Ok then, let's play this out @freakinfreakart.
I posted a reel set at the Yatala Drive-In. Dusk, the old sign out the front reading JURASSIC PARK, a car park full of Commodores, kids hanging out the back of a station wagon. Ten seconds of 1993.
Underneath it, @freakinfreakart wrote: "crap ai. maybe have some actual creativity and make these clips yourself with real people?"
I pinned it. Cause its funny at this point because I get some version of that comment every single week, and every time I read it I think the same thing. Mate, do you know what that would cost?
I direct and produce for a living. Real crews, real sets, real call sheets. So I sat down and quoted it properly, the way I would if someone rang me on a Monday and said "we want 1993 at the drive-in, can you do it?"
Here it is. Ballpark Brisbane rates, Aussie dollars, one night shoot, done properly. These are my rough numbers, not gospel, but anyone who's worked on a set in Queensland will be nodding along.
The budget: Yatala Drive-In, 1993, one night, ten seconds
Line item | Ballpark (AUD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
PRE PRODUCTION | ||
Producer (also me): 10 days prep, shoot and wrap | $9,000 | I pay myself last. Classic. |
1st AD: 3 days prep plus the shoot | $3,500 | Builds the schedule backwards from the kids' 9pm cutoff. Cries privately. |
Recce x2 (scout and tech recce): me, DOP, 1st AD, gaffer, location manager | $4,200 | Includes the servo pie run. Gaffer stands in the car park for 20 minutes going "hmm". |
Casting director and a casting day | $4,500 | Looking for faces that say 1993. |
LOCATION | ||
Yatala Drive-In, full night, closed to the public | $15,000 | Covers a lost night of tickets and snack bar sales. My guess, and probably generous to me. |
Location manager and traffic control at the gate | $4,800 | Forty period cars turning in off a main road at 3pm. |
Permits, overnight security, site paperwork | $2,500 | Someone has to stay with the Commodores. |
ART DEPARTMENT | ||
Production designer and art director | $6,000 | |
Period dressing: speaker posts, snack bar signage, 90s price boards, Golden Circle cans, Paddle Pop posters | $8,500 | Every brand in shot gets cleared or faked. We fake it. |
Sign letters: fabricate and hang JURASSIC PARK | $3,500 | The easy part. |
Clearance lawyer hours and letters to the studio | $3,000 | Permission to actually use the title: not available at any price I can afford. Fallback sign reads JURASSIC PORK. |
PICTURE CARS | ||
20 period cars (VN Commodores, EA Falcons, a Magna, a Laser, a Tarago) at about $450 a night, plus a car wrangler | $10,200 | Owners come with the cars. Owners have opinions. |
Hero car: VL Berlina wagon | $1,200 | Owner polishes it between every take. Nobody sits on the bonnet. |
CAST | ||
2 principal kids (aged 8 to 15) | $3,600 | Off set by 11pm under QLD rules, or 9pm on a school night. Golden hour is now a Year 5 lunch break. |
2 featured adults (Mum and Dad) | $3,000 | |
40 background extras, including night loading | $22,100 | One of them will turn up in a 2019 Nike swoosh. Every time. |
6 child extras | $4,500 | |
Child supervisors and chaperones | $1,400 | Plus a signed parent consent form for every kid, filed and on set. |
HAIR, MAKEUP AND WARDROBE | ||
HMU designer and 3 assistants | $5,600 | Perms, mullets, scrunchies, a worrying amount of hairspray. |
Wigs and hair pieces | $1,800 | Not every extra will grow a mullet for $425. |
Wardrobe designer, buyer, 2 standbys and the period buy (Mambo, Ken Done, Hypercolor, Canterbury, Bonds) | $9,500 | One standby's only job is hunting swooshes and Apple Watches. |
CREW | ||
DOP and camera department (1st AC, 2nd AC, DIT) | $6,000 | |
Gaffer, best boy and 2 sparks | $5,200 | Night exterior. They earn every cent. |
Key grip and grips | $3,500 | |
Sound recordist | $1,400 | For a reel that will have a song over it. Still need him. |
2nd AD, 3rd AD and 3 runners | $3,200 | One runner's whole night is "where's the extra from the green Commodore". |
Unit manager and unit base (marquee, toilets, honey wagon, power) | $4,500 | |
GEAR | ||
Camera package and lenses | $4,500 | |
Lighting package, 100kVA generator and fuel | $7,800 | Faking dusk for four hours straight. |
Haze machine | $350 | For the projector beam. Non negotiable. |
Grip truck and a cherry picker for the moonlight | $3,500 | |
Movie on the screen | $0 | Can't show the film without clearing it either. We project nothing and add it in post. On a computer. Awkward. |
SAFETY AND INSURANCE | ||
Production insurance and $20m public liability, one night | $4,500 | |
Safety officer and medic | $1,200 | Kids, cars, cables, in the dark. |
CATERING | ||
Dinner, midnight supper and 1am bacon and egg rolls for about 90 people | $5,500 | Feed the crew or lose the crew. |
Period craft services: Redskins, Killer Pythons, Twisties | $600 | Half of it is props. All of it will be eaten. |
OVERTIME | ||
Night loadings and overtime: wrap 3am, pack down done by 4.30am | $12,000 | Turnaround means nobody is useful on Tuesday. |
POST | ||
Edit | $2,500 | |
Colour grade | $2,000 | Making a cinema camera look like Dad's camcorder. On purpose. |
Sound design and mix | $1,500 | |
Music licence: one 90s track for social | $8,000 | Could be a lot more. Depends who owns it. |
Dinosaur | Not included | |
Subtotal | $205,150 | |
Contingency, 10% (it's October in South East Queensland, it will rain) | $20,515 | |
Subtotal with contingency | $225,665 | |
GST | $22,566.50 | |
GRAND TOTAL | $248,231.50 | About $24,823 per second of screen time. |
A few notes from the producer's chair, because the table doesn't tell the whole story.
