Answer in brief
An editor, a production company and one person with a camera sell different things, even though every proposal says the same word: video. Twelve questions expose the boundary of responsibility before you approve a quote, not after the first delivery.
Editor, production company or one person with a camera: who are you hiring
The short answer: suppliers differ less by price than by where their responsibility begins. An editor is accountable for what happens to footage that already exists. A production company is also accountable for where that footage comes from. A solo operator covers both roles, but never in the same hour.
An editor is bought as processing. You hand over what was shot, and you get back a cut with captions, music and finished exports. Phone footage from your workshop, or an archive from last year's campaign, becomes publishable without booking another day on set.
A production company sells the set: script, people, lighting, location, and the right to shoot it again when something fails. That costs more and occupies more calendar, but you stop being responsible for the quality of the raw material.
A solo operator charges a lower rate and offers less parallelism: while filming, nobody is editing. The twelve questions below tell you which of the three models your candidate belongs to, even when the proposal only says the word video.
Question 1: who shoots, and who edits
Ask it literally: is filming included? The answer we handle everything is not usable, because it turns into a separate line on the invoice later. You need to hear which tasks the supplier does in house, which are subcontracted, and which are waiting on you.
Why it matters: a quote without filming looks better than a quote with filming by exactly the price of a shoot day. Comparing the two side by side compares different scopes of work, not two prices for the same piece of work.
Our own price list draws the line in the open. The Single Reel package at $70 does not include shooting, scripting or actors: it is work on material that already exists. The Reels Pack at $90 does not include filming, because you supply the footage.
When a candidate avoids a direct answer, use the control question: what happens if the footage is not enough? A supplier with a camera department will name a pick-up day and its price. An editor will tell you plainly that they will ask you for more files.
Question 2: what exactly sits inside the price
Ask for the list of what is included and the list of what is not, rather than for a rate card. A workable proposal is two-sided: it states what arrives and what you will have to cover yourself. A one-sided proposal is where surcharges are born.
Why it matters: the exclusions describe a package more precisely than the inclusions do. A phrase like full-service editing tells you nothing about who finds the music, who writes the on-screen text, and who pays for stock footage.
A worked example: the Single Reel at $70 includes captions, a licensed track and exports for every vertical placement. The Reels Pack at $90 is up to 5 edits. The Campaign Edit at $180 is a hero cut plus short derivatives.
Then check that the volume matches the job in front of you. Five edits are useful when there is enough material to cut five times. A hero cut with derivatives is useful when a campaign exists for those derivatives to live inside.
Question 3: whose footage is it, and in what condition
Ask what the supplier counts as usable material: resolution, frame rate, sound, whether alternate takes exist. Send whatever you have sounds accommodating, but it moves the risk onto you, because if the footage does not work the clock starts over.
Why it matters: every package that excludes filming rests on your discipline. In the Reels Pack you supply the footage, and how complete it is decides whether the material yields five edits or two short ones.
Settle the handover method and the volume in advance. A day of phone footage runs to tens of gigabytes. A cloud folder with direct links works better than a messenger app that recompresses files and destroys the exact thing you are paying an editor to work with.
Agree on an acceptance point: the supplier confirms in writing that the material has arrived and is usable. That single line in the correspondence is what later settles any argument about which day the clock actually started on.
Question 4: what is the deadline counted from
A deadline without a starting point is not a deadline. Ask not how many days, but days from what: from payment, from the brief, from footage delivery, or from script approval. The distance between those options is measured in days.
Why it matters: your calendar and the supplier's calendar diverge exactly here. You count from the email that set the task; they count from the moment openable files landed on their drive and could actually be worked on.
How ours are written: Single Reel, 1-2 working days. Reels Pack, 1-2 working days from footage delivery. Campaign Edit, 3-5 days. Reels Pack Express, 1 working day, with a 24-hour turnaround from footage.
Notice that working days and days are not the same phrase, and the difference is not editorial sloppiness. The 3-5 days on the Campaign Edit include the weekend, while a term written in working days does not include it.
Question 5: how many revision rounds, and what counts as one
Ask two things: how many rounds are included, and what the supplier counts as a single round. A round is a collected list of notes from everyone who signs off, not each separate message sent the moment a thought arrives.
Why it matters: without a counter, revisions never end; with an unclear counter, an argument begins. Three emails carrying one note each can fairly be counted as three rounds if nobody agreed in advance to count them another way.
The terms sit on individual packages rather than on one blanket rule. Single Reel: 1 round. Reels Pack: 2 rounds on the edit. Campaign Edit: 2 rounds on the cut and 1 on the grade. Reels Pack Express: 1 round.
Pay attention to the wording on the cut and on the grade, because those are different subjects. Make it warmer is a grading note; drop the third shot is an editing note, and the two draw down different counters.
Question 6: who buys the music licence and the stock
A direct question: whose name goes on the track licence, and who pays for paid stock. We will pick the music does not answer it, because selecting a track and buying the right to use it are separate acts with separate costs and separate liability.
Why it matters: a claim about music reaches the owner of the channel, not the editor. When the licence is not in your name you risk a removed post or muted audio at the moment the campaign is already running and the budget is already spent.
How the packages handle it. The Single Reel includes a licensed track. The Campaign Edit does not include licensed music, and the licence is purchased by you. The Reels Pack Express does not include licensing beyond the supplied track.
The Monthly Content Engine excludes filming days and paid stock. On an ongoing arrangement that means the budget for stock shots and music is planned separately and up front, rather than surfacing halfway through a monthly cycle.
