Projects start from $1,000. Where a quote goes from there depends on one thing more than any other: how many people end up standing on the job.
A thousand dollars buys one photographer, or one shooter-director, for a quarter day. One location, one setup, one deliverable, finished to the same standard as everything else here. That is a real job, not a loss leader, and a good deal of the work on this site started as one.
What takes a quote past that is almost never the camera. It is crew, and the things that quietly demand crew. A second operator because the breakout sessions run at the same time as the main stage. A sound recordist because a keynote in a ballroom cannot be rescued in the edit. A lighting assistant because a warehouse has no windows, and a brand film shot in one should not look like security footage.
Most quotes for video production in Melbourne arrive as a single number with a day attached and no explanation of what the day is made of. This is how mine are built, and why quarter, half and full days are a way of scoping a creative concept rather than a price list.
Ask a producer in Melbourne how a job is priced and they will answer in days. Not hours, not deliverables. It is the unit the Australian production industry runs on, because the day is the one thing that behaves predictably: crew are booked by the day, camera and lighting are hired by the day, locations are permitted by the day, and insurance is written against it.
So the day is a planning instrument long before it is a price. Scoping a job is not really the question of what you will pay. It is how many days this idea actually needs, and who has to be there on each of them. A concept that sounds like one shoot is often a half day of interviews and a separate half day of product, in different light, in different weeks. The day rate exists to have that conversation properly.
What it is not is a menu. Quarter, half and full describe scope, not a fixed figure. The same half day costs differently depending on whether it needs one person or four, a studio or a working warehouse, library music or a licensed track, and whether the footage is running as paid media or sitting on an about page.
Which is why nothing here is a package. Every concept is quoted against its own brief, as one fixed number, in writing, with what it covers set out beside it.
Whatever the length, the same things are in it. Pre-production and an agreed shot list before the day. The shoot. A full colour grade across the set so it reads as one body of work rather than a folder of files. Delivery in the sizes you actually need: full resolution for print and tender, web sized for the site, and vertical crops framed for socials rather than cut out of the middle of a landscape frame.
Commercial licensing for your own marketing is included in perpetuity. Files stay hosted for three months after delivery. Revisions on the delivered set are part of the job.
What changes between a quarter day and a full day is not the standard. It is how much you get.
The industry default, and the right scope for most briefs. A full day carries multiple setups, which is what turns a shoot into a library rather than a set of photos: people, product, workspace and detail, all lit and graded to match.
It is where a brief with more than one thing to say belongs, and where several contributors, aerial coverage and the vertical versions can all come off the same footage. It is also where a combined photo and video day earns its keep, because the lighting is already standing and the second discipline costs a fraction of building those setups again on another date.
One location, a tight shot list, a defined outcome. Headshots for a team of eight. A single product range on white. A testimonial and the cutaways that go around it.
The honest limit is setups. A half day holds two or three before the lighting rebuilds start eating the time you booked. If the list is longer than that, a full day produces more per dollar, not less, and I will say so before you book rather than after.
A small, contained job that genuinely does not need more. Headshots for two or three people. One product, one setup. A site visit for progress photos. A single testimonial filmed against a setup that is already standing.
The test is simple. If it can be briefed in a sentence and shot in one place without rebuilding the lighting, it is a quarter day. If it cannot, quoting it as one does you no favours, because what you get is a rushed version of a job that wanted a half day.
This is where the structure actually saves you money. A quarter day on its own still carries the whole overhead of a booking: the travel, the setup, the ingest, the grade, the delivery. That overhead does not quarter just because the shoot did.
So quarter days are designed to be combined. Two or three small jobs in the same part of Melbourne on one day make up a full day between them, and each is cheaper than it would have been booked alone. Several small jobs for the same client, or several clients in one suburb, are the ideal case.
What breaks it is distance. Three quarter days spread across the metro area with two hours of driving between them is a full day of travel, not a full day of shooting, and it has to be quoted as what it is. Send the addresses early and the day gets built around them.
For context, so you can judge whether a number in front of you is reasonable. These are indicative bands for commercial video in Australia, not quotes.
Solo and small crew, roughly $1,500 to $5,000 a day. One operator, or two, covering camera, audio, lighting and the edit. Fast, close to the subject, and the right shape for most brand and corporate work.
Production companies, roughly $15,000 to $40,000 a project. A producer, a director, a crew of four or more and a longer post schedule. Worth every dollar when a brief genuinely needs that many people, and expensive when it does not.
Agency led and broadcast, $50,000 upward, often well past $150,000. Television commercials, national campaigns, cast talent, and agency strategy sitting on top of the production itself.
Jordy Scott Media quotes across these. A contained brief is scoped and priced like the first. A concept that needs a crew, a longer post schedule or talent is scoped and priced like the second, with the people that requires actually on the call sheet. What does not move between them is the standard of the work.
The gap between those bands is mostly headcount and overhead rather than craft. A brand film, a testimonial set or a year of progress coverage does not need a crew of six to be good. It needs someone who has done it enough times to know which shots carry the piece. Where a concept genuinely does need the bigger machine, it gets quoted with the bigger machine, because the alternative is taking the job and under-resourcing it.
The pressure on production pricing is not really the shoot day. It is the edit. A brief that five years ago wanted one finished film now wants the film, six vertical cuts and a stills set off the same day, and that lands in post hours rather than camera hours. Equipment replacement cycles and insurance account for most of the rest. There is more on that in where brand video is going in 2027.
What that means for planning. A rate quoted this year is held for the life of that project, and for recurring work, for the term of the agreement, so nobody is exposed to a mid-project increase. If you are setting a content budget for next year now, build it with some headroom rather than on today's midpoint.
Crew, before anything else. A contained job is one person. What moves a quote up is the second and third pair of hands, and each is there for a reason you can point at rather than a line item you take on trust. You are told which a brief needs before you book, not after. If a job does not need a crew, it does not get one.
Then the number of setups. Every rebuild of the lighting or change of location is time. Ten products in one setup is quick. Ten products each needing their own treatment is a different day entirely.
After that, in rough order: travel beyond the standard service area, talent or models and their usage terms, studio hire where a brief genuinely needs one, the size of the edit, licensing where the footage is running as paid media, and turnaround. Each appears as its own line on a quote, so you can see what it costs and take it off if it is not worth it to you.
One person available on the day who can make decisions. That single thing saves more time than any amount of planning. Spaces tidied before I arrive, product clean and ready, and a note to anyone being photographed about what to wear.
A one page prep document goes out once the date is locked. Following it is worth roughly an extra hour of shooting, which on a half day is a significant share of what you booked.
A fixed quote with the scope written beside it, so the number you approve is the number you pay. A preview gallery of selects within about three business days. The full graded set in ten to fifteen business days, video a little longer because of the revision round built into it.
And a straight answer when the thing you have asked for is not the thing you need, whether that means talking you down to a quarter day or telling you the concept deserves a crew and a bigger number than you came in with.