How much does a video cost?

Most production companies will not put a number on a page. Here is what video actually costs in Australia, what drives the price up or down, and why two quotes for the same brief can be thousands apart.

Nobody wants to publish prices. We understand why. Every job is different and a number on a page can scare off a good client or anchor a bad one. But refusing to answer the question wastes everyone's time, so here is a straight answer.

What does a video cost in Australia?

For a small business or a regional brand, most video work lands between $650 and $8,000. A short set of social edits cut from footage that already exists starts around $650. A single brand film, filmed and edited, usually runs $2,500 to $4,000. A larger piece with multiple shoot days, travel and a long form cut sits between $5,000 and $10,000. Ongoing monthly content retainers generally start around $2,800 a month.

Those are real ranges from real quotes, not a made up scale. Where a job lands inside them comes down to four things.

What actually drives the price

Shoot days. This is the biggest single lever. A crew on location for a day costs the same whether you use it well or badly, so the number of days matters more than almost anything else. Two products shot on the same day cost far less than the same two products shot a fortnight apart.

Edit time. This is the part clients consistently underestimate. A three to five minute film is usually twelve to sixteen hours in the edit. A twenty minute documentary is closer to twenty. Every short social cut adds about an hour on top. Editing is normally the larger half of a video budget, not the smaller one.

Travel. Anything outside the local region gets billed at cost and should be quoted up front. If a quote does not mention travel, ask, because it will appear later.

How much you need. One film is expensive per film. Five films from one shoot are much cheaper per film, because the setup, the travel and the day rate are shared across all of them.

Why two quotes for the same job differ by thousands

Usually it is not the camera. It is scope. One quote includes two rounds of revisions, stills, vertical cutdowns and usage rights, and the other includes one file. Compare the deliverables list before you compare the number.

The other common gap is who is doing the work. A quote from someone who shoots, edits, grades and delivers themselves prices differently to one from a company subcontracting three of those four.

How to get a cheaper video without getting a worse one

Batch it. The single most effective way to reduce cost per video is to film several things on one day. We have shot a full product range in a day that would have cost three times as much spread across three visits.

Use footage twice. Most brands film something once and use it once. A single shoot should produce the hero film, the social cuts, the stills and the website loop. If your quote only covers the hero film, you are paying full price for a fraction of the value.

Be clear about what it is for. A film for a trade show and a film for Instagram are different lengths, shapes and edits. Deciding that before the shoot is free. Deciding it afterwards costs a re-edit.

What we charge

We are a small team in North East Victoria, which means no agency overhead sitting on top of the quote. We give a fixed price for a defined scope, we state travel separately, and we tell you honestly when something you have asked for will not be worth what it costs. If you want a number for your specific job, tell us what it is for and we will come back the same day.