Looking for your thoughts.

[Todd Terry]

Hard to say, because one question might be “What did they cost to produce?” while another might be “What would you charge to produce these?” They could have spent a great great deal on them…or not. We wouldn’t charge nearly what the big boys would, I’m sure. A really big post/animation house might even spend more on scoring that we would for the whole thing… there’s such a wide range.

The first one was very simple. The second one had a lot more complex moves, particle animation, etc., and would be more costly.

Conceding that I’m totally pulling this out of my ear, without really analyzing the spots or putting any pencil to paper… just my ballpark first guesstimate as to what our budgets for those would be, is probably in the $5k-$15K range for each. The first one would be in the lower end, the second in the upper.

I could be wrong (I might be erring a tad on the low side), but I think that’s a decent starting-point guess…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Greg Ball]

Thanks Todd,

What would you think the “big boys” would have charged for these? I’m not asking what to charge this client, I’m just trying to have them understand what the spots that they sent me probably cost to produce, so they can be realistic on their budget and expectations.

Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com

[Todd Terry]

Gosh… I dunno, it’s so hard to say.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some big post or animation house wouldn’t quote a number that was in the several multiples of tens of thousands of dollars (especially last year, or the year before that, or the year….). Then again, these days there are really swift and creative 16yo geeks out there with powerful computers and all the software and ability to do it, too. The problem with those young punks is that they generally don’t have either the marketing/advertising or art direction skills so they end up needing a lot of hand-holding. Couple of years ago we were swamped and had to sub out an animation job, ran across a kid who was a Maya and Cinema4D whiz who didn’t even know what to charge us for some pretty beautiful photo-realistic 3D stuff. We coulda taken him for a ride, but chose to be financially kind to him.

The range is just sooooo wide, it’s really impossible to say.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Greg Ball]

Hi Todd,

Would you have the name and contact info of that Maya and Cinema4D whiz who I might be able to contact?

Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com

[Todd Terry]

Sent you an email.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

At the risk of being “that guy”, I gotta say, the sample spots did not impress me all that much. Particularly the first one, which could have been executed in a pre-made AE or Motion template. Motion VFX offers a few similar templates to this sample.

I lost patience with the first spot for not getting the name out sooner.

The second one looks complex with all the particle animation. It doesn’t convince me that the phone is any different from any other thin phone, though. A descriptive voice-over narrative could help.

[Greg Ball]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your input. The client just likes the style. I wasn’t impressed either, but I just wanted to be able to tell my client that these spots probably ran X-amount of dollars.

The client’s product is very different and there wouldn’t be a template available.

Have a great night.

Greg

Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com