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- Jun 3, 2015
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Demand: Ex. Someone wealthy wants to record a video of their own or group’s experiences when going on a trip to Chile.
Idea: Hire a videographer to travel with you and capture your adventure with video/drone footage.
End Product: Professional video showcasing the experience.
Notes: The average wedding videographer costs $1800 for a night.
Costs would begin at around $3,000 depending on destination, length of vacation, and associated costs for videographer.
Obviously this would be a luxury experience, but if you have the money why not capture the moment?
You wouldn’t have to worry about taking pics or videos on vacation and could just completely enjoy the experience.
Big IFs I see are:
- Will they pay that much for the service?
- Do they want someone following them around with a camera who they don’t know? (Maybe solved with a couple Skype get to know me sessions beforehand)
Just throwing around the idea unsure of the demand for that in wealthier communities. I know travel videos are huge right now.
As someone who has been a videographer, here's my 2 cents.
$3000 might seem like a lot, however the amount of footage you will gather on a vacation will be gargantuan to say the least.
You mention wedding videographers at $1800 a pop, trust me most of those guys are poor because of the amount of time it takes to edit. Remember for every minute of video you shoot that's roughly twelve to twenty four minutes of editing, and that's if you're fast.
So 60 minutes of footage will take between 12-24 hours to edit. ($3000 / 24 hour edit + 1 hour shoot = $120 p/h (not including travel and prep time))
All in all I'm not saying don't do it, you just need to be aware of how you can really stitch yourself up when it comes to getting properly paid for all your hard work.
These are the parameters that I personally would work with:
1. Hourly rate:
Work out how much you want to be paid per hour and factor into that the hiring of other people. So let's say you want to be paid $100 an hour, you have to charge $200 - $300 an hour minimum. This will allow you to factor in the overtime that every shoot suffers from. Just as importantly it will allow you to scale and hire people in the future, otherwise you are just creating a job around yourself from which you will never escape.
2. Output 10 mins:
For your suggested minimum fee ten minutes feels about right, because if you calculate you have about 15 hours for the total job time and three of those hours are filming, that leaves you about five hours to edit, which considering you will spend more than 3 hours watching that footage, and about 2-4 hours editing is actually quite tight.
($3000 / 3 hour shoot + 2 hour edit + 3 hour review = $375 (not including travel time/client meetings etc.))
3. Revisions:
This one word alone strikes terror into editors' hearts around the globe. It is not uncommon for big time TV and film producers to say things such as; "That's good, but can you just change the beginning for me, oh and the middle, ah and while you're at it, the end."
These sorts of things are said by people in the industry who know how long it can take to change just a few seconds of footage. When you're dealing with a client who has no idea, the amount of revisions you could end up doing may well drive you insane. Put it this way, you feel a special kind of insanity when somebody insists you use a 3 second shot after you have beautifully spliced a ten minute sequence perfectly to the beat of some funky tune. Because you know that shot will throw the entire sequence out, oh and by the way, they don't want you to change a single other thing about it.
The problem is of course, that your film is a creative endeavour, and creativity is subjective, what you think looks really cool, may look average to your client.
So how to mitigate this would be to set out a very clear structure at the beginning. Spend time with your client working out exactly the look they're going for, and have a set number of revisions that you will do upfront (always be prepared to be flexible in this area). You would say something like one major revision and a bunch of small ones, maybe five or ten... Like I say you'll have to be fairly flexible with this one.
($3000 / 3 hour shoot + 2 hour edit + 3 hour review + 1 hour client meetings/emails/calls + 2 hours revision = $272.22 p/h (not including travel time.))
4.Sound
Do not, under any circumstances offer to add any kind of speech or voices into the video. If you do, then you have to charge through the roof. Set the videos to music and be done.
Why?
Because if you have mountains of footage with no dialogue, you can scrub through it at x2, x3 or even x6 speed, which will dramatically speed up the editing process. You can also happily watch the footage backwards without interrupting your editing flow. This all changes if you have been foolish enough to capture important dialogue.
I can personally listen to dialogue at about 3 or 4 times speed either forwards or backwards and still get what they are saying, however that's only after listening to it once at normal speed, and it took me years to acquire this skill.
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So there you go, it's not a bad idea you just have to make sure you charge enough and that you obtain good camera equipment and set a structure that will allow you to make money and scale the business.
Obviously those editing times are completely arbitrary, just remember the more footage you have, the bigger the editing headache.
Good luck, any more questions hit me up.
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