How Much Does Video Production Actually Cost?
October 23, 2025
Ever asked a video production company for pricing only to get a frustratingly vague answer? You’re not alone. In this candid exploration of video production costs, we pull back the curtain on why “how much does video cost?” might be the wrong question altogether.
We break down real numbers for the Midwest market, from bare-minimum $5,000 projects to $250,000 documentary films, while explaining the factors that drive these costs. But more importantly, we challenge the traditional thinking about video budgeting by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs.
What if your $60,000 budget would deliver more value as a $30,000 production paired with $30,000 in strategic distribution? How might quarterly productions generating 21 content pieces outperform a single “hero” video? These questions reveal the true nature of effective video marketing. It’s not about a one-time expense but an ongoing strategy that feeds your marketing channels consistently.
Drawing on our experience with clients across various industries, we explain why video production costs what it does (hint: you’re hiring professionals for a significant amount of their time) and why the relationship with your production partner matters more than the price tag. For businesses feeling uncomfortable with video costs, we offer a simple framework: if your investment has the potential to deliver returns many times its value, the initial price becomes less relevant than the strategic outcome.
Ready to rethink your approach to video marketing budgets? Listen now and discover why successful businesses are asking better questions than “how much?” They’re asking, “what value will this create?” Share your thoughts on video budgeting challenges, and subscribe for our upcoming episode on why you should pick a partner, not a price.
Reach out if you need help with consistent, story-driven video marketing for your brand, agency, business, association, or nonprofit.
FREE KICKSTART GUIDE: https://letsbackflip.com/guide/
Topics in This Episode
- (0:00) Welcome to the Backflip Effect
- (0:29) Tackling the “How Much” Question
- (5:19) Value-Based Approach to Video Budgeting
- (10:25) Breaking Down a Marketing Budget
- (16:50) Price Ranges in Midwest Video Production
- (27:42) Marketing Strategy vs. One-Off Videos
- (36:50) Pick a Partner, Not a Price
Transcript
Ryan Freng:
Welcome to the Backflip Effect, the podcast that proves there’s a method to the marketing madness, specifically, a method that involves clever video strategy and a dash of creative mischief. Now, don’t be fooled by bland ideas or big budget fluff. Instead, we tackle real client questions and share how we’ve transformed businesses with strategies that actually work. Grab your headphones and join us as we explore the nitty-gritty of turning everyday marketing woes into story-driven success. Let’s get started. Okay, so we kind of free flow and we were coming up with content from our content list, and one of the ones that came up that I think is always top of mind we could probably talk about this every time is budgeting. How much does video cost?
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, and I think we feel self-conscious or get tired of saying things that sound cliche Because you try to get in the mind of the consumer. They want to know the answer. We’ve all had a experience of asking how much something costs and then getting an answer that is like a roundabout answer, that’s not giving you the answer right and that’s frustrating. So we want to respond to that, but it’s not a simple just like oh it’s, the market price of video is ten dollars, there’s a hundred dollars or whatever. Like um, and we’ve explored that in the past.
John Shoemaker:
I know that there are vendors out there that have done, you know, whatever cost per finished minute or something right, or even having packages on their website and they have yeah, and and maybe you know, in certain industries, like in wedding video or whatever, where it’s a repeatable thing, you could have a package on your site because it’s like this like a wedding is going to be this, there’s going to be the ceremony, there’s going to be this much coverage for that day.
Ryan Freng:
You know it’s predictable, right it’s very specific and it’s very much the same yeah for each wedding right.
John Shoemaker:
But when we’re doing corporate video or commercial video.
Ryan Freng:
Uh, obviously what we’re doing, I’ll throw social and digital in there, and social and digital, yeah, and that’s actually a huge part of it that we can get to maybe after as a part of the conversation.
John Shoemaker:
That’s changing the answer even more. Tee that up, put that in my mind, set it to the side, hold on to it, don’t forget that for later.
