The price culture

Anyone who makes a living from video will relate to this. Video production, for those reading this website and might not realise, is possibly the most extreme combination of creativity, technical, and business knowledge. It takes years to build up the knowledge to make really good video. Yet for some reason it is often looked upon as the poor relation to stills photography. As a result the rates of a good video lighting/cameraman can often be far less than that for a good stills photographer.

Why? I'm not running down stills photographers here, it is a highly skilled profession. However I often wonder why many companies reel back at the idea of the costs involved in video. My rates as a cameraman are £500 a day. Now this sounds like a fantastic amount to anybody who may be working in an office right now. Bar soliciters there probably aren't many other every day professions that can charge this. But there's a catch. And it's a big one. Camera ops who charge £500 a day are for the most part using decent broadcast quality equipment. A broadcast camera body alone costs a minimum of £10k ex VAT, and goes up from there to £50-60k or more. To make that camera work you also need a lens, which at the low end for one that is worth having will be around £4k for a basic model, or around £10-20k for the really decent ones. Then there is all the other equipment involved such as lighting, tripods, battery systems, microphones, the list goes on. To get an absolute basic broadcast camera system up and running from scratch will cost at minimum £25k.

If you run a small company that also edits the productions, again we are talking serious money. With the rate at which technology progresses these days, most companies have to aim to have made their money back, plus profit, within 2 years. At £500 a day every single day of the year this would be no problem. But the world doesn't work like that. Video production companies, and especially freelance camera ops can often go weeks or sometimes months without work. And much of the time between jobs is spent on self promotion and other things that are not paid. So the daily rate has to take all of this into account.

Contrast the cost of equipment for video with that of a basic digital SLR stills photography kit and you can see why it can be galling to see some stills  photographers charging £1k a day and actually finding people to pay it! Obviously such a photographer is often in the top echelon of the chain (but not always!), but for lighting camera people the price is usually capped at around the £500-600 mark, yet their overheads are often much higher.

An added problem is lowballing. People with low grade equipment shooting for £70 a day or less. Many clients are taken in by such people and only discover the golden rule of "you get what you pay for" when it is too late. Admittedly, some clients are happy to pay for rubbish, and some video companies are happy to produce it (knowingly in some cases). This causes an issue for those of us who like to stress to a client that the reason we charge more is because we produce, or at least do our damn best to, high quality crafted (that last word is important, for video is crafted) video.

Of course sometimes a client is insistent on taking a line when producing a video that will lead to disaster, and it is sometimes best to ditch such people. Clients who think that they know how to produce a video better than the people they have hired for that very knowledge will be the subject of another rant however.

Final word. In video you get what you pay for. Stop trying to get us to work for nothing or a paltry hourly rate that a supermarket shelf stacker would turn their nose up at (read Craigslist for a ton of such video production job adverts). No, we won't work 16 hour days just so that you can avoid having to pay an extra days wage. You'll get charged overtime. No, we won't work through lunch. And no, a chocolate bar does not count as a meal.

Put it this way, if I shoot a video that advertises someones product, if their advertising campaign is handled correctly they will make far more back than the video cost to make. If I shoot a training video, if I've done my job correctly and made a production that employees pay attention to the money that could be saved by the client not being sued could far outweigh the cost it took to produce the DVD.

Trouble is everyone and their dog is a director or camera op these days. The average company exec in charge of marketing, or HR quite often thinks that because they have a camera from Dixons that video is really easy to do. I imagine stills photographers have this issue to some degeree. Almost everyone has access to a digital SLR these days, and this unfortunately gives most people on the street the impression that all they need to do is point and shoot to become a professional. When a company exec in charge of hiring for a corporate video gig thinks he/she could make a video in their sleep there are real issues.

If you are a company exec reading this, here are a few things to consider, and be mindful of. You hired us for our ability to interpret your ideas and turn them into a watchable video. This means that:

• While we value your input, if we say that an idea won't work we mean it!
• No, we will most definitely not use your idea to use yellow Comic Sans as the title font.
• If you say you want a 20 minute video and we tell you that for your purposes a 5 minute one will be much better, we mean it! Not only do we know what we are talking about, but it will save you money in the process!
• If you argued until you were blue in the face and got us to make you a 20 minute video, no we will not edit it and put in fancy custom 3D animated visuals and get you the finished product in 2 days time!
• No, we will most definitely not use your idea to use yellow Comic Sans as the title font.
• If you forced us to shoot your chief MD in front of his big office window overlooking the city on a sunny day without wanting to pay for the lighting needed to compensate or changing the location completely, no we cannot 'fix it in post'!
• If we ask you who the video is intended to be watched by, and what type of screen it will be shown on (such a conference projector, large LCD at a trade show, or on a television) don't become irritated by 'inane technicalities'. That stuff is *important* and will influence how things are shot, and how the final programme will be graded and sound mixed!
• No, we will most definitely not use your idea to use yellow Comic Sans as the title font.
• No, there isn't a guy just up the street from us with the same equipment who is charging 1/4 of our prices. We'd know about it if there was.
• So you wantus to give you an exact quote over the phone, but you don't know the exact details of the production nor when it might be shot? Please contact us when you are serious and are not just looking for a token 'tender' just to say you have compared prices when you have already made your mind up who you are going to hire.
• If you don't mind us shooting your interview in front of the rubbish strewn desk we asked you to clear before we started setting up that's fine, it's  your image!
• At the end of a 10hr day with no lunch breaks, no you cannot review all the footage.

Conclusion 

If you can think of any more please feel free to add them in the comments section below and I'll collate them for another rant. Or indeed comment on the cost of video production. Let us know what your niche is or how you are coping with the costs that are constantly being driven down.

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