In the UK, a professional videographer typically costs between £600 and £1,000 per day for filming, with post-production adding £300 to £700 per day. This is considered the standard videographer day rate range for experienced professionals. These videographer costs can vary depending on the project.
My name is Ken Chu and I am a London based filmmaker with over 20 years experience across the video industry. After more than 15 years working in broadcast ops and video on demand for the likes of Google and Samsung I transitioned to more creative roles in filmmaking with deep technical understanding of video and a strong eye for quality.
Today I specialise in human stories, case studies and testimonial films with clients across charity, public service, healthcare and technology. My broadcast background gives me a rare understanding of how video works at scale and my corporate experience helps me understand what it means to be a creative partner and provide value with a positive working experience for my clients and their stakeholders.
Videographer Pricing: The Numbers
Lets go into depth with these prices.
Filming:
In the UK most professional videographers charge somewhere between £600 and £1000 a day for filming. You sometimes see prices lower and higher. It’s important that you understand why when you are looking at your quotes from videographers. These videographer costs are where a large part of the market sits. There is a variance because of the videographers experience, their equipment and the complexity of the shoot and project as a whole. If you are hiring a videographer you really need to understand why the videographer sits where they do in this price range. What is it that is making them so expensive? Are they on the cheaper end because they lack experience? Are they on the higher end because they have specialist equipment and are highly experienced to use that equipment to a strong level of excellence?
It’s worth noting that this is just for filming days. My videography day rate for filming is £800 a day.
Post Production:
Post production day rates are a little less because they require less equipment and often the videographer doesn’t need to travel. This ranges from £300 a day to £700 a day. My rate is £500 a day. When you get a price from a videographer for post production fees, again you need to ask the same questions about why they are priced how they are.
Production Fees:
One cost that is overlooked is production fees. This is often an underestimated part of the overall cost of hiring a videographer. This covers planning, communication, equipment and coordination required to deliver your project. Pre-Production meetings and calls are one of the most important steps of the project and can make or break the whole endeavour. Videographers and production companies usually charge 10-20% of the total cost of the project. This can range depending on how much you are asking them to do in this regard. For instance:
- Do you need them to come up with creative ideas?
- Do you need them to organise a venue or location?
- Do you need them to hire specialist equipment?
- Do you need them to orientate and pre-prepare additional contributors and suppliers?
What Do You Actually Get for the Price?
So what are you actually paying for when considering the cost of hiring a videographer? Ultimately you are paying for a specialist. Someone with experience who knows how to get beautiful looking footage quickly, with their professional camera, audio and lighting equipment. It’s one thing theoretically knowing how to use the equipment but it’s another thing to have the experience to solve problems on the day and in post production. What sort of problems could these be? Here are some examples going back to our event we priced up before:
- The light in the location keeps changing because the sun through the venue windows keeps appearing and disappearing behind clouds.
- There is a lot of loud ambient sound, like music from the sound system, people chattering, clattering sounds from the kitchen.
- Your interview subject is a bit nervous and they are finding it hard to say what they want to, or more specifically, what you want them to say.
A videographer will have the tools and techniques to alleviate these problems because they meet them almost every day.
An Example Quote
Let’s say your organisation is having an event and you want it covered by a videographer. There will be people speaking on stage, people watching, having drinks and nibbles and perhaps taking part in workshop activities. You might want some little interviews of people discussing what they have been doing at the event and what they think of it. We call these “vox pops”. At the end of it you want a 2-3 minute highlights video incorporating these vox pops mixed in with shots of the exciting things that happened at your event, a condensed highlights for linkedin, and 3 additional clips short clips in a portrait format used for instagram etc. This is what a quote might look like for this:
| unit cost | Units (days) | Total | |
| Shooting | 800 | 1 | 800 |
| Editing | 500 | 3.5 | 1750 |
| Production fee (10%) | 255 | 1 | 255 |
| Total | 2805 |
Here we have 1 day of filming at your event and 3 and a half days for post production. This 3.5 days includes time for feedback and revisions on all of the videos. On top of that we have a 10% production fee to cover all of the other tasks around the shooting and editing to make the project a success. 10% is the lower end as pre-production is less than more indepth projects. One of the videos could be something like this:
This is a typical scope for our event videography service, which covers conferences, awards ceremonies, product launches and more.
At Ken Chu Videography we price with these unit costs in mind. This helps us scale up and scale down according to your needs. Perhaps you don’t want any shorter clips for social media? That’s fine, we’ll remove some post production days. Lets make that 2 instead of 3.5. You want to add a trailer video to help create some anticipation before the big splash of the main video? Ok we’ll add an extra day of Post Production time. The venue is massive and you need an extra videographer? Do you also need a photographer? A Drone? Tailored Animation? Voiceover? Yep, we can add these unit costs. This helps you build a bespoke videography package.
