Renting my own edit suite to myself
 

I work at a small company where we do essentially everything in house. I talked to my boss this morning about renting our edit suite for my freelance work, and I am looking for opinions on what I should pay him to use the equipment. Can anyone help?

Our primary suite consists of a Dual 2.5 Ghz Mac G5, a low-end JVC DV deck, a consumer TV and a Quantum DLT 4000. I don't know what the going rate for a Final Cut suite is in Oregon, but a Media Composer offline suite goes for around $95/hour at a high-end house in Portland. It would not be profitable for me to pay that much for our suite, which is obviously not comparable to the $95/hour suites in PDX, but I also don't want to trick my boss into an unfairly low rate.

Here in L.A. you can get a decent edit suite (well equipment) for around 600-1000 a week. That is for an avid set up. I think you should factor in that you're not using the more expensive avid setup, and take it from there. I would say a fair price is closer to 95 a day then 95 an hour.

Nick,
Thank you for the reply. I'll take that info to my boss, as I'm going to negotiate the rate with him this week. It sounds to me like Mission Control in Portland has some extremely high rates if you can get an Avid suite for as low as $600/week in LA.

Why don't you let him decide how much to charge you? He's the businessman. It's not as though he will figure you tricked him, if you give him the ability to decide for himself. You know he'll be applying an Employee Discount, anyway. Especially if things are slow right now.

You could also offer to buy him some needed piece of equipment in lieu of paying a rental. He gets to use your equipment for better productivity or quality, and you get to use it too along with everything else...

Zach,

I think the first step to take is to just ask him how much he would charge you. Many bosses I've worked with and me when I was the boss, just want to cover actual costs.

Don't think there would be much, if any, wear and tear on his system, especially if you use your camera or your own deck for capture.

Your boss knows a lot about you, like what he pays you and probably what you can afford.

The only way to know how to do this, is to ask him straight out.

Mike

Thank you all for the replies. I did ask my boss straight out about the rental cost before I posted this, and he had no idea what to charge. We are both new to the equipment rental business, and that's why I posted to get advice from veterans. I will definitely get an employee discount based on what he pays me and what he knows I can afford, but he asked me to give him an estimate on the rate. He's going to take a look at the proposal I gave him (about $7 an hour for our FCP suite) over the weekend while it's a little slower.

Bob, I like your idea about providing a new piece of equipment. We're in desperate need of a video monitor upgrade, and that type of arrangement might fit our small business atmosphere well. I'm going to bring that up on Monday.

I agree with Mike's comment about just covering cost mostly because your employer doesn't make his revenues from this industry, therefore it's not part of his profit and not as critical to charge more. I do not think that you should derive a rate for your employer to charge you based on another post facility's rates without knowing what kind of product they produce. As we all know, there is probably a reason low rates are low, desperation or not so great production value. However, it also depends on what your finished product has to be. Some places with high rates might have more things than you need already built into the rate. Some weekly rates for post houses in L.A. that I know of with top of the line Avid suites cutting for network shows are around $3000.00 per week. That is a great deal and you know it's being done right for sure.

Rent?
 

I wouldn't rent that suite for too much. You can buy what you discribed for less than 200 hundred a month. the Mac will cost a couple of grand. You can get nice used 21" CRTs and TVs all day long on craigs list for nothing or next to nothing.

Mike