Ryan Freng:
But it’s always changing right.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah.
Ryan Freng:
It’s never static. I mean, it used to be when they would have to mortgage their houses for cameras it’s I don’t know $150,000 to get out the door, $100,000 to get out the door. The ubiquity ubiquitousness of technology and capabilities and distribution of production has lowered a lot of prices, and then that continues to happen as well. With social media, yeah, but people just want a price.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, when people are like I need to know a price, I’m like, all right, fine, A million dollars.
Ryan Freng:
How well does that work?
John Shoemaker:
It doesn’t work, so anyway it’s the. The point is is that we have to build it together to understand. I need to understand what it is that we need to do here. I need to understand what we’re trying to create at the end of this project and then kind of reverse engineer from there right, Like how many days are we going to be filming on location or at a studio or whatever? How many crew members are required, based on your requirements, for what kind of lighting we need? What it needs to look like, Is it commercial or is it more documentary style? Is there talent involved or not?
Ryan Freng:
You know locations, set props yeah.
John Shoemaker:
So all that stuff goes into it. So there’s a calculation that we have to put together and figure it out from there. And then how many crew do I have and their day rates and things like that.
Ryan Freng:
You know what’s interesting and this is another podcast we were talking about for today, so maybe it’ll be the next episode after that but the outcome focus and then, like you said, we start at the end and back our way up and then figure out the price. And really I think and I think this is with all things the outcome and the value are the most important things to understand, because you know, if somebody has a $60,000 budget and they come and they want a thing for $60,000, it might not serve them the best to have that thing for $60,000 versus having something for that specific implementation for $30,000. And then strategy and marketing digital and social marketing that goes along with it, so that it actually gets out there to their target demographic and can bring in more leads, as opposed to just a video that goes on a website, right?
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, yeah, and again, with Crew, there’s all kinds of different. Well, I guess I’m on a different topic now than what you were just saying and I do want to address that, but my mind was going in one direction, so I have to go that way for a moment. You know, there are directors who charge 10 grand a day. There are directors that charge a percentage of the total project, regardless, you know, depending on what that project is. So and we’re not talking about that here with our company, but I’m just saying like there are a lot of ways that you have to like figure out what all these ranges are. Um, and okay, that’s the end of that thought. That’s all I had. I was just not thinking of your.
Ryan Freng:
And to that point, it’s like what’s the value of a $10,000 director? Certainly, I would hope, experience a pedigree of awesome work. Maybe it’s not pedigree but a body of awesome work, and so that’s what you’re hiring. Hiring that’s what you’re bringing on. You’re bringing on that talent that can get you a specific outcome yeah, right, there’s kind of there’s like there there are uh in.
John Shoemaker:
In that case you’re kind of like hiring talent. So when we talk about talent, we’re talking about the actors, uh, who are doing something, who you know that’s their job. They’re getting paid for that, as opposed to documentary or as opposed to like the staff that works at the company that you’re filming. And then they’re the talent when you start to get to those upper levels of director fees and producer fees, in that case you’re starting to like pay for talent. Kind of there, too, you’re paying for somebody who’s like well known, for something, so like if you wanted to hire somebody who’s worked on these, like you know, coca-cola commercials or nike brand stuff or whatever, like that’s where you’re going to those upper levels of directing cost.
John Shoemaker:
On the smaller level, local level, then there’s just the market. You know the local market and what the rates are and you know, I don’t know, this probably is a moment to cut, maybe it’s not a moment to cut, I don’t know, because there is like like we can go when we’re talking to clients, I can get into the rates of all of it, but again it’s like it’s kind of irrelevant, right, yeah, how much of that do you need to know? Right, it’s like the sales process.
Ryan Freng:
It’s irrelevant. You want it for the vacation, the sunsets, the experience, right. So what is the experience of video production?
