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Billing for Render Time
Wanted to get some advise on how companies regard billing for Render Time.
I’m an After Effects Artist and I set a hourly or day rate to create, design, animate.
Should I consider the render time as billable time. My machine is tied up, its working for me.
Or is there a rule of thumb about how to factor in my hardware software into my hourly or day rates. -
22 Replies
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Never bill for render time.
If you’re a Total Professional
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I have always charged for rendering time (and always will), but it is always a part of my bid. I pretty much know how long any project in AE will take to render. You are paying rent on your space, utilities, laying out money for equipment and software etc, etc. It’s called a business and you charge for the time you spend dealing with client issues.
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Charging for rendering is like a traditional artist charging for the paint to dry
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media -
[Mick Haensler] “Charging for rendering is like a traditional artist charging for the paint to dry “
Nope, not the same thing. An artist can go on to the next canvas. Drying paint doesn’t tie up any additional resources. Of course if you’ve got 50 paintings drying as opposed to one you’re tying up space in your artist’s loft.
If my computer is rendering it’s doing one job and not doing another. As someone who does a fair bit of compression, rendering is a major part of the job. If someone is paying for a high quality H264 or On2VP6 encode that’s going to take longer than a standard mp4 or spark compression.
I don’t itemize render time but it’s certainly part of the job.
Of course if you have a big facility and a render farm your render is going to be very fast and each given render may not tie up the farm for long. That model allows you a much higher level of productivity and that’s where additional income is generated to cover the cost of that render farm.
A small shop may not be able to use that business model though. My business is to make sure my business is profitable otherwise I can’t be the professional artist.
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[Tim Kennedy] “Wanted to get some advise on how companies regard billing for Render Time.
I’m an After Effects Artist and I set a hourly or day rate to create, design, animate.
Should I consider the render time as billable time. My machine is tied up, its working for me.
Or is there a rule of thumb about how to factor in my hardware software into my hourly or day rates.”It’s rare that we charge for rendering time anymore. When I had one machine, I would charge 1/2 the hourly rate for rendering. We now have three suites and about 10 mac’s so while one machine is rendering, we can be working on another.
But generally render time is 1/2 the standard rate, whatever yours is. But most clients I work with, we have a flat rate for all After Effects related projects.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
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[Mick Haensler] “Charging for rendering is like a traditional artist charging for the paint to dry”
I tend to agree with Craig, but there are nuances that sometimes make a difference in how I bill. For instance, if I’m billing at full book rate in an unsupervised session and I’m able to simply walk away or go to sleep while a big encode or batch render processes, I probably will not charge full tarrif. However, if the client is supervising, or if there’s a deadline and I have to sit there the whole time, you betcha, they’re gonna pay for me, my hardware, and my facility time.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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We bill for rendering…our editing rate is $175 an hour (SD) and our rendering rate is $80/hr. I only usually bill a portion of the time it actually takes. 2 hours might get billed 1 hour. I have a machine to do it, but I have software on it, monitors, maintenance etc, and the machine is working.
Believe me, comparing paint drying to a dual processor Mac running cycles to spit out a quicktime movie of my 300 layers is an insult to my Mac!
We also bill for Encoding…again depends on the project. Most projects have both rendering and encoding and we put them in one line item on the invoice.
There are certainly other service industries who charge for machine time. I consider rendering sort of renting a machine for a short time. It is configured specifically for the job and it costs me money to maintain. But since it is not my primary income, I don’t go nuts with billing for it.
I have never had a client ask about it. The only questions are usually about the grand total at the bottom of the page!
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
[Rich Rubasch] “We also bill for Encoding”
Interesting because I always bill for encoding. I wonder what the difference in my thinking is?
I guess if a client comes in with a 2 minute spot and walks out with a 2 minute WMV I gotta charge him something.
But the process of the “Render” of an edited project is, dare I repeat, the process of the paint drying. The client certainly paid a my rate to design the show, edit, deliver screeners, digitize (yes I charge a small fee for digitizing). The rendering is means to the end.
Charging for that process doesn’t seem right. Especially when there are mechanisms that allow (in my case) older machines to render pretty much unattended in the background.
Exception though noted by DRW. If a client is there and needs to leave with a product and I am physically unable to work on something else, I would consider charging something…
but only after our round trip to the pub was over. 🙂
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Rick Dolishny
Discrete Editors COW Leader
http://www.thecreativeprocess.ca -
[Rich Rubasch] “our rendering rate is $80/hr. I only usually bill a portion of the time it actually takes. 2 hours might get billed 1 hour.”
There is a subtlety and powerful concept you mentioned here that is worth pointing out to our newer members of the COW, especially this forum which I might add seems to be growing incredibly quickly.
Note the clear hourly rate, but a flexibility on the number of hours billed. This is an incredibly significant billing strategy which is far better than a lower rate at full hours.
Even thought the gross bill might be the same, charging full rate and discounting the hours saves your bacon the next time the client shows up. And you hope they do. Because as us Old Timers know (OK, Rich, I have no idea how old you are, no disrespect, I’m talking about me and David Roth Weiss) but as we know, once you set a rate it’s pretty much the rate the client is gonna pay.
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Rick Dolishny
Discrete Editors COW Leader
http://www.thecreativeprocess.ca -
[Rich Rubasch] “Believe me, comparing paint drying to a dual processor Mac running cycles to spit out a quicktime movie of my 300 layers is an insult to my Mac!”
I wuz jes tryin 2 b funny
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