Producing a commercial for television

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Warren Kawamoto

Making food look delicious and appetizing on screen is notoriously difficult. A specialized "food artist" is usually on set to prep and dress the food items. For example, if you shoot a nice juicy steak, it usually photographs too dark, and looks either too greasy or too dry. Green salads look dead and wilted on screen even if they're fresh. In many cases, the food isn't real. Ice cream melts way too fast to photograph, so they usually use frozen mashed potatoes instead. Do you know what kind of food you're shooting, and does it require a professional food prep artist to make it look delicious?

Yes, we've got that covered. It'll all be prepped ahead of time, and not necessarily edible in real life.

[Mick Haensler]

Originally Posted by Jacques E. Bouchard

In this case, having the name of this restaurant in my portfolio is going to rank me right up there with the majors, which is why I'm so accomodating.
J.

Which is the reason he's coming to you, because the majors would tell him to take a hike with his non negotiable unrealistic requests. If you want to be ranked right up with the majors, know your cost of business and charge accordingly. Four hours to shoot??? Have fun!! Believe me when I tell you this is NOT how the majors got to where they are. It will only serve to piss them off and give you a reputation as a lowballer. The owner of this chain knows exactly what he is doing and is more than likely well aware that you will be doing this at cost or lower. You will be setting a precedent that will be very hard to move up from.

But to answer your question. I just did a 3 man 5 hour shoot which involved full light setup, boom audio, and a on location set design that needed to be ready for talent in 2 hours. I charged $1500 US. It was a non profit so my price was a bit lower than what a commercial or corporate client would have payed because I like working with non profits.

[Tim Polster]

Jacques,

I know this is sort of piling on, but this seems like a potential setup for disaster.

If the client is so restrictive going in, one would think that it might be tough to please them on the back end as well.

Shooting food in a fridge case is going to pose some lighting challenges to get it looking like the food often seen on broadcast T.V. Shadows and nice soft directional light are going to be difficult.

What camera(s) are you going to use?

This is sad to see as people just seem to want the world but in 1/4 of the time and effort needed.

Butting a shoot up against a restaurant opening for business is quite scary as well. I know time is limited for this industry but four hours and people are coming through the door means sacrifices. Which often leads to unhappy clients.

This all boils down to expectations. If they are realistic, then you will be o.k. If the client wants the moon, you have a negative for your resume.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Mick Haensler

But to answer your question.

Thanks...

Originally Posted by Mick Haensler

I just did a 3 man 5 hour shoot which involved full light setup, boom audio, and a on location set design that needed to be ready for talent in 2 hours. I charged $1500 US. It was a non profit so my price was a bit lower than what a commercial or corporate client would have payed because I like working with non profits.

I give back to the community by occasionally doing production work for charitable organizations - i.e. I only charge them for supplies and assorted fees (unions if any, permits, etc.). Some of them have little enough money to support their charitable work as it is, I don't feel right charging them for my time. I invoice them the full amount and they give me a receipt in exchange (minus costs detailed above), which I then deduct as a donation.


J.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Follow-up: I'm tendering my offer to the client next week.

I appreciate the intentions displayed here, really I do, but I'm afraid that some people wasted a lot of time presuming that I'm just a kid with a camcorder wondering which end to point. I can assure everyone that, having done corporate work for several years now, I am well aware of the restrictions and the stakes. For instance, I planned a second 4-hour day for additional shooting. I did not mention this because it's not germane to my original question, and I didn't feel that I needed to justify myself. I was trying to keep it fairly simple by asking only about the financial aspect - not the technical - to avoid muddling the issue, as is happening now.

How - or even if - I planned to do this depended solely on my having a better idea of what the industry usually charges for a 30-sec commercial spot. A few of you have been very helpful in quoting ballpark figures, and again I thank you.

Ironically, I'm surprised that no one's mentioned the legal aspects yet. If anyone has done professional work for TV broadcast, they'll know that camera work and lighting are the least of their worries. There are permits to be had, insurance to be purchased, clearances to be obtained (the restaurant is inside a convention centre), and I'm not even going to address the legal quagmire of dealing with actors' and technicians' unions and the restrictions on using a non-member (just showing a restaurant employee expertly preparing the food requires all sorts of special permissions and extra fees from the local guild). And what about territories, broadcast schedules, S&P (some broadcasters require a certification, which is free but has to be filed properly)? That's the responsibility of the producer, not the client, because I'll be the one getting the nasty registered letter from the unions if the client decides to play the commercial for an extra week, or outside the agreed-upon territory.

