Conceptualisation: Finalising the concept with the customer to make sure we’re producing what they need to meet their goals. A concept planning meeting typically only takes about 30-minutes to 1-hour and can be done in-person or over the phone.

We do things like: choose the type of video that best fits the need: promotional, training, event etc discuss the subject matter and raw video that must appear in the video discuss the on-camera interviews and select the interviewees.

Pre-production: Assembling all the things we’ll need during the shoot. This can take 1-2 hours. Preparations include: creating shot lists (based on the concept meeting) preparing interview questions (based on the concept meeting) and gear checks.

Production: The shooting day of the video is the most obvious to people because we are  on-site. This is a big part of the “how much will it cost?” aspect of things. How many video shoots will be required to capture what we need for the video?

Sometimes everything is in a single location and all available on the same day.

Sometimes there are multiple locations involved, someone critical to the video needs to be interviewed on a different day, and so forth.

Most of our shoots only require a single videographer, but sometimes additional resources are needed or requested. Things like extra videographers, sound technicians, a teleprompter operator, hair and makeup, all add up to increase the production’s cost.

Post-production: This is where most of the time is spent. How much time gets spent  depends on the amount of raw video there is to sift through and how complicated the story is to tell. It could take anywhere from 2-5 days in most cases.

The bottomline

Considerating each of these phases most projects take 4-5 days to complete, costing around R22 000 – R30 000

We always agree price in advance with our customers, so they know what the  production cost is before we start.

How to produce low cost videos

We do produce low cost videos for small business owners with tiny marketing budgets for R 8 000.

Low videos are all about keeping a very strict production schedule. From beginning to end, the entire production needs to take us less than 2 days to create the video. The shoot cannot take longer than 4 hours, during which we follow our 3-step storytelling process. We ask a string of questions leading to answers that essentially create the script on its own, then we edit everything together.

You will also have to relinquish creative control to us and trust we will deliver a video that’s on-message.

This saves lot of time in post-production. Customers who have opted for our low cost videos have been thrilled with the end result and, most importantly, the cost!

Value for Money

Let's break it down by budget to give you an idea of what you can expect for the money you spend.

• A few hundred rand: you might be able to turn to someone who does video as a side job. Using a student or recent graduate is also a way to go with this budget. You’ll get a video, but probably not a high-quality video.
• A couple of thousand rands: at the low-end of this scale you should again being looking for someone who does video as a side-hustle. You can find them at Bark and lots of other freelance sites.
• If you’re in the middle of this scale, you should definitely be looking at video production companies. Start by searching [city] video production. This should give you plenty to choose from.
• R 100 000 & up: now we’re talking about a big budget. You should definitely being looking at video production companies. Once you start getting over R 100 000, you can expect very good videos.

What’s the difference in quality?

The leap in quality from a video that costs R 3000 or less to one that costs R 20 000-R 30 000 is huge. The difference in quality from one that costs R 20 000-R 30 000 to one that costs R 100 000 and up… well… there’s a gap, but frequently not too a big gap.

Once you get up over R 100 000, there are many extras that can enhance a production. A big video production team might work on your video (videographer, sound tech, field producer, editor, etc.). You might also include specialised equipment (cinematic cameras, drones, steadicams, etc.).

It all adds up to a better video. Is it significantly better than a R 20 000-R 30 000 video? It’s likely to be better, but might stop short of being, “significantly better.” Maybe in some cases, but not all cases.

These are the basic steps of how videos are produced and should be pretty universal from company to company. Every production company prices things in their own way, but these steps determine the cost of a video.