What video production actually costs in London
Three quotes for the same brief, at £5,000, £8,000 and £12,000. None of them wrong. Here is what sits behind the gap, with published rates, sourced figures and four of our own invoices.
Where it starts
Three quotes, one brief
We Stream is a London video and photo production company that films conferences, brand films and interviews for clients including Newsweek, Rothschild & Co, DP World and Cytec. This guide is what we tell those clients when they ask why three quotes for one brief come back so far apart.
You have three quotes on your desk for the same video. One is £5,000. Another is £8,000. The third wants £12,000. They all sound confident and none of them is obviously wrong.
This happens constantly, and it is almost never because somebody is trying it on. The quotes are not describing the same thing. Crew size differs. Equipment differs. Post-production scope differs. Turnaround differs. Four variables, each capable of moving the number by thousands, and most quotes make none of them explicit.
So the useful question is what each quote is buying, and whether that matches what the video has to do. Cheapest tells you nothing until you know that.
Below: what the trade body publishes for crew, where the rest of the money goes, four jobs we invoiced and what they cost, and the five questions that make three quotes comparable.
Crew
What a crew day costs, and who says so
Start with an uncomfortable fact. There is no authoritative published source for London video production day rates. Search the question and almost every result is a production company quoting its own prices, including this one. That is worth knowing before you treat any range, ours included, as a market average.
There are two things better than a vendor's opinion, and they say different things.
The Advertising Producers Association publishes recommended minimum and maximum day rates by grade in its Recommended Terms for Crews on Commercials, effective 1 September 2025. That card puts a director of photography at £908 to £1,516, a camera operator at £514 to £637, a sound mixer at £525 to £649, a gaffer up to £568 and a producer up to £933.
What it is not: a market survey. These are terms negotiated for commercials, where the day is long, overtime bands are formal and the production is insured to the hilt. Corporate and conference work rarely runs on APA terms, and the figures do not transfer cleanly. The card is also revised every September, so check the current one rather than quoting an old year.
YunoJuno publishes averages from actual bookings through its freelance platform rather than advertised prices, which makes it the most honest number in public. Its videographer average sits around £406 to £427 a day, depending on whether you read its UK page or its global one (October 2026).
What it is not: London-specific, or role-specific. "Videographer" covers a one-person social shoot and a lead operator on a brand film in the same bucket, and the figure is UK-wide. Read it as a floor for the broad category, not a rate for an experienced London crew.
And it does not match what we see. We talk to a lot of London production companies and book crews every week, and we have not met a videographer in 2026 who charges £400 for a full filming day. A videographer is responsible for the lighting, the sound and the framing at once, and the quotes we see start at around £800 a day for that. Our own second operator is £1,100 a day on support and £1,400 filming on their own camera. Treat the platform average as a UK-wide number that is probably out of date for London.
A photographer working alone. An operator running a camera in one hand and a light in the other, while the client talks to the stand team behind him. And a full crew, where each of those is one person's only job. Most of the gap between a £5,000 quote and a £12,000 one is in those three pictures.
So where does that leave a London day rate? Honestly: somewhere between the two, depending on who you are hiring and for what. An experienced lead operator with their own kit sits well above the platform average and usually below the APA commercials maximum. A full crew is the sum of its people plus whoever is running the day. Rather than publish a range we cannot stand behind, the rest of this page does something more useful: it shows what finished projects cost, and what we invoiced for four of them.
The gap
What moves the number
Park Lane - a story-led brand film, at the Mandarin Oriental.
Crew size does the heavy lifting. One operator working alone films, records audio, makes the creative decisions and manages you at the same time. A three-person crew means multi-camera coverage, dedicated sound, and somebody running the day while the others concentrate on capturing it. That is not automatically better. It is different, and for a single-track internal video it is often more than the job needs.
Equipment level changes the look, sometimes. We have filmed jobs where nobody could tell the difference between a mirrorless body and a cinema camera. We have also filmed jobs where that difference was the entire point. Which one you are on is a question about the audience, not the camera.
Post-production scope is where quotes diverge most. A basic cut against a graded edit with motion graphics and sound design is ten to fifteen hours of extra specialist work. That is how two quotes that looked similar end up thousands apart.
Speed is capacity you are renting. Same-day delivery adds £400 to £1,500, and where you land depends on footage volume, camera count and how finished the cut has to be. What you are buying is editors on standby and a workflow built for it, which costs money to keep available whether or not anyone books it that week.
