I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but it doesn't chime with my experience of commissioning both several times for more than one label. Adrian's rate is slightly higher, as befits his extensive experience and bankable name, but it's certainly not "over three times" or anywhere even slightly close.domino harvey wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:57 pmMartin’s rate is over three times what Ellinger et al accept from Kino Lorber.
Although, that said, I know that one of my favourite commentators no longer takes on commissions because the going rate is much less than it was fifteen years ago. But the going rate is much less for pretty much everything to do with extras. This is partly thanks to technology (when I started in 2006, I was dealing with professional tape formats like Digibeta, so was dependent on facilities houses with the necessary equipment; now, it's all ProRes files that can be handled directly by me at home), but also because physical-media profit margins are now so thin that it's frankly a miracle that extras still get commissioned at all - although of course they have to be because barebones discs got completely clobbered by streaming services (and quite rightly).
I'm fascinated by the way that commentaries continue to be fetishised as the ultimate extra - we recently had someone in another thread complaining that a director didn't record a commentary instead of a lengthy (40-minute-plus) interview, but I'd be very surprised if he hadn't been offered the choice and preferred the interview. And I've offered people a similar choice and found them similarly picking a format where they'd have more control over the timing - hell, I did this myself on The Shop on the High Street (see above) and may yet do it on an upcoming Second Run release if I ultimately don't think that I can fill an entire commentary track to my satisfaction. Frank Krutnik and Neil Sinyard tend to favour either a video piece or a selected-scene commentary (or, in Krutnik's case on more than one occasion, both), and that's fine - I'd honestly prefer someone to deliver consistently high-quality content for 40-50 minutes than listen to them stretch the same material over 100 minutes.tenia wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:19 amBut if audio commentaries are getting revived thanks to the hundreds annual releases of Kino, isn't it also a question of supply vs demand question ? It's bound to require more people to cover all those, thus opening the market for more people and "massify" it a bit, hence the expectable lower rates. It's not always a question of qualifications, but it's easier to maintain high rates when it's "either you" or nothing since the label won't have a lever for negociation.