What you need to know before we talk about pricing

How much do we charge?

Good service isn’t cheap. Cheap service isn’t good

If you are on this page, it is likely because you are interested in having the best video and are curious about our pricing. While I’ve talked about this in a blog post (check it out here), I’ll give you the short answer. If you’re looking only at pricing, you’re taking the wrong approach. Shopping with pricing being your biggest deciding factor means that you aren’t looking at investing in your business. I saw a photo today that read: THE BITTERNESS OF LOW QUALITY OUTLASTS THE SWEETNESS OF LOW PRICE.

So, before we will ever discuss pricing, there is a chunk of information that we would like you to know.

Full disclosure: a lot of this will be links to other blogs that we have written in case you wish to get as much information as possible to aid you in your decision. However, this page will give you enough information to find out if you are a good fit for Hamil Bros Studios.

What do I get for my investment?

Bingo! That’s the question. Sure you can find cheap video production. Likewise, your clients could find your services at a cheaper price. But, is that what you really want for them? Heck no! You take pride in your work.

We feel the same way. We’re not just offering you a video. We’re offering you an experience.

An experience? Really? Well, don’t take our word for it, hear what our clients have had to say about the production process (check it out here).

We’re also offering you an opportunity to invest in your business, your brand, and yourself.
Let’s get down to it.

Understanding Video Production

If you really want to, and I hope you will, you can read the full series I wrote on Understanding Video Production. It’s 18 articles that will really dive into helping you understand what all we will do to knock your project out of the park. The following reading includes a lot of links that will take you to more in-depth discussions on the topic. I encourage you to read them.

Pre Production

The first thing you have to know is that video production, for Hamil Bros Studios, is much more than just throwing a camera on a tripod, hooking up a microphone, and calling “Action.” It all starts in pre-production, which is where we start the planning phase to maximize our time on set and our time editing. Once a concept is nailed down, we write the script. After the script is completed, we scout locations, and assemble a shot list and a schedule.

Production

Now, we will move on to the shoot day(s). The first thing we have to do is unload the trailer and prep the room. This includes moving things out of the way or placing them to add interest, and deadening the room as much as possible to get the best audio.

From there, we start lighting the set. This can be a fairly tedious task, but, getting good results rarely come easy, but, it will take a room from plain to cinematic.

Once the room is lit, we will light our subject. Most often, this is someone either acting or being interviewed. Since they are the center of attention, they have to pop out against everything else in the shot.

We now have [most] everything lit and it’s time to get the camera set, get audio rigged, and roll camera.

We, then, spend all day shooting, logging, offloading footage, and at the end of the day, if we’re not dead, we load the trailer back up and head home.

Post Production

Back in the studio, we copy all of our footage and audio onto our studio hard drives and wait for it to complete. Either we’ll go home for the night, go to lunch if it’s early, or maybe take a nap. There’s not much we can really do while this is happening.

When we get back to the studio, after the footage has been dumped, I start to meta-log and one-light all of the footage we shot and create smaller video files for editing. I will also sync the audio with the video at this point.

Now, we start the basic editing. Alternately, if we’re waiting for notes from a client, we will start color grading.

So, either we get notes from the client (or we don’t if they don’t need to make any) and we start the editing process where we take the story from paper to the screen.

We have the edit assembled and now we get to get into some of the really fun stuff. If you’ve ever met me, and paid attention, you may have noticed that I wear a silicon bracelet that says “VFX OR DIE,” and this is where that comes in: it’s where we can either blow things up or just photoshop things out.

As we near the end of the journey, we have our edit locked and our effects in place. It’s time to make everything “feel” right. It’s audio time! Audio is, arguably, the most important part. A good looking video with bad audio doesn’t “look” good. Bad looking video with great audio will always “look” better.

Now that the audio is complete, we prep, convert, and deliver the final edit(s). We’ll also blog about it and go through the ins and outs of the project.

As you can see, we’ve invested a lot of time, money, and life into continually getting you better results than you thought you could get.

If this sounds like the level of expertise and care you want in your video, please, then, by contacting us, you are well on your way!