The 5 Best Video Production Companies in Manchester

A single-day shoot producing one polished piece with a small crew, editing and licensed music runs roughly £3,000 to £7,000. A brand film with a director, proper lighting, a location and colour grading is £8,000 to £25,000. A TV commercial with talent, clearance and a broadcast deliverable starts around £30,000 and has no ceiling. Social content shot in batches is the cheapest per asset, frequently £2,000 to £5,000 for a day producing six to ten cutdowns. Animation is priced per finished minute, commonly £3,000 to £10,000, and does not need a shoot day at all.

Days, people and rights, in that order. Crew size is the biggest lever, a two-person shoot and a six-person shoot differ by thousands per day before anyone has hired a light. Talent and location come next, then the edit, which is usually underestimated because clients count shoot days rather than post days. Then rights, music licensing and any actor usage are time-limited and territory-limited, and renewing them later costs more than buying a longer term at the start. Ask for the usage term in the quote.

Get it in writing, because the default is not what most clients assume. Production companies commonly deliver the finished film and retain the raw rushes and project files, which means any future re-edit has to go through them. If you want the rushes, ask before signing and expect it to cost something, because archiving terabytes has a real price. Music and stock are licensed, not owned, and actor usage is time-limited. A film you cannot legally run after eighteen months is a common and expensive surprise.

A good freelance shooter-editor will produce genuinely usable social and testimonial content for a fraction of the price, and for a lot of businesses that is the right purchase. A production company earns its margin when there are moving parts, a director, a crew, talent, multiple locations, clearance, animation, or a deadline that cannot slip. The test is whether the project would fail if one person was ill. If yes, buy a company with a bench.

Four to eight weeks from brief to delivery for a straightforward corporate film, of which the shoot is one or two days and everything else is preparation and post. Add two to four weeks for animation, which has no shortcut once storyboards are approved. Broadcast work takes longer because of clearance. The single biggest cause of overrun is client feedback arriving in rounds rather than consolidated, so agree the number of revision rounds in the quote and who signs off.