Beacon launch film · Investment calibration
Three investment levels, shown against published production rates and real finished work. Built so the money can be evaluated with accurate expectations in either direction.
This document makes no recommendation. It does not argue for a budget. Every tier is given the same treatment, the same detail, and the same skepticism. The conclusion is yours to reach.
This matters more than any single figure below, so it goes first. Across every source consulted, the rate cards are solid and public — union scale, music licensing, permits, markup. The project totals are not. Of roughly sixteen production companies checked, only six display live dollar figures, and the $75K–$100K single-project zone is almost universally quote-gated.
Three of the example videos in this document carry a published price, and exactly one real client project cost is disclosed anywhere in the underlying research. Everything else is inferred from what is visibly on screen and from published credits. That inference is legitimate and it is labeled every single time it happens.
A figure someone put in public and stood behind. Union rate sheets, license price pages, permit schedules, vendor rate cards. Each one carries its source link.
Inferred from production signals — shoot days visible on screen, crew counts in published credits, runtime, cast size, technique. "Directional" marks the weaker cousin: a figure in circulation that no rate card backs. Neither is a guess dressed as a fact, and the highlighter above catches both.
The research does not cover it and nothing here fills the hole. Listed openly at the bottom of this page rather than papered over.
Wistia made three ads for one product at $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000 — all produced by Sandwich — and then published the performance results. It is the only experiment of its kind in public. It is also run by a video hosting company, and it is n=3.
Wistia published what each budget bought behind the camera. Same product, same brief, same production company — Sandwich — across all three.
Shot on an iPhone X. Published
Shot on a Canon C300. Published
Arri Amira, full crew. Published
The $10,000 ad outperformed both the other two — at roughly half the cost per install of the $100,000 version. Published
Watch the three films · Read the results write-up
Read it with the limits attached. Wistia states these plainly and so does this document:
A production quote answers both at once, which makes them hard to separate and easy to conflate. At the ~$100,000 level, usage rights are the largest single escalator in the quote.
Shoot days, crew, cast, locations, animation technique, grade, sound. The part a viewer can see. This scales with days and with drawn frames.
Where it can run, for how long, in how many territories, and whether it can go to broadcast. None of this is visible on screen. All of it is real money.
One data point makes the scale concrete: a three-principal spot with broad usage rights carries up to $60,000 in usage alone. The $20,000 per-principal cap behind that figure is published; the three-principal scenario is the researcher's. None of it appears on screen.
Two points would read as a binary. Three show the shape. Each column below gets identical treatment — same width, same weight, same evidence standard. Nothing here is styled to be preferred.
| On screen | ~$20,000Small studio or freelance-led production | ~$50,000Small studio with a full crew | ~$100,000Established production company |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shoot days | One day, one location — if it is live action at all EstAnchored on a published single-morning school shoot. | 1–2 Est | 2–4 Est |
| Crew | 5–15 people across 6+ stages PublishedDemo Duck's stated project model at its $16,000 minimum — not a $20,000-specific figure. | 8–15 EstA DP, gaffer, key grip, sound mixer, a producer separate from the director, art/wardrobe, PAs. | 20–40 EstNamed director (not the DP), line producer, full G&E, art dept with designer and set dresser, HMU, wardrobe stylist, script supervisor, studio teacher if minors. |
| Cast | 2–4 illustrated characters, or real people rather than paid talent Est | 3–6, SAG contract likely Est headcountPrincipal session fee $822.30 + 23.5% P&H is published. | 8–20 including background, full SAG Est headcountBackground (General Extra) $448.70 first commercial, 1-year use — published. |
| Animation | One register, carried the whole way — custom illustration, or motion graphics over simplified UI, or locked-camera live action Est | Custom-illustrated 2D Rate published$7,000–$20,000 per finished minute. What that buys — roughly 2–4 minutes, or 60–90 seconds of character animation — is derived from the rate, not published Est | Substantial custom 2D at established-studio tier, or rotoscope/composite over live action Rate published$8,000–$25,000 per finished minute. |
