Round one
Included
5 days of calendar
Structure. Order, length, what stays and what goes.
Sent as a rough assembly on purpose. Notes on colour or type at this stage are notes on work that is about to be replaced.
Video production · Knoxville, TN · Booking shoots from the second week of next month.
The shoot is one day. You are paying for the other twenty-seven.
A one-person video studio in Knoxville. Every page in this trade sells the shoot, which is the one day of the six weeks you already understand. This one shows you the other twenty-seven — including the two longest stretches, which are us waiting on you.
Brand film, 90 seconds — pre-production to final delivery
28 working days. 11 of them are us waiting for you.
About 5.6 weeks. 39% of the project is a phase nobody is working on, and the longest single stretch on the whole list — 5 days — is “your notes, round one”.
| Phase | Who | Days | Share of the project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scoping call and quote | Both | 2d | |
| Script and shot plan | Us | 2d | |
| Your approval of the script Waiting | You | 3d | |
| Scheduling and logistics | Us | 1d | |
| Shoot | Both | 1d | |
| Ingest, backup, transcode | Us | 1d | |
| Assembly cut | Us | 3d | |
| Your notes, round one Waiting | You | 5d | |
| Cut two | Us | 3d | |
| Your notes, round two Waiting | You | 3d | |
| Colour, sound, graphics | Us | 2d | |
| Captions and versioning | Us | 1d | |
| Delivery and archive | Us | 1d |
- 2d Scoping call and quote Two calls and a written scope. Skipping this is how a project acquires a second deliverable in week five.
- 2d Script and shot plan Written before anything is booked, because the plan decides how many shoot days there are.
- 3d Your approval of the script The first place a project quietly loses a week. Nothing can be booked until this comes back.
- 1d Scheduling and logistics Locations, permissions, people, kit. Mostly email.
- 1d Shoot One day. The part everybody pictures when they say "making a video", and the shortest phase on this list.
- 1d Ingest, backup, transcode Two copies on separate drives before anything else happens. The only irreplaceable step on this list.
- 3d Assembly cut Structure only, no polish. Sent long and rough on purpose, so notes land on the shape rather than on the typography.
- 5d Your notes, round one The longest single stretch of the project. A working week is what it takes when three people have to agree and one of them travels.
- 3d Cut two Where the film actually gets made. Round one notes are almost always structural.
- 3d Your notes, round two Shorter, because the argument has already happened. Still longer than the cut it is reviewing.
- 2d Colour, sound, graphics Locked picture only. Grading a cut that can still change is work thrown away.
- 1d Captions and versioning Every ratio and length in the deliverable set below, plus burned and sidecar captions.
- 1d Delivery and archive Files, not a streaming link. Plus the archive terms — see the FAQ.
That is not a complaint about clients — it is the only part of the schedule you actually control, which makes it the most useful number on this page. Every other row is ours to compress and most of them are already as short as they go.
What actually ships
A video is not one file.
You asked for "a video". What ships is a set — and the set is where both the price and the schedule live. A quote that says "1 × video" is hiding this table, not simplifying it.
| Deliverable | Ratio | Length | Where it goes | Edit hours | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hero cut | 16:9 | 90s | Site header, events, sales decks | 22 | The one everything else is cut down from. Everything below is cheap because this exists. |
| Short cut | 16:9 | 30s | Paid social, pre-roll | 4 | Not a trim. A 30 needs its own structure or it reads as a film with the end missing. |
| Vertical | 9:16 | 30s | Reels, Shorts, TikTok | 5 | The expensive one. Reframing every shot by hand is what the hours are, and it is why "just crop it" produces work nobody uses. |
| Square | 1:1 | 30s | Feed posts | 2 | Cheap once the vertical exists, because the hard reframing decisions are already made. |
| Bumper | 16:9 | 6s | Pre-roll, loops | 1 | Six seconds. Frequently the most-watched thing we make for a client. |
| Captions | — | All | Burned in and .srt sidecar | 3 | Both, always. Burned for social where sound is off; sidecar so your platform can index the words. |
| Stills | 3:2 | 20 × | Press, decks, site | 2 | Pulled from a stills camera on the day, not frame-grabbed. Frame grabs look like frame grabs. |
| Camera archive | — | ~1 TB | Handed over on a drive | 1 | Yours. See the FAQ for how long we keep a copy and what happens after that. |
40 edit hours across 8 deliverables, and 22 of them belong to the hero cut alone. That is the argument for commissioning the set together rather than coming back in March for “just a vertical” — by then the project has to be reopened, and the cheap versions stop being cheap.
