Time Quoting for an edit.

[projectsplat]

We are in the process of preparing for the next job, and as part of this, I am being asked a bunch of questions to do with how long things are going to take to capture, log, edit & output.

Now, over the last few jobs, I have been taking notes, and am starting to put together my own formula's as to how long I think it should take, but I am wondering if anyone has a formula for figuring out how long things should take.

I am interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

Cheers

Alister

[Jude]

There's no way of being able to quote on a new job without knowing a lot of stuff beforehand. If you've worked with the producer / talent/ camo etc team before, you can make rough predicitons, but you can't know with a new team whether they have a solid script, whether the camo made a complete ballsup, whether the actors/ presenters took 57 takes to get it right, whether the 'doco style' shooting means hundreds of hours of searching for a shot...

I'm actually interested in this at the moment and I'm working with an excellent HR woman who is helping me design a document that will help clients understand what info you need to do an accurate quote. It's a checklist and a list of things that they need to provide. I'm planning on releasing it under a creative commons licence when it's done so people can have a more stable way of figuring out quotes.

Up till now, in general, I usually say an hour a minute. One hour per minutes of product from go to whoa. It's not very accurate though, as you can imagine.

I'm also interested in other people's methods for quoting, as part of this project.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by Jude
Up till now, in general, I usually say an hour a minute. One hour per minutes of product from go to whoa. It's not very accurate though, as you can imagine.

Used to be two minutes a day ... sigh ...

[Robin]

Wow! 2 minutes a day! I'm lucky enough, at the mo', to have a job which pays me well to cut about 6 minutes of tv in an 8 hour day. Recent posts have made me think I should stay longer in this job than I had planned to!!

[JWRL]

Two and a half on a good day...

Mind you, Robin, I have cut a single camera commercial televison hour (42 minutes at the time) in two working days over a run of 26 weeks...

Oddly, it's not something that goes on my show reel.

[Derek]

I suppose it will alos depends on creative approach on the editing style, whether its fast and high tempo or slow and easy pacing.
A 4 minute intense music video can take up a much longer time than a 20 minute coporate video for example.

[E_Tedeschi]

Amen to all of the above.

I work on a cooking show occasionally, and when they do location shoots with 2 cameras on someone doing a recipe, I've been known to edit a hour of commercial TV or more in a day.

Echoing JWRL's sentiment, not exactly work I show people. In fact the producers and I often joke that we make edit decisions based on the fact that no-one is watching ;P

I have found that the "1 minute an hour" rule is a decent gauge, but only for cutting. If you're going to have to do any GFX work or onlining, that hour will dissolve into insignificance.

[Robin]

I don't find that fast paced things always take longer than slow paced things. Often slow paced things require longer to pace properly.