Post-Production : Question for Video Editor’s by Malcolm Dwain Carter

Malcolm Dwain Carter

Question for Video Editor’s

Good morning, I have a question. Let’s say you have nearly 7 years of experience as a video editor. A Talk Show project has come across your desk with the duration to be 28:30 along with the following: 

•Color correction needed

•Lower thirds to be added such as social media, topic points, names of the host/guest

•Several commercials to add throughout the break moments

•Slight audio adjustment

•Syncing the audio to the footage along with editing each segments

How much should the editor charge per episode? 

If you could answer below or private message me, that would be great. Hopefully this question is good in this lounge.

Karen "Kay" Ross

Hey, Malcolm Dwain Carter! This is absolutely a worthwhile question, thanks for asking! I usually refer to Fiverr or Upwork for what others are charging to gauge what I should charge. Besure to have a scaled payment, though - 10/30/30/30 - signing, first cut, second cut, and final cut.

Leya Kokoravec

It's a tough one to estimate directly because you have a lot of variables and not enough information.

A couple of things I would need to know would be is it a multicamera shoot, are the lower thirds going to be reused, can I create a standard color grade, how is the sound recorded and what processing would I need to do and how many revisions per show will there be.

Now if it's for a smaller number of shows or only one the price naturally goes up since you have to make the color grade and lower thirds in either case. But if it's an on going project than it can bring the price down a little.

You'd have to estimate how much time you'd need to do one show and then for the first one add 50% of time for figuring everything out on your first project and for the rest just subtract about 20% of time since with every new show you'll get to know the material a little better and you've optimised your workflow for this project.

My partner and I edit some online educational show and it's interesting how you get to know the material and you can guess when it will be time to cut from one camera to another and after a the first couple of projects we were able to edit most of the time at double the speed just because we could predict where we would cut anyway and now we can actually just skip to different places based on the waveform of the audio because we got used to how things look when there's a problem.

Long term projects like this are really good because they are a good source of revenue but at the same time after the first one they're not all that exciting.

Good luck with your project.

Jessie E. Cox Jr.

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