Clients from the UK (the inexperienced ones) sometimes surprised, sometimes shocked at prices quoted for professional video crews in Central & Eastern Europe.
They forget (don’t know), that the East European media market is very different to the UK media landscape.
The industry in the UK is oversaturated, too many freelancers are on the market and they struggle to make a living due to fierce competition. So they undercut each other and keep pushing the prices down to survive (this is the worst they can do). They even offer services by the hour !!! like plumbers.
However the picture is very different over the Oder–Neisse line. Markets are small, demand is low, freelancers very few, good ones with fine equipment (like us) is even fewer, very few in fact.
We have a healthy price structure (US clients never question our prices), which enables us to employ talented people and regularly invest into fine broadcast equipment.
When a client from the UK asks our Prague crew to drive to Hradec Kralove (125km away from Prague) film there whole day than return and all this for € 650 we have to turn it down obviously. This is not realistic, maybe even in the UK (but who knows how screwed already the British market is).
When we tell them, this is not going to work and they will end up with some cheap clowns supplying them unusable footage, obviously nobody listens.
Then a bit later we are requested to re-shoot…..not fun.
