- Alright, Let's say you're starting out as a freelance filmmaker. You have a nice little reel. People are starting to ask
you to make videos for them. But how much do you charge? Let's talk about money. (upbeat reflective music) But we're not talking about money alone. I got my good friend with me. - [Matt] Mark. - Hey, what's up Mattie? How you doing? - [Matt] How's it going? - Good man. It's been a while. - So one of the last times I
think I've hung out with you, insert flashback here. - I'm in the future Mattie. - Who thinks that Mark should start his own YouTube channel about
filmmaking or something else? - Think it would be super fun. - Okay, so? - I started one. I finally did it. - [Matt} YouTube Channel. New YouTube channel from Mark. You've posted a few really
good videos already. - Thanks man. - I've been following along. Mark, if you don't know,
he's a DP and a Director. You been what working
in the industry for like five, six years at least. - I think I was counting
in my last video actually, it's nine. - Nine years. - Yeah. - Okay, so Mark is one of
the few people that I know in the YouTube space
that's still very heavily in the industry. So if you want like industry,
insider knowledge tips, you should go follow Mark. When you're first starting out, figuring out how much
to charge for your time, for your skills, for your filmmaking, it's really, really hard. To make it a little bit easier for us, I think we can think about the money and getting paid in two different way. The first is a project based rate, and the second is a day rate. A project based rate is really simple. A person comes to you with
a need to make a video, and you are in charge of the whole project from start to finish. And you need to figure out how much is each of
those things gonna cost. How much is it gonna cost
to direct, DP, sound, do you need actors, do you
need to feed your crew? All of those things,
you need to figure out. And that's why project based pay can be a little bit tricky because you need to make sure you are covering all your bases because if you miss a big area, for example, you didn't budget for an editor or editing days, you're gonna end up
getting paid less per hour. So you really wanna make sure you got everything covered,
and there's no surprises. Also, I think Mark has
a good point for this. Mark you had a good point about a contingency plan or
contingency line item. Is that what you said? - Yeah, yeah. Because on your thing you have lines, and so it's a line item, on your budget. (laughs) And contingency is important because you never know what the project is gonna throw at you. Actually just this last week, I quoted a project for a
client and we're working on it and part way through I was like, you know, I think I need an Art Director. But luckily, I had put contingency in, which is essentially just some money that's your, oh crap money. Like it you ever need--
- [Matt] Oh shoot. I need more money. - Yeah, exactly. So I was able to take some
money out of my contingency, and hire an Art Director. And I didn't have to worry
about it affecting my day rate or the overall quality of the project. - So on top of all the other things that you've come up with,
the editing, the directing, all those things that you've
put into your project budget, also add a contingency line. Just some extra, just a little extra money because you never know
what's gonna happen. So essentially project based work, you're trying to figure out
all of the different roles and how much that's gonna cost. Even if you're doing all of those roles, you still need to take
them all into account And figure out one lump sum, how much is it gonna
cost to make this video? Then we have day rate which is, I think, a little bit more simple and a little bit easier to figure out. Basically you're gonna get a day rate, out of an amount of money, per day that you're on that project, on that film shoot. For example, as a DP,
you might get paid $800 for that day of shooting, and then maybe you'll get half day rate for travel days or edit days. But there's a day rate
for every single day that you're on that project. A day rate is great because if the project goes on for a longer period of time, you keep getting paid more
for every single extra day that you're working. Whereas, with a project based rate, if you didn't calculate properly and you end up having to
do a lot of extra days, it's kind of gonna suck because
that's out of your pocket. You're having to put in extra, and you're gonna get paid
less per hour on that project. Now there is the risk, always, that a production company
you're gonna get five days, and then you only get
three for whatever reason and depending on your contract. So you might miss out on some days. Whereas, with a project based rate, you're always gonna get
that whole amount of money. That's something you have to think about. But also an interesting
thing about day rate is that you can add in-- - Sir, this is a no vlogging zone. There's no vlogging allowed here. - I didn't know-- - You're gonna have to shut this down. - Oh man. Sometimes you can add your own camera gear to your day rate so you
kind of have your day rate, and then you have a gear rental rate. Instead of the production company renting from somewhere else, they're
gonna rent your camera, we're gonna use that
camera for this film shoot, and you're gonna get extra money for that. So let's say your day rate
for shooting it is $600, and then you bring on your
EOS R, maybe not your EOS R, maybe a little bit better camera. You bring your C300, you're gonna get paid
another $300 for that. So that's an interesting way
to kind of pay off your gear, and maybe make a little
bit more money each day. But typically I find
when you're starting out you kind of end up doing a
whole bunch of different roles, and you're doing project based rates so you're charging for the
whole production of the video. All of the different roles, you're putting into this one package. Then as you develop in your career, you start being hired
for a specific purpose, whether it's Director, DP, Gaffer, Audio Engineer, whatever it is, and then you're gonna get
a day rate for your work. Mark has some great insight on this because he's been working
in the industry for a while, so let's go ask him. Oh, I did also wanna mention
that $800 for a day of work can seem like an insane amount of money, and it is quite a bit of money, but you also have to take into account that you're not gonna be
filming every single day, so it has to kind of
cover your off days also. So, yeah, it's a lot
of money for that day, but you need to spread that
