Remember when I was blessed enough to work with an insanely talented group of musicians and performers for Theoretics’ “Higher” music video?
They came back and asked me to direct their next music video, “Jekyll & Hyde” and I’m thrilled. This song is funky, deep and unforgettable. Their entire debut album is phenomenal but this track really shines when performed live.
The band is using Kickstarter to raise money for the video budget (a very modest $5,000). Here’s the video! “Like” it on facebook, send the link to anyone who may dig it, and get excited for the visual and auditory feast to come!
Modest Budget, You say?
For those of you who have been asking, “how on earth can a music video cost as much as $5,000??” I have prepared a rough cost breakdown as follows:
Estimated days of shooting required: 4 days
Actual costs based on specific local vendors, many of whom are offering greatly discounted rates:
- Producer fee: $500-1000/day
- Director fee: $500-1000/day
- Camera operator: $500/day
- Camera equipment rental: $150-$750/day
- Key grip + assistant + lighting gear: $1000/day
- Wardrobe for 7-10 characters: estimated $20-$200/day per character
- City permits: $25-$1000/day (depending on the city, whether roads need to be closed, and other factors)
- Props/furniture rental: estimated $500
- Possible set construction: $50-200
Estimated days of post-production required: 2-3 days
- Editor fee: $500/day
- Redundant Hard disk archive: $200
- Visual FX designer fee: $75-$150/hour
- Colorist fee: $100/hour
Costs not included above:
- Band member compensation
- Additional actors and extras
- Marketing hours
- Catering (food) for 4 days
- Donor perks:
- T-shirts
- Buttons
- Web hosting
- Graphic design
- Shipping
- (etc…)
Recent music video budgets:
- Macklemore “Wings”: $18,269 (2011)
- Michael Jackson “Beat It”: $150,000 (1983)
- Average studio music video budget: $200,000 – $500,000 (2010)
Obviously, $5,000 falls far short of what we would need to hire a mostly-professional crew (the lighting/grip truck rental alone would almost use the entire budget). I’m good at being resourceful, maximizing available resources and wearing multiple hats to bring budgets down, but that doesn’t mean that making a music video, short film or TV pilot is cheap.
Have a rebuttal, input or correction? Leave a comment below and let’s discuss this.
Update: Theoretics raised around $5500 via Kickstarter. Once Kickstarter and Amazon Payments had taken their respective cuts we had right about $5000 to work with and the music video turned out well.
3 Comments
I can’t wait for the day when I can spend $5k on a music video! I’m not going to get into specifics of how I’ve cut corners or stretched the budget in the past. But I will say with my past in commercial production $5k can and will go VERY quickly…..on he first day. Anybody who doesn’t see where the money goes, see if they’ll come out to set for a day. I’ve never had a naysayer of where the budget is going, come out to set and still wonder by the end of the day. It’s always he opposite.
Have fun with the dough Garret!
Ha, we’ll see if the fans will put it up!
But yeah, $5k is nothing, but it’s enough to get something respectable out there if the director, producer, DP, editor, VFX artist and colorist are the same guy and willing to drastically drop their rates to make it happen.
The steampunk motif is going to be a trick to pull off on that budget, though….
Hi, just wanted to share a video I made with just a simple DSLR camera. I hope you like it. http://youtu.be/LGEl2HGVDck