Two quotes for the same job. One said nine thousand pounds. The other said twenty-six. I had written one brief, sent it to both, and sat there at my desk unsure whether one of them had misread it.
They had not. Both were honest. Both would have delivered a film. The gap was not greed, it was everything the cheaper quote had quietly left out and assumed I would not ask about. That afternoon taught me more about what London buyers actually pay for, and what they think they're paying for, than three years of approving invoices had.
So here is the breakdown I wish someone had handed me. No range padding, no "it depends" shrug. Where the money goes, why, and the one line that decides whether your film gets used or buried.
The half-day myth
The first quote was cheap because it assumed a half-day shoot. One location, two hours of the CEO's time, in and out. On paper that looks efficient. In practice a half-day means the crew arrives, sets up lights for forty minutes, gets two usable takes because your CEO is between meetings and reading the autocue cold, and leaves before anyone notices the air-con hum on the audio track.
I have sat in that edit. There is nothing to cut to. No second angle, no broll, no room to fix a fluffed line. The editor does what they can and you get a film that technically exists.
A full day costs more because it buys the thing the half-day skipped: options. A second camera so a stumble does not kill a take. Time for the CEO to warm up before you roll the take you keep. Broll of the office, the product, hands on a keyboard, anything that lets the editor breathe. The price difference between half and full day is rarely double. The difference in what comes out the other end usually is.
Where the money actually goes
People assume the camera is the expensive bit. It is not, and it has not been for a decade. A cinema camera body is a rounding error against the things that decide whether the film looks like your brand or like a wedding video.
Lighting is the line between a film an audience takes seriously and one they click away from. A lit room and an unlit room shot on the identical camera are not the same film. Light is slow to rig, it needs a person who knows what they are doing, and that person costs money. Cut it and you have not saved money, you have bought a worse film at a slightly lower price.
Then there is the bit nobody quotes for until it is too late: the edit. A shoot is one day. The edit is often three or four. Scripting, a real edit, colour, sound mix, two rounds of your changes, captions for the silent autoplay scroll. The cheap quote priced one round of revisions. Everyone needs three. Guess who pays for rounds two and three when they were not in the original number.
A studio shifts this maths in your favour, which surprises people. Booking a fixed virtual studio in London removes the travel day, the location fee, the weather risk and the "we lost the light" reshoot. Controlled space is not a luxury line, it is the thing that stops the budget leaking after the contract is signed.
The line item nobody warns you about
Here is the cost that does not appear on any quote and does the most damage. The cost of a film your sales and comms teams never use.
I have written about this before and I will keep writing about it, because I keep watching it happen. A company spends a serious sum, premieres the film, everyone claps, and six months later it has been opened eleven times. Two of those were the person checking whether it had been opened. The money was not wasted on the day. It was wasted in the brief, when nobody asked what question this film needs to answer for the person deciding whether to sign.
That is the real cost. Not the day rate. The unused asset sitting on a shared drive while your competitors send their prospects a film that does the talking before a human ever gets on the call.
The honest range
For a properly made corporate video, London rates land somewhere in the low-to-mid five figures, assuming real lighting, a usable edit and a script that earns the runtime. Below that, something got cut, and it is usually the thing you will miss most. Far above that, you are paying for a brand film, which is a different product with a different job, and you should know which one you are buying before you sign.
The number that matters is not the quote. It is the cost per time the film is actually used. A six thousand pound film opened twice is expensive. An eighteen thousand pound film your sales team sends every week is cheap. I have approved both. Only one of them I would approve again.
Ask the harder question before you ask for a quote. Not "what does a video cost", but "what does this film need to do, who sends it, and what happens to the deal if we do not have it". Get that right and the budget defends itself. Get it wrong and the cheapest quote is still the most expensive thing you will buy this year.
If you want the actual breakdown for your brief, the version with your shoot days and your edit rounds costed line by line, ask us for the production budget walkthrough. No pitch attached. You will leave knowing exactly where every pound goes and which lines you can cut without paying for it later.