Post-production
The part clients underestimate
Filming is a day you can picture. Editing is not, which is why it is the line most often underestimated when a budget is set. These are our own figures, from our own edit menu, rather than a market survey.
The same frame from an awards night, before and after colour. This is the line clients most often cut from a quote and most often miss afterwards.
Editing while the event is still running is the part of the price that is hardest to picture, and the easiest to cut from a quote.
Heavy motion graphics, animation and compositing are quoted against the brief rather than listed, because the range is too wide to be useful as a number. Music licensing for commercial use is charged at cost. Two rounds of revisions are inside the price: on the NOA brand film four rounds during the edit took the final invoice from the original quote to £4,000, and those rounds are inside that figure rather than billed on top.
Not estimates
Four jobs, and what they invoiced
Every pricing guide gives you ranges. Here are four real invoices instead, with what was in each one.
A 60-second scripted social ad, filmed in one morning and edited the same night. Under fifteen hours from camera to finished cut: an 11am call time, a finished cut at 1:34am. Co-posted by Heineken.
One filming day, two-person crew. Founder interview, client testimonials, office b-roll. Premiered at their anniversary event, then went live on LinkedIn. The same brief with same-day delivery would have been £3,900.
Founder Lily telling NOA's growth story on the move through London. Two cameras, one day. The quote started lower: four rounds of revisions during the edit took it to £4,000, and those rounds sit inside that price.
Seven executive films from a single shoot day in early 2025. CEO Nick Chinn on the company's direction after its reorganisation, and leadership on governance, compliance and reporting. Producer, two camera operators, gaffer and sound engineer on set.
Cytec - one of the seven films from that day.
The Cytec day is the clearest illustration of why a day rate tells you so little on its own. Seven finished films came out of one booking, because the crew, the lighting and the room were set up once and seven people sat in front of it.
Commissioned separately, each of those would have carried its own setup, its own travel and its own edit session. The saving came from deciding, before the day, what they wanted to walk away with. The rate had little to do with it.
That is the single most useful thing you can do to a budget, and it costs nothing.
Equipment
In the rate, or on top
Kit is either inside a crew rate or billed separately, and a quote that does not say which is a quote you cannot compare. The number matters less than the answers to four questions.
"Camera package" covers a mirrorless body with a kit lens and a cinema camera with a full lens set. Those are different jobs with different looks. Ask for the bodies and the glass by name, then ask whether the price changes if they bring the better one.
A panel with five speakers needs five radio mics. A venue whose house sound cannot be trusted needs an independent recording, which is more kit again. This is the line that quietly ruins a session when it is underspecified.
A three-point interview setup and lighting a boardroom with floor-to-ceiling glass are not the same exercise. The second one is about managing daylight and reflections across a whole room, and it takes time as well as kit.
Three cameras means three sets of media, three batteries to watch and three angles to match in the grade. The equipment cost roughly multiplies. The edit cost does too, which is the part that surprises people.
What “camera package” means, three ways.
We publish our own filming-only rates rather than an equipment line, because on our jobs the kit is in the rate: £1,200 for a half day and £2,000 for a full day with one operator, a second operator at £1,100 on support or £1,400 filming on their own camera. If a quote separates them, that is not a problem, but you need both halves before you compare it to anything.
End to end
What finished projects cost
Day rates are an input. This is the output: complete projects, filming plus the edit, at our published starting prices. Every figure is from our rate card rather than a market estimate, which means you can hold us to it.
All before VAT, which is added where applicable. Travel outside London is calculated by us and included in the quote, so there is nothing to add later. Advertising-level work with an art director, a set build and print-standard post is quoted per project from £8,500 a shoot day, because at that level the variables stop being comparable.
London
The costs that are about the city
Travel. Crew day rates normally absorb an hour or two of travel inside central London. A location out at Heathrow or Croydon, or a call time that needs vans moving before the Underground is running, is usually charged as travel time or an extended day. We calculate travel outside London ourselves and include it in the quote, so there is nothing to add later.
Parking and access. Central London filming means parking a van somewhere legal and getting kit in and out of a building that was not designed for it. On a weekday near Liverpool Street this is a real line in the budget. On a Sunday morning in Shoreditch it is barely one. Ask whether it is in the quote or coming later.
