How much to charge for a four camera shoot?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I may have mentioned that I shoot concerts. I’ll travel to a venue and set up four cameras, with two operators. I’ll be running two cameras plus a camera on a wide shot and my wife running another camera getting another angle. I record wild with all cameras, syncing all of them afterwards. I get audio from the soundboard as well as bringing my own pair of microphones for audience sound. Here’s something I shot last weekend.

I’ve managed to do this cheaply enough that I can shoot the show on spec, selling DVDs. But I’ve recently been asked to shoot a school play (Pirates of Penzance, so it’s out of copyright). I cannot do that on spec and need to come up with a price.

What is a reasonable price for what I have described? I’m bringing roughly $7000 worth of equipment, I’ll have to spend a couple of days syncing and editing. My normal rate is $50 an hour, blah, blah, blah. I’m not interested in what the textbook says what I should charge, I’m asking what people expect I should charge. If you were looking to hire someone to shoot a play like this, what number would you expect to hear quoted?

2

I think there is a wide chasm of service here. At the minimum, you are just going to set up a camera to capture the stage and a couple mics. At the maximum, you are going to have a couple cameras to get different angles, do close ups, and have a bunch of mics around to capture each scene as best as possible. For a school play, I’d expect it to be a lot closer to the minimum, and I’d expect somewhere between a few hundred dollars and a thousand depending on area.

3

No, I’d use the same number of cameras for a play as for a concert. This is a production of Pirates of Penzance, so there are multiple leads and a large chorus. Any parent could set up a wide shot at the back of the hall getting the whole stage and produce something very disappointing. I aim to get close-ups of each performer, and have coverage from multiple angles of the leads and the chorus.

4

Nevertheless, they might prefer the “cheap but disappointing” version.

5

It’s a school play; they aren’t going to sell more than a few dozen of these. If they can sell them for $15, and all 50 kids in the cast, crew, and orchestra buy one, the school will only get $750. I assure you that every kid in that group will not buy one. At this point, you’re asking how much money the school is willing to spend on getting you to film the production, and I hope that the school would rather spend that money on the production than on the film. I wish we lived in a world where schools had money like that for the arts, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t. I’m sure you’re putting together a wonderful product, but I just don’t think that the school would be able to pay you very much.

6

Luckily, I’ve not been asked by the school, but by one of the parents. No, I’d estimate that I’d only sell to, at most, 10% of the parents of the participants. I shoot for $25, and amazingly, some people try to bargain me down, assuming that the economics on a custom piece of work are the same as that of a Hollywood studio.

7

Just curious, Gaffa…what software do you use for post-processing edits? The idea of syncing up wild video from multi-cameras is frightening in terms of labor time.

And have you ever thought about using something like a Tri-Caster to edit in real time?

8

Yeah, I’m not going to cater to the bottom end of the market, because the most expensive part of this equation is my time. Setting up multiple cameras to do an excellent job does not take a whole lot more time than setting up one camera and delivering a wide shot of the whole stage - which is the same thing any parent could do.

I am offering something distinctly different and much better where I get close-ups of every performer, while still covering the entire stage. I’m sure any skilled chef could flip burgers at McDonalds, but they won’t do an appreciably better job of it than someone who just started a week ago.

9

Edius. It freaking ROCKS!

The wonder of Edius is that I can just drop the raw files from various cameras directly onto the timeline. Each camera has it’s own track. I’ve learned the amount of padding I need between each segment for each camera. So on a show I’m editing right now, I am using footage from one Canon XH-A1, two Canon HF-S100s, one Canon HF-200 and one lesser one that is soon to be replaced. The I just slide the tracks until I match the waveforms, double-checking at multiple places on the track, looking for camera flashes to use for an additional source of sync.

Once it’s all synced, I switch to Multicam mode. That gives me a split screen showing all the cameras. I can then just switch as it plays hitting the keys on the number pad, just like on a switcher.

The other wonderful feature of Edius is that I can do this on a five year old Core2 Duo laptop. All the footage is on HD, but Edius allows me to make a low resolution “proxy”. I finished the sync and rough edited several songs on the Megabus from Chicago to Kansas City. At any point, I can switch to the HD version in multicam mode, or turn off multicam mode and see the finished edit playing in HD.

I use a Tricaster at one of the clubs I work at, but that is only SD. The HD ones are out of my price range and would add a huge amount of bulk to my rig. And even then, if I missed a shot, I’m stuck. I’d much rather have all the footage and can cover. And shooting on HD means a vastly better looking DVD.

Here’s a show I shot with five cameras, three of them running into a TriCaster at the same time. I was hopping on that show, aiming two of the cameras and running the switcher. I joke that I’ve turned ADHD into a business.

The thing is, I am shooting a live event with no blocking. I have no idea usually what is going to happen, so I need a wide and/or medium shot to use as cover while I get to the soloist or singer. My main camera, the XH-A1, is swinging wildly from player to player.

I shot four hours of music Saturday. I have it all synced already and the job is about a quarter edited. There are few people with my workflow, and definitely none with my rig. I can come into a venue with a backpack full of equipment and deliver a reasonably professional looking product for a very good price.

10

Cartooniverse would be helpful here, as he does professional shoots. If he doesn’t stop by, you might PM him.

Myself, I am limited to single-cam projects, but I think you may be pricing yourself too low based on what I have seen. OTOH, if the school won’t pay for it, you may have to settle for what you can get. In my case (very small town), charging anything at all is difficult, so I am driven more by the market than the service.

11

I’ve talked to him about SteadyCam shooting.

My goal, at this point, is to do a concert shoot for $495, which I think is a reasonable price point for a band.

I’m not charging the school, but one of the parents.