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Determining Editing Rates for a Non-Existent Market
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Hey guys, I have a few questions based on an offer I got on Friday:
I work at an automotive paint store and deliver to body shops all over. (No one wants an advertisement right now; already tried several times.) I’ve sort of mentioned in passing that I edit and make graphics and whatnot. There is one owner in particular that coaches a football team of younger kids that I told this to. He wants me to shoot his team from the booth for the entire game. It’d be about an hour and a half and he’d like me to do it for all five games this season and then cut out the fat in post to whittle it down to maybe 45 minutes per game.
Problems:
– He doesn’t seem to understand that all I have is a 300 dollar Casio ZR-100, a point & shoot camera that I bought primarily for the 240/480/1000fps high speed capability (and it’s a step up from my old trusty Hi-8 camera).
– I wouldn’t necessarily be able to rent a camera for these occasions. It sort of depends on this next point here.
– Just as I explained earlier about a market in the void, I’m not sure he understands yet that he’d end up paying more than 75 dollars for me to shoot for an hour and a half, then cut said footage down to about 45 minutes, add any graphics he wanted, and finally throw it onto a DVD or online or whatever.Which brings me to some more points:
– This potential client in particular keeps assuming that I have some amazing camera when I’ve told him twice that he will not be receiving the quality he may be looking for unless he wants it to look like a dinky home movie. What if he honestly doesn’t care what camera I use? He doesn’t seem to care one bit as long as it’s 1080p. How the crap would I charge an hourly rate or whatever for a point & shoot?!
– Speaking of shooting rates, when I do graduate to a nicer camera (looking at the Panasonic AG-AC130), general market rates aside, how would one base a price off all the different factors that come with shooting? Shooting may seem more one-size-fits-all than editing as far as pricing, but are there any factors that I should take into consideration?
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Yeah, that camera isn’t going to cut it for shooting sports.
You could go to ebay or a pawn shop in the next town over, and find something used that could work, in the $600 -$1300 range. If he wants a final product on a DVD, then wide-screen-shooting DV camcorders could be “good enough” if they have the requisite long lens. Get an advance to cover the gear you need in exchange for a promise to cover x number of games. The point being that the client is covering the additional expenses up-front and you are not having to go into debt on the front-end of the project.
But unless this is a coach and all he needs is a wide shot to document how the plays work, one camera isn’t enough. A co-worker who is nuts about soccer shoots the team he coaches (it seems) every weekend; he uses one main camera in the stands or on a tall pole, plus he places two or more “wingman” cameras in different spots like on the goalposts and strapped to a light pole near mid-field, and edits the multicam in post to look like a live-switch.
Your first question back to the potential client is:
How will you use the footage: for coaching purposes, to document the plays, or for “entertainment”?
If coaching, your equipment outlay will be for the one camera and tapes/cards plus a good tripod and batteries. If for Entertainment and as a memento for the players, you’re going to want the wingman POV cameras covering the end zones. Either way: single camera with long lens and accessories, or multi cam, your equipment outlay is going to be at least a grand for everything, possibly two grand. That means your equipment costs, before your editing charges, will average $200 per game over the five games. If you edit each game for $200 flat, that’s a bill of two grand total or $400 per game, but you end the project at least at break-even, maybe with a small profit plus you now have the gear, all paid-up free and clear so the next job, at the same rate, is ALL profit.
An important issue on the side is: can you shoot sports? It can be tougher than people know, to shoot it right and with just one camera.
Getting the camera(s) will be an investment. It might be nice to have this one guy finance the gear if you can use it for other, future gigs elsewhere.
You will want to figure into your rate card calculations the time spent shooting the five games, and you can’t be afraid to charge a fair rate. They will either accept it or they won’t. This potential client is a consumer-type client, with low price expectations. Remember I said earlier your better bet for a good ROI is to work the B2B circuit and work for Organizations and businesses. I’m not telling you to not go ahead with the football thing if you want, but I’m saying beware that it doesn’t get in the way of the overall B2B strategy. I have passed up small gigs occasionally because we couldn’t agree to a price I was comfortable with. If you are working for less than your day rate, you are typically losing money and your time is better spent trolling and marketing for more worthwhile accounts. So, think like a Producer; look at the Big Picture and ask yourself how the opportunity serves your long term overall goals. What looks like a nice little deal can become an albatross around your neck if you over-promise and under-deliver for a wage that’s less than the time was worth. Don’t do it for less than minimum wage!
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We’re veering into what should be another thread I think, but Ima weigh in anyway.
I’ve shot sports one camera, and Mark’s right – it’s brutal. But I’ve never done a whole game. That’s inconceivable to me. I used my knowledge of the sports to set up where I hoped a highlight play might occur — easier in baseball and basketball than soccer, where you might go tens of minutes without a score, and no obvious place to have been set up the rest of the time.
For all that a baseball diamond is bigger, the action on the whole tends to go inward toward the diamond. Not the case with soccer, where, no matter where you position yourself, you could find yourself in full zoom for all but a few seconds of the game…and running as hard as any of the players to keep a usefully framed shot the rest of the time. A tripod for single-camera shooting is out of the question.
Do note Mark’s point about a camera in the bleachers AND on the light pole. You HAVE to be above the field to see movement around the ball with any perspective. A zoomed-in shot will shorten the distance between objects in the scene. From the ground, zoomed in, you (or the coach) won’t be able to tell how far apart the players are, how far the ball is moving toward you or away from you, etc.
With some of these logistics in mind, you can start to build up a collection of gear along the lines Mark suggests. No matter what you decide you’re willing to spend on all this, you HAVE to put that number in one pile, with your time in the other.
