How to Budget Crew for Prep Days and Shoot Days

Why prep disappears from quotes

Shoot days are easy to count. The client agrees to two days, you multiply thirteen people by two days, you have a number. Prep is harder because it is spread unevenly: the designer starts eight days out, the gaffer looks at the location for half a morning, the production manager has been working for a week before anyone else gets a call.

That unevenness is exactly why it gets dropped. Nobody deliberately decides to absorb twenty paid days of labour. It just never gets entered on a line.

Then the job lands, the designer invoices for four days of build and sourcing, and that money comes out of your margin. The fix is mechanical. Every role on the crew list gets a prep figure, even if that figure is zero.

What counts as a prep day

A prep day is any day a crew member works before the first shoot day, billed or not. In practice that is a short list of recognisable things:

• Recce and tech scout, usually with the director, DoP, gaffer and 1st AD together
• Kit prep at the rental house, mostly camera and lighting
• Casting sessions and wardrobe fittings
• Set build, sourcing, props returns
• Scheduling, breakdowns, permits, call sheets and the pre-pro meeting
• Makeup and hair tests, camera tests, LUT work

Not all of these are paid at the same rate, and some roles do prep that is really production work in disguise. A production designer sourcing furniture for four days is not doing a reduced version of their job. That is the job.

Prep day rates: full, half or flat?

The convention I work to, and the one most freelancers in our market expect, is that technical prep goes at half the shoot rate and creative or logistical prep goes at full rate.

Half rate makes sense when the day is genuinely short: a 1st AC spending a morning checking a camera package, a gaffer walking a location for two hours. Full rate makes sense when the day is a day: a tech scout that runs from nine to six with the client in the van, a fitting, a build.

The important part is not which number you pick. It is that the rate is agreed in writing before the job, because the one thing freelancers remember for years is being surprised by a lower prep rate on the invoice.

Kit fees are separate. If a DoP has a kit fee on their rate, it applies to shoot days and whichever prep days the gear is genuinely used, not to a half-day recce.

How many prep days to quote per role

This is the question I get asked most, and the honest answer is that it scales with locations, art department and talent, not with shoot days. A three-day shoot in one office needs less prep than a one-day shoot that builds a set.

Here is what I book at Solvo for a typical one or two day commercial with a single built or dressed location, as a starting grid I then adjust:

Strip a job back to an interview day in a client's office and most of those go to zero. Add a second location and a cast of six and the stylist and designer lines double before anything else moves.

If you want the structure to hang this on, the crew section of the free video production budget templates separates prep, shoot and wrap columns per role, which is the layout that makes missing prep obvious at a glance.

How to budget crew for prep days and shoot days: a worked example

Two shoot days, one dressed location in Warsaw, small cast, agency client on set. Rates below are illustrative to show the method; use your own market's numbers.

I convert prep into full-rate equivalent days so the arithmetic stays readable. A half-rate prep day counts as 0.5.

Shoot days and the PM's wrap day come to €12,650. Prep comes to €10,100. That is 44% of the crew cost sitting in days the client never sees, on a job they think of as "a two-day shoot".

On top of that I add an overtime allowance of 10% on shoot-day labour only: €12,650 × 10% = €1,265. Prep days rarely run into overtime, so applying a buffer across the whole crew line just pads the quote. Crew total: €24,015.

The DoP line shows the mixed rate: one recce day at €900 plus one kit prep day at €450, which is 1.5 full-rate equivalents, then two shoot days at €900. €900 + €450 + €1,800 = €3,150.

Travel, wrap and the sixth day

Travel days are paid days. Half rate is common, two thirds is also common, and the only wrong answer is assuming they are free because nobody is holding a camera. If someone flies in the day before, that day belongs to you and they cannot work for anyone else.

Per diems go on top for crew travelling away from home, and the local crew do not get them. Put the per diem on its own line rather than folding it into the day rate, otherwise it ends up in your production fee base by accident.

Wrap is the other forgotten block. Someone returns the props, someone chases the kit back to the rental house, someone reconciles the petty cash. On most of our jobs that is one PM day and one art department strike day. Two lines, maybe €750, and they are real.

Six day weeks deserve a hard look before you commit. You save a day of equipment rental and you pay for it in a tired crew and premium rates, which on short schedules often cancels out the saving.

Common mistakes

Prep budgeted only for the producer. Everyone else is assumed to arrive ready. Fix: run every single role on the crew list through a prep column, writing zero where it is zero, so the decision is visible rather than forgotten.

Prep rate agreed verbally. You budgeted half rate, the gaffer invoices full rate for the recce, and you have no document. Fix: put the prep rate in the booking email alongside the shoot rate and the overtime treatment.

Prep that expands with client revisions. The schedule changes twice, the designer sources twice, you absorb it. Fix: quote prep against a named number of days and state in the quote that further prep days are charged at the listed rate. Our approach to framing that is in the piece on writing a quote clients approve.

Prep hidden inside the production fee. Your fee covers your overhead and profit. It does not cover freelance labour, and if you bury prep there you are discounting yourself twice. Keep the two separate, as in the breakdown of where the production fee sits in a budget.

One blended crew rate across all days. Multiplying thirteen people by an average rate by total working days gives you a fast estimate and a wrong one, because the people with the most prep are rarely the ones on the highest rate. Fix: per role, per day type.

Kit fees on prep days. Easy to leave ticked when you copy last job's crew list. Fix: check that kit and vehicle fees only land on days the gear is actually out.

Keeping the grid from rotting

The reason this gets skipped is that it takes twenty minutes to build by hand for every quote, and quotes get rewritten three times. I keep per-role defaults for prep days and the prep rate percentage in Vidaset so a new job starts with the prep column already populated, then I trim it. Trimming a populated grid takes two minutes. Building one from zero under deadline is how the designer's four days vanish.

A spreadsheet does this fine as long as the prep column is part of the template rather than something you remember to add. If you want the full inventory of what belongs in the crew block and around it, there is a line-by-line walkthrough in every line item in a video production budget.

FAQ

Should prep days be paid at half rate or full rate?

Half rate is standard for short technical prep like kit checks and a brief location walk. Full rate applies when the day is a genuine working day: a tech scout with the client, a fitting, a build day, a casting session. Agree which applies before the booking is confirmed, and write it in the deal memo alongside the shoot rate.

How many prep days should I quote for a two-day commercial?

For a single dressed location with a small cast I budget roughly 4 to 6 producer days, 1 to 2 for the 1st AD, director and DoP, half a day each for gaffer, grip, AC and HMU, and 3 to 6 for the designer depending on the build. Sound, sparks and runners get none. Scale it with locations and art department, not with the number of shoot days.

Do I charge the client for prep days separately?

I show them as their own lines inside the crew block, with the day count and rate visible. Clients who see a designer billed for four days of sourcing understand the set they asked for, whereas a single lump marked "crew" invites a haircut. The total is the same either way; the conversation is much easier when the days are named.

How much overtime should I budget on top of crew day rates?

I add around 10% of shoot-day labour as an overtime allowance, and I apply it only to shoot days. Prep days almost never run long enough to trigger it. If your deals are flat 12-hour days, the allowance is smaller, but then push hard on the wrap target because the first hour past 12 is the expensive one.

Are travel days charged at the full day rate?

Usually not. Half rate or two thirds is the common practice for a day spent getting to location, with a per diem on top for crew away from home. What matters is that the day is paid at all, because it is a day the person cannot sell to anyone else.