How much to charge a client?

My friend and I have been asked to produce a 10 minute instructional video for a medical device by a small company. We're filming with consumer level equipment (two Panasonic GS-250's) and editing on Final Cut Express and Photoshop. We've had a large amount of experience using this sort of equipment and software, producing amateur films in the past, but this is our first professional job and we have no idea how much to charge our client. Any advice?

It's a little difficult to price yourself correctly when you first start out. As it's a small company, and they aren't going to a company that produce corporate videos professionally, I'm assuming they're looking for a deal?

Speak to your client in depth, so you can plan how many shooting days, and how many edit days. Try to include any additional time your client requires a meeting. Calculate the total amount of hours you anticipate the project will take to shoot and edit, plus a buffer time for any additional extras. Try to take into account your out of pocket expenses, gas, tape stock, meals, parking.

Set yourself an hourly rate. Your labour rate including equipment. $25 an hour, $50 an hour, whatever you think, a). you can do the work for, and equally important is b.) what your client would reasonably accept. You have to weigh up your client, in this case. What kind of turnover do they have? Some companies would not blink an eyelid at $100,000 for a video, others would whine like a b#tch at $2000.

Obviously, you want the work, so you don't want to lose the deal by overpricing the job, but at the same time you need to set some kind of presidence, as next time they'll expect you to work for peanuts again, if you charge bargain basement prices on your first job.

It all comes down to finding a happy medium. A price you won't resent working for, and a price your client considers is value for money. You have to create the illusion, that the client will be getting fantastic value for money.

Also find out if your client requires extras, ie. DVD authoring or duplication. Sometimes, you can offset a lowered production rate if your client needs say 2000 copies on DVD. If you can make say a $1 or $1.50 on a DVD duplication, it all soon adds up. Research your duplication costs, sleeve design, printing and packaging costs, then put your profit margin on it.

Give your client a figure, plus say, a 10% buffer (which you have the option to use or not) to cover say, an extra days shooting or editing, extra crew, or any unforseen extras that may arise.

Tips for working with corpoate clients :

Follow the client's brief to the letter.
Don't let them direct the shoot.
Don't let them in the edit suite.
Get an advance to cover your out of pocket expenses.
Follow the client's brief to the letter!