Ryan Freng:
And it should be outcome, it should be value oriented For us there’s components that we figure out, the pricing of the talent that goes into it, but for the client, could an exact video be $10,000 for one and $30,000 for another? It could, but the real idea there, I think, is what is the value and the outcome? Because, again, $60,000 for a million dollar company that’s their gross revenue that’s a lot of money, especially if they don’t do other marketing and if they’re just doing that and they’re putting a video on their website, they’re not gonna get a return on that that they need and, to that point, of the other marketing.
John Shoemaker:
So maybe, maybe it makes the most sense to just dive into we are, we will span the gap of that outcome topic, you know, and the only negative tissue here well, and we were talking about social and digital video.
John Shoemaker:
So I think what’s changing, what’s funny is like even having this conversation, I’m like sensitive to the clients that I know have asked this question.
John Shoemaker:
I can like feel them in the back of my mind. I like hope there aren’t clients and people, like you know, are scratching their eyes out right now because we haven’t given like a straight answer. You know, I feel that tension of it’s not that we’re not trying to give a straight answer, but let’s go with that scenario. So we’ve done projects where this one video production project and the output of that project the plan is to put out about a five minute video, right, and the cost of that was about $50,000, $60,000. We’ve done projects like that. That’s what was required, that’s what was needed for the project talent, all the stuff that went into that. We’ve also done things where we’ve output a two-minute video, two 30-second videos and six 15-second videos plus another 30 still images, all for, let’s say, $30,000 or something like that, 30,000 or something like that, right Like so now, which one is more valuable, or what you know, which one, like gets you what you need?
John Shoemaker:
If, if you’re a client who knows exactly what you need, and you have a marketing team internal, or maybe you’re working with an agency and they’re like this is the request that we have, this is what we need, then great, then we’ll do that.
John Shoemaker:
But when we’re working with clients who are like well, I need video, I know that I need video as a part of my thing, part of my marketing. What other things are you gonna do with your marketing? And then, when you’re getting to that outcome, focus, like this project. There is a minimum that it’s gonna to take us just to get there with crew and equipment and whatever but can we create more?
John Shoemaker:
after the fact, the answer is yes, almost always. There’s always a lot more content that you have and you just have to that. You’re just limited by how long the thing should be, or whatever. But putting out multiple pieces of content into your marketing channels, wherever they are social media, or if you’re just buying ads or whatever it would be that’s going to go a lot further for you. So then the question of price is just complicated to like just ask well, just what’s the price is like. Well, it’s the price. It’s like. Well, it’s going to be something like it has to go involved. You know it has to be tied into your whole marketing plan, right, you know what are you spending, what are you buying ads and?
Ryan Freng:
and if we can switch over to my ipad. I’m going to draw this out because this might help people think about it. So, um, you know, when we did some research too, we saw that I think it’s rising as well, like the average marketing spend. So let’s just say you’re you know you’re 1 million and you’ll just have to deal with my handwriting $1 million company and you need to spend 16% of your gross on marketing. So that equals, whoops, one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, all right. So does that mean you’re gonna go out and spend one hundred sixty thousand dollars on video? No, I mean, there’s a lot of different channels that you need to be marketing in, and SEO and web and all of that. So even if we just took this and if we were in charge of this budget, you know what could we do? We could maybe take what? Maybe a hundred thousand of this. Take a hundred, okay, for video, and then another 60k for the other marketing elements.
Ryan Freng:
I don’t like keeps doing this other marketing now the interesting part is like this you know, hundred000 is the bigger number, but the 60,000 right here is probably the work that makes that $100,000 so useful.
John Shoemaker:
And that’s not. You know, in this imaginary scenario, it’s probably not one video, it’s likely not one video. It’s like, okay, okay, if you divide that by four, each quarter, you could have a brand new production for 25 grand, and that’s starting to get into the right range, okay. So now the people that needed to, like you know, look for your, look for the time stamp, for what is the answer? Yeah, without all the fluff like 25 grand, great, that’s a great range to jump in and get a professional video made. That’s going to work for you and do a lot.
