After a couple minutes of thinking where to place this post, I figured the vegas forum would be good because of all the hard work I put into this DVD.

I am DONE.

I finally finish my high school's varsity football team's season DVD. 44 minutes with bonus features and hours of editing. Let me break it down for you guys.

10 game x 2 hours per game = 20 hours

capturing each game - 20 min per game x 10 games = 3 hours

finding good clips - 20 min per game (rewatch) - 20 min x 10 games = 3 hours

4 hours per game x 10 games = 40 hours

Intro = 5 hours (hard to figure out concept)

So I'm into this about.... a good 70 hours. So now I am at the selling phase of this project, and I'm wonderinig what I should price each DVD at. I live in Campbell, CA so its about middle-high class here (some parts) so money isn't hard to come by. I thought I would start selling at $35 bucks, which seems like a fair deal. They wouuld receive:

A DVD
DVD Case with color cover
Sound Track CD

Some of my friends are whinninig about the price and I have this feeling that I charged too much and its hindering my sales. I've only had one chance to sell these so I'm not for sure on that.

If someone could give me some ideas or how to price these things, I would appreicate it.

I have a website and everything to market these babies, just wondering about price...

http://football.curtkay.com
If you buy one, I'll give you a dvinfo discount :D

-Kay

Curt,
I'm not a pro (yet) but I'm doing research on pricing for my future video business so, for what it's worth, here's my opinion. I'd recommend you price close to what a movie DVD is selling for in the community. You've already invested much in this production (sunk costs). Now you want to get reimbursed and make a few bucks in return. Don't let pricing scare your buying public away as the feedback you are getting indicates. If your buyers are mostly kids and their families, price around $20 per copy. I bet you will get more sales which brings in the cash flow. Cost of the disks, labels, cases, and ink is a small percentage so most of the revenue will go into your pocket (business). Better to have volume sales producing more revenue than product sitting on the shelf. Hope this helps.
Randy

Ofcourse it depends all on the amount of information and quality
on the disc, but also how much you are going to sell (probably).

I do agree that compared to big movies your disc is pretty
expensive. For example, the Lord of the Rings the Two Towers
Special Extended edition (4!! DVD's + booklet + beautiful casing)
goes for $25.99 at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009TB5G/)! Ofcourse your product is a
specialty product which could warrant a higher price. Again, it
all boils down to content, number of discs you are going to sell
and the market you are selling too.

I sold my law school musical DVD for $15 bucks a copy, and it was worth a lot more than that. Sold about 100 copies. And that was very high quality footage. I don't think people are going to expect very high quality from a high school football DVD (irrespective of whether it IS high quality, which I'm sure it is!) so I don't think they'll pay $35. It's hard to get people to go to the site to download the samples to see how high quality it actually is.

Speaking of which - what camera did you use? It does look very good - very nice color saturation. I'd guss it must be Betacam SP minimum. Am I right?

Anyway, it also depends on who your audience is. If it's primarily just parents of team members, they'll probably pay anything, but that's only, what, 25 famileis or so? (sorry I have no idea how many people are on a HS football team :) )

If the audience is the school at large, definitely will have to charge less, I'd say.

Here is a company in my hometown that takes a slightly different approach. I think that they market primarily to the schools/booster clubs and get a commitment before the season starts. They also rely on the schools to provide most of the video. I'm not sure how successful they are, but their approach seems to take some of the risk and work out of the picture.

http://www.timelessimpressions.com/highlights/default.htm

heres a tip from someone who ONLY specialises in DVD

do NOT go over retail price.. this wil hinder your potential sales.. id rather sell 20 copies at $22AUD then only sell 5 copies at $40AUD

the price of DVD burners has decreased dramatically.. this offers the potential for piracy to blow your sales. Dont be surprised if ppl copy your work, especially at the prices you are charging.

only offer covers in a dvd case and prints should be of professional photo quality standard.

Your Discs should have full colour prints directly to disc, NOT labels.

for the price you are offering, Dolby Digital (standardised with official use of logos) is a necessity and music licensing is a must, especially if youre offering audio compilations...
IMO, you would be wiser in offering still image grabs on CDR as opposed to audio..

this saves on licensing fees, as well as shows potential clients that this is a possibility.

- Future sales.
Make SURE you have your business name and logo on the DVD cover, printed on the DVD itself (do NOT use labels.. not all players balance discs very well, and labels can be your downfall)
If your licensed for Dolby, make sure u include all acknowledgments.

your DVD's should also carry your logo, and Dolby info

include 2 business cards IN EACH dvd case...

-good luck with the sales...

Well, I have to lower the prices.. everyone is complaining that its too high.


So i figure 19.95 is fine, and if i can sell 100 that would be really nice instead of like... 20 at $35.

Anyways, heres another preview of some of the footage:

http://football.curtkay.com/video/game8.wmv

Color is a bit off, it was set for a NTSC monitor, not a computer monitor.

For the customers who have already paid, I have decided to give them 2 copies to make up for the difference.

