Start a videography business in Canada: no videography licence to hold, but business registration, GST/HST at $30,000, music sync licensing for delivered video, contracts that settle raw footage and revisions, and a Transport Canada drone certificate if you fly.
Applies in: across Canada
There is no videography licence in Canada. No province runs a videographer register, no exam qualifies you, and no certificate is required before you take a booking. The work that actually needs paperwork sits around the edges of the camera: the business registration, the tax registration, the music in the soundtrack, and the drone if you fly one. A videography business is a service business that sells a finished video, and the disputes that sink new videographers are almost never about camera skill. They are about music rights, raw footage, revision rounds, and a drone shot that was promised before anyone checked the airspace.
The work breaks into five layers: the business itself (registration, tax, insurance, contracts), the lane you sell first (weddings, corporate, real estate, or events), the music (cleared for a delivered video, not just for playing), the drone add-on (a Transport Canada certificate, not a videography credential), and the kit and backup discipline that keeps a shoot from becoming a reshoot. Get the first four right and the camera work gets to speak for itself.
Weddings, corporate work, real estate video, and event coverage look like one job — pointing a camera at people doing something — but they are four different businesses. A wedding client buys a day: early access, a timeline that bends around a ceremony, a same-week teaser, and a film the couple will watch for decades. A corporate client buys reliability: a brand-safe edit, a deadline tied to a launch or a conference, captions, and an invoice with a GST/HST number. A real estate client buys speed: a property filmed, edited, and delivered in days, often with stills from the same visit. An event client buys coverage: long hours, fast turnaround, and footage that works on social the same night.
Each lane has a different client, a different turnaround, and a different way of finding the next booking. Weddings come from planners, photographers, and venues. Corporate work comes from marketing managers and agencies. Real estate comes from agents and brokerages. Pick the lane whose clients you can already reach, and sell only that lane until you have a reel, testimonials, and repeat bookings in it. A videographer who advertises all four lanes on day one usually books none of them well, because no reel can prove four different kinds of work at once.
The registration steps are the same as for any Canadian service business:
Sole proprietorship is the usual starting structure for a solo videographer. Incorporation becomes worth discussing with an accountant once income, liability, or hiring a second shooter makes the extra filings pay for themselves — not on day one.
Video fees are taxable supplies. You must register for GST/HST once your taxable supplies pass $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters. Below that threshold you are a small supplier and registration is optional, but many videographers register early for two practical reasons: corporate and real estate clients expect a GST/HST number on an invoice, and registration lets you claim input tax credits on cameras, lenses, lighting, and editing software.
In Quebec, GST/HST registration through the CRA sits alongside QST registration through Revenu Québec — the two are separate filings. Track revenue from the first shoot, not from the first time you think about tax: the threshold is measured on revenue before expenses, and a videographer who buys a full camera package in year one can cross $30,000 in bookings while still feeling broke.
This is the part most new videographers get wrong, so take it slowly. Two different rights questions are involved in a soundtrack, and they are easy to confuse because both involve the same song:
The practical consequence is simple: build your soundtracks from licensed stock music libraries, where the licence for use in a client video is part of the subscription, and keep a record of the licence for every track you deliver. A client who insists on a commercial track needs to understand that the sync licence is a separate permission, often a slow and expensive one, and your contract should say who is responsible for obtaining it and what happens to the delivery date if it does not arrive. A video taken down for a music claim is not a creative failure; it is a licensing failure that was decided at the edit, weeks before anyone watched it.
One related trap: music recorded live at the event is not automatically cleared either. A band playing a cover at a wedding is performing someone else's song, and a video that captures that performance and distributes it online raises the same synchronization question as a track laid over the edit. Flag it in the contract, and do not promise a client that the live audio will survive the edit unchanged.
Aerial footage is the add-on clients ask for first and the one most likely to be promised before it is checked. Transport Canada's rules are straightforward, and they do not have a separate commercial category: the same certificates cover paid work and recreational flying.
Do not sell the drone as a separate line item until you hold the certificate the location requires. A client who booked aerial footage and gets a ground-only video on the day has a contract dispute, not a weather problem.
A videography contract is short, and the disputes it prevents are always the same six. Put all six in writing before any deposit moves:
If the shoot involves a venue, check the venue's own rules before the day: some venues restrict tripods, lighting, drones, or filming in certain rooms, and a venue rule discovered on arrival is a shoot problem, not a venue problem.
A first paid shoot needs less kit than the rigs you see online: a camera that shoots clean video in low light, a lens or two that cover the room, audio that is recorded separately from the camera when it matters, a tripod or gimbal, and lighting you can carry. The part that is not optional is the backup. Dual card slots or a second recorder, spare batteries, spare memory cards, and a backup audio source turn a failure into a thirty-second pause. One failed card with no backup ends a shoot and ends the referral that shoot would have produced.
