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What to Charge?
Hello,
A guy hired me out to key some footage he shot. It’s intended to be a talking head flash video for a web site. There are about 2 dozen clips all adding up to about 5 minutes of video (don’t ask). The footage is very difficult to key. The subject was shot on a poorly lit green screen, and getting it to look halfway decent is a task (the guy who hired me is not post-production savy and was unable to generate an effective key). I am delivering the clips with an alpha channel so the web guy can lay them over the site.
What should I charge for something like this? Or maybe I should ask what you guys would charge. Thanks a lot.
Aaron
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4 Replies
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Just charge by the hour. Your hours will add up in cleaning up his work. It’d be much faster on your end if you could just select a color, key it out and render a clip for him. Don’t be penalized by poor production.
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“Lack of preparation on YOUR part does not constitute an emergency on OUR part”
-slogan on a friend’s desk plaque.You charge an hourly rate, like Grinner says, and if they make the job harder, they deserve to pay more because it TAKES more to make it right.
It will be interesting to total up the bills later and see if it would have been cheaper to get a better, more expensive guy to shoot the original footage. The people that say “fix it in post” rarely understand what that costs versus getting it right in the first place.
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Along the same lines, while I’ll certainly bid with estimates on entire projects, when it comes to post jobs like this I wont estimate at all. I’ll charge hourly. If the client has a budget I’ll stick to that but I warn them upfront that I can’t promise the fix will be all that it can be.
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[Mark Suszko] “You charge an hourly rate, like Grinner says, and if they make the job harder, they deserve to pay more because it TAKES more to make it right.”
[Mark Suszko] “The people that say “fix it in post” rarely understand what that costs versus getting it right in the first place.”
As well charge it right and don’t go below the line. Set a standard that these type of work, doesn’t go cheap. If they have that mentally of “fix it in post”, then might charge it fair or right. After all you’ll be doing most of the hard work in the project.
I agree with the response that you charge by the hour. Going blackbox or package on this type of work may put you in the ditch on the long run.
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