r/videoproduction

So I'm a marketing manager at a mid-sized company, not a filmmaker, and I just got three quotes for a product launch video and the range was $3,800 to $47,000 for what I described as "the same thing" to all three vendors.

I genuinely cannot figure out what accounts for that gap. The $3,800 guy has a nice portfolio. The $47,000 company has a nicer portfolio but not twelve times nicer. Someone help me understand what I'm missing because my boss is going to ask me to justify whichever number I bring back and I have no idea how to explain this.

Is it crew size? Insurance? Post-production overhead? I feel like nobody in this industry wants to explain pricing clearly and it's making me feel like I'm being scammed by at least one of them.

One quote I got was from beverly boy productions and they were at least transparent enough to itemize everything, crew day rates, equipment, post-production hours, revision rounds, which made it easier to understand what I was actually comparing, but even with that I'm not sure I know how to evaluate whether those line items are reasonable.

Hi, I owned a 3D animation studio for 4 years now. The clients I've been working with are word of mouth mostly. Which is great but I also want to expand and work with bigger clients /bigger projects. I hired a sales rep and do sales myself but it's not working out well.

What do you recommend?

Was talking to a friend the other day and we were discussing how many of tomorrow's filmmakers/videographers might be AI experts but when it comes to actually creating things from scratch many will fail ie: white balancing properly, building a grade, key framing , matching footage , even timeline editing in some cases.

With the advent of AI programs that can make an entire timeline with a few sentences do you feel AI will prepare the future gen or hinder them?

Hi video wizards

Just curious if anyone can point me to the right place to get custom microphone flags made, the kinds you'd see a newscaster have around their handheld mics. My company is located in Canada, but no problem buying from an American company.

I figured this would be a good place to ask.

Thanks!

I’ve been thinking about how much the overall production process actually affects the final quality of a video.

Some creators work with a very structured approach planning everything in pre-production, following a clear shooting process, and then handling post production in an organized way. Others take a more flexible approach and adjust things as they go during editing.

It makes me wonder how much structure really contributes to the final result compared to raw editing skill and creativity. On one hand, structure probably helps with consistency and efficiency, but on the other hand, some great videos come from more spontaneous workflows.

For people working in video production do you think a structured process is essential for high-quality results, or can strong editing skill alone make up for a less organized workflow?

been going down a rabbit hole on this lately because a client asked me to put together a rough budget comparison for their product videos. the per-minute pricing looks amazing on paper at first glance, but once you factor in revision rounds, prompt iteration time, and the fact that, your usable output rate can be closer to 1-in-6 or 1-in-10 on a good day, the real cost per finished asset creeps up fast. like, Kling is sitting around $0.07/sec for 1080p clips right now, which sounds cheap until you're burning through credits on failed generations. Veo 3 is the one people keep citing for cinematic quality, but if you're accounting for the, outputs that don't make it, some folks are reporting $600+ to get five minutes of actually usable footage. that's not a bargain, that's just a different kind of production budget. the subscription tools like HeyGen or Synthesia still make the most sense if you're doing real volume, like ongoing ad creative where you need 20+ variations a month. the math works there. for a one-off hero video it usually doesn't, especially once you hit credit limits mid-revision cycle. what I'm trying to figure out is how people are actually accounting for this in a marketing budget. do you treat it like a software cost or a production cost? because those sit in completely different line items and get scrutinized differently by finance. and has anyone had to justify the quality tradeoff to a client or stakeholder who either thinks AI video is basically free or thinks it's a brand liability? curious how those conversations are going for people actually doing this at scale.

Is it actually possible now to create a music video completely online without touching editing software?

What i am looking for is something like:

• upload a track
• maybe choose a style or vibe
• and it generates a video that matches the music