Will we tell your story in December?
What changes each time we cut the budget in 1/2?
In this video I'm breaking down an actual $3,000 family vacation video project, then showing you exactly what changes if the budget drops to $1,500 or $750.
This isn't about 'expensive vs cheap' - it's about understanding what level of involvement you want to have and how much can be created at different budgets.
I'll show you:
Whatever the budget for your project, let's talk about what makes sense for your situation. I promise you'll at least come away with some clarity and some ideas.
This is invoice #00395 a family trip vacation video for $3,000. Let me show you exactly what they got for that and what happens if we cut that budget in half and what happens if we cut that budget in half again.
Here we go. Let me show you 1,400 photos and videos sent in by a client looks like and this is on the high end. In this case they sent all of these different people were on the trip and these were the moments that they uploaded footage.
I gave them a link that they could use to easily send me footage while they were still on the trip.
So we can't use all of the paragliding footage and that's part of what comes to me is I've got to try to narrow this down what's the best footage what's the what's the way that I can cover the most people and really capture the essence of their trip.
This project took 35 hours over three weeks.
They got a 20 minute or so video that captured everything but let me show you what's possible at a lower budget when the client does more of the curation work.
What do we have to do to cut this in half? At $1,500, $1,000 to $1,500 I've really I've still got to do the project setup, get the media in, meet with you and figure out what we're trying to accomplish and some of those basic starting points and I've still at the end got to do delivery, rendering out, you know putting up drafts along the way.
So that leaves us in the middle maybe it's 15 hours of actual editing and creating the story for you.
Here's an example of a video that I did for someone a while back and you know interesting life story character had a lot of fun with that but you can see with this one they actually had divided it into categories really before they even sent it to me.
They would create a folder called poker games and they put all of the photos for that in there. In this case the guy had Guinness Book of World Records for being able to for playing three regulation rounds of golf on three different continents and in 24 hours with his buddy.
So he was an interesting character. A lot of the titles that happened they said we want exactly these words and so I was giving them a place where they could pause the video and type in here's you know so-and-so comes from an interesting line of characters.
The timeline itself as we look here you can see I have broken this down into sections. They gave me what the sections are and I'm assembling them and this video in particular was played in a private setting at a funeral home in a area where people could watch and it just kept looping and she said they you know a bunch of them stood around and just laughed and cried over it and it really was fantastic for them and then they were able to hold on to it afterwards.
...and at $750 you've done 80% of the work yourself and then I just finish it from there.
Here's an example of how I could still help you. This is one example of a client that came to me a while back. They did a "renewal of vows" video. She was actually concerned that she might be near the end of her life. She had COPD from smoking. They traveled to the coast you know a scenic spot. They read the vows to each other and then here's what happened. [wind blowing] The wind blew away and you couldn't understand what anyone was saying.
We decided let's take the video footage but let's fix the audio and that really was what this project was about. They re-recorded the audio back at home just using a phone and then they sent that to me and I cut it into exactly the moment when they were speaking so how beautiful and then she came back to me later on and wanted an end-of-life message for family because she actually ended up getting quite a bit better after we were done with this.
We put together this beautiful video that will be passed on with the will at some point in the future and I hear from her every few months and we're pen pals. She's one of my favorites.
So that's what I can do at that reduced budget. If you tried editing yourself and then you got stuck 80% of the way through you were working iMovie or Final Cut or CapCut or something like that you could export the whole project send it to me and I could get it over the finish line for you if that was just a day or two of work and at $750 you've done 80% of the work yourself and then I just finish it from there.
If you want us to work together on it and you take some of the heavy lifting you know then the project size is you know I'm involved more and it takes more of my time. We work together for a week or so. If you want me to take off everything make all the decisions and it's a lot of footage then you're okay with me running with it you know that's when we start to get into the larger $3,000 project size videos.
All of those are fine with me it's really about how involved you want to be and how much you want me to put into it. How complex you want me to get, how much you want me to spend on the storytelling and the cleanup and the involvement.
The question you want to ask yourself is do you want to make the hard choices you know or do you want to pay me to do it and either way is fine. I've loved working on all of those videos with those clients I've had a lot of fun.
So if you're sitting on boxes of old footage or you just got back from an amazing trip let's talk about what makes sense for your project. I'll be honest about what's realistic for your budget. We can just have a real conversation about your memories and what it is that you want to create.
If you go to expansive.media you can book me for a video editing conversation.
I love to talk to people about their cameras and their footage and what they want to create and what they're hoping to get out of it.
Looking forward to working with you on your project.
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