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Let’s play “Bid This Crazy Edit Job” Give me your hypothetical price?
Just for fun, here’s an edit job that I’m currently working on. I’m dying to know what any editors out there would quote for the job. After working on this for months I am fantasizing about the bill to keep me at the keyboard but I’ve completely lost track of my hours.
Without giving every single detail, just throw out a number that you think would be reasonable. Ballpark is obviously ok. Please include the hourly rate you used to calculate or just bid the number of hours you think it would take to do it.
Here we go-
80 hours of archived Beta tape of a television show. Digitize (showing my age on that word)cut the show into it’s original segments and lost the commercial breaks and slates, (about 10-15 segments per show) for a total of around 900 segments.
Create 9 finished DVDs ready for duplication that are approximately an hour to an hour and a half each. Each DVD consists of compilations of show segments like Best of (type of segment)or discussion topic specific clips. You choose the segments with no direction from client.
Add custom art background and titles using Photoshop files supplied by client. No need to reinvent the wheel on these, just follow the design elements from the art.
DVD menus are fairly simple and use client art for design scheme. Each segment must be marked as a chapter and begin on the segment title screen.
Audio is no issue as the master tapes are fine. Add a few little flourishes ere and there to cover edits, but otherwise not much else for audio.
Not sure what other details to include, so give me your best guess.
I’m dying over here. This will entertain me. Help a fellow editor out?
ps- Don’t hate, but I’m using FCPx
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12 Replies
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[Karen McCrocklin] “80 hours of archived Beta tape of a television show. Digitize (showing my age on that word)cut the show into it’s original segments”
100 hours to capture those 80. Say you have 80 tapes…one hour long. I always add 15 min to that time for prep and organization…so 100 hours.
[Karen McCrocklin] “and lost the commercial breaks and slates, (about 10-15 segments per show) for a total of around 900 segments.”
Maybe 10-12 hours to cut out the slates and act breaks on all of that. But then this is what gets me. You aren’t making DVDs of the shows without breaks…but you are culling BEST OF segments from those, without direction. Why are you cutting out breaks and slates if you aren’t even going to output those?
[Karen McCrocklin] “Create 9 finished DVDs ready for duplication that are approximately an hour to an hour and a half each. Each DVD consists of compilations of show segments like Best of (type of segment)or discussion topic specific clips. You choose the segments with no direction from client.”
They trust that your idea of BEST OF is theirs too? I’d be skeptical of this…you might make a DVD and they will go “where’s clip X? And why did you add clip Y?” For you to scan through 80 hours of footage, to find 13 and a half hours of BEST OF footage…I’d add another 100 hours for that. Maybe 110, because there might be some back and forth questions to the client about some things.. And then to author 9 DVDs that are 1.5 hours in length…with client art, and with the segments all marked and tagged…I’d budget 2 hours per DVD, and not include ENCODE time. So 18 hours. But add 2 hours for buffer, just in case. 20 hours.
We are now up to 230 hours. Normally I charge $150/hour for me and my system, but that’s for shorter term things. This is a 4 week job…one month (22 days, not including weekends). So I’ll then just go with my daily rate of $650 (equipment included in that).
That brings me to $14,950…but I’ll say $15,000 even. As an estimate. Price could be less if things go smooth, more if client wants changes.
That might seem like much for some…but isn’t monkey work. Not just capturing and trimming out black and then making DVDs. This calls for creative thought…it’s up to you to watch all 80 hours and make the call as for what to include in these compilation DVDs. And then make sure the clips blend, and that they all time out properly to 1.5 hours.
Also know that I’m coming from a town where post isn’t cheap….Los Angeles.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Shane, you’ve made me so very happy and confirmed what I was thinking.
Although I came at it a little differently, we’re closing in on the right ballpark. I have more hours in it at a little lower price so it balances out. Better yet, the certainty of impending changes is going to up the price.
I actually went through the whole thing and clipped and keyworded so I charged more for that in the beginning. It’s made compiling the final edits a lot easier.
You’re right, I wasn’t that clear about cutting the breaks. I’m not really cutting them out, just cutting the good segments and leaving the junk.
Trusting my decisions on “Best of” isn’t that big of a deal because this show is fairly repetitive. It’s just about covering the common topics. The client let me know what topics they were interested in, so finding the appropriate segments isn’t too hard. It’s also about the visual balance and variety of guests that correspond with the topic.
I am a solo editor with one giant client and I sit here all day wondering if I’m living in the real world. Taking the time to post such a thorough reply has made the world feel a little bit smaller and I now see rainbows and unicorns through the window. Except it’s dark and I have another 6 hours of editing tonight. 🙂
Thanks!
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[Karen McCrocklin] “After working on this for months I am fantasizing about the bill to keep me at the keyboard but I’ve completely lost track of my hours.”
Have you not received any money yet? I hope you’ve been paid a portion of your fee as you’re working.
If not, do you have a written agreement regarding your fees, the deliverables, the deadlines?
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Shane has nailed it, but I would add an allowance for storage throughout the project. 80hrs of footage is going to need something secure and reasonable speed for editing with. A rough calculation of ProRes SD files for 80 hours will be at least 1.6TB. Allowing for project files, output renders, title sequences, finished DVDs and 20% run over, you will be getting close to 3TB.
If you want to store secure and fast, a Pegasus R6 running RAID 6 should do the trick for you, but that is around $2700?
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I nominate Shane’s post for Best Answer of the week.
A suggestion when setting the figure: a lot of research has gone into the psychology specifics of pricing, and you should avoid giving very round numbers when you make a bid or a billing, as it promotes client haggling.
If you give a non-rounded number, like $5,132.45, versus $5,000.00, clients tend to just accept it as fact, and not as a “made-up” price point from which to begin negotiating down.
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I’ve been paid a portion. I work for this client exclusively and they keep me very busy so we’ve evolved to a more casual relationship. There is great power in trust built over time. They asked me for a ballpark before I started and I’ve notified them every time something has added to the cost. That said, I am ready to get this out of my life and send the final invoice.
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Yep. He nailed it.
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excellent point about the numbers. I do that a lot when I dont know the client well.
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Thanks.
Since I don’t do many of these types of jobs (like three in my career thus far), because typically I’m a hired freelancer that works on client systems, or my own system with a weekly rate, I wasn’t sure I’d get the numbers right…thought they might be a tad high for some. I have lost a few jobs due to bids like mine that the clients deemed too high. And they might have been, for what the client needed…simple basic stuff.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I bill them separately for the cost of storage and consumables. This thing is so gigantic that I have about 5 TB in it including the edit files but I’m not as organized as I should be.
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