Ask three production companies what a two minute brand video costs and you will get three numbers that are not in the same postcode. One quotes AED 8,000. One quotes AED 34,000. One asks you fourteen questions before quoting anything at all. The third one is usually the one worth talking to.
Video is now the single largest line item in most brand content budgets, and it is the one clients understand least. This guide gives you the real 2026 numbers across the three markets we produce in most often, explains what drives them, and shows you how to plan a year of video without discovering in month three that the budget is gone.
Per-minute pricing is a myth
The most common question we get is some version of "what do you charge per minute of finished video?" It is a fair question and it has no useful answer. A sixty second product film shot in a controlled studio with two people and no talent can cost less than a thirty second street sequence that needs a permit, a drone operator, four hours of location hold and a casting session.
Cost is set by four things, in this order:
- Shoot days. Everything scales off this. Crew, kit rental, catering, transport and location fees are all day rated. One extra day is rarely a small increment.
- Crew size. A director and camera operator is a different budget from a director, DOP, sound recordist, gaffer, producer and two assistants.
- Post production weight. A cut with colour grade and a licensed track is cheap. Motion graphics, 3D product renders, subtitle versions in two languages and a bespoke sound design pass are not.
- Deliverable count. Cutting the same footage into one hero film plus nine vertical edits costs more in the edit suite than the hero film alone, but far less than shooting nine times.
Any quote that arrives as a flat per-minute rate without asking about those four things is a guess. Treat it as one.
What a 2026 video budget actually looks like by market
These are working ranges for a professionally crewed corporate or brand video with one shoot day and in-house post production. They assume a real production company rather than a solo freelancer with a hire camera.
| Project type | Dubai / UAE | Nairobi / Kenya | London / UK |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interview or talking head, single location | AED 8,000 to 15,000 | KES 80,000 to 200,000 | GBP 3,000 to 6,000 |
| Corporate story film, 2 to 3 minutes, one shoot day | AED 12,000 to 35,000 | KES 200,000 to 500,000 | GBP 5,000 to 10,000 |
| Brand or campaign film, two shoot days, talent | AED 40,000 to 90,000 | KES 600,000 to 1,500,000 | GBP 10,000 to 25,000 |
| High production campaign, multi location | AED 100,000 and up | KES 2,000,000 and up | GBP 25,000 to 60,000 and up |
| Social content day, 10 to 15 short vertical assets | AED 9,000 to 20,000 | KES 120,000 to 350,000 | GBP 3,500 to 8,000 |
Day rates behind those numbers are worth knowing. In the UK a videographer day rate sits between GBP 400 and 1,500, and London specifically runs GBP 1,200 to 3,500 for a small crew with kit, according to BearJam's 2026 UK cost guide. In Kenya, crew fees run KES 5,000 to 30,000 per person per day and camera packages rent at KES 10,000 to 50,000 per day. Dubai sits between the two on crew but ahead on location and permit costs.
The Nairobi figures deserve a note. Kenya is genuinely cheaper on crew and kit, and the talent pool is deeper than most clients expect. It is not cheaper on post production, because colour grading and sound design at international standard are scarce skills everywhere.
The line items that do not appear on the first quote
This is where budgets break. None of these are hidden fees in a dishonest sense. They are simply things a client did not know to ask about, and a production company did not know the client wanted.
- Permits. In Dubai, the Film and TV Commission application fee is AED 520 and covers multiple days and locations in one application. A public location permit runs around AED 2,520. Shooting in a mall, a free zone or on Sheikh Zayed Road each carries its own approval path and lead time.
- Arabic and second language versions. A full Arabic version of a corporate film, with voiceover, subtitle timing and a re-laid graphics pass, is commonly quoted separately at around AED 6,000. If you are a UAE brand, budget for it from the start rather than treating it as an add-on.
- Music licensing. A library track is fine for social. A national campaign needs a commercial licence with defined territory and term. The difference is hundreds against thousands.
- Talent usage rights. A model booked for a one year regional buyout costs more than one booked for organic social. Agree the term in writing before the shoot, not after the film performs well.
- Revisions beyond the included rounds. Two rounds is standard. A committee of six stakeholders will use eleven. Decide who signs off before the edit starts.
