Three minute promo, about 40 minutes of interview and maybe 25 b-roll clips. Fourteen hours of actual editing, not counting two rounds of revisions. I quoted a flat 400. Is that normal for a first paid job or am I much slower than I should be, and what specifically makes people faster at this?
Normal on time, low on price. 400 for 14 hours plus revisions is under 30 an hour before you count the shoot, the gear and the admin. Not a disaster for a first job, but do not treat it as your baseline — price the next one on scope and cap revisions at two rounds in writing.
Two rounds included and hourly after that. Saying it up front changes client behaviour more than anything else I have tried.
The revisions are where my time went, not the edit. Get a rough cut approved before you colour, mix or add graphics, otherwise you do all the fun parts twice.
Slower than you think is fine. The people quoting three hour turnarounds are recycling a template over similar footage every week, which is a different job.
@vesting_cliff · 5mo ago · 3 replies
Normal, and the useful number is that you will roughly halve it within five projects. What actually made me faster, in order of impact: transcribe the interview and cut the story in the text before touching a timeline, stop hunting for the perfect b-roll and drop a good enough clip with a marker to revisit, and build a project template with your bins, titles and export presets already in place. The one hour per finished minute figure people quote is for people producing the same format every week.
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@cue_carla · 5mo ago
The text-first idea sounds like it would help enormously with the interview waffle.
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@vesting_cliff · 5mo ago
It is the single biggest one. You will cut a three minute story in 30 minutes on paper and then know exactly which b-roll you need instead of browsing for it.
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