Visual effects have forever changed cinematic experiences, and it has barely reached its peak. As more movies and films employ visual effects, especially CGI, many have wondered how much money is spent by filmmakers for visual effects. Visual effects have and will likely always be expensive. The hardware necessary, along with the effort poured in by artists, make visual effects an expensive part of film production. And while it is expensive, it is by no means a luxury because almost all films nowadays would require a visual effects team.
How Much Do Visual Effects Cost? If you have a production budget of $1,000 per minute, you will probably spend $2000-$5000 per minute for VFX. The hourly wages of your artists take the majority of the budget. As a rule of thumb, prepare a budget that is two to five times your production budget.
There is no hard line answer as to how much does visual effects really cost. One thing is for sure: it is hella expensive! The budget may range from the cheapest indie film with VFX (Visual Effects) at around $60,000 to the Hollywood echelon, such as Game of Thrones, at around $15,000,0000 per episode. Speaking of GOT, that TV series epitomized good usage of both CGI and VFX as it employed dozens of artists and laborers. As per its supervisor Joe Bauer, they have at least 10,000 VFX shots. Let’s break down how VFX takes up so much of our budget.
This article goes hand in hand with another article I wrote a while back, researching deeper into WHY CGI is so expensive. Check it out here.
Spendings Of A Visual Effects Team
Visual effects get to become pricey because of a lot of factors. These may include the hiring of multiple artists, procuring laborers for props and equipment, renting or purchasing of strong computers and storage hardware, and lastly, the duration and costs of production. These factors make the visual effects budget higher than the regular production budget.
Talented Visual Artists
First off, you will have to hire the services of multiple artists to perform separate and distinct roles. These artists, along with the laborers for the props, become your visual effects crew. They usually outnumber the on-set crew; that is how big the visual effects team usually is in movies. A regular film would have at least 50 artists in its visual effects crew.
There are concept artists, modeling artists, layout artists, shading artists, tracking, etc. These artists are currently in demand in the film industry because of how vital their role is. As such, the hourly rate of visual artists has risen significantly over the years. As of May 2020, the average hourly rate wage of artists in the US is at $27.
Duration And Cost Of Production
Now compound the hourly rate of visual artists by months because that is how long the entire movie production runs. During those months, you will also be spending on the food expenses of all the visual effects crew members, not to mention all of the other crews as well. Furthermore, you will also be shelling out money for their transportation expenses, especially if they are not from around locally or when the movie production takes place abroad.
Speaking of movie productions abroad or remote places, you will also need to consider their accommodation. It isn’t the 1940s and 1950s anymore, films are not being shot at different locations and not just in Hollywood. In these out of studio shootings and productions, the budget skyrockets for justifiable reasons. The whole team is basically camping near the production site, which most likely costs a lot of money, but still better than a green screen studio though!
Number of VFX Shots
Part of how expensive visual effects get to be is the number of Visual Effects (VFX) shots. This refers to how many times the camera shots are you going to put visual effects to. For context, a movie is created and edited by mixing and matching different camera shots of individual scenes. A regular movie will take around 1,250 shots while action blockbusters go for 3,000 individual shots.
VFX shots, on the other hand, refers to those specific camera shots that require visual effects to be added later on. For instance, in Game of Thrones, the scenes involving Daenerys’ fierce dragon are called VFX shots because they involve a crane or device that would, later on, be edited and replaced with a dragon.
Remember, for each scene, there are multiple VFX shots that would all need to be edited with visual effects that are insanely expensive. Some of these VFX shots are even edited out, like how in Superman (2006) there was an expensive space scene that got edited out.
Average Cost Per VFX Shot
There is no clear cut cost per VFX shot. However, we can estimate how much you will be spending by comparing the VFX budget of various movies, along with the quality of the visual effects they had.
Alice in Wonderland had an average cost of $46,000 per VFX shot while the heavily criticized Green Lantern had $41,000 per VFX shot. Multiply this with the number of VFX shots you need, and you get a rough estimate of your VFX budget. Harry Potter had at least 600-800 VFX shots in it. Meanwhile, Alice in Wonderland had at least 1,700 VFX shots.
