rights no one tells you so I'm telling you if a producer hadn't said to me when I was just 22 years old filming behind the scenes on a ton of music videos you know you could be charging way more than 75 pounds a day right really the other person we work with that does these charges 350 pounds a day I couldn't believe it and my rates pretty much quadrupled overnight on a lot of jobs and no one battered an eyelid because up until this point I'd been charging comparative peanuts these figures I'll be sharing aren't going to be relevant to everyone the market you're in geographically the demand for work the area of the industry type of work you specialize in and the quality of your work all relate to the Limit you can charge as well as of course your roll on stat directors rates tend to have a lot more flexibility at least in the commercial world than perhaps the other crew members in the UK we have a couple of different standards of pricing for crew members namely through the organization's APA for the advertising industry and back two for more drama and long form but as the demand for production has boomed here in the past few years thanks to so much investment from the stream gods and film studios the lines between long form and Commercial are becoming more blurred I'll link both organizations rates below for you to browse later and for now just have a look at some of the APA rates as most of what we're going to be discussing in this video is more in the commercial World APA update their rates every few years they suggest a minimum rate and a maximum rate but it's normally always the maximum that people expect they outline a standard maximum working day of 11 plus one that means 11 hours of work with a one hour lunch break anytime after that comes with an overtime rate as well as double and triple hourly rate suggestions which are often used for night shoots for example let's look at Focus puller for instance a first AC the minimum basic day rate expected on an APA shoe is 400 pounds the maximum 498. overtime would be built at 63 pounds an hour and their double hourly rate would be at 100 pounds a third assistant director on the other hand would only expect a minimum rate of 266 pounds a maximum of 291 overtime at 44 pounds an hour and a double hourly rate of 58 pounds now that's not to say that there aren't exceptions here jobs that are trying to achieve more than the budget allows asking for people to do low rates that they can choose to either accept or not and on the other side key crew members that are simply in demand in their area a food stylist or home economist is listed at a Max rate of 580 on apa's listed rates but I know from first-hand experience a much sought after one here in the UK that was on my McDonald's shoot last year cost over 1200 pounds a day plus their assistant there are of course equivalents elsewhere in the world and in the US which I am not qualified to talk about but my internet friend dop and Camera operator Tyler beckgood tells me that in Chicago they base things on a 10-hour day and have different unions for different departments but in LA and New York a 12-hour day is expected and rates can be much more competitive if anyone else is watching from over the Atlantic or anywhere else in the world for that matter do let the rest of us know about rights in your area in the comments section below as I'm sure we'd all be interested depending on the type of job and budget at this point in my career as a commercial and branded content director who often self-shoots I can receive anywhere from a thousand to three thousand pounds a day for a shoot but there's no way that anyone would pay me that if I was still producing work that look like this and that's not to say that I don't get approached for plenty of much lesser paying work but I just have to choose to say no I won't work for less than x and either they'll up the rate that they can pay me or they won't and I lose a job but that's just a risk you have to take and be prepared to lose out on work from time to time I spoke with commercial and narrative director Craig Bingham about how he approaches traits the money thing and you know what's charged is tricky and I think it's always a shape that is always changing when I first started out someone kind of threw a figure out to me and said oh directors get 10 of the budget and it's never kind of left me so I always aim for something around there but then you know sometimes you have big projects that come through and maybe you'll get tensed around the day maybe you'll get 15 grand or whatever but if you imagine you've got a one day shoot then the whole project is going to take you three months that's like whatever five grand a month and like with London prices and you rent it that goes quickly you know in the commercial World a director 10 of the budget is a number that I've always heard from producers and it can often work out that way but it's important to remember that as the Director you're not just involved for that one shoot day or shoot days there's way more time spent upfront prepping and probably in the post-production as well in an awesome freelance directors WhatsApp group that my buddy Tom Brown kind of got me in the doors of full of directors in much higher career positions than I just discussion rates recently came up the consensus was eight to twelve thousand pounds per day for corporate and Commercial work often with slight discounts for multiple days and one thousand pounds per day for Branded content but in the instance of branded content that wouldn't just be for the shoot day it would probably include prep time as well branded content and music video director Daniel Broadley had this to share I think generally speaking for a directory on branded content would be like between like 800 and 1 200 pounds a day and that's the low that often comes with an