Anymore ideas or suggestions would help! thanks to everyone who has replied.


-Kay

Oh yea equipment used:

Camera:
GL2

Color Adjustments -
Gain - 2 notches down

Custom Color Balance using a white index card on football lights

Software:
Vegas Video 4

Color Adjustments -
Brightness and Contrast
Color Curve

I'll get the exact numbers when I get back from LA.


-Kay

Peter Jefferson stated (for the price you are offering, Dolby Digital (standardised with official use of logos) is a necessity and music licensing is a must, especially if youre offering audio compilations...)

To get the licensing agreement for Dolby Digital for this one project would negate the profits so for him to seek it would be a lose. Just drop the Logo and just go for what it is a Homecoming CD. As for going a professional look this is a great call as just burning it and slapping it in a case will not sell as well. As for getting it made our last couple of DVDs cost the following. 1,000 limited burn $2.16 for DVD and case with print media. 50-limited burn was $8.26 for the DVD and case however the graphics was better as this one was being released to film festivals.

I wish you luck one your venture.

"For the customers who have already paid, I have decided to give them 2 copies to make up for the difference."

i would strnlgy suggest you refund the money.. as oposed to offering 2 copies. tell tehm there was a problem with the figures and give their money back.
Some people DONT want 2 copies and you arent giving them the choice to purchase 2 copies by doing this, you are actually forcing them to purchase 2 copies becasue you couldnt decide on price.

I dont mean to sound harsh as i know that sounds hardh, but you know where im coming from.

I agree - refund the money.

I disagree about logo licensing. It's totally unnecessary to have Dolby Digital logos. Your audience (HS students and their parents) are unlikely to know/care from Dolby. They just want to see themselves (or their children, or friends, as the case may be) playing football.

However, unless I'm totally off the wall, as I recall it doesn't cost anything to get the Dolby logo. If you've bought Vegas or some other encoding software, that should be all that's required in terms of licensing. They do have other annoying requirements though. You have to send them copies of everything for "quality checking", including your packaging, and you can't distribute anything until they've approved everything. It could add many weeks of waiting time to the final publication, so I wouldn't bother.

As for the soundtrack, if you're using other people's songs you do need to get licenses. It's not a fair use to use other people's recordings for background music of a video, and most especially not to put it on a CD album.

Also there's no reason to get this DVD replicated in 1000 copies. Use a professional DVD-R duplication service. They will do 4-color CMYK printing directly to disk, and give you full packaging, probably for about $5-6 per disk, depending on the service. Very few people have ever reported problems with pro-duplicated DVD-Rs.

As to licenses for Dolby please see the following link, as you will find that you must become certified as well as paying royalties to use said logo ands if you use said logo without infringement fines are costly.


http://www.dolby.com/lic/

A little criticism of your footage from that link. Please take this into consideration for all your work from now until the day you DIE.

DO NOT WALK WHILE SHOOTING.
It screams amateur and looks horrible.
The only exception, is if you are using a Steadicam type device or are going for the Blair Witch look.

Anyway, I agree, I would top the price out at an even $20, if you have enough people that would be interested in buying it (looks like quite a crowd at that game).
If you were at a smaller school, where the only people that might buy the video were team members, I would price it at $40, since you'd have a very limited market.

Good luck!

How much you sell depends mostly on marketing. You have to convince people to buy your product. If your DVD is in fancy packaging, people will think it's good. If you show people a nice fancy trailer, they'll think your DVD is good and buy it. You don't necessarily need either but you have to convince people somehow that your product is something they'd like.

2- For niche audiences people will just buy it anyways. i.e. parents watching their kids play.

3- Charge "high" to cover your costs. If you price low you won't sell too many extra based on price and won't recover as much of your time/money. If you charge too low some people will think the product is amateurish.

Don't charge too high though. Most people are going to benchmark your DVD against the price of commercial DVDs to figure out if their purchase is worth it.

Sorry, Sharon, I believe you're mistaken:

http://www.dolby.com/lic/ecm/tsa.html

"These agreements are royalty-free, but a separate agreement must be signed for each technology prior to use of the corresponding Dolby trademark."

As I said, I looked into it, but it's a PITA, despite being "free."

Okay WOW awesome amounts of responses. Let me address some of these:

Dylan Couper-

Yeah I know the whole walking thing looks completely amateur, but the thing is... I am. I'm only a senior in high school with VERY limited funds after buying the GL2. So I made due with my hand until futher funding from my pay checks pay for a steadi-cam. My school is about 1700 students... if I can sell 100 copies @ $20 then I could make $2000 minus cost. I would be very happy with that so I could start buying stuff for my senior film. Thank you very much for your input.

Peter Jefferson-

I was just looking for another way out besides having to refund money. They could give a copy to a relative or something. I'll give them the choice on what they want to do.

Glenn Chan-

Ohh don't worry... I'm going to promote the crap out of these things. The cover looks really good and theres been hype about the DVDs ever since I showed the trailer at the banquet.

