VFXhack

If any VFX Supe tells you that they like budgeting shows they are lying. I have yet to meet the visual effects guy (or gal) that got into the biz because they love working with Excel spread sheets. Alas, budgets are a necessary evil. Scott Squires’ highly informative blog Effects Corner posted a very complete overview of the VFX budgeting process. I thought I’d throw my $0.02 into the ring, focusing some of the finer points Mr. Squires may have glossed over. 

Don’t pitch in the budget- The time to spitball ideas for cool ways of shooting VFX is in a Visual Effects concept meeting. If you start budgeting David Lean effects on an Ed Wood budget without clearing it with the powers that be first, you could be in for a world of hurt later on. This is especially true when you are working on monetarily challenged projects. You want to make sure you give your client creative solutions that fit in their budget, not try to force them to do something that they can’t afford and will look like crap because they ran out of dough.       

Break out your assets – Say you have a sequence of shots where a giant ghost pirate attacks a cruise ship filled with trans-gender cheerleaders (Mr. Bruckheimer this script is available for an option). You have two choices, first you could split the cost of building the CG pirate and cruise ship over the shots. Or you could budget the cost of building the re-usable CG models and rigs (also known as assets) seperately. The second choice is the only way to go in my opinion. If you bury the cost of an asset over several shots you are opening yourself up to big trouble down the line when those shots get trimmed. In this case, every time a shot is cut a piece of your asset budget goes with it. Having a sub-budget for the pirate and cruise ships sets aside the build cost and protects that part of the budget from changes in the individual shots.

Explain everything- Most budget related conflicts arise from from a lack of understanding about what is actually required from the shot. The client may want a simple 8 frame snap zoom done in comp when you bid for an entire CG city fly-through. To a certain extent these misunderstandings are inevitable, but a clear and to-the-point explanation of what you plan to do for each and every bid item is a must to keep confusion to a minimum. Be careful though, if your description of a shot gets too fancy it may cause the dreaded vfx-eye-glaze to form on your client. 

Think of the artists- When you bid it’s best that you have a specific team of individuals in mind that know well. Some artist can take take 3 or 4 times as long to do a certain type of shot than another. Knowing what team you are using and what their strengths and weaknesses are is crucial to getting you bid hours right. Thinking of the artists also means doing a gut check to make sure that you are not burning your people out. This is a flat bid business and once a price is agreed on, it’s essentially locked. Nothing will cause a crew to mutiny faster than having to work on a shot that was bid for two days and actually takes twelve to complete.

LINK to Budgeting VFX on Effects Corner