Another Pricing Thread -- BBC Documentary in HD?

astrostu · Oct 26, 2009

Hi all, sorry for another of the rash of "what do I charge?" threads, but, well, this is a fairly unique situation that I've just come upon: I was contacted by a woman from BBC's Vision Studios and they want to use the, "original individual high res images to re-create an image sequence that we could animate."

No where does she mention licensing, purchasing, etc. ... the closest reference is, "... enquire as to whether we may be able to please include them in the programme."

At the advice of my Aunt (a graphic designer who's contacting some of her friends in the ad biz), I sent a reply within an hour:

Thank you very much for contacting me. I have about 60 high-resolution photographs of the moon at various phases. The minimum resolution is 720 px (for about a half dozen of them) while the rest are approximately 5500 px. I should note, however, that at that very large, they will appear slightly blurry due to the atmosphere blurring them. However, for HD with a vertical pixel size of 1080, they will be good.

I would be happy to work with you. Do you know what the usage of the images will be for the series? Do you have a budget in mind for purchasing the photographs?

Basically, I was trying to get a feel for how they'd be used and throwing in there the unsubtle hint that I want to be compensated.

But I really have NO IDEA here on what to ask for or if an offer they make would be "acceptable." On the one hand, I already have the images, and though I may try to re-master some of the older ones to make 'em look better, there's really not much more work to do that I haven't already done. And this isn't my primary income by a long shot (1 job/year) so I don't really have to worry about that, and I'd be tempted to accept probably anything over £1000. Though, my Aunt suggests that I accept nothing less than what Elizabeth Arden paid me for 4 moon shots 2 years ago, which was $3000USD.

Towards that end, while I may not have much to lose in getting low-balled, and while I would not want to try to price myself too high and lose the possible sale, I also don't want to be short-changed here. If the standard is closer to, say, £10,000, then why should I only get £1000?

Any ideas what's standard for a major TV network/studio to pay for photographs?

JamesMason · Oct 26, 2009

What are the photos of, are they something they can get somewhere else ?

astrostu · Oct 26, 2009

JamesMason said:
What are the photos of, are they something they can get somewhere else ?

The photos are a long sequence of the lunar phases. They could probably get them somewhere else, but even though I've looked before, I haven't found anyone who's done as many as I have and processed them all to look the same way and has them at such high resolution.

For example, you can find lots of lunar phases online, but they all look different, as opposed to my montage, like this one:

Overread · Oct 26, 2009

I have no idea what you can/should try charging but BBC - phew well done there

!!!!
Congrats!

JamesMason · Oct 26, 2009

I would defiantly charge a high price for em. Not £10,000 tho, even the beeb aint got that much cash to spend on what they will see as a few seconds of footage. Personally i would charge about £2000 maybe push it to 3 if they sound really really interested. Remember its got to cost less than shooting it themselves. Sounds as tho they don't have anything similar in their library tho, and they must not be happy with whats on getty.

Just my 2pence worth

astrostu · Oct 26, 2009

Okay, I've done some looking around on Corbis on a single moon image and on a moon montage that this guy created (didn't actually photograph it himself) from the image of a full moon. Based on various usages I plugged in, the price was anywhere from $250-575 USD. But, they'd be purchasing more like 25 or so images (I would think) as opposed to a montage ... so say 20x$250 = $5000 USD.

From James' post, £2000 = $3260 these days (sigh) so if she asks me to name a figure I think it would be £1500-£3000 at this point ... unless people have more suggestions or other things I can base this on?

Overread · Oct 26, 2009

I seem to recall reading in some pricing thread ages ago to actually better to get them to put the first offer on the table. Ask them what their view of the going rate is whilst also having your own idea of the market rate (harder area I undestand here).
This gives you the chance to get an idea of what they are prepared to pay for the image(s) and their offering might be far higher than your estimation (a good thing for you). The rest is down to haggling the price should their estimation come out far lower than yours.

astrostu · Oct 28, 2009

Alrighty, I heard back. She was looking for the animation 'cause she wants to use it to show the lunar libration and nutation ... but I had pulled it down from my website 'cause I hadn't done a good job stitching it together 3 years ago. So this morning I re-mastered the animation and sent it to her (see below). In her e-mail, she said that she wanted to see the movie and show it to her producer to see if it's what they were looking for, and then she'd discuss pricing. Which I guess is perfectly fair.

astrostu · Oct 29, 2009

Just heard back. The producer and she "love it." The rights they're asking are standard: "All media, all rights worldwide, including North America, digital (i.e. VOD, DTO, mobile phone etc) and DVD. You would of course keep the copyright for all of the images, but as our programme is due to be broadcast not only in the UK, but on other channels around the world we need to clear it for the rights I've noted above."

