Film job pricing advice needed

[Todd Terry]

This is going to sound like an incredibly smartass and unhelpful answer, but honestly it’s not (or at least I’m not trying to be)…

Your estimate for the job should simply be YOUR RATE x THE NUMBER OF HOURS expected to complete the job.

I’m going to assume that you have a rate for your work. If not, obviously you need to establish one. What that is, I couldn’t say… I don’t know your geographic area, expertise, skill level or resources available to you… all of which would go into determining what a fair hourly rate for your work is.

Also, you might have multiple rates that you have to figure since there are different types of work going on, so make sure to account for that. You might, for example, have different rates for strict editing as opposed to CGI effects (we don’t, but you might). Or you might have different rates for the strictly print work, the poster (we definitely do). You’ll have to estimate your number of hours for each type of work at each rate, if you have different ones.

We also don’t have much of a clue as to the scope of the work. A “one minute animation” could be something that takes an hour. It could also take 100 hours, or a lot more… depending on what it is.

AND… when you give your estimate, give just that… an estimate, and it should spell out that it includes up to X amount of hours, and that overages due to client changes, revisions, re-dos, etc., are billable at your usual rates. And it should spell out your terms (I’d suggest some percentage upon booking the job, with the remainder due upon delivery).

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com