What we do not do is offer pre-made packages. This is because these often don’t match your requirements and puts you in a position where you are buying something you don’t need, just because it’s in the package. Every project is different and rarely fits in a cookie cutter shape. This is why expert videographer pricing is usually customised rather than fixed.
Videographer Costs by Video Type
These examples should give you a better understanding of the typical videographer costs across different kinds of projects. The price ranges depending on the complexity of the project and how many videos you need.
| Corporate event highlights and interviews (1 day) | £2,800 to £3,800 |
| Short promotional video | £1,200 to £2,700 |
| Social media content day | £2,000 to £3,000 |
| Interview/testimonial video | £1000 to £1,800 |
Hidden Costs To Watch Out For:
The examples I have given you gloss over the possible need for additional costs and these are often forgotten. Here is a list of what these could be:
Production:
Venue Hire
Actors and Extras
Hair and Make Up
Drone videos
Props and dressing
Parking, tolls and congestion charge
Specialist equipment hire
Post Production:
Music Licensing, if you want to use copyrighted music
Higher Level motion graphics
High level sound design
Additional round of amendments
Subtitles
Stock footage
Voiceover
The good news is that you don’t need to go and find all of this yourself and your videographer will be able to source all of this if it is clear that the project requires it. Identifying the needs for additional elements is why a good pre-production is so important
For more complex projects you might need to hire additional people to execute the shoot day. Additional videographers, sound person, lighting gaffers, assistants. Having these extra hands can really lift a project and take it to another level. You don’t have to find these people yourself as it’s likely your videographer will have people on hand to bring onto the project as we always have lots of friends to help us! At Ken Chu Videography we work with a lot of associates that have a plethora of different skills to bring to a production. Although additional crew will naturally increase the cost of hiring a videographer for larger productions.
For more complex productions, you can read about how we approach this as part of our brand videography service.
Full Day and Half Day Rates
A full day is usually 8 hours. A half day is usually 4 hours.
A videographer providing half day rates can be a bit of a debatable subject. Some videographers do not “do” half days. The thinking is that if you book a videographer for a few hours on any given day, they are unable to provide that full day to another client. This is especially true when you take into account travel time.
Additionally the preparation work with kit and organisation is often the same whether the day is a full day or a half day.
At Ken Chu Videography we do provide half days of filming but at 70% of a full day rate. £560 for a half day. Half days are not provided if the travel required is outside of London. We are happy to provide half post production days at a 50% rate.
Hopefully this helps you understand how much a videographer costs, how a project might be priced up and why a videographer costs how much they do.
Taking a risk and paying for a cheaper, less experienced videographer leaves you open to mistakes and a poor quality final product. If you’re not happy with the final video you’ll most likely have to do it again with another supplier or scrap the whole thing and that’s a huge waste of money.
A good video, whether it’s professionally made or not, should lift your organisation’s credibility. It helps your customers trust you and moves them emotionally towards taking action whether that’s donating to a charity, making a change in their life, or parting with their money to purchase your goods or services.
Conversely bad video damages your credibility. And that’s very difficult to recover from. This is the main consideration when deciding how much you want to spend on video. The cost of hiring a videographer should always be weighed against the impact the finished film could have on your organisation.
If you want to talk about your own project, get in touch!
Frequently Asked Questions
Below are some common questions about videographer pricing and how projects are quoted
Do videographers charge for travel
It depends. If its outside of a certain zone they charge for either their transportation costs or for a fixed milage if they are driving. In the UK driving milage is recommended by the HMRC as 45p per mile.
What is a videographers day rate and half day rate
A full day is usually £600-1000 a day. A half day is 60-70% of that, if they offer half days
How long does editing take after filming
This depends on how many deliverables you have requested from your videographer. A safe bet is 1-2 weeks. If you need your finished video quicker you can expedite it for a “rush” fee. This is normally 50% extra on your editing fees.
Should I get a videographer or production company for my project
The reality is that, nowadays the lines between a videographer and a production company are becoming blurred. Videographers have more power to cover off many of the technical tasks a full production company can achieve with less resource. However, a production company has more resources to work on more complex projects with more moving parts and higher stakes. You can read more about how we work and what we bring to a project on our how we work page.
How far in advance do I need to book a videographer?
This depends on the complexity of your project. If it’s for something like an event and there is less pre-production required to steer how you want your final video to look then there is less pre-production work needed.
If you need to bring various contributors for a case study or an in-depth testimonial video you’ll need time to organise people, understand their stories and prepare them for the shoot. Similarly if you want something with a specific style that needs developing this will need more time to go though a process of discovery and to create things like moodboards, storyboards and shot lists so that when it comes time to shoot we have prepared enough to produce the video exactly as you want it.
If you have an upcoming project, get in touch and we can advise on lead times for your specific brief.
