Ask five video production companies what a brand film costs and you will hear the same two words five times: it depends.
It’s true. It does depend. But that answer protects the vendor, not the client. So this month we put our ranges on a page anyone can read, and we want to explain the thinking before someone asks why.
What the page says
Three kinds of films, three ranges. A focused promo film of 60 seconds to 3 minutes runs $4,500 to $9,000. A documentary-style brand film of 3 to 6 minutes runs $7,500 to $15,000. A documentary or series of 10 minutes or more runs $18,000 to $50,000 and up. Event coverage starts at $3,500 a day. Aerials are $750 as an add-on or $1,500 on their own. You can read the whole thing on our pricing page.
Those are not quotes. They are honest edges. Every project we take still gets an itemized proposal. But now a company can decide whether we are in their range before they book twenty minutes with us.
The first reason: respect for your time
A discovery call is a real cost for a business owner. Thirty minutes of preparation, twenty on the call, another twenty following up. If a company has $3,000 and we start at $4,500, that hour was wasted for both of us, and we could have saved it with one paragraph.
We would rather lose a call than waste one.
The second reason: the way people search now
When someone types “how much does a brand film cost in Ohio” into Google, or asks ChatGPT the same question, the answer comes from whoever wrote it down. For years that was nobody in our market, so the answer came from a national blog with numbers that had nothing to do with Dayton.
Now it can come from us. Not because we want to win on price. Because we want the person asking to get a real answer from a company that actually does the work here.
The third reason: it filters for the right conversations
Since the page went up, the calls have changed. Fewer people ask “how much” in the first five minutes. More people open with “I read your pricing page, I think we’re a brand film, here’s the story.” That is a different conversation. It starts with the film instead of the budget, which is where we do our best work.
What we did not publish
We did not publish a rate card with every line item, and we did not publish a calculator. A film is not a spreadsheet. Two projects with the same shoot count can land thousands apart because one has three locations and a drone day and the other has one room and one interview. The page explains the four things that move the number: shoot days, crew, post-production hours, and extras like travel or rush delivery. The proposal does the rest.
We also did not publish a floor below $2,500. That is not a fit for us, and we say so on the page. A company with that budget deserves a vendor who can do good work at that level, and we will point them to one on the call rather than squeeze a good story into the wrong budget.
What we would tell another studio
Publish the ranges. The clients you want are already estimating your price from your website. If your site looks like a $20,000 studio and you charge $6,000, you are losing people who never called. If it looks like a $6,000 studio and you charge $20,000, you are wasting calls. Numbers on a page fix both.
Questions
Are the prices on the page fixed?
No. They are ranges. Every project gets an itemized proposal within two business days of a discovery call, and that proposal is the price.
Do nonprofits pay the same rates?
Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations receive a partner rate of 15 to 20 percent off production. It is written into the proposal rather than negotiated afterward.
What if my budget is below the ranges?
Tell us on the call. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you toward an option that is.
Ready to talk about the film, not the budget? Book a discovery call.