Revisions
A round is a week, not a day.
Two rounds are included, and the number that surprises people is not the money — it is the calendar. A round of notes is not a day. It is a working week.
Round two
Included
3 days of calendar
Refinement. Timing, music, the specific words on screen.
Picture is locked at the end of this round. Anything after it is a change to a graded, mixed, captioned film in eight versions.
Round three
$480
+4 days of calendar
Anything, but it re-runs the whole finishing pass.
Not a penalty and not an upsell — it is the cost of redoing colour, sound, captions and every ratio in the set. Most projects never need it.
One round of notes from one named decision-maker beats three rounds from a committee, every time and by a wide margin. If your notes have to be assembled from four people, tell us in the scoping call and we will build the schedule around it rather than discovering it in week four.
Rates
Priced from the table, not per quote.
Brand film, the set above
$6,400
One shoot day, the full calendar above, every deliverable in the table. The number this whole page is describing.
Additional shoot day
$1,250
Adds roughly four working days downstream, not one. More footage is more edit.
Interview day, 2–4 people
$2,900
Single location, two cameras, delivered as one cut plus per-person shorts.
Event coverage
$1,850
Up to eight hours, one highlight cut inside a week. Different schedule entirely — see the FAQ.
Edit only, your footage
$95/hr
Estimated in writing before we start, and I will tell you if the footage will not support the cut you want.
Extra deliverable version
Per the table
Priced from the hours column above rather than invented per quote.
Clients
Both of these are about the calendar.
“The schedule was the pitch. Everyone else sent a reel and a number; Marisol sent the calendar and told us which weeks were ours. We hit the launch date because we knew in week one exactly when our notes were due.”
Operations director, regional healthcare network
“We were late on round one by eight days and the delivery moved by eight days. Nobody was annoyed, because it had been on the page from the start.”
Marketing lead, outdoor equipment brand
Common questions
Before the scoping call.
Can we compress the six weeks?
Yes, and the only lever that actually works is your side of it. Eleven of the thirty-three days are us waiting. Name one decision-maker, block time for notes in advance, and a six-week project becomes a four-week one without anybody rushing the edit.
Why does the vertical cost more than the square?
Because every shot has to be reframed by hand for 9:16 — a composition built for a wide frame does not survive a crop. Once that work exists the square is nearly free, which is why the two sit so far apart in the hours column.
Do we own the footage?
Yes. The camera archive is handed over on a drive at delivery. I keep a copy for twelve months as insurance, tell you the month it is scheduled to be deleted, and will keep it longer for a storage fee if you ask.
What if we need a change after picture lock?
It becomes round three, which is $480 and about four extra days. That is not a penalty — a locked film has been graded, mixed, captioned and versioned eight ways, so a change to it is a change to eight files.
Is event coverage on this schedule too?
No, and it is worth saying so plainly: events are a different product. One highlight cut inside a week, one round of notes, no versioning set. If you want the full set from event footage it goes back onto the calendar above.
Do you deliver a link or files?
Files, over a transfer service, plus a review link during the edit. A streaming link is not a deliverable — it is a page that can be taken down, and you paid for the video rather than for access to it.
Start a project
When does it have to be live?
That date decides everything else, so lead with it. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.