Ryan Freng:
But you need that other part that you’re talking about, right, the strategy and I love this too, because we kind of went to that model of quarterly pillars. So if we look at this, the 25k for a quarter, you know, one shoot day for a quarter. One shoot day, get a ton of documentary style, docu-style stuff, bunch of interviews, and then you can do one longer video, maybe four mediums, and then you can do a couple more. And then what? Maybe like 16 snackables or something like that. And again we’d have to see what type of content we’re creating, the channels that we’re distributing to the length of all the content.
Ryan Freng:
But then we take a look at this and we have what? 21 pieces of content, video content that can go across three months. So seven pieces of awesome video content. Video content that can go across three months. So seven pieces of awesome video content which is a little more than one a week, almost two a week. And then, in addition, you want that additional strategy, this stuff up here, and we want image and text posts and all the other digital social marketing to go along with it, so that 25 a quarter goes a lot longer, because you’re also creating all this other content. And when you look at it you know, is it 100,000 for one video? No, it’s 100,000, for you know 80 pieces of content and you really start to make your money back when you’re able to have enough budget to create all those other deliverables, as opposed to just coming in for that one thing.
John Shoemaker:
Well, and then let’s talk about how that applies then to all budget ranges. Let’s talk about, like, how that applies then to all budget ranges Something you said there just made me think of this like, even on the lower end, like really squeezing the budget down.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, throw another out there, like 15,000, or what do you want to call really squeezing the budget down, just so people have a sense? Well, or like 5,000, like I can shoot a thing with a person.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, sure, Go go bottom of the barrel. You know, like about five grand is the bottom of the barrel.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, so you’re not getting behind the seat of this car for less than $5,000.
John Shoemaker:
But the well, and that’s like a one-shot thing, so I don’t know how to structure it in the whole plan, but what I was going to say is that you really need to start thinking in terms of what can I do? How can I have an ongoing plan? Because, um, there might be value, if you don’t have anything, in getting like a video of your company so that you just have that up right. There might be value in that. But when people talk about like shelf life and how long is this video going to serve me and be good for, yeah, just not very long.
Ryan Freng:
We just got to answer no.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, people don’t like everything’s changing to the point where you have to be ongoing with that content. So maybe five was too far down to squeeze it. It was like what can you do in an ongoing like, what can you afford monthly, quarterly, something like that? You need to be thinking about that. And then it’s like, yeah, it, the question is starting to become more complex. It’s not just like what’s the cost of video, it’s like what’s the cost of marketing, what’s the cost or what’s the budget that you’re putting towards your marketing, monthly, quarterly, annually? And then do you want video to be a part of that? And your answer should be yes. I mean, that’s that like, we can talk about that in a whole other episode, about, like, the value of video in modern marketing and um, but you need to have a plan to be ongoing. And then, yeah, you don’t want to be that client where because we’ve run into this right where a client scrapes together everything they can to get this one video done and then they’re like all right, that’s it.
John Shoemaker:
That’s where I’ve spent it, spent my marketing budget we did it right, like we would probably succeeded with video we would be better, we would better serve them by saying just hold off, don’t do the video right now. Right, get out your cell phone, do a quick selfie like hey, I’m the owner. I hope you come down to my shop, post that on your social account. Keep doing that and spend your 10 000 20 000 annual on your ad buy or something well, and that’s.
Ryan Freng:
That’s a really good point too. And looking at the numbers again, I’m going to draw some crap. But you know, thinking okay, like a significant project upfront, just a one time project for kind of a longer promotional piece for a business, call it. You know 30k, right. Then all those other pieces and ongoing work, you know. So this is 30k one time. Then let’s see if that’ll transform. There you go, fixes my font, fixes my typing or my writing. Then we say 5k ongoing.
