“Can we get the raw footage?”
Short answer – Yes!
But… there’s always a but…
It will require a ‘buy out’ to compensate us for the additional labour and loss of future work.
Here’s a quick peak at prices. But please read on to better understand.
£1000 – All rushes on a cloud drive
£2000 – Full Adobe Premiere Pro project file, graphics and animation files AND all rushes on a cloud drive
The request for “all the raw footage” is a relatively new phenomenon as traditionally editing software and the powerful workstations required were prohibitively expensive and most non-media companies had neither the infrastructure nor the skills to edit themselves.
When a client wanted to repurpose an existing video or use existing footage in a new campaign they would contract us once again to carry out the additional editing work. Most video production business models were based on this assumption.
Fast-forward to NOW where your iPhone has more computing power than a £10K workstation from 2010 and DaVinci Resolve is giving away what used to be £20K worth of software. Seriously… that DaVinci Resolve is some amazing software.
Add to this technological leap forward, a social media environment that values quantity of content and speed of delivery over quality and it seems a no brainer that clients want ALL THE RUSHES.
With ALL THE RUSHES you can get your in-house social media ace to use the outtakes and old footage to bang out dozens of new pieces of content and extend the useful life of a promo well beyond its initial intended market and lifespan.
But what we ask our clients to keep in mind is that when we shoot a scene, we are using our hard-earned skills and creativity to select just the right composition, movement, colour, framing, focus, lens selection, props, background and direction to make something that is truly unique.
Each shot is one of a kind. And collectively these shots have value beyond their initial purpose.
Thus if you wish to use them twice, thrice or a hundred times more to benefit your bottom line, then we as the creators need to be compensated.
Now in the ‘old days’ this ‘buy out’ fee was traditionally 150% of the initial contact price. But keep in mind those were the halcyon days when production companies had massive budgets (and overheads!) and TV advertising was king. But with the democratisation of content marketing and delivery we understand smaller, faster, cheaper is the rule of the day.
Thus, we are offering the above!
We feel this is a fair reflection of the value that can be gained by our clients as well as compensation to us for loss of future work, as well as labour to prep, export and host the rushes for you.
Please note as well the Raw footage will be in professional codecs and LOG. So you will need some level of expertise to use this Raw footage properly.