Gettin’ paid

[Bill]

remember first…there is no such thing as “light after effects work”

I am sure if you serch the buisness forum you will find plenty of suggestions. Average them out. Seattle is a fiarly large market so compare accordingly. I would also suggest setting up your rate before you get started. Be specific about hours/rate and what it will cost the client once he begins to add in the extras.

[Dan Humphrey]

Thanks. I didn’t notice the business forum. I guess I need to hang out here more often. =)

[Chris Poisson]

Dan,

My market is about the same size as yours. This may sound like oversimplification but you might start with the $1000 per minute rule. At my hourly rate that would cover about 3-4 weeks, and it is close to what my long form projects usually come to.

Another way is to secure a day or week rate, base it on x number of days or weeks and get them to approve overages up front. As suggested, you can probably get Seattle rates in the Business Forum or online somewhere.

[David Roth weiss]

As Bill says, this is subject that is often dicussed on the Cow Biz and Marketing Forum. I will repeat here the same advice I give over there, which is, never work on a flat rate (if you can avoid it).

As outgoing (thankfully) Sec. of Defense Don Rumsfeld once said, “there are knowns and there are unknowns, and there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” There are simply too many variables to accurately estimate what it will really take to deliver a finished product. You can guess of course, but if you’re wrong you will end up working for nothing at the end, and most creative people I know don’t do great work when they aren’t feeling like they’re being paid less they are worth. So, guessing usually ends up being bad for the editor and bad for client.

So, ther bottom line is establish a rate card and get yourself paid a finite amount of money for a finite period of time, by the hour, day, week, or month. Give the client an estimate, but make sure they know its not the “sticker price” for an infinite amount of your time and your services.

DRW

[Boyd Mccollum]

Obviously, rates vary based on a wide variety of factors. And what you might charge for a 30 sec spot would be different then what you would charge for a long form project. Here’s a good starting point to look at (from the Motion Picture Editors Guild):

https://www.editorsguild.com/v2/wages.htm

In your case, being more long form, I might do ~$2,000 a week, based on a 10 hour/day x 5 days a week. I would be clear up front with the hours/day and days/week and charge 1.5x for OT. You could also make this rate based on a 40 hour/week.

Salary is always a negotiation, so you may come in high, and he may make a counter proposal, and then you arrive at something that you both can live with. As others have mentioned, be careful of flat rates – you could find yourself working for some ridiculously low hourly rate.

Rates can also vary if you are using your own equipment (at your place or having to take it to their location) or theirs, and if you are doing DV/HDV vs. Uncompressed HD, etc.

[Mark Suszko]

I think a careful distinction should be made between the terms “flat rate” and “flat fee”. Flat RATE means as long as they keep making you work you keep getting paid more. Flat FEE means you are paid once, at a pre-set total dollar amount and if you put too many hours into the job, dividing time by rate you could wind up losing money on the deal. So I NEVER advise a flat FEE. But for an open-ended project that could go on indefinitely, yes, a flat RATE means you keep getting paid more the more you work, as you go, that can be good…

I always want to put my two cents in when somebody throws around the “thousand per finished minute” rule of thumb.

We used that rule back in the eighties when we did offline/online umatic and betacamSP to 1-inch a/b-roll linear production, with some limited DVE and chyron work, and this rate rule seemed to work out pretty well more often than not. It was probably easier to adhere to since there was not a lot of variability in the available technology until D-2 digibeta came in. Now we have at least six formats going right now that I can think of at the moment. There’s probably more.

Twenty-odd years later, I don’t know for sure that the kilobuck per finished minute rate “guide” means anything anymore. We could produce anything from lowly talking heads with imported powerpoint slides to HD-originated spots targeted for national distribution. Projects can be done in a garage greenscreen studio or on location in distant lands, and target markets are anything from Discovery HD to You Tube. Rates and quality levels are all over the map. Formats are too. There is no such thing as pure offline/online anymore, heck, linear is pretty rare now. The quarter-million-dollar suite of the 80’s is now a $2k desktop or even LAPTOP computer in a spare bedroom. Depending on the job and who is working on it with what tools, a grand per finished minute might be way overpriced now. With HD being the new gotta-have gimmick, it could also wind up woefully underbid, if you don’t pay attention.

So what kind of “standard” does that sound like?

I guess if everybody in the meeting understands the unsaid assumptions underlying the kilobuck premise, you can still use the rule and have it mean something. To me though, it seems a dangerous way to get yourself in a situation where you have accidentally overbid or underbid a job by using this rule of thumb with clients who don’t understand all those variables mentioned above. Clients are used to commoditization: gas is x bucks a gallon, eggs are x bucks a dozen, a haircut at Joes is seven bucks no matter who you are. But service and process-based creative work, crafts-work, of the sort we do, defies commodity thinking because each job is so unique. You can approximate a well-understood assignment to a pretty close tolerance but you’ll never quite nail it 100 percent in advance.

You could try running a couple scenarios yourself on the back of an envelope and see the variability I’m talking about.

I would look for some other way to ballpark a rate than the kilobuck-minute, myself. I think, like puka shell necklaces and Members-Only jackets, it’s had it’s day.

[David Roth weiss]

[Mark Suszko] “I think a careful distinction should be made between the terms “flat rate” and “flat fee”.”

Okay, good point!!! I’ll change to recommending a “flat fee” from this point on.

[Mark Suszko]

No, no NO, David!:-) You have it exactly backwards. Never charge a flat fee, sometimes a flat RATE is okay.

[Greg Ball]

I wouldn’t use the $1,000 per minute calculator, or your’ll be editing 30 second ad spots for $500….ouch

[Boyd Mccollum]

([David Roth Weiss] “[Mark Suszko] “I think a careful distinction should be made between the terms “flat rate” and “flat fee”.”

Okay, good point!!! I’ll change to recommending a “flat fee” from this point on.”

It’s an excellent distinction, though I imagine that folks do use the two terms somewhat interchangeably – I think Mark’s suggestion would be to use “flat rate” (pay ongoing) not “flat fee” (paid once).

I would be careful even with a flat rate, and define what that means – is it for 30 hours, 40 hours, 60 or 80 hours a week? Is it for 8, 10, 12 hours a day? A flat rate can quickly become a “flat fee” for a specified time period, and you could easily go from making a good hourly rate to making below minimum wage.