What to Include in a Video Production Quote
A video production quote is a scope document that happens to have prices on it. This guide covers what goes in one: the line items phase by phase, how to structure rates and quantities, the numbers to check before you hit send, and the terms that keep a project from drifting. It ends with a worked example you can open and inspect.
What a quote needs to say
Before any numbers, a quote has to answer three questions in writing: what you’re making (scope), what the client receives (deliverables), and when (timeline). One short paragraph covers it: “a 90-second brand film plus three social cutdowns, delivered four weeks from the shoot date.” Every dispute you’ll ever have about a project traces back to one of those three being vague.
Around that paragraph goes the document plumbing: your business name and contact, the client’s name and company, a quote number, the date, and a valid-until date. The last one matters more than it looks: crew rates and gear availability move, and an open-ended quote is an option the client holds for free.
The line items, phase by phase
Production work bills in three phases, and a readable quote is grouped the same way. Pre-production is everything before the camera: concept and creative, scripting and storyboards, location scouting, casting, permits, insurance. It’s the phase most often given away for free, which is why margins erode before anyone shoots a frame.
Production is the shoot: crew by role and day rate, talent and any usage rights, gear packages, locations, catering, and travel. The crew list is where forgotten lines live; a commercial estimate template carries the full list (thirteen crew roles, usage buyouts, a grip truck), while a corporate quote or social batch-shoot template runs leaner on purpose.
Post-production is edit, color, sound, motion graphics, music licensing, captions, and the deliverables themselves. Two lines here earn their keep: revision rounds (so extra rounds have a price before anyone asks for them) and, for interview-driven work, archival and stock footage licensing, the line that ambushes documentary budgets in post. Event work swaps most of pre-production for coverage logistics; the event quote template and music video budget template show how the same three phases flex per job. All six live on the video production templates page.
Rates, units, and quantities
Every line should price as rate × quantity × multiplier, with the unit named: day, hour, flat, each, person. Crew is the classic case: a camera operator at $650/day, quantity 2 (people) × 3 (days) = $3,900. The client can check the math, which reads as competence, and when the shoot grows a day you change one number instead of re-quoting.
Two labels are worth using deliberately. An optional add-on shows a priced line the client can accept without it inflating the base total: an upsell sitting in plain sight. An allowance keeps a line in the total but flags the amount as a placeholder to be confirmed, which is the honest way to handle travel or permits you can’t price yet.
Margin, markup, and the production fee
The client sees prices; you should be looking at margin. The vocabulary, since half the industry swaps them: markup is profit over cost, margin is profit over price. A $60 cost sold at $100 is a 66.7% markup and a 40% margin. Quoting without knowing your per-line costs means the number at the bottom is revenue, not profit, and you find out which after the job. (Estimatery shows this live per line and in a document P&L; the help page has the details.)
A production fee is a document-level percentage on top of the subtotal, and the order of operations matters: subtotal, then fee, then any discount, then tax. Show the fee as its own row, or fold it into the line prices for clients who don’t want to see one; the total is identical either way (how the waterfall runs). If you discount, discount the number after the fee, on the document, visibly. A discount that lives in your head is just a lower rate. Setting the rates themselves is its own craft; the pricing guide covers floors, day rates, and when to walk.
Payment terms and deposits
A quote without payment terms is a wish. State the deposit required to book dates (50% is normal for project work; it covers you for the crew you now can’t book elsewhere), when the balance is due (“net 15 on delivery” beats “on receipt”, which means nothing), and what happens on cancellation once dates are held. A deposit line on the quote itself (a percent or fixed amount of the total) makes the ask explicit instead of a surprise in the follow-up email.
Revision policy
The most expensive sentence in video production is “one more small change.” Put the revision policy on the quote: how many rounds are included (two is standard), what counts as a round, and the rate for rounds beyond it, usually your editing day rate. Clients don’t resent the policy; they resent discovering it in an invoice.
A worked example
Here’s all of the above assembled: a two-day product launch film quoted at a $24,770 subtotal, a 10% production fee shown as its own row, a $27,247 total, a 50% deposit, and terms with two revision rounds included. It’s a real, read-only estimate, not a PDF screenshot; the document travels compressed inside the link itself.
Open the worked example: Meridian Product Launch Film →
Notice what the client version doesn’t contain: costs, margins, or anything internal. That’s not restraint, it’s structure; the shared copy never had those fields in it.