apology as well that's totally fine by me I mean I've chosen to live outside of London my living costs are lower than most people so to me that's that's a great amount of money maybe if you're living in London with a with a super high mortgage it's different and that would be tricky but you know Average Joe is 800 pounds a day they're like sorry what it's great I mean I think that's the lower end of it it's often like they try and push the higher or it's a buyout because it's like a week long or something and it's like you know a lot of the Branded content I do would be multiple days so they kind of figure out a buyout rate which also is I'm quite you know it's like two usually two months worth of money that I could live off combined into like one weeks of work or something so it's like by all means it's a great amount music videos is 10 usually but on the low budget ones I don't tend to do the percentage thing because if it's a three grand video 300 quid just doesn't warrant the work you're gonna have to do but that's why I take on so many roles because although I might be able to take even out of a foreground video like a grand for myself a quarter of it I am doing so many of the roles and it is well over a week's work usually the low budget stuff is just like do you have a passion for it do it and try and take what you can from it and hopefully it's Sweat Equity because it leads on to the stuff that either the artist grows or the label signs and bigger things and they trust you you can't just go into it and be like I'll just Hoover up all the little low budget stuff and make a bank because it's just not going to happen if you're a clever and do multiple roles you can take enough from it to Warrant not putting you in the hole every time you take one up you know so it's a different process when it comes to music videos and even different again when it comes to television and film and it's different for me depending on what I'm doing I was very open about my earnings in this video about how things have changed and fluctuated for me over the years in my career so far but even now in my officially 12th year as a freelance filmmaker I still do bargain bulk buyouts for edits to fill my off days or just last month I did a camera operating job 450 pounds I tried to negotiate up but was hit with a hard can't do it but I had no other work options that day and it was only four hours of my life so why not there's still much better money than when I was working at Domino's then you could argue as someone who mostly directs I should have used that time to focus my efforts elsewhere but as this was in and around my quiet days of early November genuine haven't earned any money in the last two weeks what if I never work again fear was starting to creep in it's funny in it you know when you get projects come through and they'll say oh this is the creative this is the brief um tell me if you like it and you want to move forward with it I'm always like well what's the budget because it's you know it sounds the creative sounds great but if the budget doesn't match you know sometimes you're just not able to invest your time into it and it's important and I think money is a conversation that um you know a lot of people in our industry need to talk more about um it's quite a hidden thing and yeah you know we definitely don't need to know what everyone's making but I think it needs to be a bit more clearer about what you should get paid as a director no matter if you're a videographer a self-shooting director or any crew member we're all looking to make as much money as we can doing the thing that we love in the early days when I was just looking to prove myself I'd happily take on work for free or just 50 Quid a day but as you your work your knowledge your experience grow you can start to demand more and negotiate whether I want to do the job or not I'd often played a big part in my pricing for example I have no desire to do corporate work so whenever I get asked about a corporate job my starting point at the very least would be APA rates and I'd normally try and push it because if they don't sign off on the budget and they don't want me to do it it's a shame that I've lost that income but I didn't actually want to do the work in the first place that said obviously I wouldn't have been in this position 10 years ago when I was just trying to make enough money to pay the bills rates in this industry are not clear cut but hopefully by putting things like this video out there it can help give you a better idea of where to place yourself rates wise depending on those factors that we talked about I have mentioned once before but I've worked on an NDA so I won't disclose what commercial job well the total budget of 2.5 million pounds where the director not me took home that blessed 10 that's 250 000 pounds which equated to 50 000 pounds a day for the five days that we're shooting plus the prep time but I'd happily give my whole year or maybe two years if that was a reward that was at stake jobs like that do exist in the world and when it's at that level the rate standards start to go out the window he doesn't do commercial work to my knowledge but if he did and the director wanted say Roger deakins as his cinematographer on this job and Rogers people said he won't do it for any less than 30 000 pounds a day then there's a good chance that they'll be able to find that money within that enormous budget let me end by saying life is not all about money but talking about it sure helps to make informed decisions and financial advancements in your career you should watch this video next to learn about the sorts of rates I made working as a director on a long-form narrative series for a BBC comedy and if you still haven't make sure to subscribe for more semi-hable tips and interesting Insider industry knowledge [Music] foreign