Freelance Editing- How Much to Charge?

[Karen Grayson]

Hi,

I'm a newbie freelancer. Just graduated from t.v/broad. program.
I've been Hired as a Freelancer by a very talented but very small commercial prod. co. to work on various upcomming projects, ie. editing, shooting etc..

My first job is to edit a :15, :30 sec commercial spot for a well known local tv program. I know the editing software pretty well and have been editing various jobs at home for many months. The advertising /prod. company showed me what they are getting which is $500 for each spot [no shooting, just edit]. What is a fair price to charge?

THANK YOU ALL!
KAREN

[Don Donatello]

so are they paying you 500 and you just want to know if that's a fair rate?

or they hired you and didn't tell you what they were paying ?

all the commercial editors i know would not work for less then $500 a day.

[Karen Grayson]

hi don,

The production company is being paid by the client
$500 per :15 spot. The prod. co. wants to hire me to
edit a couple of :15 spots. Because this is my first
real paying gig, I wasn't sure what begining editors
rates are? per hour , per project etc...?

The prod. co. wants to start me out at $150 per 4 hour blocks
of time. I'm just so psyched that they are giving me this opportunity, but yet at the same time, want to be sure its a fair rate...he said he'll raise the price as their prices rise in charging the clients. Any advice / feedback is greatly appreciated.

thanks for your response
karen

[K. Forman]

Part of figuring your rate, is how much actual work experience you have, and how well you perform your edits, plus your knowledge in the field. I have roughly 4 years editing, and almost 3 doing camera work. I still consider myself a beginner.

Getting your foot in the door is the hard part, now you show them what you can do. Once you have proven yourself, your rate will go up.

[Jonathan Stanley]

Do it for whatever you can get just to have them look at your work and give you a chance. If you are good, they will want to keep you, and you can raise your price. But for now, I would do it for crackers and cheese if that is what they offered.

[Patricia Kim]

Problem with the crackers and cheese approach is that they may expect to pay that the next time, too. That happens to women a lot. Why are they telling you what they get paid? Not relevant, really, since they must know what the going market rate is for the kind of work they are asking you to do. If what they're offering seems reasonable, take it. In the meantime, check the going rates. If they like your work enough, ask for the going rates the next time around or something in between that is reasonably worked out with the client.

[K. Forman]

Mmmmm.... Crackers and cheese

[Bryan McCullough]

I charge $115/hr.

I bill out a full day at a 6 hour rate. So they'd get two hours free if they buy a full day at a time.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Bryan,

What do you include as "Editing Time" The obvious of creatively laying things on the timeline and applying effects. Do you have the same or different rates for some of the "grunt work" like:

Tape logging? Digitizing? Rendering time? printing masters to tape? DVD mastering? DVD file compilation? Making dubs of approval drafts? Etc.

BTW the project we worked on is beginning edit tonight - FINALLY

[Bryan McCullough]

Originally posted by Mike Cavanaugh

Bryan,

What do you include as "Editing Time" The obvious of creatively laying things on the timeline and applying effects. Do you have the same or different rates for some of the "grunt work" like:

Tape logging? Digitizing? Rendering time? printing masters to tape? DVD mastering? DVD file compilation? Making dubs of approval drafts? Etc.

BTW the project we worked on is beginning edit tonight - FINALLY

DVD authoring is another thing altogether (from a price standpoint).

For editing I mean basically anything that has me at the editor putting the thing together. This includes entering in the batch capture list, if there's any logging, etc.

If there are effects work to be done, like in AE, those are generally billed out as speerate works. I.E. it will cost XX for this effect or logo animation, etc.

Anything that runs without me monitoring it isn't really billed. Like rendering time. I'm not going to be billing for the hour render it does while I'm at lunch.

As with most stuff I do, and this may just be me, if I quote the client 10 hours editing for a project I'll probably actually do 20. This is because I'm always trying new things, learning, wanting to give just a bit more than is expected, etc.

Of course I don't bill that extra time over what the quote was, unless there's a change order from the client that's independent of me.

I can't wait to see how the final turns out for the canoe thing. I hope the guy I shot gave you some good material.