Live event costs?
 

Hi guys,

Most of the time I make community videos and my fee is already set by the people I work for due to the money being allocated out of public funding. However a collegue and I have recently been asked to video a live event.

The client was not happy with the last company that did some work for him. However it seems that said video company charged him on a per copy basis rather than a job basis. This struck me as rather strange. The company in question is quite a professional outfit from the sounds of it.

Now the reason I find their prices odd is because the live event in question was a highly professional stage dance at a large venue with a 2 camera setup. The length of the event, and hence the final video/s was 2.5 hours long. To me this sounds like a huge undertaking, and yet the last company do do this job only charged £10 per copy for 150 duplications.

To me £1500 for such a large job sounds ridiculous (even more so because he said he was expecting to return any unsold copies!) Considering the quality of editing the client is after if we were to charge such an amount we would barely be making any money. I have done some nosing around and although I can't find many video places that will quote for such a long job it seems that almost £9k seems pretty normal.

What would you guys charge for such a thing?

The event would be shot over 2 nights with 2 cameras on each night. The sound would be a direct feed from the theatre's own mics, and the client requires some fancy titles, as well as the editing itself to have some 'thought' put into it as he put it. Further he is wanting it to be edited and duplicated in 2 weeks max.