I created a series of videos last year for Martinstown House, a beautiful 17th century strawberry gothic manor house in the Curragh. Martinstown House is owned and managed by the Booth family who run the property as a spectacular wedding venue and guest house. I spent three days shooting in the house and gardens, and created these videos interviewing the family and highlighting aspects of the business, from Weddings to fine dining.
I created this series of videos to promote the ecology centre Sonairte. The centre is located less than a mile from the seaside, close to where I grew up in Laytown, Co Meath. Founded in the 1980’s, it was set up to promote hands on learning about the environment, and to exhibit alternative energy, a radical idea at the time. It’s a remarkably tranquil place, where visitors can walk a nature trail or learn sustainable growing techniques in a seizable Victorian market garden.
I shot these videos over two days at the centre, and developed the campaign around promoting the distinct experiences available, from Yoga classes to delicious organic fruit and veg. I may have stolen a few apples, hanging from the heavily laden branches of Sonairte’s twenty-seven distinct species of apple tree.
Sonairte are actively seeking volunteers, especially people with experience in organic horticulture or fundraising at state and European level. You can contact them by phone on 041 982 7572 or by email at hello@sonairte.ie.
Production Details
Everything was shot on the Panasonic G80, with a Sigma 18 – 35 Art lens. Most shots were captured on the Crane 2 gimbal. Editing and grading was done in Da-Vinci Resolve, and titling in Final Cut Pro.
All music is by Alexander Kyd, donated with kind permission, from his records 51 Pegasi and These Waters Remember, which are available to purchase on bandcamp.
I’m offering a special deal for couples getting married in Summer and Autumn 2018. As a videographer primarily specialising in filmmaking, commercial and visual-arts shoots, I’m making the leap into covering more weddings. I’m mindful that there are many couples who may unsure about whether to add videography to their wedding plans. The cost can seem prohibitive, and there are lots of untrained and unqualified ‘videographers’ at the low end of the market. With that in mind, I’m happy to be able to offer a one time only low-cost wedding deal for couples getting married Summer and Autumn 2018. These two packages represent a great deal on professional cinematic videography for your wedding, at an unbeatable price. They feature high quality videography from a postgraduate trained filmmaker specialising in characterful, artistic shooting. I’d love to work with you to get the cinematic look and feel you’d like for your special day. You can see some highlights of my artistic work here, or get an overview of my commercial work here. To book, or have any questions you need answered, you can get in touch here.
Full Wedding Package – € 1000
• Two shooters
• Pre-wedding Consultation (Skype or phone)
• Bride & Groom Prep
• Family Moments / First Look
• Full Ceremony
• First Dance
• Reception Speeches & Highlights
• Beautiful titles and colour grade included as standard.
• Stablised Gimble (for more cinematic shots)
Final Videos (all in 1080p HD)
• 2 – 3 minute Trailer
• 8 – 10 minute Cinematic Film
• 20 – 30 minute Documentary
Extra Special Add-ons (optional)
• 3 * 1 minute videos, resized & optimised for social media – € 300
• Guest Messages Video – € 300
• Custom DVD with menus & full colour cover * 2 copies – € 400
• All Raw Footage on USB key – € 150
• Drone Rental & Operator – € 350
• Filming till midnight (one shooter will stay till midnight) – € 300
• Express Delivery of Wedding Footage (within two weeks) – € 200
• All videos shot and edited in 4K – € 500
• Custom Website to host your video & photos – € 650
• Vintage look – add Super 8, Super 16 or VHS look to your film – € 500
Terms and Conditions
All videos are provided as a high resolution digital download.
Food must be provided for videographers on the day.
Excludes cost of transport to and from the venue, and accommodation if required (e.g.: if filming till midnight option is purchased). This will be agreed with you before the booking has been accepted.
Finished videos are delivered within one month of the big day.
Non-refundable 30% deposit required for all bookings.
Drone Operator subject to availability.
Website option includes domain name, but excludes on-going hosting, which can vary between € 10 – 30 per month for the lifetime of the site.
All prices are inclusive of VAT.
Other Terms and Conditions as per our Client Agreement.
What Happened
On February 10th, 2018, I was hired to film a concert in the Helix Dublin as part of the Festival of Russian Culture organised by The Council of Russian Compatriots of Ireland (dead link). The fee offered was extremely low, but at the time I was willing to do it – both because the job had been passed on by a friend, and to have the opportunity to gain footage from a high profile venue for my showreel.
