Do You Know How The Cost of a Live Shoot Video Decided?

[Updated]

At what pixels do you play YouTube videos?

360p to 480p video quality for me is fine and it doesn’t exceed my monthly internet pack.

A professional live shoot video can be made in as low as 20k and the exactly same video can be made in 20 Lakhs. But the quality will change.

Quality of a video changes at different levels.

At certain level it will affect resolution, at other it will affect content. And the cost will vary accordingly. But if the production company you have hired, knows the art of balancing the variation of quality at different levels, so that it will not degrade your audience interest, you can optimize the cost on production of your video ad campaign.

Let’s break each level:

Expertise of a video maker

Video making is not limited to lights and camera or camera angles par se. There are certain rules like rule of third and the golden circle. And any video maker can explain you the technicalities of these rules.

The expertise is to break these rules and still make a powerful video. Mumbai is the hub of freelance video makers and you can get a video done in Rs.5,000 to Rs 5 Lakhs. The difference in cost comes from the ability of a video maker to twist the existing rules.

Concept/Script

No, a video maker is not that important as much as the writer is. A high class video maker is worthless, it the concept is poor. That is why video makers crave for awesome script. Because scripts make great video makers, famous artists and your brand visible.

A brilliant story will cost more.

Number of locations

If you are shooting at a single location, you are saving a lot of money. If you want multiple locations in your video, just multiply the number of locations with the cost of one location!

Equipment Quality

Quality of Camera, Light, Sound and few other small equipment that are used while shooting also adds up to the production cost.

Artists

Obviously if you want to cast a Bollywood celebrity in your video, it will cost you accordingly that if you cast a television artist. Same applies for the voice over artists.

Read More Here For Everything about Video Making Process as a Whole.

Some other important part of the live shooting

Props, costumes and makeup: Everyone has their own favorite brand and we have to provide the costumes and makeups from these brands only. And no one want to use from an open pack so every time we have to buy a new pack which adds up to the cost of production.

Scene logistics and production design: The production house has to arrange for the scene designing so we hire a designer. What they do? Whatever scenery you see at the walls or the color of sofa or carpet, the curtains, the utensils. Everything is designed by the designer. Sometimes we are lucky to get these logistics at the location. But many times we had to rent them.

Number of days of shooting: Whatever we are renting for the shooting is costing us per day. It further adds up with the travel cost and full day meal for whole crew which can be range from 30 to 300 people or more.

Editing, Graphics and Post production: Shooting is not the end of the job. We have editors for cutting and joining the scenes to make them perfect. The editors either make a graphic template by their own or buy licence of some existing graphic template from the market. So the cost of editors according to their editing quality, graphic templates is also added.

Stock footage and original music and licensing: Live shoot videos use stock footages. Stock footages are the existing standard videos that can be used multiple times when shot once. For example the stock footage of a landing plane is available in few thousands but actually shooting a plan landing will cost more than a Lakh. SImilar is with music. Either we create a new music or we use the existing ones depending on the demand.

You must be thinking baap re.. It’s too much expensive to do a quality live shoot. But relax, there are many task to be done but it’s not as expensive as you are thinking.

I am breaking down the cost of making a live shoot videos with the example videos that we have made for our clients.