There is no formula to follow in hiring a videographer. Some videographers have only finished high school but they are so good and skilled, it doesn’t really matter that they don’t hold a college degree.
Others are priced high because of their educational attainment; because they hold a certain degree from a certain college and that should be reason enough for them to charge higher. The reasons vary and there’s only one thing you can do if you want to get a reasonable price for a videographer you are going to hire: interview them.
Big video production companies would naturally require their videographers to have reached a certain university degree. Even two years in college would make a difference in your resume. But if you’re working as a freelancer, most of your clients don’t really care whether you have finished engineering, biology, mathematics, or animation.
They will judge you based on your portfolio and the skills they see in you. They will judge you based on how you communicate with them and your understanding of the goals they want to accomplish through the video.
While some clients are naturally curious about what courses a videographer takes in order to enter this field, do not feel humiliated or defensive when they ask about your college or university life. They simply want to know what attracts you to videography.
There are, however, of course, certain skills that you learn from going to school. Some videographers know how to write a script if they took up mass communication or filmmaking. This means they will be able to direct a video production without the need for a separate scriptwriter or director.
If your videographer took up theater or film in college, he will have the essential knowledge on how production should go about.
When meeting your videographer for the first time, you can ask him directly if he took up a course related to videography. That is if things like these matter to you. That first meeting will tell a lot about the videographer and his skills and experience in the industry. Your impression of him during that meeting will be your guide in cutting a deal and signing a contract with him.
The sage advice you will get from us when it comes to the importance of academic backgrounds in hiring videographers is this: mind the skill before the academics. Videography is a special skill.
And though you can learn its basics from school, what your professors won’t be able to teach you is that intuition of when a special moment is about to take. That one takes years of experience to hone.