{"course":{"slug":"ai-video","title":"Video with AI","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-video","level":"intermediate","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"quoting-in-shots","title":"Price the thing that actually costs money","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-video/quoting-in-shots","position":65,"of":66,"minutes":9,"answer":"The cost driver in generative video is generations discarded rather than hours worked.","keyIdea":"The cost driver in generative video is generations discarded rather than hours worked, so a quote expressed in shots with a stated attempt allowance puts the real variable where the client can see it and decide about it."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Why hourly rates fail here\n\nAn hourly rate hides the cost driver from both sides. The client asks for the twelfth version of shot nine without knowing that each version costs money and attention; you absorb it, or you have an awkward conversation about hours that does not describe what actually happened.\n\nThe honest unit is the shot, and the honest variable is attempts.\n\n## The shape of a quote\n\n> **Thirty shots**, up to **four attempts** included per shot.\n> Further revisions billed at **X per shot**.\n> Includes: shot list, animatic, generation, edit, grade, sound, one delivery format.\n> Excludes: music licensing, voice talent, additional delivery formats.\n> Timeline: animatic in five days; approval required before final generation.\n\nSix lines. Everything a dispute would later be about is in them.\n\nThe attempt allowance is the important one, and it is not a restriction; it is information. It tells the client that attempts are the cost, which is a fact about the medium they have no way of knowing.\n\n## Pricing the shot\n\nBuild the number from your own measurements rather than from a rate card:\n\n- **Generation cost.** Cost per generation times your measured takes-per-shot. You have both numbers from the previous lessons.\n- **Still preparation.** Making and repairing the first frame, which is often longer than the generation.\n- **Edit share.** Total edit time divided by shot count.\n- **Overhead and margin.**\n\nThen sanity-check against what the work is worth to the client rather than what it cost you. A shot that saves a location shoot is worth what the location shoot would have cost, not what your credits cost.\n\n## The clauses that prevent arguments\n\nFive things worth writing down, each of which corresponds to a real dispute:\n\n**Approval gates.** \"Final generation begins after written approval of the animatic. Structural changes after that point are billed per shot.\" Without this you will re-generate a finished piece for free.\n\n**What a revision means.** Distinguish a *note* (make shot nine warmer, a grade, free) from a *re-shoot* (make shot nine a close-up, a new generation, billed). Clients do not know these are different and will not guess.\n\n**Who supplies what.** Logos as vectors, products as photographs or physical items, brand fonts with their licence, any real person's written consent. Late supply is the most common cause of a missed deadline and it is rarely your fault.\n\n**Consent and likeness.** \"The client warrants that written consent has been obtained for any real person's likeness or voice supplied to us.\" This is not you giving legal advice; it is you declining to be the party who did not ask.\n\n**Disclosure.** State that generated content will carry a visible label, and that platform and legal requirements may compel it. Put it in the quote so nobody is surprised at delivery.\n\n## Saying no early\n\nThe most valuable professional act in this subject is telling a client on day one that a shot is not achievable.\n\nFrom the limits lesson: a specific real product as a generated hero, a character-driven dialogue scene across many shots, precise physical demonstration with hands, anything that will be scrutinised frame by frame. For all of those, a small live shoot, 2D animation or motion graphics is faster, cheaper and better.\n\nBeing the person who says this on day one is worth considerably more than being the person who can drive the tool and discovers it on day fourteen with the deadline in sight. It also wins work, because it reads as expertise rather than as reluctance.\n\n## What to do when they ask for a rush\n\nGeneration time is queue time, and queue time is not something you control. A rush means paying for a faster tier, running more takes in parallel, or accepting fewer attempts per shot.\n\nOffer the trade explicitly: \"We can deliver in three days at two attempts per shot rather than four, which raises the chance that some shots are merely acceptable.\" That is an honest statement about the medium and it lets the client choose.\n\n## Keep the record with the quote\n\nWhen the project ends, put the actual numbers next to the quoted ones: shots delivered, takes used, hours spent. After three projects that file is the most accurate pricing tool you will ever own, and it is more useful than any published rate card because it is about your work at your hit rate.\n\n---\n\nToday: rewrite your last quote in shots with an attempt allowance, and see how differently it reads."},"check":{"question":"Why does stating an attempt allowance per shot protect both the freelancer and the client, rather than only the freelancer?","options":[{"text":"It caps the freelancer's exposure to unlimited revisions while giving the client a contractual minimum number of takes to expect.","correct":false,"tempting":"Describes the commercial effect on both parties without touching what the client learns from it."},{"text":"It converts a variable cost into a fixed one, so both parties can plan against a known figure rather than an open-ended one.","correct":false,"tempting":"The cost is only fixed within the allowance; beyond it the variability returns, which is the point of stating it."},{"text":"It tells the client that attempts are the cost driver, which is a fact about the medium they otherwise have no way of knowing before asking for a twelfth version.","correct":true},{"text":"It establishes a per-shot price that can be applied consistently to later work, so a client commissioning a second project can budget from the first one's terms without renegotiating the rate.","correct":false,"tempting":"A real convenience of per-shot pricing that concerns future projects rather than what the allowance communicates in this one."}]},"prev":{"slug":"subscription-or-top-up","title":"The arithmetic nobody does before subscribing","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-video/subscription-or-top-up"},"next":{"slug":"the-project-record","title":"What to keep, and the day it saves you","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-video/the-project-record"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Price the thing that actually costs money', in Video with AI. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-video/quoting-in-shots (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Price the thing that actually costs money","courseTitle":"Video with AI","module":{"index":7,"slug":"running-the-job","title":"Money, clients and running the job"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"The cost driver in generative video is generations discarded rather than hours worked, so a quote expressed in shots with a stated attempt allowance puts the real variable where the client can see it and decide about it.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"why-hourly-rates-fail-here","runs":[{"text":"Why hourly rates fail here"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"An hourly rate hides the cost driver from both sides. 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Everything a dispute would later be about is in them."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The attempt allowance is the important one, and it is not a restriction; it is information. It tells the client that attempts are the cost, which is a fact about the medium they have no way of knowing."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"pricing-the-shot","runs":[{"text":"Pricing the shot"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Build the number from your own measurements rather than from a rate card:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Generation cost.","b":true},{"text":" Cost per generation times your measured takes-per-shot. 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