Underwater shooters?

[George Cummings]

Greetings to the forum looking for those who have been paid for shooting underwater video.
Can you provide the forum with some price ranges of charges for shooting UW video? Assuming shooter provides their own video cam, housing, lights, scuba gear, has at least 100 hours underwater experience shooting video ? Not talking about editing video, just to hand client a tape of what they want shot.
Day rate for travel time or down time when not shooting but at remote location?
Day rate for shooting, say 3 dives day, max 3 hours video?
Don't need hotel, meals or transportation, no brainer what it costs is what they pay.
Obviously there is probably a wide range here from guy who meets above specs, and shoots on 3D Max Gear, vs guy who shoots HD gear and bottom end shoots SD gear
Let's assume for this exercise, video shooter at recreational depths, not rebreathers, and shooting "functional" HD video. Where you can actually see what is shot...meaning decent lighting (we all know the limits here)...Some video at prosumer level or better, decent qualtiy shooter, able to shoot at a level that any scuba shop would be OK with showing their store, or any dive operator or dive location would be OK with showing.
Shooter rates
Video Gear rates
Scuba Gear rates
Thanking those who submitt for their time, hope others learn along with us.

[Perrone Ford]

I've seen answers to this on Wetpixel when I was interested in it. Might want to check there. Lot's of pros doing this kind of thing.

[George Cummings]

Hey, Perrone thanks for reminding me about wetpixel, I've been there met them several times at DEMA..so I'll have a look see what's in the archieves...hope a few others come up with some feedback for this forum so we have in our archive too.
cheers

[Jonathan Shaw]

Hi George,

I run a small company that shoots underwater and we generally charge around between $1000 and $2000 AUD per day including everything and insurance, expenses on top of that.

We obviously can negotiate depending on the length of the job, what we are shooting and who has the rights to the footage at the end of the contract.

Hope that helps a little,

Regards

Jon

[George Cummings]

Thanks for the info, that info is helpful to my needs and I'm sure others on the forum as well. Rates seem fair based on what I have found so far...very uniquie field
and of course the skills and equipment, not to mention experience each add another critical factor...very hard to explain apples to apples to clients

[Jonathan Shaw]

You know the funny thing George is that when I shoot topside for a client especially a corporate, you say $2K and they have no qualms, in fact I've been told I a little cheap!

When dealing with people regarding underwater.... different story! Especially bigger networks, they are generally tight as all buggery!

Give me a shout if you want to know anything else, I am very open.

Cheers

Jon

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

I enjoyed watching the XHA1 Olive Island clip, Jonathan, and look forward to viewing the later footage shot on the Red & Red Epic. Probably the only things that I missed in the clip were the actual sounds of the sea and seals, and maybe some views of them swimming underwater (although I expect that will be shown in the later footage).

[Jonathan Shaw]

Thanks Tony, yeah that was the first trip and we didn't take housings for the underwater sequences, that's coming up. It will be interesting as we won't be using a cage and there are some pretty big sharks around....
We actually didn't record any sound either, it was just too much as there was only two of us on the island and we were using heaps of gear already. We were pretty stretched actually.

So the plan is to go back, shoot underwater, capture audio, shoot all the timelapse sequences.... and try and find someone who will take us up in a helicopter for a reasonable price to shoot some aerial sequences..... pretty easy hey ; ). Hope fully it will be done within two years, getting the cash to do it is the hard bit!