Budget for documentary

[Tom Plapper]

Does anyone have a handle on total budgets for higher end documentary type stuff? I'm not talking about one man (or woman) bands who are working for free but rather stuff you might see on PBS or shown at a movie theater. I would also like to know a ballpark on how long to edit one of these (in months). A wide range of budget figures and post schedules would be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.

 

[moonlitnite]

Hi Tom,

Hmm, with what you've given so far, I'd guess the responses would vary an order of magnitude (10x). Why not specify the movie genre, crew size, owned/rented gear, film location, etc.? As far as range, I'm guessing $30K to over $300,000. Ditto on editing - some will do it in a few months, others a year or more. Then there music scoring, contracts/copyrights, legal, M&A, G&A, helicopter rentals, ownership rights, etc, etc.

Maybe a good place to start would be to review some film making/directing books to consider the above/below line elements a producer considers when filming.

Good luck, Michael

 

[grinner]

the ballpark from what I have seen is minus tens of thousands to plus several million.
Depends on a multitude of things.
Post schedules on such things are a waiste of time. You'll get done in a day what ya get done, ragardless of how much time was put into a piece of paper.
Schedules are for shoots, imo.