Ryan Freng:
I can’t even spell stuff, onjin, here we go it’s probably because it’s live, yeah, also, because I probably would spell this wrong, wrong anyway on going so. Then additional monthly cost to develop more content from that initial shoot right, and then you keep going on this. If, if you do this, just one of these one-time videos, and then the ongoing, what is that? 90k total right, and that kind of gets close to that idea of the 10K or 100K project right of just video quarterly right. So lots of different ways to look at it, and I think the best metaphors that we’ve discovered are analogies, similes, what is it, is it a simile?
John Shoemaker:
Is it a?
Ryan Freng:
simile. Let’s see it’s like define a simile, an analogy and a metaphor. A metaphor is this A, you know, and Apple is like a book, right, so something categorically different. But, I said like so it’s a simile. That’s a hammer for here. What’s that?
John Shoemaker:
Good Yep, you saw right through it. You saw right through it.
Ryan Freng:
If you’re not able to define it, we’ll ask Chet GPT.
John Shoemaker:
What’s the? This is really important to the podcast. Yeah, I don’t podcast. Yeah, I don’t know I don’t know what it is a simile, my kids could probably tell me can’t smell.
Ryan Freng:
I don’t have to define them right, I just have to speak in them a an analogy and in a metaphor, and a metaphor anyway buying a car, buying a house, you know, like if somebody were to say what does it cost to buy a house? Yeah, if you knew very specifically what you were looking for and all the elements and the location and you had that whole scope dialed in, then you can get something pretty specific, like if somebody came in to us with a pretty specific scope we could give them a pretty specific price.
John Shoemaker:
And it occurs to me that, even with a ton of specifics, there would still be, like yeah, things that change it right, right, like oh, okay, well, but there is a slightly different finish we could do here. We could do it like this other materials, other methods, there’s timeline, and then there’s things that happen. You, you know, there’s delays that happen just naturally because of the market, whatever. So I mean, it is a good analogy, always using the house analogy. Yeah, you want this?
Ryan Freng:
house now. Bid 10% more, bid 5% more. You have time, just underbid and maybe you’ll get it it. You want this house in this area with that feature. Okay, it’s just gonna be more expensive because it’s just more expensive in this area. Now the interesting thing with the house is they’ll, you know, a person will stick with a realtor and figure out and buy a house somewhere. Yeah, and that’s what we want. When we try to partner with people is like hey, let’s figure this out together and we’ll get you the thing you need.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, now you’re going down a path that definitely I’ve got some energy for and some here hold the thought, Let me do simile metaphor. Simile metaphor.
Ryan Freng:
A simile is a direct comparison between two unlike things. Using the words like or as he’s as brave as a lion, metaphor makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison by stating that one thing is another, so metaphor is another. Tim is a thief. That’s a metaphor. An analogy explains a relationship between two things by showing how they are similar in a broader or more logical sense. Just as a sword is the weapon of a warrior, a pen is the weapon of a writer, so I think it’s just a simile.
John Shoemaker:
Like buying video is like is like buying that by me might be, that’s like, that’s an analogy. I would say well, I think, when you’re telling a story to illustrate another point, I think I would call it an analogy.
Ryan Freng:
It’s a parable really is what it is. So what I we should just be putting this whole conversation through chat GBT.
John Shoemaker:
What I was gonna get fired up about is yeah, so you pick a realtor and then they help you find a house that you want and they manage, they navigate through the budget.
Ryan Freng:
And we don’t compare realtors. Let’s be honest.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, People aren’t like. You know what? I’ve decided to go with another realtor and a different house.
Ryan Freng:
Um, yeah, luke’s dad’s a realtor. How many times has that happened?
John Shoemaker:
Okay. So where are we going with this? When people talk to us about something, we put together a budget and then we don’t hear from them for a while, and then they get back to us and like I decided to go with another company for a different price. Yeah, more than half the time, the majority of the time, we’re like, oh yeah, we could have done that. Yeah, like we.
