How much does a professional video cost?
Price and budgets are two of the most common questions when having conversations about professional filmmaking for conservation organizations and environmental nonprofits in Canada.
As an independent conservation filmmaker, my focus has always been to strive to provide value.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get for each and every dollar you spend
The difference between Price and Value is often not well understood. So, here we go: Price is what you pay, Value is what you get for each and every dollar you spend. That includes any little extras you receive, customer service, personal attention to details, fitting in rush jobs, and the fit as it pertains to a working relationship.
How much does a conservation video cost?
Ah yes! The wild card question!
First, a video doesn’t always cost thousands of dollars. That is usually reserved for longer documentaries. That’s because these films usually entail countless locations to be featured, numerous days of video work and aerial filming, and a host of other requirements which probably may mean some expenses too. If you hire a video agency that uses a full film crew, you can expect to pay more. Yes, that means everyone on a film crew needs to be paid. Including the person whose full-time job is holding a microphone boom. So you can imagine how the dollars start to add up.
Don’t sweat it, if you’re a very small conservation organization. The above usually doesn’t apply to you.
I work independently and personally do all filming and production work in house. That creates real cost savings vs farming out work to external freelancers. In most cases, I can usually shoot a one or two minute video, including aerial filming, in a few hours. For post production work, it usually takes two to three times the number of hours of filming work to produce and edit a video. So, if it takes two hours to film a video, it will take about four to six hours work to produce the final video. The reality here is that you’re most likely looking at a range of $600 to $1000.
If you’re wanting a professional filmed and produced 30-minute to one hour documentary, you can expect to pay between $10,000 and $50,000. Why such a big range? Well, there are many questions that need answering before a price quote can be determined. How many locations are involved? How many days will it take? How many people are being interviewed? How much travel is involved? Does the filmmaker need to sit for hours upon hours to locate and capture footage of a particular species?
As you can see, costs can vary greatly depending on your needs and story , and time it takes to film what you want.
Don’t fear disclosing your budget range
Your best course of action (before you dismiss doing video altogether) is to have a discussion about what kind of budget range you have for a video or professional photography. Most videographers don’t seek to know your budget range so we can privately say Hahahaha! and gobble up every last cent of those dollars. Knowing your budget range means I can work with you, problem solve, and come up with a plan to work with your budget.
Every small nonprofit can appreciate what it means to come in on budget.
For WorkCabin Creative, I have the word creative in the name for a reason. For one recent project, I lived off the grid for a week to shoot footage for an organization. I got creative with a barter on accommodations and travel that resulted in big savings for the client, and still enabled us to shoot the footage affordably.
So the takeaway is this…..
Don’t jump to conclusions or have pre-conceived ideas about pricing for conservation videos. Talk it through. Talk about your needs. Talk about your budget. Think about a true collaborative effort that can make it happen. Change your thinking from “We can’t!” to thinking “To make this happen, we need to be able to do this….” That’s what goes through my mind every time a potential customer says “We can’t afford it!”
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