[Tom Dewitt]

Cool, thanks for the advice. This gig will be 8 days, possibly a little longer. So I’m thinking of charging $1100 per day. All of the days will go beyond 8 hours so I figure that works out to a decent deal for them, but isn’t ridiculously low? That would be for me, and the FCP edit suite in midtown manhattan.
Let me know if that make sense.
Thanks

[Tom Dewitt]

thanks for the response Shane. The reason I ask is because this is a big step for me into higher profile work and I don’t want to throw a wrench in the works. Up to this point I’ve been charging $350 per day for editing and graphics. I’ve managed to do some good agency work through production companies so this new client hired me for a bigger project.

They don’t know what I made previously. It’s just hard to gauge where to price myself for this project. I priced it out through a post house that I have worked for in the past and they would charge $1200 per day for an editor and edit suite. Obviously if I charge $350 they will laugh in my face because that’s super low. So any help would be awesome.

thanks,
Tom

[Tom Dewitt]

If you are serious about making a living at it, I would go for a Mac Pro. Video is so demanding that you need as much power as possible and a Mac Pro isn’t much more than a Mac Book Pro, but it is much more powerful. 8 cores vs. 2. Of course if you travel a lot or edit on the road then you need a laptop. The Mac Pro also offers more expandability. Down the road if you want to get a card for it from AJA or Blackmagic you can. You can add hard drives to it etc.

[Tom Dewitt]

Are you cutting a 16:9 commercial or 4:3? The HDV footage is 16:9 and if you are trying to make it into 16:9 DV NTSC you need to use a DV NTSC anamorphic sequence to maintain the aspect ratio. Or just crop the edges of the HDV footage in a 4:3 DV NTSC sequence.