Permits. A small crew working quickly on a public pavement usually proceeds without one. Anything that blocks a footway, uses council property or looks commercial in a public space needs a permit, and the fee depends entirely on the borough and the disruption. Westminster is not Lewisham. Film London and the borough's own film office publish the current fees.
Insurance. Most commercial venues will ask before they grant access. Our lead operators each hold £5 million public liability insurance separately. It is normally inside a day rate rather than a line item, but it is worth confirming it exists at all before a venue asks you for a certificate the week of the shoot.
Getting people and kit to the right place is a cost line, not an afterthought. Travel outside London is calculated by us and included in the quote.
After the quote
The costs that turn up later
These are the lines that make an invoice bigger than the quote. None of them is unreasonable. All of them are avoidable if they are discussed before the shoot rather than during it.
An interview booked for two hours that runs four is another filming day at full rate. The usual cause is a schedule built on everyone arriving on time, which is a schedule built on hope.
Two rounds are inside our price, with a one-week feedback window. After that it is £100 to £200 a round. "Try a different music track" is cheap. "Restructure the whole narrative" is not.
Booking a rush at the start is cheaper than asking for one mid-edit. A 48-hour rush is +£400 and an overnight edit from +£900. Same-day planned before the shoot is £400 to £1,500.
Vertical versions, extended cuts, a different edit for a different platform. Each one is separate work. Verticals are £150 each, which is only a surprise if the brief said one film.
Charged at cost on our jobs rather than marked up. Library music for internal use is cheap. A licensed track for commercial distribution is not, and the licence depends on where it is going.
On anything advertising-level these are at cost and agreed in writing. They are not inside a day rate anywhere, and a quote that implies they are has not scoped the job.
Matching spend to the job
When cheap is right, and when it is not
A budget approach is the correct answer more often than production companies admit. Internal training content. Documentation of an event for the record. Social video that the platform is going to compress until the difference between a cinema camera and a good mirrorless disappears. A single operator with decent kit covers all of that properly, and spending more buys you nothing anyone will see.
Volume can also beat polish. A brand posting monthly with one operator ends up with twelve pieces. The same budget spent quarterly with a full crew ends up with four. If the goal is presence rather than prestige, twelve wins.
Cheap quotes are fine. The trouble starts when a brief that needs professional production values is priced as though it did not, which produces work that disappoints everyone and gets spent again properly six months later.
Premium is worth it when failure is expensive. A product launch, a press conference, an awards night: things that happen once. What the money buys is redundancy. Backup cameras, dual audio, people who have seen this go wrong before and know which part breaks. When something fails at a one-time event there is no reschedule.
Client-facing work that represents you to customers or investors is the other case. Production quality is read as a proxy for company quality, fairly or not. Saving on a film that then looks cheap is a false economy when the film is doing the introducing.
And complexity has a price of its own. Multiple locations in a day, a large cast with limited availability, a schedule where an overrun multiplies through everything after it. Those need someone whose whole job is making sure the day works, which is what a producer is.
A useful test: what does it cost if this is bad? Internal content nobody outside sees has a low failure cost and a budget approach is right. A launch film seen by the people deciding whether to buy from you does not. Match the spend to that, not to the cheapest available number.
For comparison
What we charge, published
This page is about the London market. These are our own starting prices, so you can measure the rest of it against something concrete. Every one of them is filming plus the edit. VAT will be added where applicable.
Filming without an edit is priced separately: £1,200 for a half day, £2,000 for a full day, with a second operator at £1,100 on support or £1,400 filming on their own camera. A producer runs every project, on set for larger shoots and remotely for smaller ones. Raw footage is included on event work booked in 2026.
Back to your three quotes
Five questions that make them comparable
Are the rates listed per person or bundled? A bundled number looks expensive until you notice it includes a producer the cheap quote does not have.
"Camera package" covers everything from one mirrorless body to a cinema rig with a lens set. The quote should say which, and whether it is inside the day rate.
How many editing hours. Whether a grade is included. Whether graphics are. How many revision rounds, and what happens after them. This is where the gap usually is.
Standard or rush. A company that can deliver same-day is maintaining capacity to do it, and that is part of what the higher quote is paying for.
A self-directed videographer or a producer-led shoot. It decides who makes the call when something changes at 2pm, and whether that person is you.
Internal content nobody outside sees has a low failure cost, and a budget approach is the right answer. A launch film that represents you to investors does not.