Audio is where new videographers lose the most work, because bad audio is the first thing a client notices and the last thing a camera upgrade fixes. A lavalier on the speaker, a recorder on the podium, or a feed from the venue's sound system beats any on-camera microphone, and it costs less than a lens. Rent before you buy at the top end: cinema lenses, large lighting packages, and a second camera body rent by the day, and renting them for the occasional large shoot beats financing a warehouse of gear for shoots you have not booked yet. Buy the kit you use every week; rent the kit you use twice a year.
The first clients come from rooms, not from ads. Offer a short film for a local business, a community event, or a real estate agent's next listing, and leave with a finished piece the client can post the same week — thirty seconds of a real business, well shot and well cut, beats any showreel assembled from unpaid tests. Planners, photographers, and agents refer the videographers they have seen work a room, so one good wedding or one good listing produces the next three inquiries if you ask for the referral on the day, while the work is still fresh.
Price the first shoots to learn, not to maximize: a flat fee per project is easier to sell than a day rate when the client does not yet know how long the edit will take, and a clear package (full film plus teaser, or listing video plus stills) sells better than an open-ended quote. Raise the fee when the calendar fills, not when you feel ready — a full calendar is the market telling you the price is too low.
There is no single startup figure worth quoting, because the range is set by the lane and the kit you already own. A shooter with a capable camera and a laptop can take a first corporate interview for the cost of registration, insurance, and a music-library subscription. A wedding videographer buying cameras, audio, lighting, and a backup rig faces a larger outlay before the first booking. The expensive mistake is not the gear; it is financing a full rig before the lane is proven, or delivering a video whose music licence was never sorted and watching it come down. Spend first on the paperwork, the backup, and the music licence, and let booked shoots pay for the upgrades.
Related: how to start a photography business in Canada (the stills side of the same shoot, and the same client rooms), how to start a drone business in Canada (the full drone rules behind the aerial add-on), how to start a DJ business in Canada (the performance-licensing side of the same music question), and how to start an event planning business in Canada (the planner who books the videographer).
No. Videography is not a regulated trade, and no province requires a videography certificate before you can take a booking. The paperwork that does apply is the ordinary business kind: provincial business name registration if you trade under a name other than your own, a municipal business licence where your city requires one, and a CRA business number. The licences that trip up new videographers are not videography licences at all — they are the drone certificate if you fly, and the music licensing for the soundtrack of a delivered video.
If the drone weighs 250 grams or more, yes — in Transport Canada's terms, a pilot certificate, not a licence. A Basic Operations certificate covers flights in uncontrolled airspace, at least 30 metres from bystanders, in visual line of sight. An Advanced Operations certificate covers controlled airspace, flights closer than 30 metres to bystanders or over them, and flights near airports and heliports, and it requires an in-person flight review on top of the exam. The drone itself must also be registered with Transport Canada and marked with its registration number. There is no separate commercial drone licence: the same certificates cover paid work. Check the airspace for every shoot location before you promise a client aerial footage.
Not on the strength of a streaming subscription or a performance licence. Pairing music with moving images needs a synchronization licence from the people who hold the rights in the song, and a performance licence from SOCAN and Re:Sound covers playing music to a room, not embedding it in a video you deliver. That is why most videographers build their soundtracks from licensed stock music libraries, where the licence for use in a client video is part of the subscription, and keep a record of the licence for every track they deliver. If a client insists on a commercial track, the client needs to understand that the sync licence is a separate permission to obtain, and your contract should say who is responsible for it.
Video fees are taxable supplies, so they count toward the $30,000 threshold. You must register for GST/HST once your taxable supplies pass $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters. Below that you are a small supplier and registration is optional. Many videographers register early anyway, because corporate and real estate clients expect a GST/HST number on an invoice, and registration lets you claim input tax credits on cameras, lenses, and software. In Quebec, register for QST separately through Revenu Québec.
Whatever your contract says, which is why the contract has to say it. The usual videographer position is that the client buys the finished, edited video, while the raw footage stays with the videographer unless a raw-footage package is bought separately. The opposite arrangement also exists, and either one is fine as long as it is written down before the shoot. The same section should settle how many revision rounds are included, what counts as a revision versus a new edit, how long you keep the project files, and what happens if the client asks for a re-edit a year later.
For commercial work, get them. A wedding couple can consent for their own day, but a corporate shoot with identifiable employees, customers, or members of the public is a different situation, and a venue full of guests is different again. A short written release that names the project, the uses (the client's website, social channels, advertising), and the time period costs nothing at the shoot and prevents the one dispute that can pull a finished video offline: a person in it who never agreed to be in it. For anyone under 18, the release comes from a parent or guardian.