General Forum > Previs Pricing
Ouch. Really no one?
Peter Koller
Peter,
I probably shouldn’t try to answer your question, nor is it probably wise, but I’ll give it a stab nonetheless. First of all, I must admit I don’t work in Antics, though I think it is a fabulous program. I bought it a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t get it to work with Bootcamp on my Mac. The folks at Antics graciously reimbursed me. Sadly, a week later, they went bankrupt.
Normally, I work in FrameForge, SketchUp and PhotoShop doing boards for producers and directors. Depending on the nature of the job, I do two kinds of boards. Roughs for an entire picture, for which I can produce up to 50 frames in a day, and presentation boards for “visual pitches”, which I’m lucky if I can produce 5 frames a day.
Of course, I don’t know how what I do translates to what you have done. Thus it is difficult to come up with an accurate cost estimate. Besides there are so many variables involved. I imagine that it would have at least cost you the 15.000 Euros you had saved for the job. How much more I don’t know. Perhaps, the best estimate would be to calculate what your time is worth. You were lucky there, because I don’t know anybody who can afford to spare 3 months of their own time boarding a picture, and an animatic at that.
I think the real value in boarding your picture is not how much you saved doing it yourself, but how much you will save making the film because you boarded the picture. Perhaps, if you took note during production of every incident, which might have cost you time, you might get a sense of the true savings you made by boarding your film.
I know a number of Indie producers here in the States who could stand to learn from your prudent example. Far too often, low budget producers here do not budget for extra shoot days, or worse yet, neglect to hire a previs artist, thus putting their productions at risk of going belly up. I know not a few ex-producers and ex-directors whose films were never completed because they lost a single day in shooting. If only they had prevised their pictures, they might be still working today.
Gare Cline
Previs Artist
Los Angeles
Gare Cline
Thank you Gare and yeah, you are right.. in some way it was a stupid question in the first place, because if we show people what our stuff looks like and they ask us to do it for them it just comes down to what you said and that's what my time is worth. I guess I should have asked whether the quality of the previs holds up with the work other previs artists are doing.
Regarding Antics: It's a shame they went out of business as the software was really well thought out. After we got used to it, we thought you could improve it by so much just with some little tweaks here and there and then it would have filled that previs niche of tools that directors/DOPs/anyone without a 3D/CG background (for whom Maya/Max is out of the question) can learn to use quickly perfectly. Sadly it's gone and left a gap because I don't see an alternative to it in 3D animated previs.
Peter
Peter Koller
By the way, I forgot to mention that I saw your work and it looks great. And no it is not Maya, its Antics. It does what it is suppose to do. It fits the bill. You are prevising your picture to make a better film. Your Antics animatics is not the end product. It is a tool to get to the end product, which is your film. And therefore, the difference between Maya and Antics.
In reply to your lack of alternative to low end previsulization, I submit FrameForge. Though its animatics feature is not nearly as elegant as Antics, it does do quite well in the storyboard department. On top of that, it is the only program that can accurately render stereo 3D.
Secretly, I do think they will perfect the animatics feature down the line.
Gare
Gare Cline
Hi Peter, can you post another link to the sample work? I'd love to check it out, but it appears to be no longer available.
Without seeing the work, I can say that previs is generally charged simply by how long it takes to complete, and how many people worked on it for the duration. So imagine what a talented artist's time (like yourself) is worth, and multiply it by 3 months and again by 3 people. The numbers will add up quickly; paying people's valid wages is no small feet.
Ultimately I agree with Gare: previs and storyboarding at it's heart saves productions money by saving time and reducing wasted effort. Generally any money spent on quality previs is truly an investment in the project that will pay for itself in spades down the road.
Josh
Joshua Wassung
Sorry.. a few months late the reply, we moved it here: www.uls-film.com
Peter Koller
Hello Everyone,
the short version: What can one charge for producing a 3D previs of a quality level like you can see here on these teasers?
http://www.kop11.com/temp/teaser1+2.mov
The long version:
I am the writer/dircector of that project, it would be my 2nd feature film, a huge step upwards in budget and complexity so I just locked my DOP, VFX-supervisor and myself into my apartment for 3 ultra-tough months and animated and edited about 100mins (about 95% of the film) of 3D previs with the unfortunately discontinued Antics3D 5.1 to convince investors that we know what we are doing.
It was a first for all of us and now that we have finished it people start asking us questions about it since in Austria/Germany where we are located film-industry people have little or no knowledge of the previs process and of course they want to know how much it costs: I have no idea, because we just decided not to spend 15.000 Euro on a storyboard artitst but instead on us and figure out how to do it ourselves. And while we learned TONS of things and saved a lot of more production money just by having the previs now I would never ever do it again for that little money. If you could take a peek at the teasers and give me a hint what rates a previs artist or company could possibly charge for it, I'd be grateful!
If you need to know more info to answer my questions, just shoot I try to provide as much info as needed.
Cheers, Peter