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Bidding Basics
Theo Ugly part of the job. My least favorite thing in life. I think it's a general statement. True money. Um, we all like to have some money so we can, you know, get good health care and take care of her kids and stuff. Other than that, it's never been really important to me. Dealing with money narrow feels good. Unfortunately, you gotta become really good at it in this job because it's all about money, how you spend it, how you manage it, how you make enough of it to stay in business. Um, here is just one of the pages of a bit. If you've never heard of a bid or an AI C P bid, there's a standard format. It's much more complicated than this, but it basically breaks down every person you're going to hire the pieces of gear that you're going to use and give an idea of the estimate of where the jobs going to cost. This is an art form. Should you guys know how to write a bid? No. You hire someone called a line producer there, One of most important people in your crew. They do this professio...
nally taken type up a bid from experience with 30 minutes of questions with you, not five, and submit it to the client initially for a bit. Okay, there's too many moving pieces. Do you guys know what the cost of an eight k light? How much a crew costs in terms of electrician's and gaffers? How much a techno crane costs all the stuff that comes A technique rains in terms of pivoting your creative hire. People who do this for a living. The entire film business, since the old Hollywood days in the twenties is built around having novice directors surrounded by veteran DP's. An entire crews there, there say, How can we help you produce this? The only thing you need is a director is to have a vision. I eat no, what you want to accomplish and to be able to communicate it. You do not need to know how to do it. They will help you figure that out and how to do it. The budget you're given all right, understand? It's perfectly OK not to know that stuff. I know a lot of it now. It helps me bid stuff better, but when you start, there's just No way you could know any of this stuff. All right, so this is kind of an idea of, you know, who you're going to hire is a little different types of people. They all have their rates. I'm not gonna get too much. This. We can do an hour on bidding. Um, if you overbid, you don't get the job happened to me last week. I was the highest bidder. We bid it, honestly. Didn't get the job. Oh, well, I'd rather bid what I know it's gonna cost than underbid and be paying for it during the entire shoot because we don't have what we need. All right. Most jobs will have several bidders, at least three. And they're gonna pick not only based on the money aspect of it, but also based on your approach. You write a letter very often where you point out some very key things. Five shoot days. Where it is. The estimate. The schedule approach list. Five actual shoot days. 11 distinct locations. Talk more about the locations the travel art department, film and equipment that we're going to use miscellaneous production fee in terms. This is very important. Always get 50% advance from your clients before you do anything before you hire a single person, so you're not on the hook. It's very common. Most jobs air 50 to 100,000 to several $100,000. You can't be the bank, but if you get 50% upfront, you can pay your crew and your hard costs usually. And then you get a 25% when you finish the job and the last 25% when you deliver the jobs that make sense, don't ever put your credit card down until you get that deposit in your bank account. And don't ever consider a job Israel until you get a thing called a P O purchase order. It's not really that makes sense. You gotta protect yourself. Uh, we asked for a 10% margin. All estimate expenses categories may very. And the event the shoot is cancelled more than 48 hours before the confirmed date. 50% of the shell apply because we're being mean because we've hired an entire crew and put a lot of work into this and we have to pay them, and I can't be on the hook for that. You gotta respect your crew. What's a day rate? So as a day rate as a director, I have a day rate, uh, the average day rate these days for a director of between 5 to 10 to maybe $20,000. I'm rich. They only pay you for the most part for the days you shoot. They don't pay you for all the prep and all the post. I worked on one commercial where I got paid 40,000 $60,000 directing fees. And I did the math on the amount of time I put in that commercial to start to finish. I would have done better working in McDonald's for minimum wage. Not kidding you. So even though the directors looked like they make all the money, not always necessarily the case there very often times where the Steadicam operator is making a lot more money than I am. Especially that day, right? So our day rates could be scary. You usually don't get paid for the shoot days. I don't like that model. You can change it if you want. You can create your own model, this kind of standard approach, what is markup? So production companies don't take 30% of what I make as in photography. They actually everything that they bill and get approved usually put a mark up on it of anywhere from 10 to 25%. So you buy sneakers, cost your dollar. The production company charges a dollar 30 and that's how they make their money for all the work they put on. Believe me, it's a lot of work. That's what the concept of markup is. Okay, Um, I'm just giving you words. You should know. I did not know what a firm bid versus cost Plus was. You raise your hand. Who here knows what that is? One person. You don't even know Nobody. How you supposed to know this stuff? All right, so a firm bid, uh, is I'm gonna hire you to shoot my commercial and your entire budget All in is $50,000. You want it? You take a job not knowing what it is. No idea, because I want to hire you. Hire seven helicopters. Four techno crane to do a Michael Bay commercial. Basically, a firm bid is I'm gonna give you 50 grand. I don't want a single receipt. Who interesting. Just 50,000 Want to hear about it? You're gonna get a check for 50 grand. You're going to produce commercial and hand it over to me. I don't care how you do it. Obviously, there's pros and cons of that, aren't they? Or cost. Plus, you give me a receipt and you can add 10 or 15 or 25% to it. But if you don't have any receipt, I'm not gonna pay you back. So it's a gamble. So if you take a firm bid and the cost you $30, to produce the $50,000 commercial, you keep 20 and that you can call it your feet and call it your mark up. They don't care. Problem is, if you go over, it comes out of your pocket unless you go up for markup. So there two models that are out there. Just so you understand that those terms ever come up, Be careful. This is a gamble. Okay. Uh, if you come under, it's called an under ridge. You don't spend all the money they gave you. You get to keep it. And you know what? Most of time you end up taking that money and spending on the next job where you go over and it kind of evens out, but important for you guys to know that.
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It was super interesting! Vincent you are a kind of a big deal! )) Thanks!
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