3D Movie vs. 2D Movie

False Creek White Paper

By Lana Safonova
Version: 3/9/2011

Summary

It is a common belief that 3D movies are extremely expensive to make and only big-budget studio productions can afford them. In this White Paper we look at the actual production costs of a 2D and 3D shoot of the same movie to show the real cost increase of a 3D film over its 2D counterpart under various tradeoffs between cost and experience of the crew.

Cost Categories Not Included in this Analysis

In this analysis we focus on the cost of filming. Since we are only looking at a part of the total cost of making a film, the “total costs” numbers that you will see in this White Paper cannot be compared with the “total budget” for a film that you might find on IMDB or in press releases. The following table shows what items are included in this White Paper and which aren’t.

Costs that ARE included in this White Paper

Pre-Production Costs
Camera Prep Costs
Costs of the actual Shooting of the Film (except as mentioned below)
Post-Production Costs
Total Cost of Shooting the Film – covered in this White Paper

Costs that are NOT included in this White Paper
All actors
Producers, Director
Music rights, composers
Visual or special effects – anything computer generated
Publicity, Corporate Overhead, Insurance
Legal, Financing costs, Accounting and Completion Bond
Contingencies
Total of the other costs that go into making a movie
Total Cost of Making the Movie – what you find on IMDB or in press releases

We have also not included the effect of tax credits, which depending on where the film is shot, can reimburse the production for as much as 40% of all expenses spent in that state or prov-ince1.

Caveat: Not all Productions Will Fit our Model

We are assuming that our production has two goals:

•  Shoot a film of the highest quality, a film that will be competitive in festivals and will be a strong contender to find international theatrical distribution.

• To spend the budget wisely. By this we mean, a sincere effort to put as great a percent-age of the budget as possible “on the screen.”

There are two kinds of films in particular that are not likely to fit our analysis: very low budget films where the only way to get the feature shot for the available budget is to use unpaid or honorarium paid crew and to shoot 10 pages per day in a continuous shot with no break; and films whose budget is so big that they can afford to average one page a day to get the exactly perfect take.

Trade-Off between Experience and Cost of Shooting

There are advantages and disadvantages in using more experienced and well-trained crew:

• The more pages per day you can shoot and the fewer days you’ll need. To get that same quality with a less experienced crew will take a more relaxed (and thus longer) shooting schedule.

• The better will be the resulting film; more experience makes you a better filmmaker.

• But it will cost more to shoot, perhaps more than you have available. So paying for a crew with higher experience might simply be out of your reach.

We suggest that filmmakers try hard to use as experienced a crew as possible, particularly in the team leader positions. It will make a big difference in the calmness and efficiency of the shoot and the quality of the resulting frame. Many unions are willing to work with a low budget film and to negotiate what parts of the union wages, terms and conditions will apply to a par-ticular production. Side letters to the Union Master Agreements or “Letters of Understanding” allow you to access union talent less expensively than you might think. So it is worthwhile to talk to your local unions and guilds and at least explore the option.

That said, we are going to create budgets for three different approaches to filming the same film:

• Low ‘indie’ budget: some positions are combined, the crew is slightly smaller. Some po-sitions are volunteers (interns), and those that are paid are at the low end of the range. This shoot will have the lowest pages per day if it wants to achieve its quality goals.

• High ‘indie’ budget: all positions are filled and all positions are paid, at rates slightly lower than union minimums. This could be either a bigger ‘indie’ production or a union shoot under a Letter of Understanding.

• Regular union feature. The wage rates comply with union rates and the lead positions are better paid. This shoot will have the highest pages per day and the resulting film will be the best quality.

We have to acknowledge that not enough live action 3D films have been shot to give any of us hard data about what is “average” for a 3D shoot. However we do know enough to begin to make educated guesses and to point to strategies that are likely to see that your available budget is well spent.

Rules of Thumb Common to All Three Approaches

No matter which of the three strategies you follow in making your film, here are some very specific recommendations to make your shoot calmer, with fewer surprises, more efficient (in terms of getting value for your money spent), with a quality of 3D that you can be proud of.

• Carefully research the rig and cameras you are going to rent. Talk directly with stereographers who have actually used the gear you plan on renting in a 3D shoot. Some rigs and camera combinations are much faster to set up, tear down, align, and change lenses than other rig/camera combinations. Bypass the hype; talk directly to someone who has actually shot 3D film with this combination. Some production companies ask to see a demonstration of the set-up and alignment and then a tear down of a rig and camera combination from several possible vendors, so that they can see for themselves before committing to a particular configuration recommended by a rental house.