However, she's offering me £200. About $330. For 20 photographs, that seems pretty small. Any avice on negotiating up?

JamesMason · Oct 29, 2009

Do they realize people have to make a living out of this !!! Thats really bad of the BBC. Sounds to me as tho they are trying to take you for a ride. Id tell them that channel 4 want exclusive rights for £2500, but then that could be a risky strategy. However the beeb is a nice client for the portfolio

chakalakasp · Oct 30, 2009

astrostu said:
Just heard back. The producer and she "love it." The rights they're asking are standard: "All media, all rights worldwide, including North America, digital (i.e. VOD, DTO, mobile phone etc) and DVD. You would of course keep the copyright for all of the images, but as our programme is due to be broadcast not only in the UK, but on other channels around the world we need to clear it for the rights I've noted above."

However, she's offering me £200. About $330. For 20 photographs, that seems pretty small. Any avice on negotiating up?

"Bwahahahahahahaha"

Yeah, okay, you can't say that to them. Still.

I suppose you could ask them how long the images (which I assume are displayed as an animation) would be onscreen and bill them the typical video footage rate, which is around $900 for 10 seconds, with a discount applied to any time over 10 seconds. And that's just for broadcast end of it; DVD rights would be a separate use at around $750 for 10 seconds. I doubt you're going to get stills rate on 20 stills run together in an animation. You could even phrase this in a way where it sounds like (and you are) giving them a discount against what 20+ still would cost, which would probably be at least $7K.

I dunno. Just do with your gut feeling; however, their quote is silly and they know it. It may be all they'll pay, who knows, but if the Beeb approached me with figures like that and wouldn't back down, I'd kindly tell them to look elsewhere. There are lots of pictures of the moon out there, but they wanted yours enough to approach you.

astrostu · Oct 30, 2009

I just heard back this morning. She says that the usage is that they would be on-screen for about 6 seconds. That's REALLY fast. Under the information from the post above, I've replied with the following e-mail this morning:

Normally, when I have sold a single still photograph in the past for commercial work, the range would begin at approximately £600. For television broadcast, my typical license fee for a single image begins at £550 for a minimum of 10 seconds with a steep discount applied for time beyond that. DVD distribution for the same time begins at £450. This is due not only to industry standards, but also the tremendous work involved in capturing a high-resolution sequence of the moon for a full month.

Given that your plan is to animate all 20 images and only show them all for a total of about 6 seconds, the normal per-image charge for a minimum of 10 seconds seems fairly excessive ((550+450)x20=£20,000). I'm willing to offer a fairly steep discount because all images will only be on screen for a total of 6 seconds. However, I think that a figure closer to £1000 would be more appropriate than £200.

I've laid out my cards and left it open to her to decide if she says her budget isn't enough but may be she can offer me more, or to just come out and accept the $1,650 figure (£1000 .... I hate playing around with exchange rates!).

Flash Harry · Nov 2, 2009

The BEEB pay fortunes in wages to (imo) talentless individuals who call themselves presenters, but they are basically rights grabbers over here and want photographs for nothing, they then use them all over and also sell them on, your submission to them indicates you have agreed to their T&C's so I'd be very careful of giving them anything before payment and don't worry about what they can afford as every household with a TV in the UK has to pay a tv license fee of over $200 every year to this institution, a bunch of robbing gits. H

astrostu · Nov 5, 2009

Alright, I heard back yesterday morning. This is what she said:

Unfortunately after discussing this with my Producer and Series Producer, we simply can not afford to pay £1000 for the images. The BBC is a public service organisation, not a commercial one, hence our very limited budgets. All DVD sales are re-invested in to programme-making budgets to enable us to make these very worthy and respected programmes. Instead, would you please consider accepting £500 to allow us to use the images?

I replied:

Given the circumstances, I would be willing to license these to you for £500 if you will also include a free copy of the DVD (or blu-ray?) set of the program with Region-1 encoding, to be sent to me once it is on sale to the general public. I also would like the contract to precisely specify the usage you plan and of course the licensing terms. Is this acceptable?The reason I throw in that last part is because IF they end up using it for more than ~6 seconds, I want that to be a breach of contract and them pay me more. I also realize that I'm dealing with a "foreign country" to my own and am much less familiar with how copyright and licensing laws work and what's implied versus needs to be specified.

Sigh. I would much rather have more £ and I'm still fairly sure that I'm being ripped off in terms of industry standards (based on what you folks and others have said).

That said, it seems as though she's not willing to go higher. And I already have these photographs and it really isn't any extra work for me to ZIP them and put them on my website for her to use them, so this is £500 I wouldn't've had before for no real extra work.

I think that after this I'll beef up my website a bit, upload to some stock photo places, and play a little more hardball next time.