money out throughout the month, so it ends up being a little bit less. - [Matt] So Mark, you were
on a shoot for like, what, a month in Berlin, was it? - Yeah, yeah. I was there for all of
January, shooting in Berlin. - [Matt] And were you on a
project rate or a day rate? - I was actually on a day rate which kind of turned into a project rate. So as a Director, you get paid
for every day of shooting, but we only had three days of shooting. But then I had to stay an extra week, week and a half, to
work on post production. So it ended up being a
bit of a project rate. But the nice thing is you
make sure your Director's rate is fairly good, so that if
there is a week or two weeks of post production and
some pre production, kind of covers the whole thing. - So just like I said, the day rate might seem
like a lot of money, but it needs to cover some
of your other days also, that you're not working. Or in this case, Mark was kind of working, helping out with the project still, but he wasn't getting paid
a day rate for those days. Just give them an idea, what are like, you don't have to say your amount, - Yeah. but what are some day rate ranges? Like people that are starting off-- - For sure. - Maybe start off and then what
does it kind of go up into? What are the day rates? - So, Director of Photography, are we talking Canadian or U.S. money? (laughs) What are we talking? - [Matt] Let's go U.S. - Okay, U.S. dollars. Usually when you're starting off as a DP and you're on smaller projects, it's about $1200 a day for a DP. Maybe on the lower end it's about $850. But then when you get up
to a bigger commercial, when you get to higher
end commercial jobs, it's starting to get around $3000 a day. Some of the crazy, like there's 10 or 15
amazing DPs in the world who can charge like $10,000 a day. But that's them, that's not me. (laughs) - That's like an absurd amount of money. That's a lot of money. I think when I first started out, I think my kind of cutoff was $500. - Yep. - That was like, I didn't do
anything below $500 a day. But then, I think the most I ever got for freelancing was like
$3000 for a half day. And man I was so happy that day. That was like crazy money for me. - Yeah. - And you don't have to
tell your rates, it's fine. (laughs) Okay, so give us some pointers on how do you figure out how much to charge because it's a really
hard thing to figure out. - Yeah. So in the early days, I
would try to get the job, so I would kind of undercut my budget and the clients would hire me because it was really cheap. But then I found myself up late
at night editing the photos, or doing graphics, working on an edit, and I started thinking, "Man, I hate this, I don't
think I'm getting paid enough." - [Matt] Regret. - Yeah, it was big regret. So what I started doing, is
when I would quote the client, if it was a 10 day project, I would think, "Hmm, maybe three of these nights I'm gonna be up really late working." How much money would
someone have to pay me for me to be okay to stay
up till two or three a.m. working on my computer? So then I would start
adding that budget in. In the early days I was like
hey if you pay be 200 bucks and said stay up till
midnight working on photos, I'd be like, I'm in. So I would start adding that in, and then you start understanding what you value your time for,
and then that helps you. You wanna think, how
much do I value my time, how much money does someone have to pay me to take a day out of my life,
to work on this project? And that's different for every person. - Yeah, I think that's what
makes this so hard is that like, yeah there's an industry standard kind of, but then it's kind of
different for every person because maybe you value
time with your family way more than another person, they really like working,
so they're willing to work for a little bit less and
just work all the time. Whereas, the other person
wants to just chill at home. So there's really no hard fast rules. You kind of just have to
figure out for yourself. - But a good thing to do is to ask around. Maybe see what your friends are charging because you wanna know what
the industry going rate is. Because if a client asks
you and you say $300, and then they go to the
next guy and he say $800, they might wonder, why is
this guy so much cheaper? Is he not as good, is he not as confident, or maybe they'll end up going with you, but meanwhile you could have made maybe five or six hundred dollars. So it's good to ask around
and know what kind of the industry standard
is in your community. - Yeah, I think for
me, when I started out, day rates were around 500 and then project based
rates were kind of in the three to five thousand
dollars, I found a lot, for like a three to five minute. That was kind of what it fell
into, when I first started. Then when you get further in your career, your rates start going up. Like I said, I made $3000
for a half day that one time. And even for weddings,
I started I think for 800 euros or something, was
the first wedding I did. By the end of it, we were
charging at one point 3000, then we're like why not just charge 5000. That was a really interesting
thing that happened when we went up to 5000, we started to attract better weddings or better clients that were really, really nice looking, and they were hiring us,
paying us a lot of money because they really liked our style. They weren't like the clients
that are penny pinching because they understood our work. They really liked it, and that's why they were
willing to pay for it. Another interesting thing that happened with that whole wedding charging more was that then I was doing
a little bit less work, but I was still getting
paid the same amount because I was charging so much more. So that's also something to keep in mind. Anyways, as you can see, figuring out what to charge
is really complicated, really hard but basically
I would figure out what the industry standard is,
and what works best for you. Then kind of low, maybe a little bit less than you really want and
then as you're getting jobs, getting more and more
work, and all of the sudden you're getting so much work
you're having to turn down work, you should be increasing your amounts for your project rates
and for your day rates. That's at least how I did it, and I'm pretty sure that's
how Mark did it also. I think that's probably the best way to figure out what to
charge for your filmmaking. And make sure you are charging. Don't just keep doing free work because you deserve to
be paid for your time, and your effort, and your skills. (upbeat reflective music)
