The Value of HD

[Dana Salsbury]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I often see videographers who offer HD price it $500-$1,500 more than their SD package. Beside render time and perhaps the cost of Blu-Ray (which is not necessary) I don't see why they mark it up so much. I'd rather do it at the same price as other's SD work and let my demos kick butt. I shoot exclusively in HD, so I may be missing something. Thoughts?

[Joe Allen Rosenberger]

......then why ever raise one's prices on packages?????

The more money a company can get for their packages......more power to them, and this goes for anyone, anywhere, at any time.

The question is....why not????

If a particular company has been offering SD packages at lets say 2000.00, and then they upgrade in all HDV equipment including edit bays.......why should they give this away at the old prices when they just spent a lot of money to upgrade.

Point is.......the more money you can get for your packages....all the better. Work smarter...NOT harder.

More money is better than less money......how could this be argued? I'm sure someone will though.

One's market is key to the rates they can charge.....

Quality Wedding Videography in general is so underpriced imo compared to other vendors.......keep the rates going up if you can, why sell yourself short....unless you have to.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

Maybe I'm missing something, but I often see videographers who offer HD price it $500-$1,500 more than their SD package. Beside render time and perhaps the cost of Blu-Ray (which is not necessary) I don't see why they mark it up so much. I'd rather do it at the same price as other's SD work and let my demos kick butt.

For many it's partly a question of recovering the cost of their investment in new HD cameras, faster editing systems, HDTV displays for their studio and so on. If you just got started doing video and bought all this stuff as your initial investment then you may not have quite the same economics to consider, but you still have to pay for all your gear somehow. In either case, if you're giving away HD quality at SD prices you're selling yourself short and might consider raising your prices a little, then when people ask why you charge more use HD as a selling point.

By the way, if you're not using Blu-ray or HD-DVD to deliver finished HD project to clients, what are you doing? Just making those discs is inherently more expensive than SD DVDs for now, so there ought to be at least a minimal extra fee for that.

[Jon Omiatek]

Time is money and there is a significant amount of extra time required to edit and distribute HDV.

Now if you shoot in HDV and edit it in SD the cost should be the same. I charge clients the price of HDV tape if I shoot in HDV and edit is SD considering there isn't any extra time required.

Now, if they want HD, as their final product, I do charge extra.

Options for HD include:

Windows Media HD
Blue Ray DVD
edited M2t File
SD DVD

If you are already charging your clients a premium for your service, maybe it should be included. I however, do not charge a premium and I am very competitively priced for my area. There is no room for any freebees, especially HD.

Jon

[Dana Salsbury]

Thanks Joe,

I'm all for that, and agree that lo-ball videographers hurt the industry by driving down value and not showing the power/capability of good videography. Thus, we are seen as an afterthought.

IMO, people pay me for:

1. My talent
2. Problem-Solving Knowledge
3. Time
4. Gear

I think a lot of people put 'gear' at the top. The problem is that when technology surpasses them, their self-valuation decreases. My prices reflect the industry's appreciation of my contribution to their wedding. I had to start thinking this way when clients wanted to play art director and/or decided they didn't like the end product and didn't want to pay. So I began seeing myself as a consultant more than anything else, and wrote as much into my contract. It's a George Foreman approach to sales.

Back to HD...Upgrading is a factor, but it hasn't been that expensive for me. The learning curve has been the larger part. That's one thing I haven't factored in.

[Rick Steele]

For many it's partly a question of recovering the cost of their investment in new HD cameras,

I agree and this should be reason enough to raise prices. If anyone needs HD just for great demo material they've got bigger problems IMO.

Any expense in this business should start paying for itself very very soon if not right away. Be it raising prices or saving you time. Otherwise, it's just another toy. Which I proudly own many :)

[Peter Jefferson]

funny..

HD is what it is, and you can charge what you like.. in the end, how much is YOUR STUDIO'S service worth to you? (ie, your skills, experience, equipment etc)

Now factor in how much growth you intend on having with this format and the means in which you are going to market the format.

Now consider whether or not the profit margin is worth your investment in time and resources and whether its wise to undercut yourself before you are steadily established, then consider whether or not you are setting a precedent for yourself and others in the industry..

[Herman Van Deventer]

I second all the raise the price - comments.

Taking the old debate of price - Wedding video's vs Still photograpy in
consideration, it is my firm believe that the new format (HDV) can be
used to adress and level and even better the financial income scoreboard
between the mentioned two practices.This statement obviously reflects on
wedding video deals where the client is prepared to spent more money on
the stills vs the video.

Glorious footage / Good skills and hours of rendering = more money !

Herman.

[Patrick Moreau]

For us, there is more rendering time, the editing process itself is much slower, capturing is much slower as we need to convert to a different format on import rather than taking it directly from a firestore as with DV. There is also the issue of saving the files and making an HD copy down the road. If all the extra hassle and time (and we are talking about a lot of extra hours here) isn't worth anything, I don't think you can be successfully self-employed.

By offering HD at another companies starting price, to me, it makes your product look cheap and devalues it. A $2k HD video with pretty much full coverage and editing doesn't sound like something that would 'kick butt'. As far as I recall, your still fairly new to this, so that partially explains it, but even if you don't want to add a surcharge just for HD, how about one for your time. I find it hard to see how you can fit all of that into a package at that price AND include HD.

Patrick

[Dana Salsbury]

I'm in my fifth year, but I haven't done weddings until this year. Your the first to question my price, but I appreciate your frankness. I don't anticipate really making money until I've got things rolling, and at that point we'll adjust for supply and demand. I didn't throw out my prices in my post, but I'm surprised that 2K seems cheap. I know it will be once I've built my following, but I've got to get there first. Would you do it differently? (BTW, I will be charging 4k+ when my referral base is strong enough).

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

I'm surprised that 2K seems cheap.

$2K seems cheap to established videographers and expensive to most couples. If you figure that business overhead is a few hundred dollars per project and taxes eat up as much as half of net profits, a $2K fee for a complete wedding video is hardly lucrative. Throwing in HD and the hassles which go with it means you're working even harder for not a lot of money.

One way to deal with this is to make sure you don't include HD in your least expensive wedding package, so couples understand this is a premium feature. If someone wants HD either charge them extra specifically for that or make them get a more elaborate package.

[Dana Salsbury]

That's a good idea.