How Much Should Video Production in Glasgow Cost?
Here’s a deep dive into the topic of costs and budgets, when it comes to hiring a video production company in Glasgow.
What To Budget for Video Companies in Glasgow
If you’re looking to commission some video production in Glasgow, there’s a good chance you fall into two camps: you’re either a proprietor running a business yourself, spending your own business’ money on a video company, or you’re managing a budget on behalf of your employer and you’re looking to commission something quite specific.These are radically different starting points, and the priorities for each will be quite different - but a lot of the advice I have from the video supplier side will apply to both. So - let’s talk about budgets, costs, and how to think about spending on video content for your business!
In this blog, I’m going to touch on a few things that I think will demystify the process a bit - I’ll be answering questions from the POV of a producer/director who’s worked on promo videos and social media content for sole traders and small independent companies, all the way up to TV ads and commercial video content for national brands like Dobbies, Arran Aromatics, CalMac Ferries and more. I’ll be talking ballparks, day rates, usage; I’ll be getting into whether you should share your budget up front; I’ll be talking about how you can compare quotes and suppliers, and how to compare like-for-like.
Give Me Ballpark Costs for a Video Company
The first thing to note is that I can’t give ballparks for the industry overall. But I will give it for our agency here. There are many, many ways to engage a video production company out there - some are agencies and some are sole traders; some are run-and-gun folks taking care of everything, and some are full crews.Let me cut to the chase and say that we’re a bit of both - we can do very compact, two-person crew jobs coming in just under £2k, and we also do full-crew jobs for e.g. TV advert production that can cost anywhere between £10k-£50k. So there’s definitely a tremendous range of production budgets that we can accommodate.
However, there’s a good chance that this range is so broad that it’s not especially useful as a piece of information, in its current form. So, let’s talk some examples.
PROMO VIDEO FOR LOCAL RESTAURANT - £1,975
- 1 day shoot; two person crew;
- 1 day edit.
- (no script or pre-production)
2-DAY SHOOT FOR A PRODUCT LAUNCH - £5-6k
- 2-day shoot; three-person crew;
- Liaise with studio and stylist;
- 2 day edit
- (pre-production brief for stylist)
TV ADVERT SHOOT FOR A LOCAL BRAND - £7,500-£25,000
- Script and pre-production ideation;
- circa 3 day shoot; 3-6 person crew;
- Casting process; liaise with locations and stylist;
- 3 day edit inc. sound design;
- TV usage (1 year)
As the examples start to increase in scope, the creation of scripted content and pre-production becomes a massive part of the process. There’s also additional responsibilities to find locations, cast performers, etc. - and the standards for production and post-production are higher, glossier. Check out the content we've shot for Arran Sense of Scotland and Dobbies Garden Centres over a number of years for some portfolio examples in this range.
TV ADVERT SHOOT FOR A NATIONAL BRAND - £25-50k
- Script, storyboard, and pre-production ideation;
- Site recce;
- 4 day shoot; 8 person crew; 6 person cast.
- Casting process; liaise with locations and stylist;
- Motion graphics; VFX;
- 3 day edit inc. sound design;
- TV usage (multi-year)
As the TV ads budgets scale up, we’re looking at more extensive pre-production, larger casts, bigger crew, expanded production values across the board. We’re also including multi-year usage across all mediums. See our anniversary TV campaign for Arran Aromatics below for project with this scale of crew and pre-production - and check out the behind the scenes video here.
Should You Share Your Intended Budget With a Video Company?
I think how you’ll naturally want to approach this will depend on whether you’re the aforementioned employee in a company who’s managing a budget and looking to commission a specific piece, or whether you’re a business owner who’s never hired a video company before.However, my instinct is: either way, yes you should share your intended budget.
Obviously the worry is that a video company will wait to hear your magic number, and then make sure to come in with a quote that maximises what they can get out of it. Essentially, if you say £5k, they’ll come in at £4,999. I totally get that worry.
But firstly, that’s not actually a bad thing as such, to match a quote to a budget.
What would be a bad thing, is if they were inflating the fee artificially because you’ve showed your hand. If the supplier is just selling you the same video content for £5k that they would have charged £2k for, then - no. No bueno. But from my point of view, if you’ve got £5k to spend on a video, I want us to give you a £5k video - by which I mean, I want to deliver a video that represents the best work we could do within your framework and scope of ambition.
So how do you guard against the artificial inflation of the fee once you’ve shown your hand? Well, my personal route around that is that I’ll send you our day rates for every component up front. So that when you then say “okay, I’ve got £5k to spend”, I will in fact make you a quote for £5k, and that quote will line up with the day rates I already sent you up front. You’ll see exactly what your £5k bought you, and if I say that includes two days with a three-person crew, you’ll be there in person and you’ll know that we delivered what we promised.
How To Compare Video Production Quotes and Suppliers
When you’re weighing up which supplier to go with, it’s probably the case that you’re comparing a couple of distinct things: perceived quality, and costs.So when it comes to comparing costs, make sure you’re comparing like-for-like. This is quite difficult to do. I don’t think it’s a simple case of comparing the end-quotes, because they’re unlikely to exactly match in terms of what’s being delivered. I think the day-rates are the thing to look at, to get a sense of who’s charging what. So, ask suppliers to clarify the day rates that their quotes are made up of. And if you do that before you specify your budget, then you’ll also get the benefit of the previous point above.
And then, consider how much of a role quality should play. I personally feel very strongly that quality is a much, much bigger consideration than like-for-like costs, because the fact is that a wonderfully effective piece of commercial video can make £50k look like a bargain, and an ineffective piece of video will make £500 seem like a massive waste.
That’s actually a serious observation, by the way - £500 is “cheap” for a video, but it’s a devastating waste of a small business’ money if the video doesn’t turn out very good. £500 wasted is a really difficult pill to swallow in this economy for most small businesses.