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About this tool
Build a line-item shoot budget from crew day rates, gear, location, travel and post hours, with contingency and GST.
A shoot budget calculator turns crew day rates, equipment rental, location fees, travel and living, and post-production hours into a single line-item production budget. It follows the structure of a standard AICP-style bid form: direct costs are totalled first, a contingency percentage is applied to that subtotal, and tax is added last on the contingency-inclusive figure. Useful for freelancers, agencies and in-house content teams who need a defensible number before quoting a client.
Open Shoot Budget Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Direct costs, then contingency, then tax — the same order a production bid is read in.
Shows cost per shoot day and per finished minute so you can price by output, not by effort.
Preset day rates are starting points; change any head count, rate or fee and the whole budget re-totals.
10% of the direct-cost subtotal is the conventional contingency line on AICP and AICE bid forms. Controlled studio work is sometimes bid at 5%, while documentary, outdoor or travel-heavy shoots commonly carry 15% because weather and access risks are higher.
Motion picture, video and television programme production and post-production services fall under SAC heading 9986 and are taxed at 18% GST. Set the tax field to 0 if you are billing an overseas client as an export of services or are below the registration threshold.
Usually not. Rental houses normally charge for pickup and return days as well, so a two-day shoot often books three or four gear days. This calculator keeps gear days as a separate field so you can bill them accurately.
Divide the all-in total by the runtime of the delivered edit. A two-day shoot totalling around 3 lakh that yields a two-minute film costs roughly 1.5 lakh per finished minute — a figure worth quoting when a client asks for extra cutdowns.
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