How Much Does a Corporate Video Cost in Melbourne?

Ask five Melbourne production companies what a video will cost and you will get five numbers, none of which you can put side by side. The most-typed version of this question is some form of corporate video cost Melbourne, and the honest answer is that a video does not really have a price. It has a stack of line items, and you can move almost every one of them.

What follows is how those line items get priced in this city, in AUD, as bands. These are the ranges Melbourne studios publish, not our rate card — a real quote depends on what is actually in the room on the day. But once you know the bands, you can read a quote for corporate and brand video instead of reacting to the total at the bottom.

The Crew Day Is the Spine of the Quote

Almost every corporate shoot is priced off a shoot day, usually eight to ten hours from call to wrap. How many people are on that day is the single biggest lever on the total, and it is the number worth understanding before anything else.

• Solo operator, roughly $1,000–$2,000 a day. One person running camera, audio and lighting. Suited to a single interview, a piece to camera, or documentary-style coverage of something that is happening anyway.
• Two-person crew, roughly $2,500–$4,000 a day. The second pair of hands buys a second camera angle, lighting that is actually shaped, and someone watching audio while the director watches performance. This is the standard corporate configuration.
• Three or more, roughly $4,500–$8,000 a day. A dedicated sound recordist, a gaffer, or a producer holding the schedule together. You are buying the ability to get through six or eight setups in a day without the afternoon collapsing.
• Drone or specialist gear, roughly $500–$2,000 on top. The spread depends on whether it is an add-on for a crew already on site or a separate licensed operator brought in for the day.

A solo day is not a discount version of a two-person day. If your shoot is one person, in one chair, in a room you control, a second crew member genuinely has very little to do. Paying for one is not buying you a better video. It is buying you someone to stand near the light stand.

An Edit Week Is Never One Line Item

Editing is commonly quoted at $800–$1,500 a day in Melbourne, and a polished three-minute video is widely put at fifteen to thirty hours of post before anyone touches the colour. That is two to four editing days, not an afternoon. If a quote shows a single small figure for “edit”, the scope has not been written down yet.

The pieces that sit around the edit are priced separately, and each of them is a real decision: colour grading around $400–$1,000, motion graphics and lower thirds around $500–$2,000 depending on how much is animated, and a music licence anywhere from about $50 for a stock library track to several hundred for something premium. Revisions past the agreed rounds are typically billed hourly, in the range of $150–$300.

That last one is where quotes quietly double. Ask how many rounds of revision are included and what counts as a round, before you sign anything.

The Line Items People Over-Buy

Over-buying is rarely extravagance. It is usually someone trying to make a video feel expensive enough to justify the brief. These are the four we would talk most clients out of.

• A third camera on a seated interview. Two angles give an editor everything needed to cut around a stumble. A third mostly gives them more footage to sort through, and it slows the room down.
• Drone shots with no job. A rising wide of an office block in Docklands is a lovely shot that says nothing. Drone earns its cost when the geography is the story — a site, a coastline, a scale you cannot show from the ground.
• Animation standing in for a real shot. Animated sequences run $500–$2,000 for graphics and well into five figures for full explainer work. If the thing can be filmed, filming it is usually cheaper and more convincing.
• Professional talent for an internal story. Experienced presenters are commonly quoted at $1,000–$5,000 a day. For a company overview or a culture piece, a real staff member who is slightly nervous reads as more credible than a polished stranger.

The Line Items People Under-Buy

Audio is first and it is not close. Viewers forgive a soft image and will not sit through bad sound for ten seconds. Two radio mics and a separate backup recorder is a small line on a quote and it is the cheapest quality you will ever buy.

Pre-production is second. Concept and script development is often quoted around $400–$2,500 and location scouting around $300–$800, and both get cut first because they produce no footage. They are the reason a shoot day runs to schedule. A day that falls apart at 2pm costs more than the scout would have.

Third is deliverable versions. Ask for the 16:9, the square and the vertical cuts, plus captions, in the original quote. Reopening a finished project three months later to reframe it for social costs far more than specifying it once, and the framing decisions on set would have been different had anyone known.

Fourth is permits and lead time. Commercial filming in a public place in the City of Melbourne requires a permit, with an application fee plus a duration-based fee, and applications close five working days ahead — seven if traffic management is involved. Fee schedules change each July, so confirm the current numbers on the City of Melbourne filming permits page, and check the relevant council if you are shooting outside the CBD. Filming inside your own premises does not need one.

Building a Realistic Number for Your Own Project

Say you want three customer stories and a two-minute company overview, all shot in your own office in Cremorne, with no permit and no external talent. Stack it up rather than guessing at a total:

1. One two-person shoot day to get four interviews and the B-roll, which is a full and honest day, not a comfortable one.
2. Half a day of pre-production: question sets written, rooms chosen, running order agreed.
3. Three to four editing days across four deliverables that share a look and a music bed.
4. Grade, a library music licence, captions, and vertical cuts of each.
5. Two rounds of revision, defined in writing before the first cut goes out.

Priced off the bands above, that lands in the same place the market does for this kind of work: broadly $5,000–$12,000 for mid-range corporate video in Melbourne, with simpler single-interview jobs sitting nearer $2,500–$5,000 and campaign-level productions starting around $12,000 and climbing. Add a second location, a weekend, hired talent or real animation and you move up a band each time.

If a quote you have been given falls outside those ranges, that is not automatically wrong. It just means something in it is unusual, and you are entitled to ask which line it is. A supplier who cannot point at it is the problem, not the number.

We film across Melbourne and regional Victoria, and you can see the range of what that covers on our video production services page or read more about how we approach corporate video. If you would rather just have the line items for your own project written down, get in touch and we will put them in front of you.