AM Insights - the £2,500 film, one day, two people.
The cheapest quote is usually one person, one camera, a light edit and a week's turnaround. The most expensive is a full crew, multiple cameras, a proper grade and same-day delivery.
Neither is wrong. They are answers to different questions, and the only way to choose is to know which question you are asking before the quotes arrive.
If you want a figure for a specific brief rather than a range, tell us the dates, the venue and what has to be published afterwards. We reply within 24 hours, and if we are not the right fit for your timeline or budget we will say so rather than take the booking.
Questions
London video production costs
How much does video production cost in London?
It depends almost entirely on crew size, post-production scope and turnaround. As a reference point, four jobs we invoiced: a 60-second scripted social ad filmed and edited overnight at £2,000, a one-day two-person brand film at £2,500, a two-camera brand film with four revision rounds at £4,000, and seven executive films from a single shoot day with a five-person crew at £6,000. Our own starting prices run from £1,100 for social content and £1,700 for event and conference work.
What is a fair crew day rate in London?
The Advertising Producers Association publishes recommended minimums and maximums for commercials crews, effective 1 September 2025: a director of photography at £908 to £1,516, a camera operator at £514 to £637, a sound mixer at £525 to £649, a gaffer up to £568 and a producer up to £933. Those are commercials terms, which is the top of the market. Corporate, conference and event work usually sits below them, but not as far below as platform averages suggest: in our experience a London videographer with their own kit charges from around £800 a day in 2026, and we have not met one who charges £400.
Why do quotes for the same brief vary so much?
Four things, and most quotes make none of them explicit: how many people are on the crew and in what roles, whether equipment is inside the day rate or charged separately, how much post-production is included, and how fast it comes back. A basic cut against a graded edit with motion graphics is ten to fifteen hours of extra specialist work on its own.
How much does same-day delivery cost?
With us it adds £400 to £1,500, depending on footage volume, how many cameras were running and how finished the cut has to be. A single-camera highlight sits near the bottom of that. A multi-camera day with graphics and an editor cutting on site sits at the top. It is planned before the shoot rather than asked for on the day, because what you are paying for is capacity held in reserve.
What does post-production cost on its own?
Our edit menu starts at £500 for a two to three minute highlight film. Speaker clips and vertical cutdowns are £150 each, and a pack of one highlight, six clips and six verticals is £1,800. Two rounds of revisions inside a one-week window are included. Heavy motion graphics, animation and compositing are quoted against the brief.
What does a multi-day conference or trade show cost?
With us, three show days start at £3,600 for one operator covering photo and video in a two-hour window each day, with same-day photos, a highlight film and three verticals afterwards. Three days with a photographer and a videographer, up to four hours each a day, start at £7,950. Most stands do not want ten-hour coverage, which is why those are priced per show day rather than as full days.
Is equipment included in a day rate?
It depends on the company, and the quote should say. On our jobs kit is inside the rate: £1,200 for a half day and £2,000 for a full day with one operator, filming only. If a quote separates equipment, ask what is in the camera package by name, how many radio microphones are included, and whether lighting is a three-point interview setup or a whole room.
What are the costs that turn up after the quote?
Days that overrun, charged as another filming day. Revision rounds past the two included, at £100 to £200 each. Speed decided late, where a 48-hour rush is £400 and an overnight edit from £900. Formats nobody mentioned in the brief, at £150 a vertical cutdown. Music licensing, which we charge at cost. All of them are avoidable by raising them before the shoot.
Next
Want a number for your brief?
Tell us the dates, the location, roughly how long you need us there and what has to be published afterwards. A quote comes back within 24 hours with availability and a real figure rather than a range.
We are a London video production company working across events and conferences, brand films, interviews, fashion and beauty, sport and iGaming. Clients include Newsweek, Fast Growth Icons, Connected Britain, Rothschild & Co, DP World, Luxoft, DXC Technology and Cytec.
The full rate card sits on our prices page, the work is in the portfolio, and the contact page has the form.
Written by Violetta Coretnic, producer and co-founder at We Stream. Published 1 May 2026, updated 25 October 2026.
Crew rates: APA Recommended Terms for Crews on Commercials, Appendix 1, effective 1 September 2025. Freelance averages: YunoJuno, October 2026.
We Stream Ltd · London · No. 17207516
team@westream.uk