Fair Equipment rate on Full budget union feature

[curleysound]

This poll is in response to what has been discussed recently in the Equipment Rates thread. A comprehensive series of these polls will hopefully give us all a base line of what we accept. This one is an experiment, and does not cover every member of the forum, but it's a start. The more people who participate, the more accurate of a picture we will get to reference from. I have made the poll as general as possible, and your complete honesty is important. I'm pretty sure this is an anonymous poll, so there's no reason not to be.

Best,

Tom

[taylormadeaudio]

you should add one more button:  • hopefully $10 a day less than my nearest competiton.  : )

Seriously, doesn't it depend on the job?  I know you're asking about full budget union features, but what's full-budget these days? over 10m?  25m?  150m?  Could you be more specific?

[Guest afewmoreyears]

We need the poll for all rates.... ENG,Commercial, Feature, MOW, etc

GREAT START,  Good work Curly!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOG YOUR INFO.......

[curleysound]

you should add one more button:  • hopefully $10 a day less than my nearest competiton.  : )

Seriously, doesn't it depend on the job?  I know you're asking about full budget union features, but what's full-budget these days? over 10m?  25m?  150m?  Could you be more specific?

I guess that's open to interpretation, but the polling features are limited here, so I was trying to be broad and general. There are more polls going up, so perhaps this one will go by the wayside, and more accurate ones will come about? Anyone can make a poll, so have at it! The more we have up here, the more information will be available for us to gauge our rates from...

Tom

[David Waelder]

I can't really help with rates for full budget features. I virtually never get to work those projects. However, in the spirit of sharing, I can say that equipment rates I've been paid for occasional work on television shows have ranged from $425 to $450 per day. That rate is typically set for the first unit mixer so there is some presumption that the gear is "on" five days per week. However, the shows typically pay the same rate for someone coming on for only a day or two of overlaps.

At that rate one is expected to have a full complement of gear including recorder, mixing panel, radio mikes, Comteks or similar, etc. Most shows expect two time code slates. You should also be prepared to work two booms with matched or very similar microphones. There is no general agreement on how many radios should be included but one would be expected to have enough for a typical day. There probably wouldn't be any call-backs if you tapped out at two radios but no one would expect you to pull eight out of your kit. Probably four would suffice. Similarly, one should have at least 3 Comtek (or similar) headsets. Four or five would be better, more is probably not expected, at least not from the 2nd unit package.

Playback gear of any kind is not included. For a simple playback scene requiring a laptop and a column speaker one normally charges an extra $100. Larger playback rigs justify additional rental.

I hope that helps provide a little perspective. As I said, there is some presumption that these rates are for regular work. Commercials and other strictly one time assignments ought to expect more.

David Waelder

[John Blankenship]

you should add one more button:  • hopefully $10 a day less than my nearest competiton.  : )  ...

I'd rather be the same as, or more than, my nearest competition.

With rate comes perception.

A number of years ago someone conducted a now famous marketing test.  They doubled the price of a certain brand of whisky and the company sold something like twice to four times as much.

I'm not saying that tracks exactly with our line of work -- we're usually not seen as a prestige item -- but it's still true that people tend to value what they get by how much they pay for it.  Even with equipment, if you're just a tad above someone else the lowballers with go with the cheaper package, the clients who want quality will tend to go with the slightly higher one.  The latter clients are usually better to work with and more often pay on time.  The lowballers are often more difficult to deal with, often have unrealistic expectations, and too often require you to chase them down to get paid.  Then, sometimes, they'll try to talk down the price some more before paying you.

Cater to lowballers and that's who most of your clients will be.  Cater to quality and you'll get more of the better clients.

These are things I keep reminding myself when confronted with the lowballers and I'm thinking about bills coming due.  It's not easy to turn down any potential client when you really need the money, but the times I have, I've usually ended up being glad I did.  I'm generally pretty flexible, but if I perceive I'm dealing with a lowballer, I've learned to be less so.

Like most anything in life, there are exceptions.  I have a couple of clients who typically pay below what they should.  They keep coming back and I like working with these people so I take that into account.  That doesn't mean I don't try to work the rate upword, though.

My .02 -- FWIW.

JB

[Brian Maier]

John I totally agree with what you said.  Personally i've raised my rate fairly significantly over the last year and it has only brought me more work, and better jobs. I have no intention of being the "low budget guy", would much rather be the "high quality guy".  Having said that I want to touch on a question I asked in another thread about starting out at "union" rates. Ive worked up to where i'm at, defiantly didn't start here.  I personally would not feel like I would been doing anyone any good by charging a rate higher than I could deliver on.  I want to be compensated fairly for the work I provide but at the same time I want the clients I work for to feel like they are getting a quality service.