DOCUMENTRY SHOOTS
Documentaries are typically longer-form projects that require a great deal of planning, research, and coordination.
They often involve a team of professionals, including a director, producer, cinematographer, and editor, and may take months or even years to produce.
The production process for a documentary usually involves extensive location scouting, conducting interviews, shooting footage, and editing the final product.
Due to the complexity and time required for a documentary, they tend to be more expensive than short films.
Factors to consider in making a documentary
Establishing a pricing structure for a documentary can be a challenging task.
Four Main Factors which influence cost
Storytelling
Research and pre-production
Equipment and technology
Legal and ethical considerations
Funding and distribution
Case studies
Interviews with experts
1. The level of quality desired.
The most immediate effect any budget has on film-making is the impact on quality – and by quality we mean how good the look, flow, sound and story is in your film.
With film-making, the sky is the limit in terms of the quality you can achieve. But high quality comes with a cost. The more money you can spend, the better the quality can be. Good quality can be achieved on modest budgets, but it takes some thought and careful planning.
Don’t be put off if your budget is tiny. You can make a moving, authentic film on a low budget. It’s just unlikely to have the polished feel of a higher-end professional production. But a professional, polished feel may not be what you, or your audience, needs.
If you do want a professional feel to your film, you need to hire professionals, Starlite Film Production we will bring equipment and expertise that enhance the visual and audio quality and the storytelling quality.
2. The scope and scale of your story: how many locations, how many events, how many people?
The more locations you want to film, the more expensive the film will be. The more days you want to film over, the more expensive the film will be. The more people or events you want included in the film, the more expensive the film will be.
Principal filming is costed per day or per half day. It costs around $1200- $3000 or more to hire the smallest professional film crew per day. The more cameras, crew and equipment your story requires, the more expensive the daily filming costs will be. You also will be expected to pay for the crew to travel to locations. So the more locations and events featured adds up to more travel hours and more film days, which adds to the cost.
Generally speaking, the more people and places featured in a film, the more screen time is needed establishing and introducing them, and the more editorial finesse is required to weave them into the story. The more demanding your storyline, the more time will need to be spent in editing to stitch it all together. Editing and post-production, like filming, is usually costed by the day, and can cost from $500 to $1500 per day, depending on the expertise you need. Editing and post-production is the longest part of film production.
Many more hours are put into editing the film than filming it, so consider carefully how complex your story and editing needs are. You should bank on needing at least one day of editing/post-production per finished minute of film.
Note that economies of scale do apply in film-making. It can sometimes be as time intensive to produce a short film 2 or 3 minutes long, particularly if there is a lot of content to be edited down, as it is to produce a 10 minute piece.
To reduce production costs, consider filming your short film over one or a few days in the one location, with a very simple storyline or subject. Simplicity is often the key to the best storytelling, so a small budget can help make a virtue out of necessity.
How much third party material you want.
If you are banking on using a favorite piece of music, or a piece of existing film footage, or still photographs you found on the web, you will need to pay for the rights to use them.
Third-party rights are expensive. Music and film footage is costed by the second, and photographs per image. Costs vary extremely according to how well-known the content you want to use is, and where and to whom you want to show it.
The more popular or well-known the content, and the more people you want to watch your film, the more expensive the rights will be.
A few seconds of use or a few images for even a modest film quickly adds up to thousands of dollars.
And be warned – there are often multiple copyright owners for music and film footage, which means you may have to pay the amount out multiple times per artwork.
To reduce costs, Starlite Film Production will find free content from creative common sources
4. The level of editorial control you need.
Few people factor in the process of review and amendment, yet it is one of the major time investments in a short documentary film. Because documentaries attempt to catch a reality, they don’t always work easily to a script. You cannot plan what people will say or do. This is one of the exciting aspects of working in documentary.
It also makes it dangerous.
The content captured needs to be reviewed and evaluated and turned into a story which fits the original need, and also matches what was learnt through the filming process.
The cheapest way to work through the review process is to treat your film as an artistic commission, in which you articulate what is needed at the beginning, and you leave it up to the crew and director of Starlite film Production to produce the creative output.
The most expensive way to work through reviews is to request the control to make creative changes at any point in the production. This makes you, effectively, the director, and you direct the film making team to make the changes you require. Starlite Film Production crew will often charge themselves out at an hourly rate if this is the stipulated requirement – meaning the more changes you want, the more it will cost you.
At Starlite Film Production we do understand that it’s a complex area to deal with.
Don’t be put off if your budget is tiny
Achieving high quality in film-making is an unlimited pursuit, but it does require a significant investment.
A low budget shouldn’t discourage you from creating an emotionally compelling and genuine film.
Film Budget Planning:
Break your script into pages per day
The first step of formulating a film production budget is deciding how many pages you plan to shoot for each scheduled production day.
Prioritize difficult scenes
Dialogue is typically easy to shoot. Effects-heavy sequences are not.
PRO TIP
Complex sequences are often written in different ways.
One writer may simply say, “Frederick transforms into a wolf,” while another may describe each stage of that transformation in great detail for pages.
Adjust your estimate accordingly. When there is little detail, treat the sequence as longer than the page count.
Film for actors
Every film needs a leading woman (and occasionally a man). Cast Members are one of the first elements you categorize on your script breakdown template.
Film Budgeting for your extras
Count background actor days by doing a count of where they’re featured on your script breakdown sheet, with each strip multiplied by the number of actors.
If you need 30 actors for a 1 page scene, that will equal 30 background actor days.
PRO TIP
If your script totals 150 background actor days on your script breakdown template and your background actors are paid $100/day, multiply 150 by $100 for a line-item total of $15,000.
In a nutshell
A question we often get asked is ‘I want to make a simple 5 minute film about X. How much would that cost?’
Our Answer? ‘It depends’
For organisational and online video production, a common costing rule of thumb is often said to be ‘$1000 for every finished minute of video’. However, we find this costing rule to be wrong more often than it is right, possibly because the rule seems to have been around for aeons.
If you are looking to produce a documentary film on a low budget, it’s important to consider the cost per finished minute. Typically, the cheapest starting point for costing is around $1000 per finished minute. However, we recommend using $2000 – $4000 per finished minute as a beginning point or a rough estimate. Keep in mind that even a seemingly simple film may end up costing more than expected.
We outlined various factors that affect the cost of film-making. We focused on four key elements and offered some suggestions on how to minimize expenses if you are working with a limited budget. The information provided here can be helpful in understanding why film-making can be costly and how to make the most of your resources but the trick is to not be discouraged.
We’re here to help you every step of the way.