okay so kind of a weird situation. a small production company reached out to me through instagram of all places, they saw some footage i posted and want me to do aerial work for a short film they're shooting next month. two days on location, they mentioned something about needing specific shots at golden hour and some tracking shots of vehicles on a road.

ive done real estate and some event stuff but never anything for an actual film production, even a small indie one. they asked me to send over my rate and i genuinely have no idea what people charge for this kind of thing. i dont want to lowball myself but i also dont want to scare them off if im way off base. they seemed like they had a pretty small budget based on the vibe of the conversation.

do i charge per day, per shot, per deliverable? is there a standard thing people do for this? also do i need to worry about anything extra contract wise for a film project versus like a normal commercial client

day rate is the standard for film and video production work, pretty much always. for an indie production with a small budget you might see anywhere from like $500 to $1500 a day depending on your market, your gear, and whether they need you to also edit the footage or just hand over raw files. if you have a decent camera drone setup and some solid reel to back it up id say dont go below $700-800 unless you genuinely want the credit and experience more than the money right now, which is also a valid choice early on.

the contract thing is real though ? make sure you sort out who owns the footage and whether you retain any rights for your portfolio, some productions will try to get a total buyout and not think to mention it. also get clear on who handles any airspace authorizations or permits if the location needs them, you dont want to show up and find out they assumed that was already sorted.

this happend to me similar situation a while back and i underchrged massively because i was excited about the project haha. like way too low and then regretted it for both days of the shoot every time something got complicated. definitely look up what local union rates are even if neither of you are union, it gives you a reasonable anchor point for what professional work in your area is actually valued at