People have compared Creating budgets for videos to the scientific method. Marketers, business owners and even videographers find it trivial to find out what a video will cost the people involved.

Why is a video production budget so vital? The amount of money put into a project isn’t the core of great videos. Yet it can help to have a clear plan of where finances, resources and time will go into when planning to make films.

Budgeting for video production is not that different from budgeting for a household in principle. The clearer we are with sources, costs and returns the better off everyone is. Proper budgets assure that everyone involved leaves the project happy. Great video budgets help assure that a film is a win-win situation for everyone. Here are five factors that affect video production budgets

1. Production Value

If your video is going to demand some extravagant production value (like shots off mountain ranges or exploding cars) it’s going to cost you. The production value is best determined in pre-production. Knowing what shots you want to take will make it clear what kind of money it’s going to take to make those shots happen.

2. Time

Like the old saying goes, “time is money.” The longer a project is going to take, the higher costs are going to be. That’s why proper time management and scheduling is vital as well in the planning process. Factors like off-site locations will also affect the length of time a project will take. Essentially, the more time it takes to make a video, the more expensive it’s going to be. But, the shorter it takes to make a video, the less costly it will be and the more value-for-money the project will be for everyone.

3. Talent

There’s a reason why talent is expensive. That’s because getting great talent saves clientele from a lot of headache. Many things can become a factor in determining the value of talent. A few factors would include experience, portfolio, creativity, originality, professionalism and so on.

4. Results

Making a video that will reach tens of thousands of viewers will have a different value with one that’s only going to reach a few hundred. Most clients would disagree saying that the amount of work will be the same no matter what the outcome.

When reaching a wider audience, there are more factors to take note of. Context, cultures, possible public relations problems and such will come into play. Remember that Pepsi ad that turned out to be offensive to different cultures?

5. Editing Process

Pre-production and actual production aren’t the only stages of film-making. There’s also post-production. Some videos might be harder to edit than others. That’s definitely a factor to keep in mind when creating video production budgets. What’s the editing process going to look like and how many revisions might it take until we get the right output?