What does a corporate video cost in Belgium? What actually drives the price

Why quotes for the same brief differ by a factor of five

Ask three Belgian producers for a corporate video and you can get €2,500, €9,000 and €25,000 for what looks like the same request. Nobody is necessarily lying. They are quoting three different things: someone filming for a day and handing over an edit, someone building a considered film, and someone producing a set of assets designed to run as advertising.

The confusion comes from the word video. It names an object, and objects seem comparable. But what decides whether you get enquiries is not the file; it is the message, the material and the media behind it. Compare only the file and you will buy the cheapest one, then wonder why nothing happened.

So force the quotes onto the same terms before you compare them. How many shooting days, how many finished deliverables, in which formats and languages, how many revision rounds, who writes the script, who owns the raw footage. Once that is on paper, the differences stop looking mysterious.

Strategy and script: the cheapest part, and the part that decides everything

The work that changes results most happens before anyone touches a camera. Who exactly is this aimed at. What problem do they already have. What is the offer, and why would somebody respond to it this week rather than think about it. What is the single message, and what proof supports it. That is a couple of days of thinking and writing, and it is a small share of most budgets.

Skip it and you get what we would politely call an image film. Nice drone shot, sincere managing director, a warm word about craftsmanship, no clear proposition. It photographs well and it sells nothing, because there is nothing in it for the viewer to act on.

It also protects the rest of the spend. A script decides how many locations you need, how many people appear, whether motion design is required and how many deliverables the shoot can yield. Producers who quote without a script are guessing at the day, which is exactly how a shoot ends up over-scoped in the wrong places and short of the shots that actually matter.

⚠️ If a quote contains no line for strategy or scripting, someone is going to improvise on the day. That is the expensive option.

The shooting day: half day versus full day

A shooting day is the most visible cost line and the most misunderstood one. A half day is not half the work. Crew, equipment, travel and set-up happen either way, so the fixed part of the cost barely moves while your available filming time drops by more than half.

That has a direct consequence for value. Booking a half day to save money usually means the crew is packing up as the light gets good, and the shots you cut from the plan are the flexible extras: the alternative openings, the detail shots, the second interview. In other words, exactly the material that would have given you variations to test later.

So a well-planned full day is usually the better purchase per usable asset. A half day only wins when the brief genuinely is small: one interview, one location, one message.

The single biggest lever: deliverables per shoot

Here is the number almost nobody asks about. Not what the shoot costs, but how many finished pieces come out of it. One shoot can produce one film, or it can produce one main film plus a set of shorter cuts, several alternative openings, vertical versions for stories and reels, subtitled variants and a handful of standalone clips for retargeting.

Divide the same production cost by one deliverable or by fifteen and you get two very different businesses. This is why we plan the asset list before the shoot day, not after it. If you know in advance that you need four hooks against one body, you shoot four openings while everyone is already on location, which costs minutes. Going back for them later costs another day.

There is a limit worth respecting. Fifteen assets cut from one thin idea are still one thin idea, and audiences fatigue on the underlying concept, not just the edit. Volume helps when the variations are genuinely different arguments; it does nothing when they are the same video trimmed five ways.

• →Main film, and shorter cuts derived from it
• →Multiple openings against the same body, for hook testing
• →Vertical and square formats per placement, not one crop for everything
• →Subtitled versions, per language, burned in rather than platform-generated
• →Standalone clips aimed at people who watched but did not act

Cast, locations, permits and post-production

Professional actors add cost per shooting day and buy you reliability: they hit the line, they take direction, and the schedule holds. Your own people are usually cheaper and, in our experience of what tends to convert, often more persuasive, because a customer talking about a real problem or a foreman explaining what goes wrong on site carries a credibility no casting can fake. The trade-off is time on the day, since non-actors need more takes and better direction.

Locations behave the same way. Your own premises are cheap and controllable. A client's site, a public space or a city centre brings travel, waiting, weather, noise and sometimes permits, which differ per municipality. Belgian distances are short, but a crew crossing the country twice in a day is paying for the road rather than the footage.

Then post-production, which is where budgets quietly move. An edit is a fixed job; motion design, animated text, graphics explaining a process, voice-over, music licensing, colour and sound are optional and each one has a reason to exist or not. Subtitles and versioning per placement are the least glamorous line in the quote and among the most valuable, because they decide whether your video works with the sound off, in two languages, in three formats.

A video as an object versus a video inside a system

There are two ways to buy video, priced differently because they are different products. The first is an object: you pay, you receive a file, you post it, and what happens next is your problem. The second is part of an acquisition system: strategy, video, media budget, tracking, follow-up and daily optimisation, judged on leads, appointments and customers.

The second costs more up front and is the only one with a measurable return, because it has media behind it and a number at the end. A €3,000 video that nobody sees produces nothing, and its cost per lead is undefined. A larger production running against a real budget produces a cost per enquiry you can compare, improve and scale. That is why we sell leads and customers rather than videos, and why the media budget belongs in the same conversation as the production.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable conclusion. The cheapest video is usually the most expensive per lead, because the only number that ever gets cheap is the invoice. Divide production plus media by the enquiries it generated and the ranking of quotes often reverses completely. Ask any producer, including us, that question: not what does the video cost, but what will a lead cost once it is running, and how will we know.

⚠️ We have delivered projects from €7,000 to €30,000, depending on the objective, the number of videos and the size of the advertising budget. Where a project sits in that range depends on the brief, not on a package.

Frequently asked questions

Why will you not simply give me a price per video?

Because the same words describe a one-day interview shoot and a set of fifteen advertising assets, and quoting one number for both would mislead you. What we can do quickly is scope the brief: objective, number of deliverables, languages, locations, and the media budget behind it. That produces a real figure instead of a placeholder.

How long does a corporate video project take in Belgium?

For a typical project, expect a few weeks from first conversation to finished deliverables: strategy and script, then the shoot, then editing and revision rounds. Multiple locations, actors, permits or heavy motion design extend that. Rushing the script to shoot sooner is the one shortcut that reliably costs more later.

Are we better off using our own staff instead of actors?

Often, yes. Real staff and real customers carry credibility that scripted delivery does not, and for lead generation credibility usually beats polish. Budget a little more time on the day, because non-actors need more takes and clearer direction.

Do we own the footage and can we reuse it later?

Agree this in writing before the shoot, because practice differs per producer. Ownership of the raw footage, usage rights for any actors or music, and the right to recut material later all have real value if you plan to keep advertising. Reusing existing footage for new hooks is far cheaper than shooting again.

Is video production a deductible business cost in Belgium?

Video production and advertising are normally treated as business costs, with VAT recoverable if you have a VAT-liable activity. How it is booked, as a cost or as an investment amortised over time, depends on the project. Your accountant should confirm the treatment for your situation.