What do $3,000 vs $1,500 vs $750 video editing projects look like?

I took an earnest look at a recent project and thought to myself...

"well, if I were doing this project again, what would I have to cut out of the video to get the cost down by 1/2?"

I initially exported a pdf of the invoice out of Freshbooks and uploaded it to an AI app and asked if there were a very simple way to cut out specific line items so that the final cost would drop from $3,000 down to $1,500.

But the more that we went back and forth on it, ai realized that, it really came down to how much time I spent in a few key areas. Not, which things got pulled from the video.

Intuitively, I guess I could have guessed that would be the case. As I dug around and sought to find 2 more examples, one where the final cost came out to 1/2 and another where the final cost came out to 1/2 again - I realized that the ai assessment was correct.

It wasn't really about removing something. It was greatly influenced by the client involvement...

..how much of the heavy lifting did they want to do before it even got to me? Who was going to think through just what this story was about? What did I need to do to the footage once it arrived? Would I spend days sifting through footage trying to find the story, or would they simply tell me: "here's the I want you to put together"?

When working on a professional company or independent film project, the script and scenes have been deliberated on years before the footage finds its way to me to start editing. I don't have to look through it and say, "ok - I think what's happening here is, there's this guy who dreams of having a baseball field and one day he decides to build it and see if anyone will show up to play on it, but the bank is coming for his farm and..."

Really, it comes down to a few simple factors:

Client involvement
Organization of the footage
Quantity of footage
Decisions regarding the story and the creative direction
Complexity of the video editing

How much the client wants to get involved.

Very little involvement:

When a client is hands-off, I am given quite a bit of flexibility, and you may have noticed that I said it in several videos that "these are my favorite".

However, this does tend to mean that, I will be spending more time trying to make decisions and determinations at many points throughout the project.

Here I am at my most creative, but also, these videos require more of my time.

Medium amount of involvement:

Answering questions as they come up. Sending in footage in an organized fashion. Clear idea of what you want. Ability to communicate that upfront.

Extremely involved:

All of the involvement that I mentioned with a medium level, but also taking the time to actually write titles and descriptions that I can simply copy/paste. Taking the time to review each draft and then having specific, follow-able input that might look like, "at 3:26, let's move that photo out of section 2 and over to the 3rd section, right in front of the one currently at 4:49". Serving as the quality assurance helper as well as giving me a clear idea, and examples of what you want created.

Keep in mind, there is a diminishing point-of-return here too. I have had videos get "over-worked" or become nearly unwatchable due to constantly changing feedback.

In one 'highly scientific' project, there was a committee of people at the company that had hired me. I'd make a requested change on a Wednesday, send it in for review, the next Monday they'd send more change requests, I'd make those right away and send back another draft for review. The following week they'd send a few more change requests, and ironically, those would revert the video back to where we were 2 weeks earlier! As new people got involved, with no history on the project, they'd insert feedback and we would just keep going around in circles. All over things that were so slight, the viewer would probably never notice. But my time logged on the project does notice! 🤭

How organized is the footage?

I Organize:

This isn't something that I ask or that the client could really answer, it's subjective, right? Imagine these two scenarios, with client A the footage shows up 30-40 videos and photos at a time, 2-3x's a day, for 10 days straight. It's in no particular order, the footage from when they first met 40 years ago is mixed in with footage from the grandkids last Christmas, it's from a wide variety of cameras, some of it was photographed through the glass on a picture frame and on day 10, I might get footage that matches what was already sent in on day 1.

You Organize:

Then there's client B, they send in all of their footage at once, on time, before we start working on their video together. It all shows up grouped together by topic or scene already in a corresponding folder. Almost all of it is ready to go, no retouching needed and requires very little of my time to figure out what goes where.

I'm fine with both clients, but the way! But, you can easily see how with client A, it will take me much more time to sort and organize and prepare to start putting their video together than client B.

In the $3,000 example shown in the video, I probably hovered over arriving footage for at least a week.
In the $1500 example, 95% of that footage showed up before I even started editing.
With the $750 example, 100% of the footage showed up at once and we began.

The complexity of the video is a factor in how long it takes to edit your video.

Not complex:

It's a video clip of a couple standing near the beach, the officiate is reading to them, they each speak their part. The footage is used as is. Everyone is in the frame the whole time. There is a start and an end. The voices need to be isolated from the wind and external noise.

Medium complexity:

It's a life story. It's 99% photos arranged by times in the person's life. They each need a border, and they need to appear on the screen and leave in a way that is consistent with the feel of the story. Excess space behind the photos needs to be filled with something. There should be music that matches the theme. There are simple titles that explain each point in time in the photo montage.

Complex:

There are 7 mini stories in the video. Each needs a title screen that lets the viewer know that the last section is over and eases them into what's coming next (we were just viewing car races, now we're about to slow down and go to a war memorial museum to learn about Great-Grand-Dad. Some of those title screens would be more fitting if they had some basic word or element animation. Each section needs music that fits that section's feel. Photos need borders, and smooth movement on and off screen, ideally to the beat of the music. There are moments that should sound like something, but the camera rarely captures that when in the hands of an amatuer, so adding sound effects is a must, or it will feel like something is wrong. Some of the footage needs to be color corrected (to just look good) or stabilized becuase it is too shaky or hard to watch. Voices need to be isolated. There are rolling credits at the end, it might even contain those special blooper-like moments that did not fit anywhere else.

The quantity of footage affects the length of time that it takes to edit your video.

Small:

One or two video clips or 25-50 photos.

Medium:

50-200 photos, a dozen video clips.

Large:

It's an epic trip. There are 15 moments over the trip that are interesting. Potentially hundreds or over a thousand photos and videos. Cannot use them all, because the video would be 4 hours long. Selection of footage becomes a major part of the project.

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.

Book Time To Talk Here...

---

Video Transcript

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.