I’m going to bring this around to the same point that several of us have suggested to Patrick: chase market rates at your peril. You HAVE to cover your costs at the very least. If you can’t afford to do the job at the rates the market (or client) will bear, DON’T DO IT.
So be careful laying out your costs. Be honest. Then tell the client how much it will cost, no negotiating, this is what it’s going to take. If he doesn’t want to pay that much, wish him well and move on with your day.
Unless you decide that you’re okay with giving away your time, which is also a perfectly valid choice that all of us have made at one time or another. But you start by KNOWING your costs. Everything else follows from that.
For more details on shooting, please fire up a thread in the Field Production forum. A lot of clever folks there who have done an awful lot of this kind of thing.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
I have no idea why I didn’t sign up to this forum earlier. This is million dollar information and it’s just so great to get so much golden feedback. Thank you, Mark, and all!
Also, I’ve never really shot sports before. While this may be strange to say, if I did shoot for this client, this would be a “learner client,” I guess you could say. He is the type of person that if I can overlay some text on the screen and the image quality is crisp, he’ll quite literally be amazed. So, while I have my own standards, of course, pretty much anything is gonna blow this guy away, so I might as well try to get my feet wet shooting sports with this client while I can and just wing the crap out of it.
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[Patrick Reagan] “He is the type of person that if I can overlay some text on the screen and the image quality is crisp, he’ll quite literally be amazed.”
Maybe.
Patrick, the previous two threads from Mark and Tim only begin to hint at some of the tools and techniques needed to make a game video look like a television broadcast. And THAT’s quite likely what most civilians — people with no clue of what’s behind what they see on TV — have as their expectation, a switched television broadcast. It’s not their fault, it’s just that most people outside of a discipline have very little idea of the inner details of the discipline and most of us tend to simplify things we don’t fully understand.
My advice is to enter into this very carefully and make sure that your prospective client has been fully briefed on what you can (and more importantly cannot) physically accomplish with the gear you will be using. MANAGE THE EXPECTATION and, as others have pointed out, be willing to walk away if you can’t be funded to do the job properly.
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Patrick – on the Sports side of things, look at everything you can find online at the local level, and see if there’s anything there that you can’t do. There’s a certain level of expectation with sports – color commentary (even on a simple level), on-screen scores, multi-camera shooting…
I’ve both shot and produced lots of sports stuff over the years – the toughest, in terms of camera work – soccer and ice hockey – the ball or puck, respectively can change directions in the wink of an eye, and if you don’t have a wide shot to cut to from up in the stands, you’ll be screwed. Most sports beg for multi-cam shooting, and even the lowest level ones are often shot with a small remote truck and a director, so that the games can be cut live. Editing ISO reels into a game package is a nightmare, and you could lose your shirt doing it that way.
Here’s an example of what a small hyper-local station here in NH does for their sportscasts – bear in mind that it’s hockey and basketball season up here:
https://ycnnow.com/2012/02/09/game-of-the-week/
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Patrick – you have stumbled into the goldmine portion of the COW.
Bob Zelin speaks the truth, and it usually only registers with 5% of new members – the rest hoot and holler until they realize he is right on the money.
Simple question – if you know the locals don’t have a lot of money, but you wish to stay local, and you only have a Fischer Price video camera, how can you solicit your services if you can’t really afford to do the level of work you are selling and based upon the low prices in your area, you’d lose your shirt on every project if you had to rent gear.
In any business you have to take a certain amount of risk initially, in your case to invest in some better gear. It is a Catch 22 situation – you can’t afford the equipment you need to do the work that would pay enough to afford the equipment. It is a double Catch 22 because even if you have the equipment, the prevailing low monetary values in your area will prevent you from earning enough money to make back your investment and make any profit.
Good luck. Good to see you making an effort to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Mike Cohen
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Mike, I’ve always had the idea of trying to sell my services to people as I’ve developed some skill, but what really set this off was a number of people who were asking me to make strictly motion graphics-based videos. I would, of course, be able to do that without a camera. I was thinking that if I drummed up a handful of side-jobs like that, I’d be able to simply pay cash for a nicer camera (and that is the only way I’d buy one). After that, I’d be able to expand a bit.
As far as Bob, I’ve already realized he’s right on the money, and I enjoy that his initial post was simply to motivate me. I already find Bob to be awesome.
I am not trying to make a living with this currently. This would simply be to get some experience and extra money until I try to move next year, as well as just see how the market really is in this area. This would be what could be called a micro-cottage industry venture. As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, I have a day job and go to college. I would technically be making profit from every job, regardless of size, because I currently have nothing invested unless you want to count the software I’ve bought, but that was originally purchased for personal use, not necessarily business use.
I am not trying to jump out with both feet and say, “Yes, I can shoot your 35,000 dollar wedding as a one-man operation with a 300 dollar point and shoot camera.” That was never my intention, and that would be ridiculous. Because of my low marketplace/business experience and only mooooderately-high amount of knowledge concerning Premiere, AE, etc., I would not feel comfortable taking on larger jobs until I took the baby steps in order to get to “that level.” That doesn’t mean I can’t charge a bit of money to make a 30 second, graphics-based intro for someone or cut together some folks’ footage.
As far as the sports filming thing, I went ahead and turned that down because I further explained to the potential client that my camera wouldn’t be sufficient for filming the games. Not to mention his budget was 40 dollars per game. Aka… 40 dollars for me to go through the entire production process, from written outline to finished product. Some of you guys charge double that PER HOUR, so… yeah, no deal.
The good news is that a couple friends of mine that make music are needing a demo for a “Who we are” type of video for their company. I had them sign a contract stating the terms, and I am currently giving them a “first-time client’s discount” of sorts at $25/hr.
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