See how the producer saved over $20,000.00 on this airplane shot
Certain kinds of vehicles can be very expensive to rent. Consider the cost of renting airplanes, tanks, helicopters, or exotic sports cars. A single Lamborghini can cost anywhere from $1500.00 to $2500.00 per day to rent, with a large deposit and extra insurance.
Renting specialized vehicles can be costly! But swapping those expensive vehicles out with identical VFX models can slash production costs and allow you to spend your money on other project components.
Take the above shot for example. For the film, FML, the producers and director wanted to have a custom banner being pulled through the sky by an airplane. They needed the sky to be perfectly blue and couldn’t afford to wait for the weather.
Had they decided to do this shot practically, the cost could easily have surpassed $20k.
Here are the categories of estimated savings;
*Wages for camera & support crew
*Pilot
*Airplane rental
*Fuel
*Airport fees
*Craft service (food for crew)
*Insurance
*Banner production
*Camera and gear rentals
*Transportation (crew and gear)
*Payroll Admin
*1099 Reporting Admin
By choosing to do this shot in VFX, production time was saved. And the weather did not need to cooperate! Doing it in CG gave the director 100% control over all the factors in the scene.
Adding specialty vehicles to your project is a great way to boost production value. And VFX makes it possible, even if your production budget is limited.
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Thanks for checking this out!
Izzy,
VFX for low-budget feature films