I filmed the concert, recorded the audio from the desk in stereo, edited, graded and titled the video, and provided it to the concert organisers. Initial changes were requested, which were carried out. Further changes were requested – though never specified, which I stated I’d be happy to make after the fee had been paid. No payment was forthcoming. On 22nd March half payment was received directly into my bank account, without any accompanying communication.
Unfortunately, to date the organisers have failed to pay the balance of the extremely modest fee. Instead they have cut off all contact. Despite numerous emails, phone calls and ultimately letters of demand on headed paper, to date they show no sign of settling this debt.
This leaves me with no option but to name and shame them. Freelancers and others doing business with those involved need to know that they may not pay their bills.
Who Wont Pay
The man who hired me, and seemed to be in charge of the concert was Jaroslav Jankovskij, a resident of Dundalk.
Another organiser of the concert was Anastasia McCabe. On Feb 26th I corresponded by text with Mrs McCabe. Mrs McCabe congratulated me on the quality of the video, confirmed she would organise payment, then asked for minor adjustments to the video. I confirmed I was happy to carry out adjustments after payment had been received.
I spoke to Mrs McCabe by phone on March 5th. Mrs McCabe mentioned (but did not specify) additional changes to the video, which I again stated I’d be happy to provide after payment had been completed. Mrs McCabe then told me I was being rude, and hung up. Despite several attempts, I was unable to reach Mrs McCabe by phone again. Having recovered Mr Jankovskij’s address through the CRO, beginning March 20th I sent him a series of letters requesting payment. These provoked no response.
As previously stated, to date Mr Jankovskij and Mrs McCabe have refused to pay their debt. Be careful when dealing with these people.
Unpleasant Details
At the time of filming the gig, it didn’t appear to be listed on the Helix website. Thus I was unaware till later that the central attraction of the concert was Russian actor Dmitry Pevtsov, whose wikipedia page suggests is both a friend and avid supporter of Russian dictator Vladamir Putin. I was not informed as to the nature of the concert before hand – or it’s connection to the Russian Government / Festival of Russian Culture. During the gig I asked if it was a political event, and I was informed it was not.
At the time I filmed and edited the concert footage, I was unaware that Mr Jankovskij had previously been involved in a violent dispute, involving the non-payment of a debt.
I shot this video for Dublin based migrant non-profit, Our Table.
Our table is a community driven project, aiming to highlight the need to end direct provision in Ireland. Our Table aims to create nurturing and empathic spaces where people can gain skills, are paid a wage and can gain knowledge of the Irish food industry. It is a non-profit, non-demoninational organisation that aims to build an awareness of food in multicultural Ireland and to highlight that the current system of Direct Provision is deeply flawed.
Last summer I graduated from the Broadcast Production Masters in IADT. Since then I’ve transitioned from primarily working in radio, to shooting and editing events. I’ve worked on everything from christenings to concerts, art documentation to theatre promotion, short films to music videos. Over and over again, clients are surprised at the cost of services (even cut price, chance of a lifetime, ‘just this once’ services).
Here are my current rates.
Two things are in play here. One, the market for videography is still not well established in Ireland. For many clients it’s their first time dealing with a videographer. Two, lots of people (from established photographers, to folks who just got a nice camera for Christmas) figure they’ll turn their hand to videography – offering to shoot their friends and family at ultra low, or even no cost.
I thought I’d take the time to explain what goes into making a professional video – from equipment to time. Hopefully it gives a fuller picture of the costs involved.
The Cowboy Factor
Filming is not photography. There are a host of factors that need to be taken into account filming a live event that just aren’t there when taking photographs – from the 180 degree rule to choice of recording codec, from handing aperture changes in motion to dealing with interference from the refresh rates of lighting. Filming isn’t 24 times harder than taking a photograph, but it is significantly more difficult.
Think of it like this – imagine you’re asked to take a photo of a friend. Now imagine there’s only one shot left in the camera, and they’re moving, and the light is changing, and this picture is important to them – maybe its capturing the most important moment of their lives. Now repeat this one hundred times and you’ve got some idea what it’s like to make an event video.
Note – this isn’t to denigrate the artistry or complexity of photography. The best photographs are as complicated to setup and certainly as artful as any film shoot. It’s just that when it comes to capturing real time events, in varying conditions, with high expectations, there are more factors to be juggled when shooting video.
When you’re filming on your phone, or in the automatic mode on your camera, or just in great lighting – many of these problems disappear, often at the cost of the quality of your final image.
