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The Cheese Grater is back
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[Herb Sevush] “But the difference is I don’t charge for my editing rig”
OK, I don’t understand that argument. I get that in your case, you may be charging a package price including complete creative services. But, if you are a freelance editor and not charging a kit fee for a laptop system or an hourly rate for a home studio, then you have only yourself to blame. A day rate for a home studio – editor + gear/room – should be minimum of $1K-2K/day in most medium US markets. If you aren’t charging that, then you are really on a slippery downward slope.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “if you are a freelance editor and not charging a kit fee for a laptop system or an hourly rate for a home studio, then you have only yourself to blame. A day rate for a home studio – editor + gear/room – should be minimum of $1K-2K/day in most medium US markets. If you aren’t charging that, then you are really on a slippery downward slope.”
Perhaps your market allows for this added charge but larger markets like NY, LA, and San Francisco don’t allow for this at all.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
[greg janza] “Camera owners have a significantly higher day rate to cover the high cost of their equipment. But most freelance editors don’t have the option to charge a premium for their computer equipment on top of their daily rate.”
Wrong. SO WRONG. Computers, hard drives, editing software. That isn’t cheap either. THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS of investment. If you aren’t adding that equipment rental to your fee…that’s on you. ANYONE who doesn’t do that, is doing a disservice to not only themselves, but to others. And setting client expectations COMPLETELY wrong. How on earth can you invest thousands of dollars into equipment…and then the upkeep of that equipment…and then updating of that equipment…without charging a fee? Why do camera ops get to do this, but not editors? I don’t get your logic at all.
Part of the price of food in a store, is the cost of not only the food in the store, but the workers, the electricity, the rent on the land or building (or mortgage and property taxes)…the equipment used to track the sales of that food. ALL of it. That’s built into the cost. YOUR equipment should also be built into the cost of your doing business.
My kid’s girl scout troop did a project…track the cost of one type of food, in this case, an apple, across several types of stores and locations. Corner market in Los Angeles, large grocery store in Los Angeles. Same types of businesses, but then in Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and New York…rural and urban areas. Track the cost difference. The apple costs significantly higher in larger cities, opposed to the rural areas, in the same state. And differed from state to state. Reasons? Rent, electricity, wages….lots of factors.
If you are an editor with a laptop and a hard drive…you charge a kit fee. Smaller than someone who uses a tower, two monitors, a RAID and a broadcast monitor…but you charge a fee. Where I might charge $500/week for my setup, you might charge $50/week for yours. BUT YOU CHARGE. Overhead…someone working out of their garage (me) would charge less than a colorist occupying a lush bay in a big building. Where they charge $350/hour, I charge $125/hour. Less overhead. But that is the fee for me, and my system….on a daily rate. Weekly is cheaper, due to longer term employment/rental. Just like renting a house on a monthly basis is cheaper than a hotel room…when calculated over a month.
MY GOD…are there that many people NOT charging for their equipment out there? Is this why many clients seem shocked when I add that cost to a bid for services? to my estimated costs?
It’s bad enough that projects have money for the camera people, and their equipment, but then seem to have zero left (or very little) when it comes to post…so ask for a HUGE discount on our end. But to then not charge for the equipment? You get an F on this business school test.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Andy Field] “for those of us who write and edit for a living, a useful keyboard is essential – when you’re just typing how great FCP is, it may not be as important.
“Then please point out for me the keyboards that have not been “useful” (your word, not mine) that have shipped with ANY NLE including laptops in the past 10 years.
I’ll wait.
My point is that the level of silly carping about insignificant details has risen to insane levels lately.
Don’t like the “feel” of a particular keyboard? Bring your own. ALL computers have USB ports that accept ALL keyboards. This is NOT that difficult. Period.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Shawn Miller] “I guess we’ll have to see how these renderes run Metal vs Cuda, but for around $3k US, you can build or buy a very fast workstation for GPU rendering. If you’re doing CPU bound rendering, you’ll still have to pay a premium for high core count Xeon processors, but on Windows and Linux you can at least get dual processors.
Shawn
“This WILL be interesting.