Peter Moore-

I'm just using my own DVD burner, I know its not professional, but its convenient and cheap. I'll probably get my next project duplicated at a professional place. So what exactly do I have to do to use the Dobly Logo? I found their animated intros on the internet as a VOB file, converted it to avi, and I really want to add it in. Just looking at the legal site of it.. (do I even have to?? its just a class project for my visual media class.)

Thanks guys, you are all really helping me learn this stuff... I just hope I turn some what of a profit.

-Kay

Curt, you didn't particularly ask for a critique, just advice on pricing. But, you put your clips out there, so you should expect a few comments.

Your homecoming clip is tedious. The faces of the players, lacking any real emotion passing in an endless procession of fade-to-black transitions grates a nerve after the third one. Show us the singer, show us a wide shot of the crowd -- do something other than pan the players on the sideline over and over.

Also, if you are marketing to parents, your music choices leave something to be desired. On the clips on your website, even if my child was featured, I would have a hard time paying the money to listen to that soundtrack. Of course, that is the head-banging crap that SportsCenter has been leaning toward for the last few years, so your younger audience may be inspired.

You avoided answering the questions about music licensing, so I can only assume that the music you have used is all original, performed by friends who want to gain some exposure. You are really opening yourself up if you are distributing for profit material that has been previously published.

"So what exactly do I have to do to use the Dobly Logo?"

You have to go to their site, fill out all the paperwork, and send samples for "quality assurance." It's a lot of work, and you can't put anything out until they've approved it. Iwould recommend against it for your project.

"I found their animated intros on the internet as a VOB file, converted it to avi, and I really want to add it in. Just looking at the legal site of it.. (do I even have to?? its just a class project for my visual media class.)"

No, you may not use those trailers at all unless you get them officially through Dolby's licensing. Trademark infringement can get you in a lot of trouble (sometimes more than copyrights!) Don't ever use anyone else's logos without permission.

Like I said, just stay away from it. Indicate on your packaging that it's "Digital AC-3 2/0" or something like that. Again, none of your customers are going to care from AC-3.

Oh and finally don't listen to the critics here. You're doing a fine job.

Jeff -
I was expecting some comments on the clips.... thats why I put them here... Anyways, Thank you for your input, I will consider some of your suggestions in my next project or when I have $$$$ to buy another camera (1 cam only right now). The music has been changed due to my father yelling at me when I showed him the "final" version last night.

I have decided not to include the music complications due to the fact that they are real bands and such and I do not have the time or money to get licensing from each of them.

Thanks for your opinion.

Peter Moore-

Okay, so I'm going to scratch the whole dobly intro that I had planned... damn. Yeah the common person really does not care about AC3 or even know what it is.... I'll just add Digital AC-3 2/0 some where on the cover.

Don't worry about the criticism from other members of the board... nothing is compared to my father. :)

-Kay

Curt, you handle criticism much better than most teenagers. I hope you know that I presented it not to knock you down, but to help you grow.

As for cameras and shot variety...you don't need multiple cameras (you can't shoot more than one at a time anyway). You just need to think while you're shooting about how you're going to tell your story. Or even better, think before you start shooting and work from a shot list. There are pros here that can help you with this more than I can. I am a self taught hack. Learning from others mistakes here on the forum is a lot easier than the school of hard knocks.

Thanks Jeff. I'm used to criticism and I welcome it. If everyone told me I was doing a good job then.. well there would be no reason to improve or grow.

Anyways... I had a screening at my house today and the public liked it... I hope sales pick up so I can make some money.

-Kay

with regard to Dolby TSA, i prolly missed the boat here, but im licensed to carry logos as well as advertise the fact that my work is "set to a professional standard approved by Dolby Labs".. now this is a selling tool.. maybe u might want to consider that in the future...

as for the VOBS, DO NOT, i repeast DO NOT use them.. whatever you do.. for one they are inferior to the theatrical trailers supplied by Dolby Labs, on top of that, you would need to rip the vob apart and re-author.. but thats moving onto other stuff...

apart from that, good luck with your venture.. !!

i wish i started young!!!!

Here is something I do with the schools that certainly helps the marketing.

I offer the videos for $25 and give the school student body fund $5 of it. They also have to distribute the videos after they are completed so I get out of that terrible task. Distribution can really eat into your profits otherwise.

Everyone is happy and the parents feel good about getting a video while helping the school.

I did a HS graduation and sold the tapes at the entrance to the site. The Principal announced that the tapes were offered and that the school would receive some of the money.

Spur of the moment project paid off quite nicely. I hired two additional crew and ran four cameras.

Then the school paid me very nicely to shoot Grad Night.

You could probably get the Athletic Department to help sell the videos.

I'm trying to keep far away from the ASB of school as possible. The advisor is bias and I've had enough encounters with her (the weird part of this tale is that I was in ASB for the last 4 years until recently). Basically you can find out more information @ www.curtkay.com.

I am going to donate a portion of all proceeds to my dean though. She recently was diagnosed with cancer and her insurance isn't covering all charges.

-Kay