A quote approved by marketing and blocked by finance costs more than a high quote accepted first time. That is the difference this market punishes most.
What makes the price
Four variables, and talent is not one of them.
The number of videos and variants delivered. The complexity of the shoot: locations, equipment, people on camera. The duration and extent of the rights. And urgency, which is always paid for.
An order of six videos costs far less than six orders of one video, for the same quantity delivered.
Rights are the multiplier
That is the line that makes a quote vary threefold.
A video for your own accounts, for three months, has nothing to do with the same video run as paid advertising for a year across every channel. Creators know it, and the price follows that difference.
So buy the duration you need, not the one that reassures you: a short renewable licence often costs less than a long one taken as a precaution.
The second language is a line, not a variant
It is decided in the brief and shot the same day.
Planned in advance, it adds one take and a modest supplement. Decided a month later, it means redoing everything, and its cost becomes that of a second shoot.
Put it on the initial quote, even when the answer is no: it avoids the most expensive conversation of the project.
Taxes change the figure finance sees
That is the point foreign teams discover at the end of the process.
The applicable treatment depends on the province, the supplier's status and the nature of the service. It is checked once with an accountant, then written into your quote template, so you never come back to it.
What a first test should cost
Four to six videos, two creators, two angles.
That is the minimum volume that teaches you something: any less and you will not know whether it was the format or the person that did not work. Buy short rights on that first batch, and keep budget to extend what works.
What should not be on the quote
Reasonable corrections, delivery of the files, a version with no burned-in text.
Those elements are part of professional work and are negotiated once, in the general terms. A change of angle after the shoot, however, is not a correction: it is a new order, and that is written down beforehand.
What actually makes up the price of a video
| The line | What it covers | Its share |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation | Brief, scouting, exchanges | Often underestimated |
| The shoot | The capture itself | The visible part |
| Editing and rights | Deliverables, revisions, usage | What makes quotes differ |
What inflates an invoice without anyone deciding it
Unbounded revisions. Two rounds included and the rest billed: that line in the quote prevents the spiral where a three-day job takes ten.
What makes two quotes incomparable
The rights. The same video at three hundred or eight hundred can both be justified if one allows a single post and the other a year-long ad campaign, and that difference is invisible in the price alone.
How to compare two quotes
Never on the displayed price.
Compare what is delivered, in formats and versions, the duration and extent of the rights, the number of corrections included, and the deadline. Two quotes that seem thirty per cent apart are often identical once brought to the same scope, and sometimes reversed.