• Spend at least 1 week on your camera test. Even for a crew with significant 3D experience. This is the absolute minimum. If your budget allows, make it 2 weeks.

• If you have any doubt about the 3D experience of your director, producer, camera crew, and data crew it would be valuable to have a day or two training on set with your actual production gear with all of the relevant people present. Bring in experts to:

• Make sure that the workflow is working. Run a test right though from camera to archiving the data and getting dailies.
• Make sure that the crew knows how to align the rig and change lenses efficiently, and
• That the director and producer get used to what excellent 3D looks like on the monitor in the video village. If you are shooting a feature for theatrical release or if you are going to converge in post, what they see isn’t anything like how it will look in the theatre. They (especially the producer and director) need to get used to this before the shoot starts.

• Make sure your director has a well-thought-out shot plan and the camera crew is in-formed well in advance. Director who changes their minds on set will add unexpected and unbudgeted time to the shoot resulting in a budget overrun or lost coverage.
• Use zoom lenses if at all possible. If you are going to use primes, consider renting two 3D rigs. It will give you a backup and it will speed up your shoot.
• ? Don’t try to shoot 6 day weeks. You will spend the money you thought you’d saved in extra pickups and a reduction in picture quality from an exhausted (and unhappy) crew.

Pages per Day vs. Crew Experience and Training

1. To arrive at budget numbers for each of the shooting strategies, we took an actual 100-page script of a horror/thriller film with a minimum of special effects. The film is to be shot on location on multiple sites (houses, hospital, office, performers’ tent, streets, hayfield, etc.) in various locations in one town in British Columbia.2

The goal is to shoot a 3D film of excellent quality, a film that will be competitive in attracting theatrical distribution throughout North America and Europe. In all three shooting strategies, we assume that you are using zoom lenses (or primes with second rig/camera system) and the rig/camera combination has been well-chosen. They have had a week of camera prep and their director is calm and well-prepared with no history of on-set dithering. The actors know their lines and there are no animals or children on set.

We asked a group of film-making experts for their considered estimate of what would be a reasonable pages-per-day to aim for. Several had more than 25 3D movie, documentary, or television credits, others had less 3D experience. Some were union members, others not. All had in-die experience at some point in their careers. We asked them to fill in the following table, based on their experience and the description of the film and its goals as stated above. Here is the consensus of what they said.

[Any readers with experience with 3D shoots and willing to share their pages per day actual results are welcome to email us at LanaSafonova@FalseCreekProductions.com Let us know if you’d like your information to be anonymous or credited.]

Crew Size and Composition

We have assumed the following crew size and composition for each of the three scenarios as follows:

In a low budget scenario, we had some positions combined (e.g. Production Designer/Art Direc-tor; 2nd AC/Rig Technician, Costume Designer/Head Wardrobe, Sound Effects/Music Editor) and there were not too many assistant positions (e.g. Assistant Location Manager, Assistant Art Di-rector, etc.) as there are on a bigger budget. We also reduced the size of some departments (the number of positions) as you can see from the table above. In a low budget shoot we also had volunteer Production Assistants/Interns with a small honorarium of $50 per week (Scenario 1) and a honorarium of $150 on a non-union shoot with a bigger budget (Scenario 2). For this first scenario we also assumed that we didn’t have to rent an office for the whole period of pre-production, production and wrap (we only budgeted for renting some space for production meetings/rehearsals), while in Scenario 2 & 3 we budgeted for renting a production office.

Crew Size and Composition

The following table shows some wage rates for the various levels (job types) for three different scenarios. We have used Canadian Dollars for this table and for the total cost of production

numbers that follow. With the Canadian and US Dollars trading back and forth around parity, it makes sense to simply pick a currency and adjust to other currencies as required.

It should also be noted that when budgeting for a union crew, you should always keep in mind union fringes and add them on to the standard fringe percentage that you have added to labour costs (fringes would be specific to location and union(s), you’re signatory to).

The detailed composition of the crew with detailed wage rates can be found in Appendix B at the end of this White Paper.

Budget Increase: 2D vs. 3D

Following the assumptions above, we came to the following grand totals for the three scenarios:

The percentage of 3D over 2D increase differs in each scenario due a difference in underlying assumptions, as described above (positions added/removed; production office expenses, shoot-ing schedules, etc)

Analysis of High Budget Indie Film

Here we came to a grand total of $1,142,318 for a 2D shoot and $1,391,253 for a 3D one (see the variance report below), which makes it an 18% increase in going from a 2D to 3D production.