John Shoemaker:
It’s not a, it’s not a physical product that has a set value. We are trying to interpret what they’re looking for based on their conversation and then saying here, here’s what I think would be good for you, and it has to be a conversation back and forth. It’s a bit of a weird industry. I guess it makes sense that people do it that way, because they’re trying to compare vendors, and I need to also be humble enough to admit that People might just decide that they don’t want to work with us. Don’t like us, that’s fine. Yeah, absolutely good. But it’s like you have to. If you like us and you want to work with us, if you like what our company is doing and what we were saying and kind of the message that we put out or how we create things, then just talk to us and we’ll design something that makes sense. So it’s more of a.
Ryan Freng:
If you like what we do and who we are, let’s make it work.
John Shoemaker:
You’ve got to choose. I mean is that the biggest takeaway for budget? It’s just like well, that’s why we use our cliche, or it’s not?
Ryan Freng:
cliche. It’s a good phrase, it’s awesome. Choose a partner, not a price or pick a partner if you want to go out alliteration.
John Shoemaker:
It could be a simile.
Ryan Freng:
Let’s do this. Okay, let’s wrap up cost. Let’s give people tips on cost, all right. And then the next one, which you’ll have to tune into right after this, is pick a partner, not a price, because I think we could rant on that in a really positive way. Oh, that’s gonna be a different one, that’s not part of the wrap-up, okay, no, I think I think we started getting into it and I think we have a lot more to say. Okay, so let’s wrap up the price. You know, give me some pithy uh responses like I can, what is video production?
John Shoemaker:
and I can give numbers too, um, and maybe some examples and I can talk about markets and and right. So we’re in the Midwest and I could, just because people are looking for this right, they’re still scratching their eyes out because they’re like you won’t just say it, you haven’t said it yet.
John Shoemaker:
So in the Midwest we’re in Madison, wisconsin. The bottom basement stuff you’re going to find is around five grand. You can play the budget game. You can look for the budget company. What you get when you go for a budget is going to be budget. So if that’s what you want, fine, there might be vendors out there.
Ryan Freng:
Generally, you get what you pay for and there are some people who are starting off who are exceptional, but the chances of you hitting the lottery are so low and we get people in marketing in video who come to us and say, yeah, I had a bad experience. I’m looking for somebody who can provide some continuity and some regularity and some consistency, like, yeah, that happens all the time, but you could win the lottery, maybe that’s you, that’s you yep, yep that is a metaphor ah so um 10 000 to 20 000 is like a still a small.
John Shoemaker:
10 is kind of tight. 20 is starting to be good. That’s a good range to just be like. I can get a pretty good production going for that. Again, this is kind of Midwestern areas.
Ryan Freng:
I’ll typically say 15 to 30 is a really solid range for documentary style promotion.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, and my brain is in the past and I haven’t adjusted for inflation yet, so we might need to adjust that. Then let’s say we’re going to incorporate talent, so you need a few actors and you might be building a set. You might have a couple day production. So now we’re talking about we’re probably in that $50,000 range somewhere in that ballpark, and then if we start talking about bigger things and campaigns, then we’re looking up toward 100, things like that. We’ve done feature length documentary film. Production budget only production budget was about 250,000 for that and again, that was a while ago.
Ryan Freng:
So that scope was? Do you remember how long that took to film and how? Because, we travel all around the country, somewhere around?
John Shoemaker:
that was somewhere around 12 to 14 shoot days and the scope of that project went over a year.
Ryan Freng:
So 12 to 14 shoot days, as we could schedule them in with different people across the country, and then months of editing and back and forth and to be clear when we’re looking at movies like blumhouse is probably, uh, the one that creates the cheapest movies in the most repeatable way, and I think they like, say, five million or at one point.