Not F**king up
When you hire a professional, they use professional gear, including but not limited to SD cards, hard drives etc. They also engage in a professional workflow – duplicating and backing up footage as it’s shot, on site and off. This is all to ensure that your project or event doesn’t disappear. That sound is recorded as well as picture. The final edit is there next week, or even next year, when you need it in an emergency and have lost or deleted your copy.
It’s a lot more work than you think
When you’re hiring someone to make you a video, much of the work they do is invisible. This can include, but is not limited to – equipment assembly and disassembly, logging footage (loading it into the computer, labelling and checking each file, backing up etc), reviewing clips, editing, re-editing, colour grading, rendering (squeezing out a final file), and reviewing the export.
Any one of these steps can go wrong in a hundred ways. Rendering alone can take hours on a complicated project, even on a fast computer. There is no such thing as a ‘quick edit’, or a ‘small change’, since changing one element of a video requires re-rendering, then checking over every other element of the newly exported video. Counterintuitively, a short video (say a 30 second advert) can take MUCH longer to make than a long video (for example a single shot of an event).
I could write an entire article listing the intricacies of editing – which depending on the specifics required by the project (the number of clips, number and type of cameras, whether takes are mixed, the different kinds of media involved, synching speech, cutting to music etc) can be enormously involved and time consuming. This is why videos produced by friends or ‘for free’, can take months to appear, never get finished at all or be very disappointing when they do finally get done.
Equipment is expensive
Here is my current filming kit. Here is the gear I intend to buy over the next year. Filming equipment is expensive, really expensive.
The camera is in some ways the cheapest (and arguably least important) element of a filming setup. It’s a support system for the lenses, monitor, microphone, and accessories. One that requires lighting, fast media, and a faster computer and external hard drives to edit its output.
Right now, my gear is close to the most basic setup with which professional work can be done. It’s my experience and eye that differentiate the final product. Even so, my current setup cost several thousand euro to build up. Each time it’s used, it faces wear and tear, and more than almost any other freelance industry – each year it must be upgraded as standards improve and new equipment becomes available.
In addition to a reliable, decent quality camera and editing computer, there are numerous non-obvious yet expensive elements to a pro-filmmaking kit, including things like…
The list goes on and on, and whats more, it varies per job, meaning that one setup will not suffice for a varied workload.
Experience
Imagine, you’re on a plane to Thailand. God forbid, as my mum likes to say, you have a heart attack. The call goes out, is there a doctor on board? A hand is raised in first class. The off duty doctor races back towards the hell that is economy and begins to [INSERT 7 YEARS OF MEDICAL SCHOOL TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE HERE]. You survive. What saved your life? Was it a stethoscope?
It was your doctors education and experience. The training (and more importantly hands on experience) of a videographer / director of photography, is what makes their work worth paying for. In my case, I’d been filming and editing web and short films for over a decade before I decided to turn professional, and embarked on an expensive masters degree. I’d also been working as a radio producer writing, producing, recording, and editing programmes (many of which are directly transferable to what I do now). It’s the thousands of hours I’ve spend on and off sets, shooting, rigging, editing, grading, watching tutorials, reading manuals, and generally learning, that you’re paying for when you hire me. Not just my gear.
Freelance work
Videography, sound recording and editing are for the most part freelance work. That means that the day rates charged have to support the living expenses of the videographer while they look for work and on the unpaid days that will arise for even the most qualified and popular videographer. Like all freelance work it’s paid at a slightly higher rate than full time work, at least in theory. In practice, videographers work for below their official rates all the time – usually for charity campaigns etc. This places additional importance on being paid properly for professional work.
Additional Expenses
Other things can add to the cost of videography significantly, from additional staff (to provide B roll, sound recording, makeup etc), to equipment rental and transport. These costs vary by event, but they can mount up. They’re frequently invisible to the client, as they’re accounted for in the initial quote provided. Sometimes these costs are swallowed in order to help establish a working relationship, or just ease what can be an onerous burden – for example when shooting for artists or charities. In the end they still have to be paid. This may sound obvious – but it bares repeating: You wouldn’t ask a lawyer, builder, plumber or taxi driver to do their job for free. Why would videography be any different?
Conclusion
Hopefully this gives a bit of context to videography pricing – and a hint as to what a great deal you’re getting when a professional does offer you a discount.
Baring in mind all of the above, videography in Ireland is incredible, arguably unsustainably, cheap. Compare the price of filming a wedding here (about 1,000 – 4,000 euro), with the prices for the same service in the US. Now get in touch, and hire me!
