How Much Does Video Production Cost?

How does a video production team price out a project?

One of the first questions we receive when working with a new client is related to the cost of video production. Whether we're speaking with a small business owner who desperately needs to account for every dollar of an ad budget or a project manager at an ad agency tasked with finding a video crew to help with a more extensive budget campaign, the question is the same. What is the cost? We understand the importance of knowing an exact and accurate cost of video. However, you must know facts about what drives the price up or down so you don't make a mistake and get ripped off. 

It's essential to start with what video companies don't tell you they account for when building out a budget. Yes, we're pulling back the curtain and sharing the juicy details behind pricing! Most clients' biggest misunderstanding about video production is the hours spent behind the scenes. Clients want to pay for A, but you also have to do B, C, & D so they can get A. It's not that video production companies are evil; they just (oftentimes) wrongly assume a customer doesn't care about the behind-the-scenes work. 

Preproduction & Production. 

Good videographers must understand the business before they pull the camera out of the case. More importantly, they must understand how this video will help the business. This takes time. Sometimes it's 1-3 meetings with clients, back-and-forth phone calls and emails, or even scouting locations. There's also behind-the-scenes work like watching reference videos, studying competitors of that business, or researching what industry leaders are doing in another part of the country. There might also be production schedule books, shot lists, and scripting that need the team's full attention. Combined, this can take as little as 1 hour or as much as 20 hours. These elements are factored into your final price when getting a quote. 

Editing & Post Production. 

The video production team has a lot of work to do after the video is made too. For example, a client might want to do a first look in person with the editor. At the very least, the client will need multiple revisions communicated through email and phone calls. Some companies even build re-shooting into their pricing, but we prefer not to because, more often than not, if good planning happens, re-shooting doesn't need to.

Editing can be the most significant part of a project from a time standpoint. For example, most half-day shoots equate to at least a half day of editing, but more often, an entire day. Something like a 1:2 ratio for time shot versus time editing. Why does editing take so much longer than shooting? Even with a great script and precise planning — creating a quality edit takes time. You might have 5 or 6 takes to sift through to pull the best portion of a line or clip from to compile one incredible clip. 

Building Out The Final Project Budget

As you can imagine, all of the minutiae on a project can add up, and at first glance, it can be tough to calculate an accurate cost for a client. Thankfully, after years of working on hundreds of projects, experienced videographers have a little more insight into how long these vital activities might take. But this still isn't a complete picture or even the most accurate way to price out a project. 

The biggest variables videographers use to price out projects are shooting time and final deliverables. At first glance, this might be confusing based on the litany of small things I've mentioned already. But shooting time and final deliverables are the best pricing indicator for video production proposals. 

An Example of Pricing. 

Why shooting time? As mentioned before, we generally have a framework for calculating editing time based on shooting time. We recently worked on a project that had four half days of shooting (or two full day), and we could consider that as the main variable when factoring their price. Quick math, four half days of shooting equals 4-8 half days of editing plus our best estimate of the preproduction work needing to before hand.

This same project had as its final deliverables one 2:00 video, and two alternative :30 cuts for social, three vertical cuts for Instagram stories, and 20 hi-res pictures. Knowing the final deliverables allowed us to see more accurately that the editing time would not be just 1:1. Considering additional cuts that needed to be made, color grading, revisions to all videos, and the tracking required for making the vertical versions for social, the ratio would be closer to 1:2. In real life, this project went well over our ratio and ended up having to eat the cost. But it wasn't too painful. In the end, it just took a little extra time, but the client and we were happy with the final product. 

Closing.

As you can see, a ton of factors determine a quote for a video. We know that the money decidedly spent the best way is best for you. We hope that this gives you a little more insight to what all goes into pricing.