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storyboard costs
I understand fully that it is difficult to get an exact number on something like this but I am usually an editor and so am out of my elemnt.
I am wondering what to charge a new client to make a story board for a 60 to 90 second sales video. It would comsit of 12 full color boards.
The client will provide a rough treatment idea that needs to be flushed out and polished. I expect the project to take 3 days to execute, but am wondering how to charge for the random costs that may p[op up.
Any other advice and or things to watch out for you can provide will be well appreaciated.
Please ask any questions that I need to answer to get better help from you guys. -
12 Replies
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It really depends on how hard or complicated the boards are.
Personally, I try to never use storyboards unless a client demands it. As a director I usually don’t need them myself… and the problem becomes that once a client sees something one way, that becomes what they expect and are sometimes disappointed by a different result… even if that different result is better.
But… you didn’t ask about their usage, you asked about costs.
Some boards we have done are super easy, others were more complicated. For the easy ones, we just use found images or comp-resolution photos from iStock and that usually does a pretty serviceable job. These are cheap and easy… maybe only an hour or so worth of work. That falls into the “couple of hundred dollars” range if it’s a client who is insisting on the boards. If it’s a potential client that we are trying to land with a proposal, then the boards are gratis, of course.
We have had existing clients that wanted much “better” boards, for some reason. One big corporate client of ours had a lady who absolutely positively could not visualize anything… even though she was head of marketing (go figure). For her, we made (at her instance) very nice and detailed boards… with extremely detailed custom illustrations for each frame. I think those boards ended up costing her a couple of thousand dollars.
And, by the way, she still couldn’t visualize it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Todd: LOL! Been there, done that, got the t-shirt:-)
Make a distinction in detail level between storyboards and a detailed “pre-visualization”. One shows the keyframes of the major shots to give asense of the overall composition. The other is an animatic cartoon of the whole thing, as real-time as possible. That represents a spectrum of time and money that can be spent.
If you can get them to define how detailed to get, you can then figuer the hours and multiply by your rate. On the low end, something made with photoshop, poser and sketch-up, up to ten simple key frames, that’s maybe an hour per frame? On the high end, a very realistic pre-vis DVD or web stream with all the stuff accurately modeled, textured, and mapped out in exactly scaled CGI, with the dolly tracks and jib angles all computed against the time of day and sun position? With all the music and SFX tracks and narration/dialog? Yeah, that’s more. Because you’re essentially doing the job twice.
I remember a spot in the 80’s that ran in Chicago, big ad agency. They loved the roughly-animated sketch-based animatic so much, the client said “run that on the air just like that”. They never did shoot the actual spot, just bought time and played the animatic, which was maybe five still frames of pen and ink sketches with touches of water color pencil shading, and a few x/y DVE moves.
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[Mark Suszko] “They never did shoot the actual spot, just bought time and played the animatic”
I believe that this has happened more than once. MANY more times than once. We’ve had it happen with sketches used in print ads. As Todd mentioned there are people out there who truly cannot “see” anything that’s not literally in front of them. Whenever possible I try to avoid them.
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Do you think your client can afford this quality?
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I got one worse that that, Fernando; it was just one frame, stick figures, drawn on a napkin. When I got done with producing and editing it, the client said it was my best work ever.
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[Mark Suszco] “I got one worse that that…”
Worse? I thought that was very cool (kidding).
In advertising we used to create storyboards to present ideas for the clients. Those were done by a professional drawer. So, what he charged was the real cost of the Storyboard.
For production, a napkin can be OK, if you can understand what you originally draw there. LOL.
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Fernando…are you available to do some freelance storyboarding?
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Now I don’t know if you’re serious or you’re just kidding me, Chris. =)
But yes, I’m available.
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I was kidding based on the images in your other post. They made me laugh because they look like the storyboards I draw! We often have clients want storyboards but not want to pay for them. So I’ll sketch something out (as best I can) for them. When I’m doing them just for myself, they look like what you posted!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Something was telling me that the storyboard I posted wasn’t the best way to promote me as a storyboard artist. LOL.
Anyway, no straight answer for Sebastian. Last time I checked, a professional drawer was charging around 300 pesos per slide (around 22 dollars). Those drawings were used as final in a video. A storyboard sketch could be different in price. But that was here in my dear country.
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