baptism
 

I have been asked to video a baptism but not sure how much to charge. Who here has done one and how much do you charge? What all do you put in the video? I know all the actual video but do you do a highlight video with it? Any tip would be appreciated.

If you have a minimum I would charge that, I have a minimum charge which equals a certain amount per hour. And then maybe figure into it how much per copy etc. But ultimately your time is your time, if the event really means a lot to them, they should not mind paying you a reasonable rate.

I do baptism videos for people at my church every week. We do a small 3-4 minute 'interview' before the baptism since they are all old enough to vocalize and basically they give their testamony. If it's an infant I'm not sure what else you'd put in there. Maybe if they take some pictures of the day you could put them in with some nice music. Not sure.

Baptisms
 

I have not produced a baptism video but..... In my market, I would expect to be able to charge about $100 or so. The work is very minimal..... 2 hours of time including drivign to the event, shooting the 5 minutes, adding another few minutes of interview shooting, and then the 1-3 hours editing, 1 hour rendering & re-rendering, and 1 hour mastering and burning a DVD. Looks to be about 5 hours MAX of work, and for a custom production that is a pretty darn good. price. As far as how many cameras, I would expect that one woudl be enough.

jason

I have filmed adult baptisms at our church. Getting good sound is critical, so use a wireless mike on the baptiser (not the baptisee as it will get damp!).

For the final momento DVD, I usually add the opening and closing prayers, the actual baptism on a static tripod camera (set this up beforehand), and the encouragement talk afterwards.

The camcorder(s) just pickup sound in their mikes, but in Vegas MSP, I edit in the good sound from the audio recorder to produce final result. I may then drop the camcorder sound depending on the circumstances.

Time to edit?
 

So what is your time to edit with what you described?

jason

Lalo, I've done 1 infant baptism, never did an adult baptism. For the baby baptism, I started out with a standard establishing shot of the church exterior; shot video outside of out-of-town & apparently seldom seen relatives arriving, hugging, etc.; video of the baptism ceremony inside the church, then went to the house of the baptismee where there was food & drink for all (captured every person there on tape at least once while he/she was chit-chatting but never w/food in mouth), and ended with the opening of presents.

That was a couple of years ago. I don't remember the time it took to edit, but it went quickly. I only used ambient sound, no music. I'm not at home now so I can't check, but I think the total run time of the disk was 35-40 minutes. It was straight documentary style with a little artistic flare thrown in, but no highlight segment.

This was a very large congregation, and they apparently had baptisms only once or twice a month. For the one I taped, there were probably 20 or so baptisms. Each was individual, but it was an assembly line. As soon as one family unit was finished, that group moved away and the next group stepped up to the font.

In that case, wiring the officiant for sound was impractical. If you're doing a baby baptism, better to wire the godfather. He's close to the action and doesn't get wet -- unless from the baby's personal fountain.

I would say the actual time in edit is about 2 hours after capturing. Putting the clips on the timeline is realtively straightforward, editing the good sound in SoundForge and then syncing it in VMSP can be time consuming. Because of sound/video drift you have to check all is well for the entire piece, but if less than 10minutes of footage not usually a problem.

The next stage is using DVDA to prepare the DVD burn, but I am fairly good(!) at that simple task! But I cannot stress the importance of checking the result as you go, or else you make a lot of frisbees!

Thanks David, Jason, Jacob,Tom and Stephen for the advice. Apparently the price I quoted them was more than what they were wanting to pay because she made some excuse that they had bought a camcorder or had someone bringing a camcorder. At least now I'll be prepared for the next one that comes along.