What Does a Corporate Video Cost? Prices by Format and the Line Item That Appears in No Proposal

Published prices for a corporate video run from about EUR 1,500 to well past EUR 15,000, and the range is not the problem. The problem is that the two most expensive things about a video appear in no proposal: the time your own company spends on it, and how quickly it stops being usable. This article gives the ranges by format, then the two calculations that decide whether the money was well spent.

What the formats cost

For most mid-market projects meant to hold up on a website and in social channels for a while, the sensible band is EUR 4,000 to 9,000. Below it you are usually buying documentation of what happens anyway, which can be exactly right. Above it you are buying staging, and staging only pays when there is something specific to stage.

The shoot day is the smallest block

The most common misreading of a video budget is that the camera is where the money goes. The shoot is the visible part and rarely the largest one. Ahead of it sit concept, script, location scouting, scheduling and approvals. Behind it sit editing, colour, sound, music, graphics and, without exception, more revision rounds than anyone planned.

This matters practically, because it explains why two proposals with the same number of shoot days can differ by a factor of two and both be honest. One assumes you deliver a finished script and approve the first cut. The other includes writing the script and three rounds of changes. Comparing shoot days compares the wrong third of the project.

The question that separates the two proposals in one sentence: how many revision rounds are included, and what does a further one cost. Providers who answer that number without hesitation have thought about their own process. Those who say it is not usually a problem have priced the optimistic case.

The line item that appears in no proposal

Your own time. A brand film ties up management for the interview, marketing for the coordination, the people in front of the camera for their day, and at least one person for scheduling, approvals and sign-off. Several person-days, spread across weeks, none of which appear on any invoice.

We say this as the production side, because it is the part clients most often underestimate and the part that delays projects. Almost no film is late because of technology. Films are late because a location could not be cleared, because the managing director could not be scheduled, or because the cut sat with three people for approval for two weeks. A realistic plan therefore puts dates on the client-side work with the same precision as on the shoot.

The calculation that decides: cost per year in use

A production price on its own says nothing. What says something is what the film costs per year that it remains usable.

Same film, same invoice, a factor of four between them. What decides it is not production quality but how much perishable material is in the picture. A film built around a machine that will be replaced next year, a hall that is being rebuilt, or six named employees is a film with a short shelf life. One built around the process, the craft and the result ages far more slowly.

The practical consequence is a question to ask before the concept, not after: what in our company will look different in two years. Whatever comes up in that answer either stays out of the film or goes into a separate short piece that is allowed to be replaced.

Two rulings that can cost more than the production

People in the film are the part where the legal risk sits, and two German employment decisions mark the boundaries precisely.

On 11 December 2014 the Federal Labour Court held (8 AZR 1010/13) that consent to the publication of a person's image under section 22 KUG must be given in writing, and that consent validly given does not automatically lapse when the employment relationship ends. In the case decided, an employee had consented in writing to film recordings and tried to revoke shortly after leaving; the employer was still permitted to keep using the video, because the consent was valid, its purpose sufficiently clear and no defect of intent was present.

On 27 July 2023 the Regional Labour Court of Baden-Wuerttemberg went the other way (3 Sa 33/22) and awarded EUR 10,000 in non-material damages under Article 82 GDPR. An employee had moved to a competitor on 1 May 2019 and asked for photo and video footage of himself to be removed; the former employer only complied after further letters in January and February 2020. The claimant had sought at least EUR 11,000; the chamber considered EUR 10,000 appropriate, reasoning partly from the deterrent effect.

Read together, the two produce one practical rule that costs nothing on the shoot day and a lot afterwards: get written consent, name the purpose and the channels in it, and keep it. Note that the two decisions rest on different bases: in 2014 the Federal Labour Court reasoned from section 22 KUG, while the 2023 judgment turns on Article 82 GDPR and does not mention the KUG at all. The relationship between the two regimes remains unsettled, which is why practitioners apply the stricter standard and treat a removal request quickly rather than at the next website relaunch.

One shoot, several pieces

The only genuine lever on cost per format is that the expensive part of a shoot day is the setup, not the minutes recorded. Crew, travel, lighting, access and coordination are paid whether you leave with one film or four.

So the economical plan is not the cheapest single film. It is deciding, before the shoot, which pieces come out of it: the long version for the website, two or three short ones for social channels and job adverts, a handful of stills, and clips that sales can attach to an email. That decision has to be made in advance, because it changes what gets recorded and how. Made afterwards, it turns into a second shoot at full price.

Four signals of a weak proposal

• A flat price without parameters. Shoot days, final runtime and number of revision rounds belong in the document. Without them the price cannot be checked against anything.
• Nothing on usage rights. Where may the film run, for how long, and what happens to the raw footage. If raw footage stays with the provider, the next edit is a new project.
• The music licence left open. This is where reuse most often fails later, typically when a film that was licensed for the website is meant to run as an advert.
• No question about the purpose. A proposal written without asking what the film is for cannot know its cut, and will deliver the film the production company likes making.

Conclusion

A corporate video costs between EUR 1,500 and EUR 15,000 and up, and where you land in that range follows from the format rather than from the provider. The two figures that decide whether it was worth it are not on the invoice: the person-days your own company puts in, and the number of years the film stays usable. Both can be influenced before the first shooting day and barely at all afterwards. Ask what will look different in two years, decide which pieces come out of one shoot, and get the written consent while everyone is still in the building. If you want to work through that against your actual plans, that is what a first conversation is for, and the neighbouring budgets are in what branding costs.

Frequently asked questions about video production cost