Video Production Budget Template: Every Line Item Explained

What a video production budget template has to do

A template is not a wish list of every line that exists in the industry. It is a checklist that forces you to say "no" out loud to things you are not buying, so you notice when you have forgotten something you are.

Mine does three jobs. It prices the job correctly, it survives a client asking "what is this €2,740 for", and it turns into an actual cost report after the shoot so I learn whether I was right.

That last one matters more than people expect. A budget you never reconcile is a guess that repeats itself. I keep the rates per currency in Vidaset so every new quote starts from last month's real numbers rather than a figure I half remember from 2023.

How to structure a video production budget

Feature budgets split above and below the line because the financing works that way. For commercials and corporate films, I find it more useful to split by phase, because that is how the client's questions arrive and how the money leaves the account.

Six blocks, in this order:

The shares shift wildly by job. A talking-head film with two people and a borrowed meeting room puts almost nothing in talent and a lot in post. A food commercial inverts it. The point of fixed blocks is that you can compare this job to the last one and spot what is out of shape.

Underneath those six sit the markups: insurance and admin, contingency, production fee. Keep them visibly separate from the direct costs. Clients who want to cut will cut from the blocks, and you want the fee lines untouched by that conversation.

Pre-production line items

This is the block people under-budget, because prep does not look like work to anyone who has not done it.

• Producer prep days. Scheduling, crew booking, vendor quotes, client calls. On a two-day shoot I budget two to four.
• Director prep days. Treatment, shot list, pre-light or tech recce attendance.
• Location scouting. Half a day to two days, plus travel. Separate line, because when the client adds a third location you have something to point at.
• Casting. Casting director fee or self-cast time, studio hire, callbacks.
• Production coordination. Call sheets, releases, risk assessments, chasing permits. On larger jobs this is a person, on small ones it is your own time and it still costs.
• Art and wardrobe prep. Shopping days, hire, returns. Returns take a day too.
• Client-facing documents. Treatment design, moodboards, storyboard illustration if it is commissioned.

If you are building a blank sheet from scratch, it is faster to start from the free video production budget templates and delete what the job does not need. Deleting is a safer operation than remembering.

Crew: the block that moves the most money

Every crew line needs a role, a number of days, a rate and a day length. Miss the day length and you have booked an argument.

I write each crew line as rate per 10-hour day, with overtime noted at a stated hourly rate beyond that. Prep and travel days get their own lines at their own rates, often a fraction of a shoot day for crew, full rate for heads of department.

A typical commercial or corporate crew block:

• Director, 1st AD on bigger days
• DoP, 1st AC, 2nd AC or DIT if you are shooting multicam or heavy data
• Gaffer, spark, grip
• Sound recordist, boom operator
• Production designer, art assistant, stylist, hair and makeup
• Producer on set, production assistant, runner
• Stills photographer or BTS operator when the client wants social assets

The two lines I see dropped most often: a second camera assistant on data-heavy days, and a runner. Both get added on the morning of the shoot at a panic rate.

What goes in equipment and rentals?

Split it by supplier, not by department, because that is how the invoices arrive and how you check them.

Camera package, lighting and grip package, sound kit, special kit (gimbal, drone, slider, probe lens), and transport. Rental houses usually quote a three- or four-day week, so a two-day shoot with a pickup day may cost the same as three days. Put the weekly logic in your note field or you will lose the saving.

Two lines to keep visible: expendables (gels, tape, batteries, card readers) and consumables on set. They are small individually and they do not stop. I budget a flat figure per shoot day rather than itemising.

Drone and anything requiring a licensed operator goes as a service line with the operator's fee inside it, not as a kit rental. You are buying a pilot, insurance and permissions, not a device.

Locations, travel and the lines people forget

• Location fees per day, plus prep and strike days if you load in the night before
• Permits, road closures, filming fees for public spaces
• Parking for unit vehicles, which in a city centre is never trivial
• Catering: breakfast, lunch, craft. Budget per head per day and count the client, the agency and the talent, not just the crew
• Travel: crew mileage, flights, trains, taxis for late wraps
• Accommodation and per diems when you are away overnight
• Security, cleaners, power generator and fuel
• Shipping and courier, including kit returns

The forgotten one, almost always, is the client. Four agency people on the monitor eat lunch, drink coffee and sometimes need a hotel. Count heads honestly at the budgeting stage.

Talent, usage and buyouts

Keep the performance fee and the usage fee on separate lines. The performance fee buys the day. The usage fee buys the right to run the film in defined media, for a defined territory, for a defined period.

On my jobs the usage is quoted as a percentage of the day fee or a flat figure per territory and term, depending on the market and the agent. If the client wants to extend from twelve months to three years after delivery, a separate line makes that a simple arithmetic conversation rather than a renegotiation of everything.

