What Video Production Costs in St. Louis

Revised September 3, 2026

Two quotes land in the same inbox on a Thursday afternoon. Same brief, same ten minute runtime, same delivery date in November. One of them says nine thousand dollars. The other says forty one thousand. The marketing lead at a Maryland Heights manufacturer reads both of them twice, then forwards them to her boss with a subject line that is just a question mark.

She is not being naive, and neither quote is a scam. They are almost certainly both honest. They are simply descriptions of two completely different films that happen to run the same number of minutes. One is a producer, a camera, a microphone and three afternoons of interviews. The other is a scripted shoot with hired actors, three locations, a lighting package, animated product cutaways and four rounds of client changes.

Nobody explains this to a first-time buyer. Video is the one marketing purchase where the deliverable everyone pictures, the shoot day, is often the smallest part of the invoice. So here is what this work actually costs around St. Louis, in broad ranges, why runtime tells you almost nothing about price, and how to read two wildly different numbers without guessing.

How much does it cost to produce a 10 minute video?

There is no honest single number, because runtime barely predicts cost. A ten minute single camera interview edit commonly lands somewhere in the low thousands. A ten minute scripted piece with actors, multiple locations and animation can run twenty five thousand and up. Crew, shoot days and post drive it.

That is not a dodge. Runtime is close to useless as a price predictor, and any company that quotes you off minutes alone is guessing. A ten minute recorded panel discussion with two cameras is a long afternoon and a straightforward edit. A ten minute brand film can be a small production company’s entire month.

What actually moves the number is a short list. How many shooting days. How many people are on the crew each of those days. How many locations, and whether any of them charge for access. Whether there is a script, and whether somebody has to write it. Whether there is paid on camera talent. Whether the edit needs motion graphics or animation. And how many rounds of revisions you get before changes start billing separately.

In rough terms, and these are typical ranges that move hard with the specifics: a single camera interview or testimonial piece, shot in a few hours and cut simply, commonly lands somewhere in the one to five thousand dollar range. A branded piece with a small crew, a real lighting setup, b-roll across a couple of locations and a polished edit generally runs something like five to twenty thousand. A scripted commercial with cast, multiple shoot days, a full crew and animation starts around twenty five thousand and climbs from there without much of a ceiling.

Those are the numbers this kind of work generally runs, not any particular company’s rate card, and the overlap between the tiers is real. A ten minute video can sit comfortably in any of the three.

Where does the money actually go on a video project?

Three buckets: pre-production, the production day itself, and post. Most first-time buyers picture only the middle one, which is frequently the smallest of the three. The work that decides whether the video is any good mostly happens before anyone rolls a camera and after everyone has gone home.

Pre-production is scripting, storyboarding, casting, location scouting, permits where a location needs them, scheduling, shot lists and the call sheet. On a simple interview piece that might be two hours of a producer’s time. On a scripted spot it can be weeks, and it is where a project quietly succeeds or fails. A shoot day that starts without a shot list burns money in real time, at the rate of everybody standing in the room.

The production day is the visible part: crew, camera package, lenses, lighting, grip gear, audio, and whatever you are paying for the space. It is normally billed by the day or the half day, and it is the least flexible bucket, because a day is a day whether you use nine hours of it or four.

Post is the bucket that surprises people. Ingesting and organizing footage, a first assembly, the edit itself, color correction, sound mix, music, titles, motion graphics, subtitles, and then every revision round and every alternate version. On a documentary style piece, post is routinely the largest line on the project. The working rule inside the industry is that one hour of finished screen time represents many, many hours at the edit bay, and the ratio gets worse the more footage you shot.

This is why “can you just shoot it and send me the files” is a different product at a different price, and why the answer is sometimes yes. If you have a capable in-house editor, buying only pre-production and a shoot day is a legitimate way to spend less. Just be honest with yourself about whether that editor actually exists and actually has the hours.

