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How much does it cost to make an online video?

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Let’s just get straight into it one of the main questions that we get asked all the time. How much does video production cost?

Or, “How do you price your video production?” It’s a difficult question to answer but in this article, we’ll try our best to answer, “How much do you charge for your videos?” And “How much should I charge for videos?” This article is going to address the costs associated with video production be it explainer videos, brand story video, corporate videos, online videos for social media or TV commercials.  We’re not going to be telling you all about how much we charge as a London Production Company that specialises in more high concept and high end video production. Were just going to give you all a few tips and things to take into consideration when you’re pricing your video production projects. The main things that they will price on a project is what you have to pay for your time and effort and also how much money you want to put into your pocket. We’re going to break these down in depth, these are the main things that you need to take into consideration when calculating how much will a video production will cost.

Is there a pricing formula for a video production?

Here is the pricing formula for a video production company.

  • Hours spent working on pre-production Cost
  • Talent costs and usage rights costs.
  • Casting
  • Location scouting
  • Creative development
  • Logistical Costs (Travel Etc.)
  • Crew costs
  • Catering
  • Art Department Props
  • Wardrobe
  • Equipment costs
  • Post-Production offline – number of editing days
  • Post-production online – number of days for colour grading, VFX and sound mix
  • How Much Profit You Want To Make

Put all these factors together and you have a fair price to send over to your clients.

Now lets make a cost breakdown for a typical video production inquiry.

When we get an inquiry for a video project the first thing that we think about is the things that we are going to have to pay for. So let’s just say the client contacts you and they say they want to use Lamborghini in their brand story video that they want to shoot out in Los Angeles. They also want behind-the-scenes content, they wanted to be shot on a Red DSMC2 or Arri Alexxa Cinema camera, they need a techno crane and they also need a drone.

The first thing that we’re going to get into is renting equipment, paying the crew, flights & hotels, talent, wardrobe and props. Were also going to have to contact someone out in Los Angeles for location permits and casting, so were going to also have to pay them, we are also going to need a all the equipment and specialized crew associated with the techno crane. All of this sits in the section of what we have to pay for the video production on the day of shooting.

1.How Much Does it cost to Rent video Equipment?

Here are some typical video equipment rental costs:

Camera Rental Prices

  • Arri Alexxa Mini £350
  • RED DSMC2 Dragon X 5K £250
  • SONY FS55 £150
  • SONY FS7 £150
  • Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K £100
  • DSLR SONY A7 III, GH5 £50

Lens Rental Prices

  • Zeiss Ultra Primes full set £450
  • Cooke S3 full set £500
  • Leica Summicron Full set £150
  • Zeiss CP.2 Full Set £200

Light: Small light package  £ 500

  • 3x led panels
  • 1x 1.8 HMI
  • V-locks
  • Extension lines
  • Lightstands x 4
  • Frames 1.5×1.5
  • Frost and Gels

Grip  £500

  • Wally dolly
  • Kessler Slider pod
  • Dji Ronin M
  • Sachtler tripod and Fluid head

Special Grip £5500

  • Techno crane
  • Remote Head
  • Crew x 4

Special Prop £5000

  • Lamborghini
  • Precision Driver
  • Detailing Crew
  • Insurance

    2.What are the logistic costs for a production company that needs to shoot an online video in Los Angeles?

You have to work remotely with your production manager in the location where you want to shoot. When there is an 8hr time difference this results in much longer days for both sets of crew. So keep this in mind.

After that you have the usual costs:

  • Airport Transfers
  • Flights
  • Excess bagage
  • Equipment Carnet
  • Hotels
  • Sustenance
  • Per diems
  • Float

    3.How Much Does A Videographer Cost?

For the behind the scenes video you will need to hire a videographer. Now we can’t really put an exact price on a videographer as it would depend on who you hire, but perhaps a good estimation would be £1,000 for a more experienced videographer compared to £300 for a beginner. That’s the day rate for shooting, but then you need to add on a cost for editing. So typically a behind the scenes video for a one day shoot will cost anything from £1,500 to £5000.

    4.How Should I Price My Time And Effort?

The next thing is our time and effort so we would say how much time and effort does this project entail? The shoot times are going to extend over a course of four days including the scouting and technical recce.  We also have to write a script for the story that the client wants to tell throughout the video.  Essentially you need to work out how many people and for how many days will be working on the pre-production. Best advise is whatever you estimate it will be more. However, if you price it correctly you probably wont be com putative and you wont win the job. So this is where you have to bite the bullet and just get it done as best as you can. We all do it. Pick a number, hold your breath and hope for the best. It all comes down to personel. Pick the best people for the job and you will get it done in less time with less mistakes – and that means more profit.

    5. How Long Does It Take To Edit An Online Video?

We also have to account for the time that it’s going to take to edit the video so this all sits in the category of our personal time and effort. Usually a simple edit for a short video will take around 2-3 days, however more complex edits will take much longer, typically 5-6 days. Again it all comes down to quality. The better the editor the faster you will get the job done and the better it will be. At Beast we have a 20 year history in the industry so our network is huge and we are lucky to be able to bring the best professional video editors to all of our projects, no matter how challenging the budget is.

    6. How Much Profit Should I Make With Online Video?

Our final point is how much money we want to put into our pocket? We sit and we think in depth about how much this project is actually going to cost us. First off were going to be producing this video over 4-5 weeks, so we have to take that into deep consideration. Next this music video has a story script within it so it’s probably going to take us a lot longer to edit this than just a simple one location shoot, where it’s just a bunch of performances. We’re going to have to do a lot of traveling which is also time consuming, so were also going to add that into consideration when we’re pricing the project. Usually in bellow the line video production you add a mark up of 10% and for above the line TV commercials you add a 20% mark up. Checkout Beast Los Angeles

   7. How Do I Determine My Costs & Potential Profit?

What we’ll do is we’ll calculate other costs for the rentals of the equipment, the rentals of the vehicle, the rentals of the location, the amount that we have to pay someone to come on and do behind the scenes content, the amount that is going to cost us to get a flight from London, the amount that is going to cost us to get a hotel over the course of  sevendays and we’ll stack that on top of the price for the money that we want to put in our pocket and what this is going to allow us to do is it’s going to allow us to get every single thing that we need for this video and also profit the amount of money that we want in the end. When we first started out doing video production, the music videos what we would do is I would just have one set price for all these videos and this is like one of the biggest mistakes we see a lot of people and they have video packages and with these video packages they’ll tell you how much time you get they’ll tell you how many locations you get and tell you how many shots you did which is all cool in a sense, this is kind of categorizing the videos, the amount of work that you have to put in with them. But what you also have to take into consideration is what could potentially needed to be rented for the video shoot, the artists might need a vehicle, two artists might need props, the artists might need a motel etc.

 8. How Much Should I Charge For Post-Production?

Video Production Cost
Video Production Cost

Here are some basic costs for Post-Production

  • Offline Editor £350
  • Offline Edit suite £250
  • Library Music £250-100
  • Colour Correction £150 per hour
  • Sound Mix £350
  • Output £350

So to answer the question, “How much should a video production Cost?”

The answer is, “it’s up to you to know how much you think your video production is worth and how much money you want to put into your pocket at the end of the project”. One of the biggest mistakes that we’ll see people doing is they’ll go in and they’ll price their personal video off of someone else who might be a potential competitor which makes no sense to us at all. There’s no problem with you wanting to have a higher price than someone else in your city but don’t fear that you won’t get business because you will, don’t price your own production company in London against someone else’s.

It’s up to you to know how much your production company is worth and how much money you want to put in your pocket at the end of the day, that’s not up to us.