VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[BALKY]

Hey, everyone!!!


Today I received this inquiry:

For one of our clients I'm doing a casting for series of
medical animations.
All together 16 videos, combined of around 6000 words.
They can be recorded all together, probably in January.
Their budget would be €1150 for you (so without our margin)
Would this be something you'd be open to?

If I divide this by 16, it comes out to ~€70 per video, each about 3 minutes long. Normally, I would not even consider such a low rate, but since it's for the whole batch of videos...

What do you think? How would you handle such request pricewise?
_________________
Best,
Pavel Kuklin
~~~ Russian native vo artist [Moscow standard dialect] ~~~
*****
YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@trueruvoice
VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/channels/russianvoice
AUDIO: http://audio.russianvoice4u.com

[Mike Paul]

Hi Balky,

Here's what I would do:

1. Calculate the average video length (6000 words / 16 videos) to come up with an average word count of 375 words per video.

2. Check out Edge Studio's words-to-time calculator and punch in 375 to get the resulting "guesstimate" of time: 2 minutes 30 seconds.

3. Reference the GVAA Rate Guide and find the Non-Broadcast section, where there's a subsection called MEDICAL / TECHNICAL NARRATION, where I find this: 1-2 min: $400-$500; 3-5 min: $600-$700. Notice how there's nothing for 2-3 min? Bummer. Call it $500-600. Remember to convert from USD to EUR.

These rates are what we charge in America, though--so if anyone reading is from another country, you may have to do some math to scale it up/down to your locale.

Since there are multiple videos, a discount would be given at your discretion. For reference, GVAA has this to offer for Explainer discounted rate: "$250 per video with up to 175 words. Additional $50 for each 100 words thereafter." An explainer is a video up to 90 seconds, and yours are longer. Plus, it's medical narration--which has words like pseudostratified ciliated columnar epithelium. Just some of the many reasons medical is priced higher.

At the moment, €1150 is equal to $1340, which would cover about 2 videos if they were all 2:30, which of course they're not.

Were it me, I'd fire back with "I'm open to negotiation, if you have room -- how did you arrive at your budget, if you don't mind me asking?" Knowing you won't work for slop... so figure out what your rock-bottom price is first. Don't become emotionally invested (read: desperate).

Open-ended questions starting with 'who', 'what', 'when', 'how', and 'where' allow for exploration and find middle ground. The only thing 'why' does is sound like an accusation. "Your budget is low. Why?" versus "How'd you arrive at your budget?"

I once did a 17,000 word eLearning job for $2,572.65, or about 15 cents per word. I was about a year into the business and didn't understand rates yet. Ironically, it was for the USAA--but the video was made in India, so the rate was pretty low.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

PS - I still really don't know shit about rates. Even my agents are like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... even some of the rates on stuff coming from agents have me like "Are you sure?" and they go "Yeah.... totally understand if you pass".
_________________
Mike Paul
speakingofmike.com