- Vertical reformatting. A 16:9 film does not become a 9:16 Reel by cropping. It needs reframing, often a re-cut, and usually new titles.
Volume changes the maths more than quality does
Most brands overspend on one film and underspend on everything after it. That is the wrong shape. Short form video is now the highest returning content format most marketing teams run, and in industry survey data compiled by SellersCommerce around 85 percent of marketers rate it as the most effective format on social. Videos under sixty seconds earn substantially more engagement per impression than any other content type.
That performance comes from consistency, not from production value. A brand posting three decent vertical videos a week will outperform a brand posting one beautiful film a quarter, every time, on reach and on cost per acquired follower.
So plan the year, not the film. A practical annual shape for a mid-sized brand:
- One hero film per year. This is your website, your sales deck and your paid top of funnel.
- Four content days per year, one per quarter, each producing 10 to 15 short assets.
- A monthly light capture day, phone or single operator, for founder led and reactive content.
That gives you roughly 60 to 70 usable assets a year. Run the same total budget into four hero films instead and you get four assets and nine months of silence.
How to get twelve assets out of one shoot day
The difference between a productive content day and an expensive one is planning done before anyone arrives on set. What we run for clients:
- Shot list built backwards from the posts. Write the captions first. Then work out what footage each one needs. You will find three of your twelve ideas need no shoot at all.
- Wardrobe changes to fake calendar spread. Two or three outfit changes on one day means the content does not look like it was all filmed in an afternoon, because it will be posted over eight weeks.
- Shoot the vertical natively. Frame for 9:16 on set for anything destined for Reels, TikTok or Shorts. Cropping in post loses the top and bottom of every composition you carefully built.
- Capture B-roll with intent. Twenty minutes of unplanned "atmosphere" footage is twenty minutes of nothing. Ten specific cutaway shots on a list is a quarter of filler solved.
- Record audio you can reuse. A clean forty minute interview becomes six talking head clips, a podcast episode, three blog posts and a month of quote graphics.
The brief you send before you ask for a quote
Send this and your quotes become comparable. Skip it and you are comparing three different projects that happen to share a name.
- Business objective, in one sentence, with the metric that proves it worked
- Where the video will run, specifically, including aspect ratios and maximum durations
- Number of deliverables and their formats
- Locations you already have access to, and locations you would need secured
- Whether talent is your own staff or needs casting
- Languages required, including subtitle versions
- Who has final sign off, by name
- Live date, working backwards from any campaign or event it supports
- Budget range, honestly stated
That last one causes anxiety. State it anyway. A production company that knows you have AED 25,000 will design a AED 25,000 shoot. One that does not will either quote AED 80,000 and lose the job, or quote AED 15,000 and cut corners you notice on delivery.
Eight questions that separate a production partner from a camera for hire
- Who is actually on set? Ask for names and roles, not a company reel.
- Is the editor the same person who was on the shoot? Continuity between shoot and post matters more than most clients realise.
- How many revision rounds are included, and what triggers a change order?
- Who owns the raw footage after delivery? The correct answer is you.
- What is the permit and insurance position, and who carries it?
- Can I see a project that went wrong and what you did about it?
- What is your turnaround from wrap to first cut? Anything over three weeks for a simple film needs an explanation.
- Who writes the script and who signs off on it before the shoot day?
Red flags: a quote with no line items, an unwillingness to name the crew, a portfolio that is all wedding and event work presented as brand work, and any promise of "unlimited revisions", which in practice means the price already includes the cost of arguing with you.
Video is a distribution problem, not a filming problem
The most expensive video mistake is not overpaying for a shoot. It is producing good footage that nobody sees because there was no plan for where it goes, who cuts it for each platform, what the paid budget behind it is, and how it connects to the website that has to convert the traffic.
This is why we run creative production alongside strategy, social, paid and web rather than as a separate service. A film that arrives with a posting calendar, platform-native cuts, paid budget behind the two best performers and a landing page ready to catch the traffic will beat a better film delivered as a file on a hard drive. Equinode has run this across 25 plus brands on three continents over 12 plus years, and the pattern holds in every market.
If you are planning video for the next twelve months, look at the full range of what we produce, see how it fits with a UAE social strategy or the Kenyan platform mix, and tell us what you are trying to sell. We will tell you what it costs before we tell you what we would shoot.