Word on the street is that the next Rev of FCP X (which everyone guesses will likely show up at the Creative Summit sometime in Oct/Nov.) won’t have many (if any) new features – but will be a massive effort from the dev team to re-write huge swaths of the core program code to be optimally Metal compliant.
The thinking is that this alone will yield massive benefits for ALL X users – and, of course – help the FCP X truly shine on the coming New MacPros.
We’ll see.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “The thinking is that this alone will yield massive benefits for ALL X users – and, of course – help the FCP X truly shine on the coming New MacPros. “
I doubt this would ever happen, but one interesting play would be if Apple automatically bundled its pro applications (FCPX, Motion, Compressor, Logic Pro X) with the purchase of a Mac Pro ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Shane Ross] “You get an F on this business school test.”
Shane, you made me laugh so kudos to you on your post. The perfect way to discuss this would be over cocktails but in lieu of that, all I can say is that the business has changed dramatically since I began freelancing in the mid-90’s. I’m happy for those that can maintain a premium charge because I agree with everything you’ve stated but at least in my market, larger economic forces dictate rates and if freelancers aren’t flexible they’ll simply have less work offered to them.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
[greg janza] “larger economic forces dictate rates and if freelancers aren’t flexible they’ll simply have less work offered to them.”
I’m with Shane. I don’t see that either. Lower rates, yes. But there are still rates. For example, one of my f/l gigs has been location edits for conferences. If I bring my laptop edit system there’s a kit fee. If they don’t like my rate for it, they have the option to supply me with a system. Some do, some don’t.
If I book a room in at a small production company or editorial boutique to edit for clients I bring in there, I still have to pay the host company a rental fee for the room and gear. That certainly gets added back into my invoice. Maybe with little or no mark-up, but I certainly don’t eat that cost. There’s quite a lot of companies with that sort of rental business model in NYC and LA.
I really don’t see those parameters being different in any market based on people I know around the country. What does tend to happen is flat bidding for a job; but in those cases, the bid includes some factor for gear.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Interesting idea Oliver.
That would be interesting.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[greg janza] “the business has changed dramatically since I began freelancing in the mid-90’s. I’m happy for those that can maintain a premium charge because I agree with everything you’ve stated but at least in my market, larger economic forces dictate rates and if freelancers aren’t flexible they’ll simply have less work offered to them.”
So…they can take advantage of you and you let them? yeah, I’ll need a few whiskys in me to let that one settle in.
I do realize that the market from the 1990s has changed. Not longer can you charge $350/hour for editing, or charge $2500/week for an Avid. Then again, back then, an Avid ran $95,000 – $200,000. Yes, things are cheaper now…you can edit on a laptop and hard drive, but that will still run you $4000 or so. So bill for it. $50 a week…even $25. But bill for it.
I’m damn sure that the company’s that are hiring you charge for everything they do. Corporate clients, real estate people, grocery stores, lawyers. Ask them if they are only billing for their hours…and not including overhead in their costs. People would laugh at you.
No, businesses do EVERYTHING THEY CAN to pay less. Send production overseas…cheaper labor, cheaper location rentals. They do what they can to lower the cost of labor..and then say “I saved X dollars! where’s my bonus!” Stick to your guns, say “I cost this much,” and bill separate for the kit fee. If they ask why they need to pay for that, say “to pay for the equipment I use on your project. This much for me, this much for my equipment. If you want to only pay me…you aren’t going to get anything in return, because I can’t use my equipment.”
They might come back with “But X company over there is cheaper, they aren’t charging for their equipment.”
Let them go to them. See how long that company actually stays in business. Or see how low the quality is..and the client might come back to you. I have done this…I have been asked to do a job, told I was too expensive. So I said, “sorry, but that’s my cost….me and my equipment.” “But they are cheaper!” “Go to them.” 2 months later, they came to me to fix what the other company did. Work was sub standard due to the inexperience of the editor, and they lacked proper equipment to do the job right.
Yeah, it might hurt to not get the job. I’ve been there, been living off scraps. But you can’t give in. Once you give in, then you set client expectations and they NEVER pay you what you are worth, or for the equipment costs, so you are taking that out of your pay. Meanwhile, they are making more money because they saved money on you…and now they expect EVERYONE in that area to charge the rate they are getting you for.
I need a whisky.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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