I recently attended a deposition of an expert witness in a patent lawsuit. The depo was in a pleasant Southern university town where the median price of a detached house is $250,000.
In addition to be transcribed by an in-person court reporter, the deposition was being videotaped. I learned that the videographer’s fee was $200 for the first hour and $100 for each subsequent hour. A federal court deposition is typically 7 hours on the record and about 10 hours of total time including breaks. Thus the videography fee would be $1,100 for the day.
This is a job that requires no specific education (and certainly not a college degree). The videographer was using the following capital equipment:
- Sony MiniDV (tape!) camcorder (since nobody will ever look at this stuff, it is good if it goes straight to an inexpensive yet durable medium that can be tossed into a file cabinet and forgotten); about $225 for a “prosumer” model on eBay right now
- box of MiniDV tapes ($2 each; good for 1.5 hours)
- RadioShack four-channel mixer
- three lav mics plus cables
- RCA-to-stereo-1/8″ cord
- Manfrotto tripod
- pop-out background
- stereo headphones for monitoring the audio
I inquired and learned that, unlike a wedding photographer, the guy did not bring a backup camera to the job. If the camera had failed he said that he would “go to a store and buy a new camera.” Thus the total cost to get into this business would be under $1,000.
The actual work done by this videographer occupied about 1.5 hours during the 10-hour period. He had to set the camera on the tripod, mic up two lawyers and the witness, test and set levels on the mixer, change tapes four times, occasionally make an announcement, and pack up the gear. We were blessed with 50 Mbps symmetric WiFi in the hotel conference room (part of the university). He had brought a tablet computer and keyboard and was surfing the Web for the remaining 8.5 hours (while monitoring audio quality through the headphones and occasionally glancing at the video monitor on the camcorder).
The downside of the work is that it can be tough to be a solo practitioner. “Lawyers are lazy so they just want to be able to call one number and have someone show up,” said an attorney. “Maybe you could do it in a big city or Silicon Valley.” Thus it is typical for a middleman(woman) to take a cut. On the other hand, if the other side wants a copy of the videos it might be exactly the same price, i.e., another $1,100. And if there is a third party involved in the case? Another $1,100.
Related:
Could almost sense you smiling as you wrote this, so how does this contribute to the GDP?
Questions you never put to this $1,100-a day young entrepreneur in this pleasant Southern University town:
• how many hours a week, on average, has he been so employed
• how big is his competition
• how much does it cost to market his services and schmooze the lawyers
• how many years/ months could he go on at his current utilization, thus profitability, levels.
ianf: I did ask about how much work there was and he said that, for most of the year, he could be as busy as he wants to be (depositions nearly every weekday). He didn’t say that competition or marketing costs were an issue, but sometimes he has to drive pretty far from home in order to attend a deposition (thus making this a potentially better job in a big city).
Why does whoever provides the court reporter not also provide a videographer? That seems to me like a more demanding job, and, while the pay is decent, it’s not a $1100 per day…