Am I crazy?
 

In regards to this thread....

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=59187

about how much to charge for doing some video work, Don suggests:

"As for the editing process, well, I guess it depends on how much time you think it'll entail. Lets say its an extra day, 8 hours, to load, edit, author and burn the DVDS. Why not just charge your normal day rate for that as well. SO if the job takes 1 day to shoot and 1 day to edit and burn...2 days...1 day at your normal day rate to edit and burn and 1 day at an increased rate for shooting (includes OT)."

Couple of things:
1) Please don't think I am trying to slam Don for his post, I know a lot of folks have the same ideas....maybe I should too. I am using his post because I happend to see it. If anything I am questioning weather or not I am short-selling myself.

2) I don't know how comfortable I would feel using this as a pricing structure. Seems to me that a day of shooting, where I am totally at someone elses disposal, is one thing.....and a day of editing in my "office" where I can answer phones, respond to email, check out the great DVInfo forums....basicly doing what I want to do including conducting other business...is a totaly different kind of day.

I am fairly new to video and am just starting to entertain the idea of doing some freelance work outside of my job. I am an IT guy by trade and occasionally I take a person's computer home to do some repair work on the side, usually the OS is fried due to children surfing the net. I feel I am taking advantage of a person if I tell them that I will work on their PC for $X an hour, and then go home and start a 3 hour install of Windows that I only walk in and answer a few questions every 15 minutes or so(read that as "When a commercial comes on the TV") while the PC does its work.

So, am I just a sucker waiting to be taken advantage of? I understand that my situation is vastly different from a person who is running a small video business, but I'm not sure if I could charge a person the same for time that I am totally theirs(video taping) and time that I am not totally thiers. (Encoding, burning....editing of course is the exception, but the original post seemed to indicate that editing would be minimal to just fade in at start and out at end.)

Randy

Look at it this way Randall- If you are in the shop editing and answering phones, how can you be out shooting footage for a new client? You can't, because you have dedicated that time to a previous project. You need to listen and watch every bit of tape you plan to use, because it is really embarrassing to hand over a completed disk, only to find out that the audio skips 20 minutes in. If it takes only half a day, or if it takes a whole day, charge accordingly.

ANd a day of editing to me means justthat. 8 hours of editing, building DVD menus, loading and printing disks, etc. I do not count capture or render time right now, just because I work at home and am watching TV or something else while it happens. I do charge for the 5-10 minutes it takes to manage a capture or render, but not for time where the computer is working and I am not. But I may add an hourly "computer charge" for rendering and capturing time that would help fund a second CPU for those tasks. Maybe $10 an hour or so??

And if the client is in a real hurry and I have to render during the day, they pay me for those lost hours. Do whatever makes sense to YOU and your situation.

My $.02
 

It's my experience that for the type of work I do, editing takes 3 x the amount of time spent shooting. If I was shooting for a day, then a simple edit without major effects and color corrections is going to take me 3 full days.

These are 3 days where I can't be out shooting other things, and I am confined to only working on the task at hand. It only makes sense to charge a fair premium for the more labor intensive task. In my opinion, editing is much more work than shooting. It's more fun because I can do it at my pace without distractions but it's still more laborious.

Thanks....
 

Thank you all for your input. It does appear that I am indeed crazy. My wife says she could have told me that! I guess that I am still so new(and small) at this that I have the mind set that my primary focus should be sales, not shooting. Shooting pays the bills but you have to get someone to pay you for it first!

Again, thanks to all who responded.

Randy

The primary focus should be sales. But doing work way underpriced is not sales, it is practicing your craft. Sales is when you get paid a fair rate for your experience, expertise, and environment.

There is nothing wrong with doing work for free or cheap, but I personally reserve those efforts to local non-profits. Underbidding everyone on normal jobs just sets the wrong expectations in the market, and you will end up with only cheap clients who are unwilling to pay you a reasonable rate.