How we build a budget estimate
Every number on this site is built bottom-up from real production rate sheets — coverage hours, cameras, editing, add-ons, and a per-market factor. It is an honest planning estimate, not a quote. Your final price comes from the videographer you hire, for your specific shoot.
Hourly coverage tier
The base of every estimate is time on the ground — tiered, because a full day prices more efficiently than five separate one-hour calls.
Past the top tier, each additional hour is added at a fixed rate.
| Coverage | Typical use | Base rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | Quick single-location shoot | $499 |
| 2 hours | Short event or promo | $599 |
| 3 hours | Half-event coverage | $699 |
| 5 hours | Most events, one location | $1,099 |
| 8 hours | Full-day coverage | $1,399 |
| Beyond 8 hours | Each additional hour | +$150 / hr |
Number of cameras
A second or third camera means more gear, more setup, and — for a multi-operator shoot — more crew.
We add $200 per additional camera beyond the first, scaled by the market factor below.
Editing tier: raw → fully edited
The single biggest driver of the spread, and the reason we show a range instead of one number.
The low end of every estimate is raw footage; the high end is a fully edited film with a highlight cut. Editing is priced per hour of post-production ($100/hr) — which is why a heavily-edited brand film ranges wider than a same-day event recap.
All coverage delivered as-shot, organized — no cutting. The low end of every range.Base coverage
A cut, sequenced, color-graded deliverable — the finished film most people picture.+ editing time
The full edit plus a short highlight cut, licensed music, and social cutdowns. Top of the range.+ highlight
Add-ons
Optional line items, priced separately, that only appear when your shoot calls for them.
Drone needs a licensed pilot; a live stream needs an encoder and a reliable uplink; a same-day teaser compresses an edit into hours.
| Aerial / drone | $300 – $700 |
| Live stream | $700 – $1,400 |
| Same-day teaser | $500 – $900 |
| Highlight reel | $300 – $600 |
| Lighting kit | $200 |
| Animation / motion graphics | $250 – $1,000 |
| Captions / subtitles | $100 – $250 |
Per-market adjustment
The same shoot costs more in New York or Los Angeles than in a mid-size metro — labor, gear rental, and cost of living all vary.
We apply a per-market factor calibrated against local rate data (a higher-cost market runs roughly 15–30% above the national baseline; more affordable markets run below it). It adjusts the coverage, camera, and editing subtotals — not the nationally-priced add-ons.
Here is that step doing its work. Both columns are the engine's output for the same shoot, run twice — once at the national baseline, once with Chicago's factor of 1.15. The drone and the teaser do not move, because add-ons are priced nationally.
| Line item | National | Chicago | Charged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wedding coverage + edit (raw → finished) | $1,200 – $2,700 | ×1.15 | $1,375 – $3,100 |
| Additional camera (×1) | $200 – $200 | ×1.15 | $225 – $225 |
| Aerial / drone | $300 – $700 | not adjusted | $300 – $700 |
| Same-day teaser | $500 – $900 | not adjusted | $500 – $900 |
| Budget estimate | $2,200 – $4,500 | $2,400 – $4,925 |
Real output, this request: a 6-hour wedding in Chicago on June 14, two cameras, drone, and a same-day teaser. Every figure is rounded to the nearest $25, which is why $200 × 1.15 lands on $225 rather than $230.
One range, cut three ways
The $2,400 – $4,925 above is the whole span, raw footage to fully edited. Nobody buys "a range", so the engine splits it at the two points where the deliverable changes — these are three depths of the same shoot, not three different prices.
A range, not a quote
Two identical shoots can finish thousands of dollars apart on one choice: how much editing you want.
Raw footage sits at the bottom of the range; a fully edited, color-graded film with a highlight reel sits at the top — so until you decide where you land, an honest answer is a range, and the builder narrows it as you add detail. These are estimates for planning, not quotes: Videographer.com does not set, fix, coordinate, or recommend any videographer’s prices — every videographer sets their own, and the final price comes from them for your specific shoot. The estimate just means you walk into that conversation already knowing what fair looks like.
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