The kids run the schedule. Under Queensland's child employment rules, kids aged 8 to 15 on a recorded production can work between 6am and 11pm, eight hours max. If they've got school before 9am the next day, they're done by 9pm. In October it's properly dark by about 6.30. So my "magic hour at the drive-in" with kids in it is a window about the length of a Year 5 lunch break. Want them later? That's a special circumstances certificate application, plus the patience of every parent on set.
The sign is the real problem. JURASSIC PARK is a title and a logo owned by people with very good lawyers. I could build those letters in a day. Getting written permission to put them on a sign, in something I post publicly, from a studio that has never heard of me? I'd send the email. I'd still be waiting in 2031. So the real version either changes the sign, which kills the memory, or quietly risks a letter I don't want to open.
The screen is blank too. Whatever's playing behind the cars has to be cleared as well, so we'd shoot it empty and put something in later. Which means the "real" version of my reel ends with someone in a dark room adding pictures on a computer. Bit awkward.
Then there's the stuff nobody sees. Two recces. A tech recce where the gaffer stands in the car park for twenty minutes working out where to hide a generator. A 1st AD building the whole day backwards from the kids' cutoff. Forty extras through wardrobe in under an hour. Somebody's Holden won't start. It rains, because it's October. We wrap at 3am, unit base is packed into trucks by 4.30, and we haven't edited a single frame.
All of that for ten seconds. Which I'd then post to Instagram, where you'd watch about two and a half of them before scrolling to a dog video.
What it actually cost me: a few dollars in credits and a long night at my desk.
ok so here's where i've landed and honestly it's two things at once.
like it stings a bit. and the comment wasn't even that mean, it stings because it's half right, you know? i'm a craft guy. i've spent years on sets fighting for literally everything on that list, real wardrobe, real light, a good 1st AD who keeps the day moving, and i'd argue for all of it in any pitch meeting. and here i am making reels with none of it. so yeah.
but it's also genuinely funny?? like the idea that i could just go film it is so far off it's almost sweet. nobody shoots the drive-in in 1993 for a ten second post. there's no version of my life where i raise a quarter of a million dollars so you can feel something for ten seconds between ads lol
ok the uncomfortable bit. these reels wouldn't exist without the machine, those memories would just stay in people's heads, and honestly i think that's a real gain, none of it happens on a $248k budget. but then look at that table again. every line with a job title on it is someone i know. the gaffer. the HMU team who can do a 1993 perm from memory. the wardrobe standby. the caterer doing the 1am bacon and egg rolls. my reel didn't take money off any of them cause that shoot was never going to happen, i know that. but i also know the same tools that made my reel cheap are the ones making clients ask why a real shoot still costs what it costs. both are true and i don't get to just pick one, which is annoying.
and like what's actually lost is the night itself. ninety people in a paddock at Stapylton, cold and tired and laughing at 2am, making a thing together. you can't prompt that. the picture might end up looking close but the night never happened. that's the bit that gets me honestly.
anyway. no @freakinfreakart, i'm not going to go film this one with real people. but you've kind of made me want to back the real stuff harder, and be upfront about which is which. so thanks i guess?
Hit reply and tell me: would you have chipped in for the real version? Or tell me which Aussie memory you want me to quote next. I reckon a Year 6 school camp would be worse.
anyway sorry for the dump this monday morning lol
Sammy