Ryan Freng:
They’re like five million. Yeah is the smallest we can be, and then we can do a bunch of these and we need one of these to hit. So just giving that scope, what is that? A 20th of the cost? Yeah Right, in the Midwest way.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, and then you know the higher profile, the higher profile brands, the higher profile talent. You know all those numbers need to gain a multiple Right talent. You know all those numbers need to gain a multiple right. You know again, like, if you’re talking commercials and stuff, you’re easily gonna hit a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand on your brands. You know Culver’s or whatever is probably doing commercials around a hundred to two hundred thousand a commercial, something in there, right, well, and to go back to your original point of like the parts that go into it.
Ryan Freng:
So now I think we’ve kind of sold like it’s gotta make sense, it’s gotta make dollars and cents on your budget, like you have to make more money from this expenditure than spending it. But talking about actors, you know like if we hire local yokels, you know like if we hire local yokels, uh, you know 500, a thousand dollars for a spot, um, minimum.
Ryan Freng:
Right, and then we start to get agency folk out of Chicago. Uh, for a limited run you’re probably talking several grand, you know, two, three, four, $5,000 for this one actor, for one thing. Um, so then then that that just explodes the budget as well. So it depends on the brand, right when they want to hire, what the actor needs to do, kind of all the scope of work, the specific. So again, can we do a commercial for 20 grand? Yes, it looks very different than a commercial for 100 grand, like we did a project for around $100,000 which had a couple days of shooting, and then what? 11 commercial deliverables. So really dialed in, really systematic, right, really repeatable, and Culver’s is doing one commercial with some other assets for starting at 100. We did 11 different beasts, but just gives gives you an idea?
Ryan Freng:
of why can’t you just give?
John Shoemaker:
me a price for a thing, and I’m including editing in these. I mean as a total budget. I’m including editing as a part of what that thing would be, and I realized another analogy could be a simile, could be a metaphor.
Ryan Freng:
It’s likely one of these.
John Shoemaker:
Which is, let’s say, you hire somebody to work on your car, you, you know the mechanic’s going to get back to you with a thousand dollar or $1,500 cost, right? So then and this is me just speculating on why people like don’t understand what video production costs is, because they’re used to other things, maybe that cost smaller amounts. Like well, I hire a mechanic and it’s $1,500 for a car. Like, why is the video this? Well, if you hired your mechanic to work on your car and you said, this project of my car, you’re going to be working on it for a month. That’s not $,500 bucks anymore, mm-hmm, it’s 25 grand or something like that, right? So the project, the video project, you’re not just Like I have a thing and I think this thing is supposed to be worth this value.
John Shoemaker:
You’re hiring a team of people to Work on creative pre-production. Put together the plan. Team of people to work on creative pre-production. Put together the plan. Do the shoot days. Bring back the stuff, do the editing, do all the reviews back and forth with you as the client. Make sure that it fits with your marketing plan. If that’s a part of the project, so that’s the other part of it. That other perspective is like. It’s not just this thing. You’re hiring somebody for a service for a month or two months or however long.
Ryan Freng:
That process is Well and I do think when budgeting, people think like, well, it’s simple, like people you know, when people start to say it’s simple or it’s easy or it’s quick, they don’t understand the process. They think maybe they’re just hiring somebody to go with a camera, spend an hour and then they just put it into their computer and it’s done right. They think it’s like maybe these other services that they experience. But you’re right that it’s much more complicated.
Ryan Freng:
One other thing I wanted to mention is like the outcome orientation and the value focus, and we haven’t really cracked the nut yet, but we’ve really tried and had some good experiences with some investment firms who have millions in profit each year and they’re looking to improve that or increase that by millions, and I think we pitched maybe $130,000, $160,000 project to one of them for a full year.
