The question of "how much do I charge for travel time" came up on Creative Cow. My favourite answer was (and I'm paraphrasing here) "I charge for travel time as much as I charge for shooting time. If I wasn't travelling, I'd be shooting. Why should I discount?"
Probably best to itemise the things that make up the price (so they know that a lot of stuff went into it), but just give one single price for the lot rather than a price for each task, otherwise you'll have them haggling over how much you are trying to charge for each task. In the minds of the bill payers, they may know they can't shoot video, so they'll leave your price alone on that one, but "anyone can copy files, dub a tape, drive a car" etc so they may question them if they can see what you are charging for them. Single price.
- videography (half day, full day etc)
- logging
- light hire
- mic hire
- travel
- tape dubbing (call it "transfers" or "tape backups", otherwise they'll question why they are paying for it)
- freight/postage/handling
$Your Price
It's possible the company has an employee who makes corporate videos but can't/won't travel to this location but is entirely capable of editing what you have shot. Alternatively, they have no editor. The boss's nephew is on holidays and has iMovie on his MacBook and they're screwing you out of a job. Or maybe they had a camera and it's in for repair, or some tightwad doesn't want to buy a new camera.
See if you can contact the editor directly just to nail down what they want to work with. Don't mention dubbing or anything, just ask what he wants. Remember though they may not be authorised to request anything that could incur additional expenditure so keep it simple.
Mind you, I'm not in business so I probably have NFI. I'm the guy you'd be sending the tapes to if you did work for my employer.
Outside shooters can make me look affordable because then the bosses realise how much time and effort go into video and how much it would cost if it all went to an outside company. Do a good job and the editor (who might swing a camera in head office but nowhere else) will sing your praises and next time someone asks him for advice on video, he'll remember your name. As long as you're not outrageously expensive, he won't care what you charge if the material is good, because that makes his job easy and makes him look good, too.
