For me, videography is much more than the time that I spend at the location filmming.  That’s actually the easiest, most enjoyable part for me.  In reality, the real time and value that I add comes in two parts.

  1. Shooting on location = approx. 20% of cost to me
  2. Editing your footage and researching market trends and advancing my knowledge-base = approx. 80% of cost to me

I love shooting video.  It’s very fun to me.  But understand that you aren’t paying me for just showing up and pointing my camera.  You are mostly paying for the time It took me to increase my knowledge and keep up with the current trends artistically, and also the amount of time it takes to edit footage to make sure it is valuable both technically and artistically.

But I don’t downplay the difficulty of the actual location shooting.  Every location brings unique challenges to it, both visual and audio.  Recording professional quality video requires advanced knowledge of the latest equipment and familiarity with your equipment’s weaknesses and limitations.  Personally, I own the best equipment out there and I’m a fan of Canon, which produces the best quality cameras and lenses, but I also understand the limitations of my equipment in the real world.  Audio is another important aspect of filmaking that is not fully recognized by the general public.  I have an arsenal of several types of recording devices.  I must evaluate each shooting location independently to determine how audio will be recorded.   Professional audio for video is a profession in and of itself, most average people do not realize.  As a videographer, I have fill multiple hats of several specialties.  This requires a lot of research and education.

Although I own the latest technology, I learned videography and filmmaking from the ground up.  Some other videographers just buy the best equipment and think that they can produce quality solely through technology.  In contrast, when I started out I learned how to produce quality video using poor quality equipment, understanding the limitations and abilities of my equipment.  My personal philosophy is simple:  Make videos that bring joy to people and capture reality in a way that is positive and brings value to everybody.

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