Video prices are based on a number of factors:
- Hiring talent, such as actors or hosts, will cost you extra and you should include this in your budget. However, unless you’re doing a big commercial production for TV, you probably won’t need to hire talent. For branded short docs, testimonials, and product videos that are mostly interviews and b-roll, try featuring your employees or customers.
- Time – This is directly linked to day rates. Day rates are so high because they generally include pre-production work as well as gear costs. Since most videographers charge by the day, your video production costs will go up with more shooting days. Using the above rates, you could expect a three-day shoot to cost around $3,000 to $8,000 for a two-person crew.
Also be aware that when you hire a shooter for a half-day, they will charge you more than half their day rate. This is to make up for lost time and money when they can’t schedule a second gig that day. - Travel Expenses – You can spend as much money flying out a production crew to shoot on location as on the production itself. Besides transportation costs, travel expenses also include hotels and meals. The best way to avoid these costs is to hire local production crews or freelancers who won’t have to travel. Besides, even if you hire a production company that isn’t local, they may end up subcontracting the work out to local freelancers to lower their own costs.
- Equipment – Even when a videographer doesn’t need to rent equipment, they will still charge you for equipment costs. This usually is a part of their day rate, and it helps them protect their expensive equipment. It also helps cover the original cost of purchasing equipment.
On a bigger production, a crew may need to rent cameras, lighting, grips, mics, or other film gear. Most production companies will pass these rental costs directly onto you as expenses. If they don’t, they may include rentals in their flat-rate fees. You can save money here by being flexible about camera and gear requirements. - Post-Production – Much of the work that goes into producing a high-quality video is done in post-production, so budget well for this. In post-production, your video will go through story editing — usually with multiple rounds of feedback from your company — as well as coloring and grading. Video editors tend to specialize in just one of these, so you may have to hire a different editor for coloring than the one you hire for story edits. Motion graphics, or titles, can bring about separate video production costs as well.
- Save With Freelancers – If your team can handle some areas of production in-house, such as script, location scouting, or editing, then you can lower your video production costs. You can save money by hiring a freelance crew (a couple of shooters and sound techs) instead of a full-service production company. However, if no one on your team knows how to manage video production, you will get better results by going to a production company and letting them handle all the details.
Custom Video Vs. Templates
Most of the above information applies to Custom Videos (that is: videos created from scratch for a client). Many companies, in anticipation of Internet work, have pre-designed and created what are called, “Templates”. These are carefully designed and scripted videos that contain placeholders. A placeholder is a block that can be easily edited to change the information within the block. For instance, an image contained within an Image Block can be easily changed to a different image in minimal time, or text within a Text Block can also be easily edited quickly.
Since Templates are already designed, can be easily edited (changed to suit needed purposes), and can be reused for other video purposes, you can save yourself or your company loads of money if you can find a template to meet your video needs.
RTB-Enterprises has developed hundreds of templates to meet many different client purposes and if you can find one to suit your requirements, with minimal editing (mainly image and text changes), you can save hundreds of dollars in your video creation.
The popularity of online video has skyrocketed in recent years, and it’s quickly become the visual content medium of choice for many businesses and brands across every industry.
The reason is clear: video works (and the numbers prove it.) More conversions, more engagement, better ROI, and of course the simple fact that people just like watching videos.
So why not give them what they want?
If you’re ready to jump on board with video, you’ve got a few options. You could hire a professional or agency. This will likely yield the most high-quality results, but it’s also the most expensive option and may take much longer. You could hire a student or amateur, less expensive, but the quality could be lacking. Or you could choose from one of RTB Enterprises pre-created video templates and let us professionally edit it to meet your needs and save hundreds to thousands of dollars in the process.