How I Made Over $100,000 As A Filmmaker Last Year

this year as a freelance filmmaker I turned over a little north of £230,000 approximately $287,000 my very best year as a freelance filmmaker yet in this video I'm going to break down how and where I made that money highest and lowest day rates buyouts passive income where I invested money and after all of that where the net profit which is the amount remaining after all my expenses are taken away before tax stacked up against previous years my name is Scott Peters a director cinematographer and as you'll see in this video I often play a number of other roles too another year has already passed and I'd like to once again start by saying this is not intended as any sort of brag I know there's tons of people out there making nowhere near this sort of money and also a whole bunch making hell of a lot more I also know that this has been a really rubbish year for a lot of the industry so please don't watch this if you're easily upset this is an attempt at some transparency in the industry around a subject I've always found difficult to learn about myself myself this is also my 13th full official year as a working filmmaker but I've been making videos of some level since I was a kid so whilst I've only been fulltime is for 13 years I've actually been doing this film making thing for something like 24 years from when I first picked up a camera that's not to say anyone watching this thinking about a career in this world will take nearly as long as I have to make these sorts of rates but I just want to put it all in perspective for you so the numbers the rates the days and and so much more let's break things down into the different roles that I played to make these earnings in this my most successful Financial year to date as solely a director this year I made a total income of 75,000 45 over what is technically just 35 working days which if you watch any of my other content you know is a load of rubbish because as a director you only get paid for the shoot days but there's actually everything else outside of that which is always way more than the sh days so actual days work I have no idea it was months and months of time but 75 grand in 35 days sounds pretty good doesn't it um my top day rate for a commercial that I have not made a video about because I couldn't was 7 Grand which was pretty good I hasten to add that that was not really just a day rate but 7 Grand best day rate I have ever made as purely a cinematographer my total income for the year was 7,756 that was earned over5 and 1 half days of shooting which as a cinematographer pretty much is 5 and 1 half days I think that half day was actually a wcky day half rate for the wcky with my top day rate being 1,354 which I believe was the APA going top rate at the start of the year and as a director DP someone doing both camera lighting and directing the thing my income total for the year was £ 35,44 3 that was over 25 and 1 half days worked with a top day rate of £ 5,100 actual days worked not a million miles off 25 and 1 half days but because of the directing side of things it would again be a fair few more days than this not nearly as many more as my soul directing jobs as these were more for Content straight to social media type jobs where agencies and clients seem to give less of a I welcome that because it means less prep which I don't welcome less prep now I'm contradicting myself it's not that I want to prep less I want to prep loads but it's the time taken up um with meetings and opinions from agency and clients that is the time I don't love um because they're hiring you for your tastes and opinions but they're also not depends who they are and what mood they're in as a videographer this year I worked just six days that's the everything man job where it's probably just me maybe a producer I'm doing the camera I'm doing the sound I'm doing the lighting I'm probably shooting on slightly lower end equipment and yeah 6 days is what I did making a total income of 694 £40 sometimes that would have included my low end kit as well my top day rate on any one of those jobs was £ 1,388 as a producer I worked just 2 days with an income total of 1,000 that's £500 as my top day rate as per usual it looks like I mostly worked as an editor call me an editor don't call me a director or cinematographer but I will frown at you because I do not like editing and I don't have editing I don't want to edit but I'd always rather get the job done right and also money is money when you're trying to earn a living um as an editor I worked 72 total days and the income there was £ 44,7 189 with a top day rate of 650 quid but most regularly it was between 450 and 500 quid a day I have been editing now for most of my living life and there are past videos that you can go and watch mine where you can kind of see where I was at at what point in my career there's plenty of days where I've edited for nothing 50 Quid 150 quid then I was on 300 for years and now I sit more around the 500 Mark but I have got a love experience and I am very fast no eager just facts animator and animator is a bit of a stretch but I want to compare it comparatively to previous years it's mostly just After Effects solo work when I'm saying animator and I worked just one day as just an After Effects animator making a total income of £500 as a camera operator I worked just one day and it was for Amiga £475 which I guess as a camera operator is actually that is a standard rate I think I was actually initially offered £350 and I went back saying won't do it for anything less than 475 and they said yeah that's fine we can do that so always challenge if you're not happy with what you're getting and if they can do it they'll do it if they can't they won't I don't regret doing that job it was a nice day out got to spend it with my friend Nathan and some other people that I met for the first time had a good lunch and got to visit Brighton football club um but was it sexy no it was not passive income I make in four ways or I try making four ways previous years not always the first one is royalties this is from TV show that I directed in 2019 now and royalties sometimes they're rubbish sometimes they're less rubbish this time they're somewhere in between I got8 which is kind of rubbish but also I didn't have to do anything for four years for that five years for that so it's pretty cool