Compared to this, coordinating the actual shoot is child's play. But I wouldn't go so far as presuming that none of you didn't already know this. ;-)

Thanks again. I'll let you know if the client accepts the offer.

J.

[Tim Polster]

Jacques, I am sorry if my post caused offense, but to be fair, your original post painted the image of somebody who was accepting a job that they have never done before and looking for an amount to charge for it.

How can one put a rate on a broadcast commercial? This type of question is asking the impossible.

If you want to include the term "broadcast", you are going to get replies based on the top end of the video world. And as most know, this means in the millions. The question and answer can be very broad.

Nobody has said you do not have the skills to do the job, but the fact that you are trying to make the job work speaks enough.

I was actually trying to make the point that you are selling yourself short and putting your reputation in jeopardy by agreeing to a 'get something for nothing' type of situation.

I wish you luck and hope everything works out well with the shoot.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Thanks Tim, but your post didn't offend me. I didn't want to go into the specifics about the nature to the job to avoid well-intentioned but misguided advice about the technical aspect, but I was interested in knowing what the range of prices people charged for a 30-second spot.

I can say now that, if I go full-union, there's no way I can pull this off for less than $10,000 (not including the broadcasting). The actor's union is brutal, to the point of dictating how many people I must hire (whether I need them or not). I would have liked to know how many people go non-union, while still paying fair wages, just to avoid dealing with all the red tape.


J.

[Tim Polster]

That's the rub about asking for pricing, the technical aspects are at the heart of determining how to quote any job.

Good to see your are protecting yourself with the pricing. If it is too high for the client then you have made a good decision.

[Mick Haensler]

Ditto on the apologies Jacques, offending you was never my intention. Good luck with the project.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Really, Mick, I wasn't offended. I would have liked a wider sample pool, of fees, however. From the figures that I've seen, I don't know how people do it. Maybe they don't bother with unions or insurance?


J.

[Mick Haensler]

Originally Posted by Jacques E. Bouchard

Thanks...
I give back to the community by occasionally doing production work for charitable organizations - i.e. I only charge them for supplies and assorted fees (unions if any, permits, etc.). Some of them have little enough money to support their charitable work as it is, I don't feel right charging them for my time. I invoice them the full amount and they give me a receipt in exchange (minus costs detailed above), which I then deduct as a donation.
J.

While you're efforts here are admirable, in the U.S. this is against the law if you're not claiming the FULL amount of the invoice as income BEFORE you take the charitable giving deduction. Which kind of makes it a moot point. The reason for this is you could invoice them for some ludicrous amount, say $50,000 for a $5,000 :30 PSA, claim that as a charitable donation and not have to pay any taxes on it. If your business only made $50,000 that year, you wouldn't owe any income tax at all. If I'm pointing out something you already know, please disregard.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Mick Haensler

While you're efforts here are admirable, in the U.S. this is against the law if you're not claiming the FULL amount of the invoice as income BEFORE you take the charitable giving deduction.

Well obviously, I can't deduct donating money that doesn't t exist on paper...

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Mick Haensler

While you're efforts here are admirable, in the U.S. this is against the law if you're not claiming the FULL amount of the invoice as income BEFORE you take the charitable giving deduction.

Well obviously, I can't deduct donating money that doesn't t exist on paper...

EDIT: how the heck do you delete a duplicate post?

[Adam Gold]

No, you can't deduct it at all, here in the States. What Mick is saying is that it's irrelevant whether it exists on paper; if you don't actually receive income, you can't deduct against it as a charitable donation. So if you bill and receive 100K for the year -- that's your real gross -- and you also donate a job worth 20K, you'd have to declare 120K to then deduct the 20K donated effort, which is the same as neither billing for it nor deducting it. You can't deduct the 20K against the 100K of real income no matter what you do, no matter how much paper there is.

If the tax laws differ in Canada, you're lucky.

And you can't deduct a duplicate post either. Notify the mods by using the "report post" button and they'll do it for you.

[Jacques E. Bouchard]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

So if you bill and receive 100K for the year -- that's your real gross -- and you also donate a job worth 20K, you'd have to declare 120K to then deduct the 20K donated effort, which is the same as neither billing for it nor deducting it.

That's precisely what I was saying.

I bill the client for the job. The client hands me a tax receipt for a donation. I declare the amount, then submit the deduction.

J.