| Music | Stock/royalty-free $15–$80 per track PublishedCustom composition starts at $1,000 and can exceed $5,000. At $2,000–$5,000 that is 10–25% of a $20,000 budget Est | Broadcast-tier license, $199 (1 territory) or $999 (5 territories) PublishedOr a freelance composer at $650–$1,900 per finished minute — no public rate card exists for composition Directional | Boutique house original score, $3,000–$10,000 regional/web-only DirectionalNational broadcast creative fee runs $30,000–$50,000+; orchestral or live band $50,000–$100,000+. |
| Voiceover | One artist, $200–$500 standard; $1,000+ premium/broadcast Published | No figure is assigned at either level by the research. The only union anchor is the SAG off-camera principal session fee of $618.30. Not known | |
| Revisions | 2–3 rounds, staged. Each additional round $300–$1,500 Published | 2–3, with a defined change-order threshold Est | 3+, built into schedule, with a strategy phase upstream Est |
| Deliverables | 16:9 master + 9:16 + 1:1 + two or three short cuts EstEach extra format costs $200–$800 if not negotiated into original scope — published. | 1 hero + 2–3 full cutdowns + platform crops, possibly BTS Est | Often 15–30 discrete assets EstHero, full cutdown ladder, crops, stills pulled from the shoot, BTS. |
| Locations | One, typically found rather than paid Est | 2–3, at least one paid and permitted Est countNYC permit $500 per 14 days, $3,200 admin fee for DCAS interiors. FilmLA ~$931 — and FilmLA states its fees are only about 40% of true permit cost. | 4–8, or a stage build Est countStage listings run $1,000–$1,750/day small independent up to $15,000–$25,000+/day on a major lot with union labor. |
| Turnaround | 6–10 weeks PublishedGisteo publishes 5–6 weeks full-service; Demo Duck 8–10. Rush under ~2 weeks carries +25–50%, which puts a three-week $20,000 video at $25,000–$30,000. | No weeks-to-delivery figure appears anywhere in the research for either level. Not known | |
| Rights & usage | ~$20,000Small studio or freelance-led production | ~$50,000Small studio with a full crew | ~$100,000Established production company |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talent contract | Typically no paid on-camera talent, or a single non-union performer — no SAG contract Est | SAG contract likely: $822.30 session + 23.5% P&H per principal Published | Full SAG contract with real usage negotiation Rates published |
| Usage exposure | None from SAG at this level Est | The research says "plus usage" without quantifying it at this rung Not knownThe ceiling that applies to any SAG principal: Class A unlimited, 13-week max, $20,000 per principal. | Up to $60,000 for a three-principal spot with broad rights Rate publishedArithmetic on the published $20,000 per-principal cap. The three-principal scenario is the researcher's; the rate is not. |
| Music license | Web and social only. Standard tier $59 explicitly excludes TV/radio/film Published | Broadcast permitted — Premium $199, one territory Published | Multi-territory $999, or Enterprise custom for unlimited territories Published |
| Broadcast | Separately quoted. Gisteo carves broadcast out of its standard pricing because of extra VO licensing fees Published | The published escalation on music alone: web-only to broadcast is 3.4×; broadcast to multi-territory is another 5×. PublishedWhether a given project clears for broadcast depends on the music and talent licenses actually purchased. The research does not state a broadcast condition for either level. | |
| Source files | Not included by default. Gisteo publishes a buyout starting at $500 PublishedIf re-cutting or localizing later without returning to the vendor matters, this has to be bought up front. | Not addressed by any vendor in the research at these levels. Not known | |
| Term limit | No vendor in the entire research base states a term limit on the finished asset's license — perpetual versus fixed-term is unaddressed at every level. The only published term anywhere is the SAG Class A 13-week maximum. Not known | ||
| Markup & insurance | AICP standard production-company markup is 25% Published. Short-term $1M general liability runs roughly $525–$565 flat, $5M roughly $1,110 Published. The common 2–3%-of-budget insurance figure is a rule of thumb rather than a rate Directional. At the $100,000 level both markup and insurance sit inside the quoted number rather than on top of it. | ||
| AI-generated talent | Does not reduce this category. Under the 2025 SAG-AFTRA Commercials Contract, new performances generated from a digital replica are paid at 1.5× scale session fee, plus full holding and use/residual fees. Published | ||
Every column is presented at equal weight on purpose. Where a cell says "not known," that is the state of the public record, not an omission.