personto person rental fat llama I've talked about them a lot before it's pretty rubbish the rates these days I've did actually put my prices ever so slightly up after last year's video of realizing how rubbish they were and I made a whopping 293 through rentals from fat llama this year which to be honest is not worth it with the amount of like back and forth questions asked by people renting having to arrange time for collection having to sort the kit out it's not worth it um but I'll probably car on doing it anyway because you know direct rentals though rentals where I took the more higher end Gear with me on jobs uh and would have saved the production money because I would have put it on at a very competitive rate but I would also made myself back a fair amount of my investments direct rentals $6,717 that year or the year before I sold three clips of r film Supply nting me a whopping £ 374 better than a kick in the nuts so £ 17,6 76 passively or somewhat passively I mean nothing's ever truly passive there's a lot of prep maintenance and Handover time with the rental related stuff and I had to give up my unpaid time to shoot the stock in the first place but the royalties I mean you could argue they were quite underpaid jobs in the first place that particular TV show but I'm calling it a win that feels like real passive income as always there's a few anomalies that haven't been included here as well as the excessive costs of actually being a filmmaker year on year Insurance his subscriptions Etc you can watch a video here to learn more about what they might be as well as both wanting and needing to invest in gear upgrades along the way again much like last year there might be a little bit of movement here either way once the accountant has checked that I've inputed everything correctly into my accounting software and I can't stress enough that this is not the amount of money that is just sitting in my bank account at the end of the year taxes take a pretty hefty cut out of this firstly from a business perspective and then when I actually withdraw the money I get here again as well as putting money back into the business in these Investments that I talk about but after the cost of sales and admin at the end of the financial year ending April 2024 I made a net profit of £ 49,7 180 83 and although I worked a lot of days I think stacked up against next to the previous best earning year which was 2022 I actually worked a little bit less 198 days that year and somewhere in the bullar region I say bullart because there was so much prep time in a job leading up to Christmas which is still somehow ongoing and it's made all of this quite hard to quantify somewhere in the wall Park of 180 days is what I worked in this financial year that's a conservative estimate seemingly a lot of cash over not that many days but at what real cost aside from investment of years and years of my life into learning improving my Knowledge and Skills loans and risks taken on buying kit trying and failing to advance my career far more than trying and succeeding continuous countless rejections across all areas of the industry with many many more to come too I'm sure I'm really not saying any of this for any sort of a poor Scott reaction if anything I've learned from posting on the internet that it will probably more likely invoke a Fu you you handsome ginger sort of reaction but again I just want to put all of this into some realistic perspective for you and with that point out that when I was busy over the last Financial Year my work life balance wasn't very balanced at all not too long into the start of the last Financial year somewhere in the middle of May when I was at the end of a 12-day shoot stint of working most of my livable hours I experienced burnout for what I can now call the first real time in my life I've never experienced anything like it in my career or life up until this point and I honestly never want to experience anything like it again but it is a bit of a struggle to keep that at Bay it really did feel like the world was ending around me and I couldn't and probably still can't properly explain it and it was all because I was overworking myself and taking far too much on for whatever reason I'm gr up always fearing the future a little bit financially speaking always working more hours and trying to do a bit more more not for the want of a Lish lifestyle or anything like that but just for Financial Security and hopefully a less worryful future that coupled with a drive and want to do better and be better something that not just us in the film industry strive for which all equates to finding it really hard to say no to and turn down what often sound like bigger and better jobs when they come along if it hasn't hit you yet the burnout and the sacrifice that come comes along with working so much then take it from me don't let it it's just money you'll always find a way to make more and it's also just a video and add a TV program a movie no one's going to care about it in a few weeks months at most years time no matter how much thought and effort you put into it say no to that job go out to drinks with those friends and go and visit that family member you haven't seen in ages it's just not worth it bummed you out at all or maybe you're feeling inspired or maybe neither but hopefully this was a little bit insightful and might give you some way of basing where you're at and how you position yourself in your own career depending on where you are at join me next year for probably a lot lower earnings as I try really hard to say no a lot more but I've tried that before as well so we'll see how that goes watch this video next for more career money insites and make sure to subscribe for more semi hule tips and interesting Insider industry knowledge [Music]

Channel: Scott Peters

Views: 21,170

Keywords: director, filmmaker, film finance, how much money can you make a filmmaker, videographer, cinematographer, dop, director of photography, money, per day, day rate, directing, editor, editing, freelance filmmaker, full time filmmaker, animator, producer, producing, production, scott peters, freelance director, industry rates, apa, bectu, film riot, danny gevirtz, lewis potts, freelance videography, videography, how to make money as a videographer, commercial director

Id: RlP7mh3nfqY

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024