Why do two quotes for the same video differ by five figures?

Because “the same video” describes the runtime, not the work. The gap between a nine thousand dollar quote and a forty one thousand dollar quote is almost always crew size, shoot days and post hours, in that order. Two companies read one brief and pictured two entirely different productions.

The cheaper quote is usually assuming fewer people, one location, one day, existing footage wherever possible, library music and two revision rounds. The expensive one is usually assuming a written script, a casting session, two or three shoot days, a lighting and grip package, custom graphics and a longer approval cycle with a client who will want changes. Neither company is wrong. They answered different questions, because they were asked a vague one.

The fix is not to squeeze the high quote. It is to say out loud what you actually want, then let both companies price against the same picture. Nine times out of ten the numbers move toward each other, and the gap that remains tells you something real about how each shop works.

It helps to know what the neighboring services cost, because video sits in the same budget conversation as stills and gear. If a controlled space is part of the plan, renting a photo studio in St. Louis covers what those rooms charge and what comes with them. If the video is being made at an event, what it costs to rent AV gear for a St. Louis event is the other half of the same line item.

How big does the crew need to be?

Crew size is the single biggest lever on a video budget, bigger than camera choice and far bigger than runtime. Every additional person on set is a day rate, and day rates for experienced specialists commonly run several hundred dollars to well over a thousand apiece. Two extra people across a multi-day shoot can move a quote by five figures.

At the bottom is the one-person band: a single videographer who directs, shoots, records sound, lights the room and then edits the whole thing. This is a real and often correct choice for interviews, social content, and anything where the subject matters more than the polish. What you give up is attention. One human cannot watch the frame, the audio levels and the person talking at the same time, and something gets less of them.

A small crew usually means a producer or director, a shooter, a sound recordist, and sometimes a gaffer or a general assistant. This is the sweet spot for most business video. The producer keeps the day on schedule and manages your people so you can go back to work, the shooter gets to actually look at the image, and the sound is being handled by somebody whose only job is sound.

A full commercial crew adds a director of photography separate from the camera operator, a first assistant camera pulling focus, a gaffer with an electrician, grips, hair and makeup, an art department, a production assistant or three, and a producer who has already been working for weeks before the day. That is what a national-looking spot costs, and the price is not padding. Each of those people exists because a specific thing goes wrong without them.

What does the sound person actually buy you?

Sound is the line people cut first and regret most. Audiences forgive a soft image and will not forgive a hollow, echoing room or an air handler humming underneath the CEO’s best answer. Bad audio cannot be repaired later in any meaningful way, and it is the most common reason a finished corporate video feels cheap without the viewer being able to say why. If the budget forces a choice between a second camera and a dedicated sound recordist, take the sound.

What should the agreement say about revisions and deliverables?

Two things, in writing, before the shoot: how many rounds of revisions are included, and exactly which files you receive at the end. Those two lines are where video budgets actually break. Not on the camera, not on the crew. On “just one more small change” and “we also need a vertical cut.”

A revision round means one consolidated set of notes from your side, applied once. Most agreements include two or three. What blows that up is feedback arriving in pieces, from four people, over ten days, each batch triggering another pass through the timeline. Collect every note from every stakeholder into one document, send it once, and you will use fewer rounds than you were given. A company that bills hourly past the included rounds is not being difficult. It is being accurate.

Deliverables are the other trap, and the more expensive one. A finished ninety second video is one file. The same project delivered as a hero cut, a sixty, a thirty, a fifteen, a square version, a vertical version, six social clips, a captioned version and a version with no music under it is ten separate exports, each one its own timeline and its own export. Decide up front where this video is going to run and put those versions in the original scope. Adding them after the edit is locked costs considerably more than including them from the start.

Settle the subtitle question early too. Captions are cheap when they are planned and irritating when they are an afterthought, and if the video is going anywhere near a public website, you want them.

