What videography staff earn, and what it costs to employ them

What to take away

What camera operators, producers and editors earn

Pay in this trade varies by city, project type, whether the person brings a kit, and whether the client is an agency, a corporation or a direct small business. Published national figures are still the honest starting point, because they come from a survey rather than a forum.

The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables break employment and wages down by occupation, state and metropolitan area. Pull the row for your own metro rather than the national number.

For camera operators in film, television and video, code 27-4031, the national median sits near $30 an hour. The middle half of the trade runs from about $21 to $43, and the top ten percent clears $60.

Producers and directors, code 27-2012, which is where a lead shooter or an owner-operator often lands on paper, show a median near $39 an hour. The middle half runs from roughly $24 to $62, and the top ten percent passes $80.

Audio and video technicians, code 27-4011, who run sound and set up the kit, sit lower, with a median near $26 an hour. Film and video editors, code 27-4032, cluster around $29 an hour.

Below that sit the entry roles. Production assistant rates in most US markets typically start around $16 to $20 an hour, and rise with kit, driving and set experience.

These are wage figures. They exclude overtime, tips and the value of any kit the person supplies. They are also national, so a shooter in a small market may see half the median and one in a top-three market may see double.

In most markets the Los Angeles and New York metros run 20 to 50 percent above the national median for camera work, while mid-size metros such as Atlanta, Dallas and Minneapolis sit near it or below.

Converting everything to one unit

Three ways of paying people, one unit for comparing them.

Let W be the wage or fee for a period, B the payroll burden of taxes and required coverage, and N the non-productive paid time. Non-productive time covers travel, gear prep, training, meetings and the hours between jobs you still pay for.

Let K be what you provide that a freelancer would otherwise fund: equipment, software seats, insurance and storage. The formula is (W + B + K) divided by productive hours actually delivered in that period.

Burden has published rates. Employers pay 6.2 percent of wages for Social Security up to the annual wage base and 1.45 percent for Medicare with no cap, a combined 7.65 percent. Federal unemployment tax runs 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of wages, usually 0.6 percent after the state credit.

State unemployment and workers compensation vary by state and by your claims history. State unemployment typically runs 0.3 to 7 percent of wages. Workers compensation for production typically runs 0.5 to 5 percent of payroll, higher for aerial, stunt or heavy rigging work.

Benefits add more. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series puts benefits near 30 percent of total compensation for private industry, so wages are about 70 cents of each compensation dollar. Health insurance, retirement and paid leave are the big pieces.

Non-productive paid time typically eats 5 to 15 percent of paid hours. A salaried editor does not deliver forty productive editing hours a week; nobody does. Use your own measured figure, from timesheets, or the whole model is decorative.

A worked example. A salaried shooter at $30 an hour on 2,080 paid hours earns $62,400. Burden at 15 percent adds $9,360, for $71,760. At 20 percent non-productive time the role delivers about 1,664 productive hours, so the loaded productive hour is about $43.

Add $6,000 a year of gear, software and insurance and the same hour costs about $47. A freelancer quoting $800 for a ten-hour day bills $80 an hour for hours worked, and that rate has to cover the days nobody books.

What each arrangement really costs

Read the last column as a list of things to write into the arrangement before it starts.

What a freelance day rate has to fund

A freelance day rate has to cover unbilled days between bookings. It must also cover equipment purchase and repair. Insurance, software, storage and accounting come out of it too. So do training, sick days, holidays and retirement.

Billable days are a fraction of the working days, and the rate carries the rest. A shooter who bills 100 days at $800 grosses $80,000. Prep, travel, edits and admin often add up to 1,500 hours of work, so the effective hourly falls near $53 before expenses.

That is why an offer that looks generous against an hourly wage can be below viability as a day rate. It is also why the cheapest freelancer is often the one about to leave the trade.

Overtime, long days and records

Event and documentary work means long days and irregular patterns. Schedules and working environments vary widely by production, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics description of broadcast, sound and video technicians records.

