of this project is to make money, how much more could you have made if you'd have kept your methods secret and spent the time buying and selling shares?

Peter, could it be because there is more money in telling people how to do something than there is in doing it?

Send $50 for my book, "How to Get People to Send You $50." ;-)

Rob

Peter, great question.

Let me put the solution in terms that videographers would understand best.. (and btw this is a great product idea for you)..

A) Let's say I'm a wedding videographer. I only make $40-$60K/year tops. And I've gotta work with pain in the butt clients.

OR I can..

B) Put together a "How To Shoot World-Class Wedding Videos" 3-DVD set priced at $197 for all wedding videographers.

I create it once, sell it hundreds of times. Let's say I just do 500 sales in Year 1, which gives me a topline of $100,000. Of which likely $80,000 is profit. Over the following 5 years, I sell a total of $375,000 in DVDs. Versus working for clients. What's the wiser choice? Plus you only have to do the work once. And get paid for years. Thats' the secret to my success.

What's the smarter thing to do?

Same thing w/trading, and my other topic, DVDs, -- it's much smarter to do a seminar, videotape it, convert to DVDs and sell it online/via amazon etc, than it is to try and "do the thing yourself". Also, creating subscription websites for memberships to "how to" do stuff, is tremendously profitable.

And for trading, via economy of scale, if I sell 1,000 copies of a $995 12-DVD product, I've just made a cool $1,000,000 in revenue. It would be very very difficult to make that much via real trading, and would take a lot more time even if it was possible.

Or let's say I'm a pop music star. I could a) perform in local clubs, making $500 a week. Or I could b) make a CD, sell via cdbaby.net or amazon, and make the same $500 a week, but I don't have to get up onstage anymore. I just sell the recordings. So I have time to make more, and multiply my income.

It's all about leveraging your skills wisely, to make the most profit possible.

That's why I've sold over $1.2M online of my info-products myself.

So yes, there is absolutely positively more money to be made in selling to hundreds of people, the info on how to do it, vs always doing it yourself (which is non-leveraged "grunt work" for clients, where you're trading time for money.).

Study Dan Kennedy for more.

Ken

Beautifully put, Ken!

Totally transparent in every detail. Faultless.

I was looking for something along the lines of the Gold Rush and found it here:

"The minds of the Americans quickly changed, however. Knowing this was a great opportunity to make a fortune of money, a San Francisco merchant, Sam Brannan, ran through the streets of the city while shouting and holding up a bottle of gold dust as proof. Brannan made $36,000 in nine weeks, but not because he mined for gold. Instead, he bought and resold shovels, pans, and pick axes. Pans that sold for twenty cents rose to over fifteen dollars in only a matter of days (“Gold Rush: Discovery”)."

OK forced up by supply and demand, but his creative idea was that he sold the shovels to those that had a dream/hunger for the gold. He didn't do the grunt - clever man.

Here it is .. http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1020682

Thanks for the explanation Ken.
All is clear.

I would like to buy 3 copies please....I am also writting a new book called "how to lose $150.00 " :)