Ryan Freng:
We even tied it down to okay, here’s how it’s going to be each month, each quarter. Here’s the content we’re going to create, at least in a kind of initial way. We didn’t develop this without actually working with them, but we started kind of ideating on that and then the goal would be yeah, we’re gonna try to get 10 new investors that you wouldn’t have had before, right, and those investors equal hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least that first year in profit, and then after that it compounds as we add ten and ten, and ten, you know, etc. Now the interesting thing is, I think, that investors tend to be just this frugal you know group in a way that even spending the hundred and fifty you know was a difficult thought process because they’ve never done anything like that before, because yeah they can hire a service for a couple grand or ten grand or something like that.
Ryan Freng:
You know why does this cost so much, despite the upside being a multiple of that cost.
John Shoemaker:
Right, we haven’t cracked that nut yet but all there’s that was an interesting interaction. There’s a difference again there. It’s. It’s important to define that, what we’re talking about too, because there are videos that are that are a defined project, and then there’s marketing, and that that involves video right in there. And we provide all this, that we’ve done all of it. Sometimes we’ve just done a video for something or whatever, and there’s a set cost to that, but it still takes whatever, it still takes the crew and that time.
Ryan Freng:
I’m listening to you.
John Shoemaker:
I’m just going to turn on the air conditioning and then there are also marketing plans that involve video, which is a whole different thing.
Ryan Freng:
Well, and generally now the discussion that we’re having is like you got to think in a more complete way for this thing. It’s like you can’t. I don’t know if there’s a good uh simile or analogy, uh, with a house or a car, but you can’t be like, ah, I just kind of want to frame in wheels. Yeah, there’s not really a good analogy.
John Shoemaker:
It’s not going to be good.
Ryan Freng:
Maybe it’s more like a website, like, just give me the code, I just want the code. Well, you don’t want a code, you want a website and you want a back end that you can interact with and manage the content, and then you want a way to share that, and then you want a server to host it on, and it’s got to be fast. You need all this and it’s going to be ongoing. So you don’t just want me to hand you code, you don’t just want a video, or you don’t need a video.
Ryan Freng:
You may think that is all you need but you really need that consistent strategy and marketing that goes along with it. If you’ve never done video before, you should be uncomfortable with the cost, like it should be uncomfortable to you because it’s likely going to be more than you think In terms of your marketing and your marketing budget, the outgoing money. You know kind of different strokes for different folks, but video is going to take up a big portion of that budget just because that is the content that converts the most. It’s the content that engages better than anything else. It’s more shareable and it’s more segmentable. So you can break that one big quarterly video down into multiple pieces and share that out. So it’s going to just give you a lot more mileage. So final verdict Do it On a rating of one to 10, production cost.
John Shoemaker:
I’m for it. I am in favor.
Ryan Freng:
There’s no good way to end that. So you know it’s’s complicated, but if you think outcome and you think value, focus, then it doesn’t matter if it’s ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars, if it will double.
John Shoemaker:
You know if, if the opportunity is double or triple or ten times that, yeah, it’s just probably I don’t know there’s it’s not a wrap-up point, it probably just kicks off a whole other discussion, but it’s. You’re hiring professionals for a large amount of their time to work on your project. It’s like people. If you think through it logically, I think you can get there. If you think about like well, this is how much the engagement photo session costs, this is how much wedding photography costs, this is how much wedding photography costs, this is how much wedding videographer costs, and those things are priced and they’re designed for consumers and there are very set uh guidelines, right. And then this is very specific scope diving into business professional area and trying to coordinate with the business on what your goals are, what you’re trying to, you know, get as an outcome anyway, you just build it.
Ryan Freng:
That way you can get there logically yeah, yeah, and I think the next podcast we’re gonna do which you have to tune in for, is pick a partner, not a price, the alliterative, not an analogy, nor a metaphor or a simile. It’s none of those. It’s just a great direct statement. It is the thing, it means, what it says. So tune in for that. Like, follow, subscribe, do all the things. If you do have specific questions, do post and reach out to us so that we can address them, because we want this to be a resource for anybody getting into video production, anybody doing video production for their business and how you can succeed better. So that’s what we got. Thanks John, thanks Ryan, we’ll see you next time.
