#Hourly charge?
Hourly rates are such a nebulous thing in this business. What I fail
to understand is when someone tells me he charges $50 or $75 per
hour for animation work why isn't he bringing home 100,000 – 150,000
per year? I know these people are working many hours on projects. A
current video editor and myself are jointly working on a video
project for an independent producer. He keeps telling me he charges
$75 per hour. Well if it were so the last editing segment he worked
on for 35 hours would have blown the budget for the whole project.
Here's the point: It doesn't matter what you say is the charge per
hour because so many hours never get billed. I spent most of my
working life in industry; and, there, all hours get billed. A wage
earner gets $10 per hour and makes $400 per week. (40 hours) A
manager makes $12-15 per hour and is paid salary. He puts in avg. 60
hours per week. How do I figure? Simple: The line worker punches a
clock and doesn't do a damn thing unless he is on the clock. The
manager is present for 40 hours but always is working on "homework"
and training and job related social affairs etc. Therefore, many
times he makes less than the line worker when figured per hour.
In the animation and CGI business I, too, have found most clients
don't care to pay by the hour. They just want to know what their
charge is for X result. So, I just think the comparison of hourly
rates are totally irrelevant for this industry.
In a practical sense I have one type client that likes to experiment.
He usually has no idea what he wants in his animation. We have
agreed that I bill him at $15 per hour and I go on the clock for
every phone call, every meeting, every learning curve minute to
develop his ideas. Guys like him are rare in this industry. Mostly
I get the storyboard developed, a non billable couple of hours, have
several meetings and then finally go to work. Now I start to charge
hours into my estimate. Notice I said charge into an estimate. Most
time this client is trying to work an open ended bid (the worst kind
of bidding where after you submit a bid the client will take
competitor's bids and try to get everybody to further drop the
price). I loose a bunch of business at good rates because I refuse
to participate in open ended bidding.
The bottom line is the "Bottom Line" If after the year end you do a
comfortable living and are happy with your life style then you have
done well, If you make big big bucks per hour but only got 1 or 2
small jobs all year and spent the rest of the time perfecting your
skills and developing a demo reel you're probably on the verge of
going out of business. Likewise if you don't charge enough to meet
your commitments you will be working long hours with lots to do and
still won't make your nut.
As far as hard goods involved, I always mark up video for resale. If
I bought a video tape for $10 and sold it for $10 I'd be loosing
about 20% or $2. It takes about 20 % prorata to cover cost of
acquiring and maintaining and selling inventory. These are real
costs and not profit.