Day Rates?

[Gary Hazen]

There’s no industry standard. Your rate is dependent on your skill set and your market.

Here’s a calc:
https://freelanceswitch.com/rates/

[Steve Kownacki]

And your overhead. Day rate for what?

Steve

[Craig Seeman]

[shane jenny] “What is industry standard? “

I’ve posted that Calc often.
The industry standard is to charge enough to pay all your personal and business bills every month or develop a strategy as a homeless starving person. That might sound facetious but given what some people charge relative to what they need and how they rationalize it, I have to seriously believe there are some who are targeting the homeless starving strategy.

There is a baseline number to which no corner can be cut, short of hemorrhaging. Going below that baseline makes about as much sense as cutting off a leg to improve your basketball skills. Generally the leg doesn’t grow back either. An unsurvivable rate may be an albatross as word of mouth spread and you get more requests to work at rates which will kill you.

Sorry for such a dark response but this message is nearly important as the “Grinder” message so popular on the COW. A short version might be “Don’t be your own Grinder”

[Scott Carnegie]

$400 for my labour for full day up to 8 hours, $250 for a half day up to 4 hours. Camera or editing gear is extra.

http://www.MediaCircus.TV
Media Production Services
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

[Scott Carnegie]

That’s my rate for shooting and editing. For producing it depends on the scope of the project, I don’t really have a day rate for that but a project rate.

http://www.MediaCircus.TV
Media Production Services
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

[Nick Griffin]

Wow! I hope I can shoot something in Winnipeg. I could make a lot on the mark-up without having to pick up a camera. But seriously, market size and skill level make this a VERY wide price range.

Here in the Washington/Baltimore market on the East Coast of the US the day rate for a good shooter could be anywhere from $1,200 to $3,500 (or more) for a day. The high end of this would generally be someone able to shoot film or one of the very high end digital formats.

The better people won’t take half days because when there’s enough work there is no such thing as two half days in the same day.

Camera operators (NOT Directors of Photography) on features of course get much less. But then they usually have 20-40-60 days of continuous employment.

[Aaron Cadieux]

It’s almost impossible to get a real answer to that on the cow. You’re not going to get a lot of hard number answers from many people. Lots of people adjust their rates depending on how much they think the client will go for. For a guy like me, producing work on a local level, I charge by the hour. My hourly rate (depending on the complexity of the shoot) usually runs between 75 to 100 an hour. On an edit (depending on the complexity of the edit) I charge between 100 – 500 dollars per finished minue of edited video. I’ve been told my rates are too low, but I have little overhead. I’m also usually not producing work on a national level. I’d say my freelance work is on the higher end of local productions. I hope this helps.

-Aaron

[Craig Seeman]

See this post with video about day rates. 15 minutes explains how Daily Cost of Doing Business is factored.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/874829

[Scott Carnegie]

While I know there is no industry standard becasue there are so many variables, what I posted is standard for my market for an experienced corporate video/documentary shooter.

http://www.MediaCircus.TV
Media Production Services
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

[Craig Seeman]

Key for us to keep in mind is Cost of Living.
Those of us in major urban areas in the USA would barely break even, let alone make a living, at those rates.