You have three quotes. They are thousands of dollars apart, all three showed you work that looks good, and all three people seemed nice on the call.
There is no obvious way to tell them apart, which is why most companies end up picking the middle price and hoping.
Everybody's work looks good, which makes it useless for comparing. What to ask instead, which price gaps are real, and when the cheap option is right.
Start with why their work all looks good
Every video company shows you their best work. That is not dishonest, it is what a portfolio is.
But their best work is almost always their best client. Somebody with a great story, a good looking facility, and a person on camera who happened to be a natural. Anyone competent makes a good video out of that.
What you actually want to know is what their average project looks like. And what they do when the story is not obvious, the building is beige, and nobody wants to be filmed.
That is the real job, and the work they show you is chosen specifically not to show it.
So ask this: show me something where the subject was boring.
Watch how they react. Some people love that question.
We made a video about warehouse automation software with almost no technical language in it, and that piece says more about how we work than anything we would normally lead with.
What you are actually buying
Not a video. Two things.
A day of somebody's full attention. Cheap production is usually cheap because they are on site for two hours. Everything good in a documentary style video comes from being there long enough for people to forget you are there.
A way of thinking about your business. Somebody is deciding what the story is and what to leave out. That judgment is the product. The camera work is table stakes at this point, almost everybody's is fine.
If you keep that in mind, the questions below mostly write themselves.
The questions that actually separate people
Who is going to be on site?
Ask for a name. In this industry it is common for the person who pitches you to never appear again, and for a contractor you have never met to show up with a camera on shoot day.
That is not automatically bad. Big projects often need crews. But you should know it going in, and you should meet whoever is going to be interviewing your CEO before that day.
What do you need to know about my business before we talk about video?
The answer to this one tells you almost everything.
A production company will start talking about deliverables, packages, and gear.
A partner will ask who your buyer is, what makes them hesitate, and what you are actually trying to make happen.
Neither answer is wrong. But you are about to pay somebody to explain your company to strangers, and if they are not curious about it now they will not be curious on shoot day.
How many finished pieces come out of one day on site?
Almost nobody asks this, and it is the biggest real difference between two quotes.
One company shoots a day and delivers one video. Another shoots the same day and delivers a main piece plus twenty short ones cut from the same footage.
Same cost to you, wildly different value, and you will not know which you bought until it is over.
Get the number in writing.
Who owns the footage, and do I get it?
Some companies hand over everything. Some hold the raw files and charge you to reopen the project later. Both happen, and neither is unusual enough to be a scandal, but you need to know which one you signed.
We wrote about what happens to the raw footage and why the answer matters more two years out than it does on shoot day.
What happens after you deliver it?
Most companies send a download link and disappear. If nobody on your side has a plan for where the video goes, that link is the last anything happens.
Ask whether they help with that or not. Fine either way. Just know before, not after.
When have you told a client no?
You are listening for whether they have ever pushed back on something a client asked for.
Somebody who agrees with everything is going to make exactly what you described, which is a problem if what you described was wrong. You are hiring judgment. Judgment sometimes says no.
Which price gaps are real
Three quotes that are far apart usually means they are quoting different things, not that one is a rip off.
Days on site. The single biggest driver. Two hours versus two days is most of your price gap right there.
How many finished pieces. One video or thirty.
Who is doing it. One experienced person, or a producer plus a crew plus an editor plus overhead.
How much thinking happens before the camera comes out. This is invisible on a quote and it is where most of the difference in the final piece comes from.
Ask each company to break their number into days on site, number of finished pieces, and who is doing the work. Half the confusion disappears immediately. There is more on what actually moves the number if you want the longer version.
The one real red flag is the quote that comes in far under the others with no explanation of what is different. Somebody is planning to be there for ninety minutes, and you will get ninety minutes of video.
When the expensive option is right, and when the cheap one is
Not every job needs the same answer, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling.
Hire the big agency when you are buying media as much as video. National campaign, television, paid placement at scale, multiple markets. That is a different business and you want people who do it every week.
Hire the cheap freelancer when the job is small and clear. One event, one interview, a few hours of coverage, no story to figure out. Paying four times as much for that is a waste and a good firm will tell you so.
Hire somebody in the middle, which is most firms our size, when the story is not obvious and the video has a job to do. A brand piece, a case study that goes in every proposal, a recruiting video that runs for three years. Those need somebody on site long enough to find the thing worth filming.
Figure out which of those you are before you start comparing prices, because the three are not competitors.
The one question to ask if you only ask one
What would you want to film that I have not thought of?
A production company answers with a shot list.
A partner answers with a question about your business.
You will know within about ten seconds which one you are talking to, and that is the difference you are actually choosing between.
The short version
Ignore the work they show you, it all looks good. Ask who is on site, how many pieces come out of a day, who owns the footage, and what they would film that you have not thought of.
Make each quote break out days, pieces, and people. Then the price differences will make sense.
If you are in the middle of comparing a few options and want somebody to look at the quotes with you, happy to do that even if we are one of them. It is a short conversation and you will make a better decision either way.
Dylan Smith is the owner of With A Twist Media in Greensboro, NC. He has been making documentary style video for manufacturers and construction companies across the Triad since 2019.