One technique observation that applies across the ladder. Mixing registers costs more than committing to one. The research notes that combining live action, custom character animation and 3D inside a single $20,000 piece is the most common way that budget produces a result reading as roughly $6,000 — and separately documents the same dynamic at the top, where the same $75,000–$150,000 bought either a single :30 of animation or a 3:38 film across eight-plus locations. Both are observations about technique and scope discipline, not about which number to pick.
These are described, not rated. The research documents what is visibly on screen; it does not evaluate the work, and no quality verdict has been added here. Watch a few and form your own read — that is the point of the section.
The clearest illustration: at the same $75,000–$150,000 level, one company bought a single :30 of animation and another bought a 3:38 live-action film across eight-plus locations. That spread is technique, not quality. Drawn frames cost per second; live action costs per day.
None of the Demo Duck projects below carries a disclosed commercial price — the one published figure is a pro bono partnership at $0. Every band is inferred from runtime, technique, cast size and published production detail, anchored to the studio's stated $16,000 minimum Published
1:20Illustrated animation
$0 to client — pro bono Published
Commercial equivalent $18,000–$30,000 Est
Fully hand-built illustrated animation of a student's poem, carried by the student's own recorded voice. Entirely bespoke — no stock, no template, no UI screens. Worth noting the conditions: no client-side revision pressure and no margin.
Watch:30 or less eachMultiple pieces
$18,000–$35,000 for the campaign Est
Roughly $5,000–$9,000 per :30 inside a package Est
Product spots in simplified UI motion rather than pixel-accurate screen recording, plus live-action classroom vignettes with 2D overlays. The per-asset economics work because discovery, design system and music amortize across the set.
Watch4 short spotsLive action
$15,000–$25,000 for the set Est
Tasty-style locked-off top-down live action with real students across four activities. One shoot day at the school itself, one fixed camera setup, no paid talent, no set build — shot in a single winter morning around class schedules.
WatchDuration not published2D motion
$20,000–$35,000 Est
2D motion and infographic animation built on a brand system Thorn's own in-house design team supplied, which removed the visual development phase entirely. Palette brightens across the runtime; character detail increases as the story turns.
WatchDuration not published2D character animation
$20,000–$35,000 Est
Top of band, likely spilling over
A diverse cast of custom characters and causes, meaning many bespoke designs and rigs, plus two voiceover artists performing in duet rather than one — two paid sessions, two direction passes.
WatchReel2D / motion graphics
$3,500–$5,000 per :60 Published
2D character animation, motion graphics, kinetic type, whiteboard and animated spokesperson work. Gisteo states these examples correspond to its published standalone project rates.
Watch~:30Generative AI
$2,000 Published
Made in Google Veo 3. The creator states 300–400 generations produced 15 usable clips over roughly two or three days — about a 4% hit rate Published. Kalshi had six- and seven-figure quotes in hand first. It ran nationally and did 18M+ impressions in 48 hours Published. Visual incoherence read as intentional under a chaos brief.
View the creator's post~1:00Generative AI + VFX
Never published No band claimed
OpenAI Sora footage plus corrective VFX and an original commissioned score. Publicly criticized for visual discontinuity and character drift. Two facts sit together: the brand cited a limited budget, and it still required an ad agency, corrective VFX and a composer — so it was not a cheap project.
ViewNo production-cost figure is published for any of these. Bands are inferred from visible signals or from published credits — agency, production company, director, named crew counts.
0:542D character animation
$40,000–$75,000 Est
Fifty-four seconds of full character animation by Giant Ant — five animators plus a separate cleanup pass, storyboards, illustration, original music and SFX. No shoot, no cast; the entire cost lives in drawn frames.
Watch~0:29 × 4 films2D motion graphics
$40,000–$75,000 Est
Credits published
Four films rather than one. Animade published exact scope: six named animators and dedicated sound design, executed against COLLINS storyboards. The budget bought deliverable count.
Watch0:30Live action + 3D
$40,000–$75,000 Est
Production and post only — the celebrity fee is unpublished and sits outside this figure
An art-directed kid's-bedroom set, celebrity talent against a space environment, and a 3D motion-design mosaic of class tiles with UI compositing. What's on screen is not fully explained by the band, because the talent line isn't in it.
Watch1:00Live action
$40,000–$75,000 for the spot Est
The full shoot package it was cut from reads at $75,000–$150,000 Est
A lit and cast :60. The one example here flagged as a cutdown from a larger package, so the single-spot figure and the visible production are not one-to-one.