Also in this block: extras, agent commission, fittings, travel for talent, and voiceover with its own usage. Voiceover usage gets missed constantly because the recording feels like a post cost.

Post-production line items explained

Post is where the schedule quietly expands, so price it by the deliverable list rather than by feel.

• Offline edit days, including client viewing days
• Number of revision rounds, stated. Two included, third chargeable, written down
• Colour grade, usually by the day or half day
• Sound design, mix, studio hire
• Music: library licence or composition, with the licence term matching the talent usage
• Graphics, titles, lower thirds, animated logo
• VFX, cleanup, beauty work, screen replacements
• Subtitles, captions, translation and foreign language versions
• Versioning: 16:9 master, 9:16 and 1:1 cutdowns, 30s, 15s, 6s
• Mastering, delivery specs, archive and storage

Versioning is the line that decides whether post is profitable. Nine deliverables from one shoot is not one edit, it is one edit and eight more sessions of reframing, retiming and re-exporting. Each one gets its own quantity on the sheet.

How much contingency and production fee should I add?

I run contingency at 5 to 10% of direct costs, depending on how much of the job is outside my control. A controlled studio day with a locked script sits at the bottom of that range. Three locations, children, weather and a client who has not yet signed off the script sit at the top.

Production fee is 10 to 20% of direct costs in my experience, lower on large budgets, higher on small complicated ones. That is the company's margin: my overheads, my risk, my time running the thing. It is not a mysterious extra, and I have never had a producer-literate client object to a clearly labelled fee line.

Insurance, legal and admin sit above the fee as real costs: public liability, equipment cover, employer's liability where required, contracts and releases, bank or currency charges on cross-border jobs. If you work internationally, add a line for the payment fees you absorb. They are real money.

A video production budget breakdown example

Two shoot days for a brand film, two locations, small cast, nine deliverables. Illustrative rates in euros, used here to show the method rather than to set a price in your market.

Crew and post together are €11,600 of €22,440, just over half. That ratio is what I check first when a number feels wrong. If post is under 15% on a job with nine deliverables, I have forgotten something.

One more thing about this sheet: the client sees the block totals, not every row, unless they ask. How much detail to expose and how to phrase the assumptions is a separate craft, and I wrote about it in how to write a video production quote.

Common mistakes

Budgeting shoot days but not prep and wrap days. Fix: every crew line gets three quantity fields, prep days, shoot days, travel days, even when two of them are zero. A zero you typed is different from a zero you forgot.

Pricing one deliverable when the brief lists nine. Fix: paste the deliverable list into the post block and give each format its own line with its own quantity before you total anything.

Burying the production fee inside day rates. Fix: a separate fee line. When the client cuts a shoot day, your margin should not fall by a third as a side effect.

Rounding kit to day rates when the rental house charges a week. Fix: ask for the weekly rate on anything that touches three days, including pickup days and prep.

Copying last year's sheet and keeping last year's rates. Fix: reconcile actuals against the budget after delivery, then update the rate list once, in one place, rather than inside forty spreadsheets. This is most of the reason I stopped running quotes in Excel, and I compared the two approaches honestly in Vidaset vs a spreadsheet.

No currency and no VAT statement. Fix: state the currency, whether figures are net of VAT, and who pays bank charges, at the top of the sheet. On cross-border jobs this single line prevents a 20% misunderstanding.

FAQ

What should a video production budget template include at minimum?

Six cost blocks (pre-production, crew, equipment, production expenses, talent, post-production), then insurance and admin, contingency and production fee as separate lines below them. Every row needs a quantity, a unit, a rate and a total, so the arithmetic is visible rather than typed in by hand. Anything less and you cannot answer "why is it that number" when the client asks.

How much contingency should I put in a video budget?

I use 5 to 10% of direct costs. Studio-based jobs with a locked script and a small crew sit at the low end. Multi-location days with weather, children, animals or unsigned scripts sit at the high end. Show it as its own line so the client understands it is cover for the unforeseen, not padding hidden inside the rates.

Should the client see every line of the budget?

It depends on who the client is. Agencies and in-house teams who commission regularly often want the full breakdown, and giving it builds more trust than it costs you. Direct clients buying their first film usually want block totals with the assumptions spelled out, and a detailed version available on request.

How do I budget for multiple versions of the same film?

Treat every format and duration as its own line with its own quantity, never as "and social cutdowns". A 60-second master, three 15-second cutdowns and vertical versions of each is seven deliverables, each needing reframing, retiming, a new mix pass and a new export. Price the first version at full rate and the derivatives at a fraction, but price them.

Do corporate video budgets use the same structure as commercials?

The blocks are identical, the weights differ. Corporate work usually carries less talent and usage cost, more interview and location time, and a heavier versioning and subtitling load for internal distribution. You can start from the same sheet, or from a corporate video budget template that already has the typical lines in place.