File or Stock Video Rates

[supedog]

I just received an email today from a West Coast production company producing a documentary TV Pilot. They saw some weather video of flooding
in my state that I shot a few years ago, and wanted to know if I had more raw footage. I own the rights to all of my footage.

I have know idea how much to charge them for any of my footage. It's in Standard Definition now after converting it to .mov files on one of my external hard drives. I might have some still in High Definition.

Have any of you every had a request like this, and how much would you charge? Do you charge an amount by the seconds or minutes?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Dan R.]

Industry standard is per-second, with a minimum of 10-20 seconds. Rates can vary depending on the broadcast range of the final product (local, regional, national, worldwide), the license term, whether it's SD or HD, and how dramatic/rare the footage is. $35-$85 per second for SD and $60-$120/second for HD is a reasonable range depending on those factors. I'm guessing this is likely a worldwide/in perpetuity license which would fall on the higher end of the scale.

 

[nautilusvideo]

I would agree with Dan. His rates are in pretty much industry standard. Feel free to pm or email me if I can help you with the license agreement. Make sure they send you TC in and outs from the final EDL after you send them a burned in timecoded screener. Be sure to get payment up front for the footage before releasing the clips to them and do not ever send them your masters.