Facilities and Hardware
Aside from all of that, you will also be spending money on maintenance and overhead expenses, such as electricity, software, and rent. It’s not like the artists are not going to be working in a conducive environment. You will definitely be spending the budget on high tech computers because the stronger the computer is, the faster the rendering period becomes.
Virtual and physical storage is also a concern. For virtual storage, you would need at least 50-100MB for each frame. For physical storage, you would need an equipment and props room.
VFX vs.CGI
VFX and CGI tend to confuse people a lot because they fail to distinguish them accurately. Well, CGI is a kind of VFX, a highly advanced one if you ask. CGI is basically something that is entirely computer-generated while VFX is not. But both form integral parts in modern filmmaking.
CGI is Part Of What We Call VFX
A CGI or computer generated imagery is one that is entirely computer generated, but still falls within the scope of “visual effects”. For example, the Avatar movie that stunned audiences worldwide is one that heavily relied on CGI. Those beasts and beings are entirely computer made. If that movie was made with just VFX, the beasts would have been some costume or animatron that would later on be edited with visual effects to look real.
Thus, ordinary VFX relies on a physical shot that is later edited via computer. CGI, on the other hand, does not require a physical shot because highly skilled artists can accurately draw out beings and things without any material basis. This comparison makes CGI way more expensive.
Films That Used CGI vs. Films That Used VFX
As mentioned earlier, the Avatar movie was made out of pure CGI because they created an artificial world of beings, a stunning one! The classic Jurassic Park trilogy used VFX because the dinosaur shots were actually based out of dinosaur animatronics that were later edited to look real.
The solo Black Panther movie used CGI, which is probably why it garnered so much criticism. While the solo Black Panther movie looks cartoonish, the black panther suit in Civil War looked real because there was a real suit that was embellished via VFX.
The Most Expensive VFX Films
To better appreciate how expensive VFX and CGI is, let us take a look at some of the most expensive ones to date. These two films showed that although CGI and VFX may be a necessity, it does not guarantee critical reviews. VFX and CGI are just part of what makes a movie or film great, not the entirety.
Game of Thrones Season 8
Let’s start with the one that enraged 50% of the fans while the other half, cried on the sidelines for their murdered medieval TV series. GOT season 8 costs $15,000,000 per episode because if you have a silly script, might as well distract the fans with amazing effects. Minus the dark Battle of Winterfell scenes, literally dark, the whole season deserved the $90,000,000 budget it had.
As for why expensive, well dragons of course. We also have VFX with the horses, probably a few real horses that are multiplied on a computer, and the fire and catapult visual effects. That season botched, but at least we had that amazing dragon battle sequence, hooray, I guess!
Jurassic World
Ah, nothing beats profiting out of the fans nostalgia! Jurassic World was the latest iteration of our beloved Jurassic Park series. This time around, the dinosaurs were not just ordinary VFX, but straight-up CGI. It was pretty obvious since you could see multiple dinosaurs on the scene, doing that with VFX would be tiring and time-consuming.
According to Screenrant, the bulk of the $170,000,000 budget went to CGI. That is to be expected since there were more dinosaurs in this movie than probably the entire original trilogy. They also had that CGI island that had a volcanic eruption, well you can’t just VFX that out!
The Need For Visual Effects And CGI
Now that we have established the need for VFX and CGI, why do filmmakers and viewers still look for it? Well, for viewers, it is much more appealing to see a CGI or VFX dinosaur than some guy in a dinosaur suit, screaming like a manly crow. For filmmakers, CGI and VFX have come to save the lives of our dear stuntmen. Some stunts are too dangerous to do, so we have to go for CGI or VFX.
Some animals no longer exist, like dinosaurs, and so we need to rely on CGI or VFX to bring them back to life. Some beings do not even exist or have never existed, like orcs or trolls, so we go for CGI and VFX to show the viewers how fascinating they truly are. CGI and VFX have made the cinematic experience more immersive and realistic.
Conclusion
To summarize, VFX, including CGI, are quite expensive. They require tons of effort, mastery, skills, and imagination from our hard-working visual artists. VFX and CGI are rightfully expensive because of how much effort goes into making it. In fact, we should pay visual artists more because, without them, we probably won’t have fun imagining dinosaurs and dragons. The next time you watch superhero movies, fictional movies, and even action blockbusters, you will appreciate the visual artists more because you now know how rightfully tiring but expensive their job is.