How Much do I Charge?

[vjlozano]

Hi Everyone! Is there a "Standard" fee in terms of VJ Rates... I mean how much do I charge for producing original material for events? and how much do I charge for VJing Live with it?

Plz Help me out> -I feel I've been "undercharging" people for my services...:P

:o

peAce

[vjlozano]

I mean I now the producton value for Audiovisual material may vary depending on what it is (film,CGI,tec..) and how many hours it took to make, but I'm hoping to come up with some sort of way for calculating my rates....

I'm n need of some experienced advice

[LEVLHED]

if you look around there have been discussions on this in the past..look for threads.

but my advice, in the end: AS MUCH AS YOU CAN GET
:D

[DFUNC]

Depends on how good you are. Some VJs are not worth an AV-cable and some get a couple of thousand $ a night.
:sad:

[asterix]

Small gig - cheap tix then not much.
Big gig, expensive tix then heaps.
Dont forget setup/pull down time (hourly rate). Hardware charges (10% cost). Custom content charges.
Or if your just an enthusiast helping out a small local scene - just do it for the rider my friend.

[vjlozano]

THNX Guys!!

I was recently on tour with Grammy Award winner Singer Juan Luis Guerra though out europe and USA... it's the first time a dominican artist uses VJing in his show...anyway, since it's not a custom here n my country to have such "things" as Vjays they were first scheptical about having to pay me by the hour for me to perform my visuals LIVE (I have worked with them before creating visual content for the show, but they used a DVD to play them)... but after a couple of shows they were more than happy to give me the USD$400 bucks (one hour and a half show). It was a total of 18 shows I think (or 20). I didn't charge them for the visuals, beacause I really wanted to be in the the gig and prove to them taht I'm worth the money. Now for the winter latin american tour I will renegociate and ask for USD$100/song for the visual content creation (the winter show consists of18 songs). They'll probably end up giving me USD$50 for each song (content creation) and USD$400 for each show.

what do u think?

[LEVLHED]

sounds ok if YOU keep full exclusive rights to the video content you create.

[videoteque]

Every country has it's own values. Here in italy there is very little that you can do with 100?, instead in another country is like two months wages...

In any case they should pay you enough for "subirte la bilirrubina"!!! :P :P

[Rovastar]

Originally posted by vjlozano
They'll probably end up giving me USD$50 for each song (content creation) and USD$400 for each show.

what do u think?

!!!!!!

It is very difficult to give prices in countries where I don't know for example the average monthly wage or month rent for a studio/flat.

I don't know if $400 is an average monthly wage in your country, etc. Thus difficult to quantify also I haven't done "tour work" and with tour work everyone is on good money with little outgoing but that compensates for other things like the lack of seeing friends/family being on the road, living in a tour bus, etc.

What say does the sound engineer or the lighting jockey or the rodeo get paid? It is all relative. IMHO you should be paid more per show than these people.

But the main point is why is the custom content creation price sooo low?

It is a lot more difficult and time consuming IMHO than going through the motions perform the same content live night after night.

You charge $400 to play clip and only $50 for a 4 minute track of visuals?

I would tbh be thinking in the thousands per track. Now I do not know the quality of your work but what you must know is how long would each track take you to make from start to finish.

What development time do you need to make each track?

What hour rate what an good experienced graphic designer, etc charge in your country so you get a compression.

The percentages don?t add up. Perform one show you get $400 we will say that is 1 days work although you only work for a couple of hours you have to cost for travel time, etc. And you seem happy with $400 a day work.

But it say takes 1 week (*guess I have no idea yet how long it takes you :shrug: ) to create 5 minutes/1 track of content. Surely then you should charge day rate ($400) by 5 days so $2,000.

That is the way I logically see it.

Make sure you keep all copies of your custom content you create including all pre-production work as evidence that you did it. Hopefully with some data/time evidence there.

Make sure you own the rights to the work you create and you are licensing them for the ?use in a live setting, were you or someone you directly appoint with written approval from yourself/your company, are playing the content.? Hence they cannot then use the content without your services illegally (as you make the bluk of your money doing the performance)

Also are you having/perceiving problems selling them the custom content. A nice comparison is how much would a 4-5 minute music video cost them? They are paying 10?s of thousands minimum for that service. And they want the same level of work for $50.

You can also sell your custom content to them on that basis of future music video with proper negotiations but a different cost is involved or if they want to own them all outright it is say $5,000 a video.

[LEVLHED]

I was thinking about this last night before I fell asleep...
was going to come back and write pretty much what Rova did :)
in the end its up to you, but the points he makes should all be considered before you give them your price...and in the end my original advice still holds true.

[vjlozano]

Thanx Guys!! Quite frankly 'm new to the bizz side of audiovisual/production, and here in santo domingo there are very few and new laws for intelectual rights.. it's almost a joke.. also, it served me real well to talk to local coworkers on the tour (Rotterdam, Roskilde, Barcelona...) cause had no idea the rates here in DR were so low!!!

Anyway, thnx for the advice on making shure I own the rights for the content I make, I was being lazy about it but now I realize how important it is for both the short and the long term..(I have a close friend who just finished law school and is very good that could help me out)...

I am very grateful for this comunity and how well it helps Vjs to grow and learn about this bizz!!!:D :alien:

[Stuart]

Make sure you own the rights to the work you create and you are licensing them for the ?use in a live setting


in most cases you will not own the work. This is almost always done on a 'work for hire' basis and as such the content that you create for the project is owned by those who own the project.