A camera shows everything. Including the carpet you meant to clean.

Who owns the footage, the music, and the people on screen?

Three separate questions, and the answers are often not what a first-time buyer assumes. In most agreements you are buying a license to use the finished video for a defined purpose. Not the raw footage, not the music, and not unlimited rights to the faces in it. All three are negotiable, and all three cost money to widen.

Music is the one that catches people. Library and stock music is inexpensive, often tens of dollars per track, and it is what the large majority of business video uses. A recognizable commercial song is a different universe, involving two separate sets of rights, and the answer is usually four or five figures at minimum for a limited term in a limited territory. If someone tells you they can put a hit song under your video for a few hundred dollars, something in that conversation is wrong.

Stock footage and licensed graphics behave the same way. So does paid on camera talent. An actor’s rate is tied to usage: where the video runs, for how long, and in which media. A piece shot for your website that later becomes a paid ad campaign may owe additional usage money, and that is a real bill rather than a technicality. Say up front where the video will run, including the honest possibility that it runs somewhere else later.

The raw footage question is worth settling before the shoot rather than after. Some companies hand over everything, some archive it and will pull clips on request, some charge for the drive and the transfer time. There is no universal right answer here, but there is a wrong outcome, and it is discovering two years later that the only copy of your founder’s interview lives on a hard drive at a company that has since closed its doors.

What drives the price of a wedding or event videographer?

Coverage hours and edit hours, in that order, with nearly everything else downstream of those two. A videographer pricing a full wedding day is pricing ten or twelve hours on their feet plus somewhere between twenty and sixty hours of editing afterward. Typical packages around the metro commonly run in the low thousands, with a wide spread in both directions.

Coverage is the first question to answer. Getting-ready through the reception exit costs more than ceremony and toasts, and it costs more again with a second shooter, which is the only way to have a camera on the aisle and a camera on the faces at the same moment. Couples who regret their wedding video almost always regret the coverage window, not the color grade.

The edit is the invisible half. A five minute highlight film is built out of hours of ceremony audio, drone shots if the venue allows them, toasts, dancing and two or three synced camera angles. Choosing between a short highlight, a longer feature edit, and full documentary cuts of the ceremony and the speeches changes the price more than any equipment decision anybody makes. A vineyard ceremony out toward Ste. Genevieve with a long drive and a sunset window is a different day than a downtown reception hall with everything in one building.

Ask about raw footage delivery, because it is genuinely valuable and often cheap to add. Twenty years from now the polished four minute film will be lovely, and the unedited twelve minutes of your grandmother talking at the reception will be the thing you cannot replace. Some videographers include the raws, some charge a modest fee, some do not offer them at all. Worth knowing which before you sign anything.

The same logic that governs a photographer’s day governs a videographer’s, and pricing them together makes both conversations easier. What a photographer costs in St. Louis and what an event photographer actually covers in St. Louis both break coverage hours down the same way, and the two vendors are going to be standing three feet apart all day anyway.

How should you choose a video production company?

Shortlist two or three companies worth interviewing, then watch their actual work before you speak to any of them. Not the sizzle reel. Full pieces, start to finish, ideally made for a client that looks something like you. A reel hides whether a company can hold a viewer’s attention for ninety straight seconds.

Then interview them, and state plainly what you want. What the video is supposed to accomplish, where it will run, who has to approve it, how many revision rounds you expect, which versions you need at the end, and who owns the footage. Say all of it out loud in the first conversation rather than discovering it in month three. Then compare that list against what each company is prepared to deliver.

The gap is the signal, not the price. One company hears your list and tells you which parts are realistic at your number and which are not. Another agrees to everything and stays vague about how. A third tells you straight out that the budget will not carry the scripted version and proposes a smaller idea that will actually work. That third answer is usually the most valuable one in the room, because it is the only one that has been checked against a real production schedule.

