In Appreciation of Wedding Videographers

I've been fascinated with video since high school (which is over 10 years ago for me). I even got the opportunity to shoot my first wedding when I was in high school. Back then SVHS was the "format of choice", and all editing was done manually by playing on one tape deck and recording from a different tape deck (although NLE's where just starting to make in entrance into the market).

Video has come a long way since then SVHS was replaced with DV which is now being replaced with high definition (go AVCHD!). We also now have decent computers that can store and play these higher bit-rate videos.

Recently I got an opportunity to shoot another wedding as a favor for my mother in law. At the wedding one of the guests thought that wedding videography was a lucrative business since it costs so much. This got me thinking, what would it be like if I went pro and shot wedding for ~$2,000 per wedding.

Weddings tend to be in the summer and fall, and the probability of finding a gig every week is pretty low. So, let us say that on average I was to land a job every other week. That would be 26 (52/2) per year. That means I would be raking in $52,000 per year, better than working fast food, but not even half of my current salary.

Now let us look at the expenses of this business:

• Day of wedding requires at least one other cameraman. I'm guessing that a minimum wage for this job is $50/hour because you need to hire someone skilled. Why do you need another cameraman? Equipment fails, weddings happen only once. If for no other reason, you must use two cameras (and have someone man them) to reduce your liability. So there is about $10,400 subtracted for hired help.
  
• Equiptment costs:
  
  
  
  • Digital Audio Recorder: minimum of $350
    
  • Lavaliere Microphone: minimum of $600 x 2 = $1,200. Need two for the same reason you need to cameras. Why external microphone? The most important element of good audio acquisition is proximity. Being able to hear the wedding vows is probably the most important part of the entire production, and the onboard camera microphones will never be close enough to the bride or groom to be effective.
    
  • Prosumer Quality HD Cameras: minimum of $2000 x 2 = $4,000. Consumer quality cameras simply don't have the manual controls that allow you to control basic things like focus and depth of field. They also don't do good in the low light "mood light" that people like to have at their weddings. They also tend to have lower dynamic range which makes it difficult to capture any details in the white wedding dress next to the black suites.
    
  • Editing Software: $1,500 (Final Cut Pro)
    
  • Editing Hardware: $2,500 (Mac Pro) I've been using my laptop, for my project, but my render times for a 45 minute long wedding is on the order of 20 hours.
    
  • Accessories: ~$1,000 (2x tripods each at least $250, Media for the cameras, external capture card, external monitor(s), etc)
    
  
  

So, initial capital expenditure is ~$10,550, let us round that up to $11,000. I'm guessing that this equipment has a depreciation schedule of 3 years, so that is about $3,500 per year in equipment expenses. There is also the option of renting, but then you would potentially be working with unfamiliar equipment. Note that there is also probably some repair expenses to.

$52,000 - $10,400 - $3,500 = $38,100

Now let us look at all the other work involved. There is the work on the day of wedding, then there is the time needed to edit it all together. I'm guessing once you got this process down you could do the editing in a 40 hour work week, there is also the time needed to make plan and negotiate with each client (minimum of 8 hours work?), the time to actually be at the wedding (average of 8 hours, so we can do the pre-wedding pictures/video, actual wedding, reception, time to drive to and from wedding site), there is also the time and money needed to drum up business and advertise. I'm guessing at minimum this would take up 4 weeks per year (160 hours), and cost a few thousand (get a booth at the yearly wedding expo, flyers printed, website, etc).

With these additional expenses taken into account we are down to $36,100 for working 160 (advertising per year) + 26 (weddings per year) x 56 (average time per wedding) = 1616 hours per year. This means I would be getting a wage of about $22.33 per hour.

My extra camera man would be making more money per hour than I would be!

Note that this analysis also didn't take into account the fact that people often want popular songs in their wedding videos, which if properly licensed costs $1,000's of dollars per song per video! I could not properly license them, but at the added risk of being sued. How do professional videographers deal with this problem?

One other aspect of this business that I don't like is that I'm gone away from my family every other weekend.

So, if confronted with paying $2,000 for having a wedding video, be thankful! Also note that it is a worthwhile investment if shot and edited by a pro.