Budgeting For Your Project

Over the years, VideOccasions has been involved with projects ranging from $25 to $10,000 to produce. Ultimately, your needs and how you plan your project will determine cost. It is very important that you discuss costs with us before beginning your project. We won't be able to give you a firm price, but based on past experience will be able to estimate your costs fairly accurately.

To help with estimating the cost of your project, consider these examples.

1. A 10 Minute Photo Montage (still pictures to DVD or video tape)
• Still pictures in a memorial, reception or birthday video are typically displayed on screen for 5 seconds.This means that displaying 12 pictures takes about one minute. So for a 10 minute finished piece you'll need about 120 pictures.

• It takes about an hour to scan 45-50 pictures, so it will take roughly two and a half hours to capture the pictures for your ten minute project.

  Allowing another 45 minutes to an hour to put music with the pictures, and some time for titles and reviewing the project, you'll probably spend 4 to 5 hours and, at $80 per hour, $320 to $400 on your ten minute photo montage.

• This works out to about $2.65 to $3.30 per picture, maybe a little less or a little more depending on how many changes you make and how well organized you are.

  NOTE: We do not charge by the photo but by the hourly rate of $80. The "per-photo" costs shown above are merely to help you in estimating.

2. A PowerPoint® presentation transferred to DVD

This is a pretty straight forward transfer from one medium to another. We charge a flat rate of $25 to do the transfer unless editing is required, at which point we change to a $80 per hour fee, billed in 15 minute increments in addition to the $25 flat rate.

For example: We begin to transfer your PowerPoint® presentation to DVD ($25), only to discover that several of the photos in the slide presentation must be resized and one of the music tracks isn't embedded in the correct location. We call and you authorize correcting the problems. The resizing and music work takes an additional 30 minutes ($40.00) and the entire job costs $65.00.

3. A Party or Reception Video

This breaks down into two parts: video taping the event and editing the tapes.

• Video taping will cost $225 for two hours (minimum) for a single camera shoot, $400 for two hours (minimum) for a two camera shoot. After that it's $85 per hour for one camera, $170 for two. The per-hour rates for four hour or eight hour guarantees are slightly less.

• Editing is at the rate of $80 per hour. For a two-hour one camera shoot expect the editing to require at least 4 to 6 hours, for a two camera two-hour shoot about 8 to 10 hours. This editing will provide you a finished piece which tells the story of your event, with titles, captions and music added. You'll have an opportunity to review the project before it is burned to DVD.

4. Editing Bill and Tammy's Wedding Video Tapes

In this example, imagine that two friends have each recorded hour-long video tapes at the wedding of Bill and Tammy. Now the newly-weds would like to have a single tape made of the wedding, with the addition of 10-15 still photographs from their honeymoon. They would also like to have music added to the tape once it is finished, along with a title and a "credit roll" listing all the names of the people in the wedding party..

Bill and Tammy have done their homework. That is, they have logged their tapes; they have created an Edit Decision List which includes the text and location for each title and caption; and they have selected all the music which will accompany the production.

From an editing point of view, the two source tapes increase the complexity of the edit considerably. The sound on these tapes will have to be synchronized, and numerous decisions will have to be made regarding which tape has the best shot at any given moment. This is editing at its most interesting -- and at its most time consuming.

Bill and Tammy have prepared well, have developed an excellent edit decision list and have selected and numbered all the still photos that will be used. Still, a project of this magnitude can be expected to take 8 to 10 hours to edit, at a cost of $640 to $800 or more, again depending on changes that have to be made and whether last minute material is added.

5. Roger Goodman's Business Presentation

Since we are often called for "ball park figures" for video taping and editing a business presentation or large scale social event, we include this final example.

Roger Goodman will be giving a day-long seminar at a business fair. He would like two cameras on hand to record the event. He is aware that adding a second camera to tape an event more than doubles the overall cost, but feels that a second camera will be necessary to record audience participation in the seminar.

Much of his seminar will be accompanied by a PowerPoint® slide presentation. His plan is to edit the tapes of the seminar, cut in slides from the PowerPoint® presentation and distribute the finished product on DVD and VHS tape.

Video taping costs will be at least $1450 for the two camera shoot, more if circumstances require the services of a sound engineer or special lighting.

The shoot, which will run from 9-12 and 1-4:30, will produce 10-12 hours of tape -- 5-6 hours from each camera. Even with Roger's cooperation in preparing an Edit Decision List it will take 20-30 hours to produce a rough-cut of the material -- $1600 to $2400 -- and several more hours to finish the edit and create a DVD master.

A conservative estimate for this project would be $3000 to $4000 and could run as high as $4500 to $5000 if Roger makes extensive changes to the rough-cut.

A Rule of Thumb -- Experience has shown that it always takes longer to do a project than you think it will, usually because you'll see creative possibilities as you work with your editor that you haven't seen before.

Last modified 10/05/07