The vast majority of the cost increases come from the increase in camera rental cost for a 3D camera system and the addition of two more crew members. These costs are not going to go up as the budget for the film increases; in fact they are likely to stay generally fixed as the budget increases4. This means that as the budget for the film increases, the percentage increase gets lower. As a matter of fact, if you look at our union shoot budget (with a grand total of $1,634,536 for a 3D shoot and $1,392,008 for a 2D shoot), you can see that 3D over 2D percentage has come down to 15% in this case. Or, let’s say if the same increase of $248,935 is ap-plied to a $3 Million feature, the increase is only 8.3%. And for a $10 Million feature it is a 2.5% increase.

For our $1 Million budget indie film, the breakdown of the cost increase as it shifts to a 3D shoot is shown in the following table:

The largest increase in costs is in Camera Equipment (see the variance report below) – a 72% jump from $47,620 to $168,300 when going from 2D to 3D. On a 3D shoot, you will have to rent a 3D rig, including matching cameras and matched lenses and a lot more ancillary equipment rather than on a 2D shoot with a red camera. The overall rental costs may amount to $26,000 per week (after discount) per camera system6.

From camera labour standpoint, there will normally be two additional crew members that are required on set in order to shoot in 3D: a 3D rig technician and a stereographer. You can combine the 2nd AC position with a 3D Rig technician thus saving some labour costs, which we did when putting together a budget for our low-budget non-union scenario.

Aside from these two positions, the size of the crew remains unchanged when going from a 2D to a 3D shoot7. A slight increase (10 – 15%) in labour costs in the 3D Budget is the result of a difference in our shooting schedules (25 days for a 3D shoot and 21 days for 2D) to allow for a slower pace of production, as mentioned previously.

Post Production numbers and Dailies Processing Costs have also gone up on a 3D budget as compared to the corresponding line items on a 2D budget but the growth is not significant – 8% for Dailies and 9% for Picture Post Production to allow for depth grading as well as 2% for editorial labour.

The actual detailed line item budgets for the 2D and 3D versions of this film can be downloaded separately in the “Downloads” section of our website: www.FalseCreekProductions.com

Conclusion

Shooting in 3D will entail increased cost of production but this added cost is small (18% on av-erage) when compared to the probable increase in revenues from having your movie shot in 3D. And because the camera rental increase and two extra positions in the crew don’t increase as the budget for the film grows, the percentage increase in costs for shooting in 3D gets small-er as a percentage of your total budget.

Appendix A: Cost of 3D Camera System

This is an estimate for the cost of a 3D crew and 3D camera equipment for a feature film in-tended for theatrical release. These are retail rental prices in effect today. Significant discounts could be available depending on equipment availability at the time of your shoot, early reservation and deposits, and other factors.

We’ve included the entire list of equipment needed including the rig, cameras, prime lenses, lens motors, remote controls for both lenses and rig, on-rig and video village monitors, batteries, data recording machines, SSD cards, batteries, battery chargers, fluid heads, two tripods for set-up, and a DIT machine to offload the SSD’s and make dailies.

If your production is going to be bonded, there may be additional equipment needed to meet the redundancy requirements.

Red One Camera System

This camera system includes:

• Two Red One bodies with the MX Mysterium sensor
• Element Technica Quasar or P&S Freestyle Beam-splitter rig with remote controls. The Freestyle is steadicam capable; the Quasar better suited for tripod and dolly shots.
• 3D Ready pair of Angenieux Optimo DP 16-42mm lenses (1st choice) or two matched sets of six Arri Ultra 35 Prime Lenses (T1.9). It’s critical that the two lens (or sets of lenses) be matched8.
•  C-motion lens motors and remote
• Four Red Drive kits
• DIT station
• Dailies station
• Eight Red CF cards
• 46” Hyundai 3D monitor for video village
• Transvideo monitor for the rig
• Eight Anton/Bauer batteries, two charges and UPS
• Fluid head and two tripods
• All cables, hardware and accessories

Weekly retail rental cost: $31,110 (USD)

Appendix B: Composition of the Crew and Assumed Pay Rates

We used 5 (or 6 – for a Scenario 3 budget) levels of rates and applied a particular rate depending on the position with only a few positions having specific weekly/daily rates:

Low Budget Shoot (Scenario 1)

High Budget Indie Feature with Aspirations of Festival Awards (Scenario 2)

Union Crew Shoot (Scenario 3)