Initial Ideas: Brain Tree Films Video Pricing

I am prepared to to not make anything (ideally not though) on my first couple of video pieces as long as the content I am generating will lead to great content and hopefully future work. However I did want to research what I should be pricing for any work that I undertake further down the line to see if it is a commercially viable exercise. First of all I wanted to work out what I felt my costing should be to earn a decent amount out of any work I was to undertake. It is a hypothetical breakdown but would give me a ballpark figure of what I would need to charge to make a decent wage. For this I did a basic outline for a small video production I felt would be typical of a lot of the work I would be undertaking a 5 minute company promo. The breakdown works out like this and is based on me earning £300 a day using my own kit (or borrowing extra kit from my college) and undertaking all of the work myself except on the shoots where I would need assistance from a sound man/second cameraman possibly.

• £300: One days research planning and concept development. Also pre-production scripts etc.
• £300: One day shoot my time.
• £200: Second camera/sound. May use students from college for "work experience" for free.
• £1200: 4 days Post-prod including titles, SFX, grading, music & final cut compressed for web.
• £2000: TOTAL

I then contacted or looked online for what other local production companies were charging or contacted them directly to ask for quotes. here are the responses that I got back or found from my research. Remember these were only ball-park based on what I outlined as my factors for the shoot above and they all have VAT added already.

• £3000:00 Off Shoot Productions
• £3545:00 Ginger Beard Productions.
• £4000:00 Vistech Studios
• £5000:00 Bruizer Creative Video & Film Agency.

From this my costings undercut all of these. It helps that I am a one man band with minimal overheads and can scale up when needed. It may even be worth considering upping my price a little to factor in any contingencies.