That variability drives the two most common labor cost failures: unrecorded hours, and a day that ran to fourteen hours with no agreement about what happens after ten.

Federal law requires overtime at 1.5 times the regular rate after 40 hours in a workweek for non-exempt employees. California adds a daily rule: 1.5 times after eight hours and double time after twelve.

Two fixes, both administrative. Agree the length of a day in writing before the shoot, and agree what happens beyond it. Record actual hours as they happen rather than reconstructing them later.

Wage and hour obligations for employees are not a matter of custom in this trade. The Department of Labor publishes compliance assistance for new and small businesses, and how those obligations apply to you depends on your facts.

Classification, which decides whether any of it applies at all, belongs in the same conversation and is part of the obligation map in licensing, releases and compliance. Ask an accountant or an employment attorney rather than copying another company.

Hiring itself must be consistent, and the EEOC publishes guidance for small employers on nondiscrimination in recruitment and employment, which a small company meets by having a written process rather than a policy department.

The costs that hide inside labor

Four items that belong in your labor number and are almost always left out.

Supervision. A new person's first projects consume your time as well as theirs, often for weeks. Budget 10 to 20 percent of their hours as your own time in the first month.

Rework. Time spent fixing work that did not meet the brief is labor cost with no revenue attached. On projects with a vague brief that is typically 5 to 10 percent of edit hours, and it belongs against the project rather than in general overhead.

Gear time. Prep, cleaning, charging, firmware and media wrangling. It is not billable, it is not optional, and an hour a day is typical for a solo shooter.

Idle capacity. An editor with no project this week still costs what they cost, about $1,200 in wages for a 40-hour week at $30 an hour and nearer $1,400 loaded. That is the argument for measuring utilization rather than busyness.

Using the number

Once you have a fully loaded productive hour, it feeds two decisions.

It sets the floor under a quote. A project that does not cover its own labor at the loaded rate is subsidized by you. Multiply loaded hours by the hours a project consumes, add pass-through spend and a share of fixed cost, and that total is the floor.

It also tells you whether to hire at all. Compare the loaded cost of a salaried person against what you spend on freelancers for the same work and against revenue you turn away.

An in-house editor at a loaded $47 an hour costs $7,520 over a 160-hour month. The same editor freelancing at $65 an hour costs $10,400. Break-even lands near 116 hours a month.

If the answer is close, subcontract; flexibility is worth more than the small saving. Which role to add first is in hiring and training a crew, and the selection method is in hiring a shooter or editor who shows up.

Common questions

Should I pay a shooter more if they bring their own gear?

Almost always, because they are funding purchase, repair, insurance and replacement out of the rate. A kit fee typically adds $100 to $300 a day on top of labor for a camera and audio package.

Alternatively hire them at a lower rate and supply the kit yourself, which is the same money moved to a different place on your books. What you supply is a separate decision, informed by the camera, audio and lighting setup guide.

Is a half day worth offering?

Only where travel and setup are genuinely small. Otherwise you are paying most of a day's overhead for half the output, and the person is losing the rest of their day anyway. Expect a half day to bill at 60 to 70 percent of the day rate.

How do I raise rates for existing clients?

With notice, in writing, with an effective date, and applied to new bookings rather than to work already agreed. Thirty to 60 days is the usual notice window. Explain what changed rather than apologizing, and expect to lose the client who was only there for the price.

What is a fair way to handle a canceled shoot day?

Decide the policy before it happens: what notice releases the client, what the crew are owed for a day they held, and whether a deposit transfers.

A common policy is 50 percent of the day rate for a cancellation inside 48 hours, and the full day inside 24. Any figure you find published belongs to someone else's business; the point is that yours exists in writing.

Does location change the answer?

Substantially, and in both directions. Wages, rental availability and client budgets are all local, which is why a rate that works in one city can be unviable in another and worth checking before expanding into another market.