Need budget help w/HD piece of $500k-$1m feature

rickt · February 4, 2005

Hi all:

I need a little bit of help with some ballpark pricing info for the HD component of a $500k-$1m feature (100 mins running time). We're shooting on 24P-HD, with most likely the F900 (w/monitor for DP). We'll be downconverting *after* principal photography to DV for the offline edit, and then when done, sending the EDL for online to a post-house for conversion to 35mm film. Sound will be recorded separately and mixed in during post.

So we're putting the budget together, and there are some "holes' I'd like y'alls help with. Some of the items that we just don't know about would include:

- Cost of F900 (complete lens & filter kit) rental/day

- Cost of on-set HD technical advisor (daily or weekly rate)

- Cost of downconversion from HD to DV for offline edit

(NB: should we do this manually using say a Miranda, or send to a house?)

- Cost of final online edit to film transfer (100 mins, HD --> 35mm film)

- Cost of color correction (100 mins)

Some random questions I have:

- For those of us that can't afford renting multiple cameras, how do you handle that?

- Thoughts re: in-house downconversion at start of post vs. sending out-of-house?

Thank you all VERY much for any and all help/commentary you might have!

Cheers,

Rick.

Edited February 4, 2005 by rickt

Elhanan Matos · February 5, 2005

- Cost of on-set HD technical advisor (daily or weekly rate)

This would be a DIT, usually DIT's will get paid as much (if not more) than an operator, this all depends on who you hire. It's best to hire a DIT with a solid background in HD, there are alot of people out there who think that using an HD camera is the same as using a DVCAM camera, or a Beta camera. Check with your rental house and see if they can recommend anyone.

David Mullen ASC · February 5, 2005

I've somehow managed to shoot eight 24P HD features without a DIT or engineer, although it's the Number One question I get asked -- "who's your engineer?"

If you're competent with a pro betacam, you can handle a basic HD package.

Rental is a tricky question since there are so many deals. For a really basic HD camera package, you can find one for something like $5000/week, even cheaper, although the book rate would be more like $9000/week when you added it all up (I'm assuming a 3-day week.) If you have to pay for just one day, it would probably be something like $3000, but again, there are better deals than that. I managed to rent a small F900 package for one month for $10,000 for "A Foreign Affair".

I've even got free HD camera packages on some projects (well, not me, but a very persuasive producer...)

Here's some prices from the Plus-8 catalog:

F900: $1000/day

HDSDI adaptor: $150/day

Evertz downconverter: $150/day

20" HD monitor w/ HDSDI: $450/day

9" HD monitor: $100/day

6" onboard LCD: $75/day

Batteries: $25/day each

Charger: $35/day

Fujinon 22X 7.8 zoom lens:$175/day

So that's around $2200/day not including sticks, head, mattebox, filters, etc.

But maybe you'll get lucky and negotiate a 2-day week rental (i.e. you pay for two days for a week-long rental.)

I don't know about post costs, but Victory Studios used to run this deal for $45,000 for all the HD post needed for a low-budget feature. But that's pretty low, because color-correcting an HD feature, which can take about three to five days minimum, alone can cost nearly that.

After that, you can figure on spending another $60,000 transferring it to 35mm at a digital-to-film transfer facility (which may or may not be the same place as the HD post house.)

These figures are off the top of my head and obviously there are poor-man's workarounds these days.

Mike Brennan · February 5, 2005

Don't forget to record sound on camera, so you can start to edit on your dv immediately.

Where are you shooting?

Rates in Europe seem lower although there are fewer cameras so when things get busy rates go up .

US$5k a week for

Camera

Follow Focus

14 and 9 inch monitors

1 x Wide and long zooms

Tripod

batts

ect

Mike Brennan

David Cox · February 7, 2005

Hi Rick,

I can help with the post costs / processes since we are a post company!

In answer to your question about down-converting, the issues raised aren't so much about quality. They're more about timecode problems. If your timecodes don't match perfectly between your DV tapes and your HDCam tapes (I am assuming you are shooting to tape), then your online (conform) process will take forever and cost a fortune (because they will have to manually find your shots - very bad idea!) Also watch out for the 24FPS thing. You will most likely be transferring your 24FPS material at 30FPS to DV (in the US or 25FPS in europe) to transfer into your offline device. This is fine PROVIDED THAT YOUR OFFLINE DEVICE UNDERSTANDS that you are simply effectively digitising too fast. In other words, your offline system takes in the material playing at 30FPS, but edits it at 24FPS. Basically, a frame is always a frame. The two problem points are (1) when you transfer from HDCAM to DV you must trasfer "frame for frame". The deck MUST NOT be set to compensate for the speed difference between 24FPS and your DV speed. It should be playing your frames too quickly. (2) When you digitize your 30FPS DV into your offline system, it must then bet set to play back your frames at 24FPS, otherwise your film is going to be an unexpected length!! The EDL it creates must then be a 24FPS list. If either of the points are not addressed correctly then you may have an EDL where the timecodes no-longer relate to your source HDCam tapes and / or if you send your offline cut to your musician / sound mixers, they could end up with a film that is running at the wrong speed.

I would strongly suggest checking the process by copying one tape, doing a test edit with EDL and reconforming it from the HD tapes to prove the path works.

As for other post costs, of course it does depend what you want to do and how far you want to go. We would suggest a basic package for most drama based films of around 6 days for conform and grade. Add more for any effect shots, fixes etc. You may also like to add some time to have a nice opening sequence designed. Our rates for this sort of DI / conform are around $6,500 per day and that would take you to a final HD master tape. The Filmout costs vary based on stock type and haggling ability! We always recommend some test filmouts while grading because no matter how well calibrated we all are, sometimes things just "feel different" on the big screen. This is especially true for extreme grades and processes.

Does that help?

Feel free to contact me via our WEBSITE if you need further info.

David Cox

Managing Director

Baraka Post Production Ltd

www.baraka.co.uk