Vourly rates at a glance:
- iPhone 4K filming: $100 per hour, 1 hour minimum
- Professional cinema cameras: $200 per hour, 2 hour minimum
- Editing: $75 per hour, billed separately from filming
- Add-ons per shoot: drone video $150, drone photos $125, professional lighting $150, second camera $150, photo add-on $250
- All raw footage included, plus one free revision round on your edited video
Video production packages exist because buyers want one number and vendors want committed scope. That is a reasonable trade on both sides. The problem is that a package is an abstraction over three concrete line items, and when those three are not disclosed, comparing two packages becomes guesswork dressed as a decision. This is how to take one apart.
Why most video production packages hide the same three line items
Strip the branding off a Bronze, Silver, and Gold tier and you will find the same three ingredients in different proportions:
- Filming hours. How long someone with a camera is on site, and on which tier of gear.
- Editing hours. How long someone spends cutting, and how many finished videos that has to cover.
- Equipment add-ons. Drone, lighting, a second camera, stills.
Everything else in a package description is usually a restatement of one of those three. Once you know the three numbers, two packages from different vendors become directly comparable, and often turn out to be much closer than their prices suggest.
The reason packages are written the other way round, in outcomes rather than inputs, is that outcomes are easier to sell and much harder to compare. A tier promising a brand story, social cutdowns, and a highlight reel sounds like three things. It may be one 2 hour shoot and 4 hours of editing, which is a number you can price yourself. Ask for the inputs and the conversation gets shorter in both directions.
What a package should tell you before you sign
Five questions. If a vendor answers all five in writing, the package is legible:
- How many filming hours, on which camera tier?
- How many editing hours, across how many finished videos?
- What does an extra hour of each cost? This is the number that decides what the project actually costs, because scope grows.
- How many revision rounds are included, and what is a further round?
- Do you keep the raw footage? If not, every future edit has to go back through the same vendor.
The most expensive answer is usually the third one, and it is the one least often published.
The hourly alternative, priced out
Vourly publishes the rate card instead of bundling it:
- iPhone 4K filming: $100 per hour, 1 hour minimum, 1080p raw files.
- Professional cinema cameras: $200 per hour, 2 hour minimum, 4K raw files.
- Editing: $75 per hour.
- Flat per shoot add-ons: drone video $150, drone photos $125, professional lighting $150, second camera $150, photo add-on $250.
Because the add-ons are flat per shoot rather than per hour, they get cheaper per deliverable the more you film in one visit. That is the real economy in this model, and it is the same economy a package is trying to sell you, just visible.
Building your own package from the rate card
Three assemblies that cover most of what a business actually asks for:
- A social content batch. 2 hours on iPhone 4K at $200, plus three reels at about 1.5 hours each of editing, $225. Total $425 for roughly a month of short form content.
- A corporate interview piece. 2 hours professional at $400, lighting $150, second camera $150, and 3 hours of editing at $225. Total $925 for one polished finished video with cutaway coverage.
- A brand day. 4 hours professional at $800, drone video $150, photo add-on $250, and 6 hours of editing at $450 across two finished cuts. Total $1,650.
Each of those is a package. The difference is that you can see which line to cut when the budget moves, rather than dropping a tier and losing four things at once.
Two companion pieces make a package quote easier to read: videographer day rates for how filming time is sold, and video production cost per minute for why runtime is the wrong unit to compare on.
Three package traps worth naming
These recur across vendors and none of them is dishonest. They are just easy to miss when you are comparing headline prices:
- The unused tier. The middle package is priced to look like the obvious choice, and it usually contains one deliverable most buyers never use. You are paying for the anchor, not the content.
- The cheap entry with expensive overage. A low starting package with an undisclosed extra hour rate is the most common way a quote doubles between signing and delivery. Always ask for the overage rate in writing.
- Revisions counted per project rather than per video. Three revision rounds sounds generous until you learn it covers all five deliverables combined. Ask whether the count is per finished video.
How to negotiate a package into a better shape
If a package is close but not right, the productive conversation is about swapping components rather than asking for a discount. Vendors have far more room on composition than on price:
- Trade a deliverable you will not use for editing hours you will. A drone pass you do not need is worth roughly two hours of editing at the rates above.
- Ask to move filming down a tier and put the savings into editing. For social content this almost always produces more usable output, because the constraint was never the camera.
- Consolidate visits. Two shoots in one day at one location costs meaningfully less than the same two on separate days, and the flat add-ons are paid once instead of twice.
- Ask what the package costs unbundled. If a vendor cannot answer, that is itself useful information about how the price was set.
When a fixed package genuinely wins
Two cases. First, when the scope is truly known and repeated, such as recurring monthly content where everyone already knows the shape of the shoot. Second, when the buyer needs budget certainty more than efficiency, which is common in procurement driven organisations. In both, committing to scope is worth a premium, and a package is the right instrument.
Outside those, an hourly rate card usually costs less for the same output, because you are not paying for the parts of the bundle you did not need. Real estate listing media is the deliberate exception here and is genuinely better sold as packages, which is why the real estate page carries a size tier table rather than an hourly rate.
Revisions, raw footage, travel, and tax
Every booking includes one free revision round on the edited video, and further editing is billed at the same $75 per hour with no package to buy into, so you only pay for cuts you request. All raw footage is included and yours to keep, unedited and unwatermarked, with full commercial rights, delivered through a secure client portal within 24 to 48 hours.
Local zone travel is included, out of zone travel is $1 per mile, and Washington sales tax is added at 10.5%.
Frequently asked questions
What is usually included in a video production package?
Almost every package is built from three things: filming hours, editing hours, and equipment add-ons such as drone, lighting, or a second camera. Packages differ mainly in how many of each they include and how much of that is disclosed. A package that will not break out those three numbers is difficult to compare against anything.
Are video production packages cheaper than hourly?
Sometimes, and only when you use the whole bundle. A package is a volume discount in exchange for committing to scope up front. If your project needs 2 hours of filming and the smallest package includes 6, the discount is theoretical.
Does Vourly sell video production packages?
Vourly publishes a rate card rather than tiered bundles for hourly work: $100 per hour on iPhone 4K, $200 per hour on professional cinema cameras, $75 per hour to edit, and flat per shoot add-ons. You assemble the equivalent of a package from those parts and can see exactly what each part costs. Real estate listing media is the exception and is sold as packages on the real estate page.
What should I ask before buying a package?
Ask how many filming hours and editing hours it contains, what an extra hour of each costs, how many revision rounds are included, whether you keep the raw footage, and what happens to unused scope. Those five answers make any two packages comparable.