Question 7: what do I hold after delivery, exports, footage or project
Ask what stays with you once the job closes: the finished exports only, the exports together with the original camera files, or the edit project as well. Those are three different levels of handover, and the default is the first one.
Why it matters: without the original files, any rework six months later becomes a reshoot. With them, you can move to another supplier or assemble a new cut for a new purpose without starting the whole job from zero.
The project file carries a limitation worth understanding. It is bound to a program, its version and the paths to the media; on another machine it opens only alongside the footage, and it does not guarantee that effects and plugins come along.
Interchange formats such as XML, AAF and EDL move a timeline structure between programs, but they move it partially: cuts and timing travel, complex graphics and colour work usually do not. Discuss that before delivery rather than after it.
Question 8: which containers do you deliver, and for which placements
Ask about deliverables with precision: container, codec, resolution, aspect ratio and the number of versions. We will send it in good quality is a promise rather than a specification, and there is nothing in it to check on acceptance.
Why it matters: a container and a codec are different things. A container such as MP4 or QuickTime describes how the tracks are packed into the file; the codec describes how picture and sound are compressed. Two files ending in .mp4 can hold different codecs.
The practical consequence: agree on a publishing file and an archive master. The publishing file needs broad compatibility; the master needs to hold quality. A single file rarely serves both of those jobs equally well.
Check the framing separately. The Single Reel includes exports for every vertical placement, which means reframing to vertical does not become a separate task and does not consume the one revision round you have.
Question 9: who makes the captions, and how are they made
Confirm whether captions are included, who proofreads the text, and how they arrive: burned into the picture or as a separate track. That decides both the accessibility of the video and whether you can translate it later without a rebuild.
Why it matters: WCAG 2.2 asks for captions on prerecorded video with sound at Level A. Both burned-in and separate captions satisfy the requirement, but only a separate track can be switched off, restyled, translated and read by assistive technology.
There is a commercial side as well. Feeds are often watched with the sound off, and without text on screen the point of the video does not reach the viewer. Captions here are not charity; they are a condition of the video doing its job.
The Single Reel includes captions in the package. Asking a supplier whether captions are included also reveals how much they think about where the video will be watched, rather than only about how it looks on their own monitor.
Questions 10 and 11: ongoing volume and genuine urgency
Question ten: how does the work run on a retainer. Ask about the unit of accounting, how the volume gets agreed, and how you leave. An ongoing contract stays comfortable exactly as long as you can say what the monthly fee buys and where it stops.
The Monthly Content Engine is $290/mo on a monthly cycle, the volume is agreed at the start of each cycle, and stopping it takes 30 days notice. Filming days and paid stock sit outside the package and are counted separately.
Question eleven: what changes when the deadline is tight. Ask not can you go faster, but what gives when we do. Usually it is not the editing hours that shrink, but your time to decide and the number of revision rounds available.
The Reels Pack Express is $150: 1 working day, a 24-hour turnaround from footage, and 1 round. Shooting is not included. That is the honest arithmetic of speed, because going faster means the material has to be ready in advance.
Question 12: who am I talking to, and what happens if they drop out
The last question is plain: who runs the job day to day, who covers for that person when they are ill, and through which channel notes arrive. A studio answers this from its process; a solo operator answers it only once the event has happened.
Why it matters: with a single-person supplier the risk sits in continuity rather than in quality. One person with a fever stops your campaign entirely, and no contract turns that person into two people for the duration.
Collect the answers to all twelve questions into one document, then place two proposals side by side. Compare the exclusion lines rather than the totals at the bottom, because the exclusions show which part of the work you are keeping.
The video production package terms, including timelines, revision rounds and the list of what is not included, are published on the service page. Check your brief against it before you approve a quote, not after the first delivery.
Practical checklist
- Ask outright whether filming is included, and get the answer before discussing price.
- Request the package exclusions alongside the list of inclusions.
- Put the starting point of the deadline in writing.
- Clarify what the supplier counts as a single revision round.
- Check whose name goes on the music and stock licences.
- Agree in advance what you receive at delivery: exports, footage or the project.
Questions and answers
What separates an editor from a production company when choosing a supplier?
An editor works with material you already shot: assembling the cut, adding captions and music, and preparing exports. A production company is also accountable for the material existing at all, which covers script, location, lighting and people on camera. A solo operator can do both, but in sequence, so their timelines add up rather than run in parallel.
What does the Single Reel package at $70 include, and what does it leave out?
The Single Reel at $70 includes captions, a licensed track and exports for every vertical placement. The timeline is 1-2 working days and it carries 1 round of revisions. Shooting, scripting and actors are not included: it is a package for working with footage that already exists, not for organising a shoot day.
What is the deadline counted from when filming is not part of the package?
The Reels Pack at $90 runs 1-2 working days from footage delivery, not from payment or from the brief. That is why the acceptance point deserves to be recorded in writing: the supplier confirms that the files arrived and are usable, and the clock starts from that confirmation.
Who buys the music licence on a video project?
It depends on the package, and the terms cannot be generalised. The Single Reel includes a licensed track. On the Campaign Edit at $180 licensed music is not included and the licence is purchased by you. The Reels Pack Express excludes licensing beyond the supplied track, and the Monthly Content Engine excludes filming days and paid stock.
What should I ask for when a project is handed over after delivery?
Agree separately on three things: the finished exports, the original camera files, and the edit project. A project file is bound to a program, its version and the paths to the media, so on another machine it opens only alongside the footage. Interchange formats such as XML, AAF and EDL carry cuts and timing, but complex graphics and colour work usually do not travel.