Pay attention to what they ask you. A company that wants to know what the video is for before it asks your budget is thinking about the right problem. There is a version of almost every video that fits almost every budget, but only when somebody is willing to change the idea instead of just shaving the shoot day.

One local note worth having. St. Louis carries a deeper production community than people outside it assume, with experienced crew, camera and grip rental houses, and studio space scattered from downtown out to Earth City and over the river toward O’Fallon, Illinois. Missouri also runs a state-level film production incentive program, which matters far more to larger productions than to a corporate video shoot. The practical benefit for a business buyer is simpler than the headline: you can usually hire a good local sound recordist on a week’s notice, and that is not true everywhere.

Where do you find video production near you?

Frequently asked questions

How much for a videographer for 2 hours?

Most videographers do not sell two hours, because setup, teardown, travel and file handling surround the shoot no matter how short it is. The usual smallest unit is a half day, and a half day of a solo videographer commonly runs somewhere in the several hundred to low four figures range in this market. Editing is normally quoted on top of that, not inside it. If somebody does quote you two hours, ask whether the number includes an edit or only the recording.

What is a video production company?

A company that handles a video from idea to finished file, rather than only operating a camera. That means pre-production such as scripting, casting, location scouting and scheduling, the production day with crew and gear, and post-production including editing, color, sound mix, graphics and the various delivery versions. Some are full-service shops with staff producers and editors, some are a small core team that hires specialist crew per project. Both models are legitimate and the second one is very common in St. Louis.

Is it worth hiring a videographer for a wedding?

It depends entirely on whether sound and motion matter to you, because that is the whole difference from photography. Video is the only thing that keeps the vows, the toast, the laugh and the music. Couples who skip it most often say later that they wish they had heard the ceremony again. Couples who regret paying for it usually bought a short highlight film and never watched it twice. If you book one, buy coverage hours first and polish second.

What is a good budget for a wedding videographer?

Around this metro, packages commonly land in the low thousands for meaningful full-day coverage with an edited film, with plenty of options above and below that. The spread comes from coverage hours, whether a second shooter is included, and how much editing the deliverables require. A ceremony-and-toasts package with a short highlight sits at the bottom. Full day coverage, two shooters, a feature edit plus documentary cuts of the ceremony and speeches sits well above it. Decide coverage first, then price it.

How much do video producers get paid?

It varies widely by whether they are staff or freelance. Freelance producers commonly work on a day rate that runs from several hundred dollars into four figures depending on experience and the size of the production. Staff producers at agencies, in-house marketing teams or broadcast typically earn a salary somewhere in the range of other mid-level marketing and media roles, moving with market and seniority. Anyone quoting you one national number for this job is flattening an enormous range.

What does the 80/20 rule mean in video editing?

It is a rule of thumb rather than a standard, and editors use it two ways. First, roughly eighty percent of your usable material comes from about twenty percent of the footage, which is why organizing and logging clips before cutting saves so much time. Second, the last twenty percent of polish consumes about eighty percent of the hours. That second version is the one that matters to your budget, because it explains why revision rounds cost real money.

What is the hardest job on a film set?

Ask ten crew members and you will get three answers. By pressure and responsibility, most people name the first assistant director, who owns the schedule and has to keep dozens of people moving without losing the day. By physical demand, grips and electricians, who are hauling and rigging heavy gear before anyone else arrives and after everyone else leaves. By concentration, the first assistant camera pulling focus. On a small corporate crew, all of that lands on two or three people at once.

How far ahead should a St. Louis business book a video shoot?

For a straightforward interview or testimonial piece, two to four weeks is usually comfortable, mostly to line up the people you need on camera. Anything scripted, cast or shot across multiple locations wants six to ten weeks, because pre-production is real work. Build in edit time as well, since a first cut plus two revision rounds commonly takes another two to four weeks. If the video has a hard date attached to it, count backward from that date and add slack.

About the Author: The St Louis Near Me Directory Team
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.

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