Hey all-

I'm the official videographer for my school's JV and Varsity Lacrosse teams. I'm not a parent, I'm actually another student, a 12th grade senior. I've had a couple of parents approach me about doing highlights videos for their sons (Grade 11) to send off to college next year. I'm looking for input on how much to charge to put together one of these for them.

Some background: I did a highlights video for another member this fall. It involved one day of taping a tournament with six individual hour-long games. I then threw the highlights together into a quick 4-minute video and also tacked on some extra footage. For this, I charged $150. The highlights videos I will be doing for these students will likely be much more time-consuming and much more professional-looking. They will have an introduction by the student, highlights from our entire 10-game season (and maybe post-season), and a full quarter of one of the games. I will be editing with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and Adobe After Effects 6.0 and 6.5 Professional. I will likely be using one tape per player per game, with a serious amount of time added on for editing.

How much should I charge for such a video?

Thanks!

How much should you charge?

A lot.

But then, you radically undercharged for the other highlight film (a full day shoot, plus edit, for $150?). I'm a coach and have a small video production company, and I typically charge $1,000 for a team highlight. But that's only if the players themselves find the highlights, and send me a cut list (usually in an excel spreadsheet, so I can just import the batch capture list into premiere). If I have to scan the tapes themselves, I quote them $100/hour for my time and suggest that they know better than I what constitutes a 'highlight.' (I also have them pick out music. Not my job, please direct complaints to your teammates if you don't like the selection.)

And if you're getting multiple tapes of a single game, think long and hard about your workflow: you'd hate to have six replays of the same play, or worse, spend days poring through endless video trying to figure out which play is which.

For college highlight films, I charge $300 or $0: but I only do highlights for kids on teams that hire me for the full season. So there's a bit of a charity discount (and the cost is zero for my players, because I want to see them go to college). Most editors would charge more in the $500-$600 range, though at coaching clinics most are advertising highlight films for $800+.

Then again, part of the issue is what the market will bear. If the parents aren't looking to spend a grand on a highlight film (it might save them more than that in tuition if Johnny Lacrosse gets a scholarship), perhaps you discount your hourly rate (a number you should think very, very hard about).

Then again, if you're just in high school, perhaps you ought to chalk it up to experience and charge them just a few hundred. Just be sure you know what kind of a commitment you're signing up for - I've kicked myself more than once for taking on a 'discount' job, then being saddled with a nightmare of customers' expectations. (Do yourself a favor, make it clear it's a discounted rate: I've had to turn around and start charging an additional hourly rate on what were basically volunteer jobs when the 'client' started asking for complete re-edits after seeing 5 or 6 rough cuts... sigh.)

And of course, good luck.