Watch0:15Live action
$40,000–$75,000 Est
A single location, lit and designed, with slow-motion and a practical debris burst. Fifteen seconds. The research calls it a clean floor-of-band reference — the same range that bought 54 seconds of full character animation elsewhere.
WatchThis is the band the agency proposal under review sits in. Again, no disclosed budgets — bands rest on published credit lists and visible production signals.
0:302D animation
$75,000–$150,000 Est
Credits published
Thirty seconds made by 35+ named people across BUCK, Part and Sum, and Notion — eight animators, nine designers, two copywriters, a six-person strategy team. The steepest cost-per-second in the entire research base. That describes density, not outcome.
Watch3:38Live action + screen comps
$75,000–$150,000 Est
Six-plus child cast across multiple families and eight-plus locations — festoon-lit backyard, lantern-lit blanket fort, three gelled home interiors, forest, beach — with night-interior lighting packages and a forest tracking shot. The longest piece in the band by a wide margin.
Watch1:00 (+ :30 cutdown)Live action + custom 2D
$75,000–$150,000 Est
A seamless blue cyclorama stage hire, a hero child actor, a second dressed "ON AIR" home-studio set, and fully custom frame-by-frame line art that tracks the performer. Real rotoscope hours, not a stock overlay pack.
Watch0:30Live action, narrative
$75,000–$150,000 Est
Agency credit published — Quirk Creative
Four dressed locations — living room, school hallway, classroom, and a built branded center — roughly twelve child actors plus adults, and a consistent cinematic shallow-focus grade, across two shoot days with minors.
WatchIncluded only to mark where the ladder continues. Same caveat — no published costs.
1:00$150,000+ Est
A dressed period-office set with ~20 background extras, practical and CG wings, an oversized-keyboard build, a dinosaur-skeleton museum set, heavy grade, plus named DP, VFX house, edit house and audio post.
Watch7:03Likely well above $250,000 Est
Seven minutes of broadcast-grade 2D by Titmouse — roughly eight designed characters, dozens of backgrounds, FX animation, a professional Japanese seiyū cast, original score, and 7+ language localization.
Watch0:30$150,000+ Est
Underwater pool photography, a roller-coaster POV rig, a soapbox-derby car mount, a waterslide and a dressed classroom. Four-plus locations, specialty camera packages, a water unit, two to three shoot days with minors.
Watch6:15714K views
Plausibly under $10,000 Est
Sal Khan on a single webcam in front of a home bookshelf, cut against raw screen recordings. One location, no lighting package, no score, no VFX.
Watch0:05Made entirely in-house
No production figure published Not known
Zero shoot days, zero locations, zero cast. Four total frames of vector art drawn in Figma, and sound design consisting of the creative director recording roughly 200 armpit-fart variations himself. Celebrity talent was considered and rejected as unnecessarily expensive.
Watch0:30Live national broadcast
No production figure published Not known
A blue slate, one line of type, thirty seconds of silence. It ran in a slot where CNN :30s were estimated at $231,000 each Est — a useful reminder that production spend and media spend are different conversations.
WatchThe brief's own requirements, mapped to published rates and to the level at which each element appears in the research. No verdict is attached. This is here so the requirements and the money can be read side by side.
Read every date in this section as stale. The brief is a June 2026 document and every milestone in its schedule — including the shoot week and the September 1 lock — has already elapsed. Dates are quoted below only to identify which requirement is being priced, never as a live timeline.
Two document conditions worth knowing before reading any proposal against this brief. First, the current version of the brief carries no budget figure at all — earlier drafts named tiers explicitly and those numbers were removed. Second, its Section 4 contains an unresolved contradiction: one paragraph states the certified teacher is on screen with the student abstracted in animation, while an adjacent paragraph states the video should not be built around a teacher delivering instruction on screen. Both conditions bear directly on what a vendor would have priced against.
Separately: the timeline in that brief is a June artifact and every milestone in it has elapsed. Any production-window math needs a fresh date before it means anything.
These are the numbers anyone can verify. They are what makes a line-item bid checkable, which matters more than usual given that no category average exists to check it against.
| Line item | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| SAG Class A unlimited use | $20,000.00 | Per on-camera principal, 13-week maximum. SAG-AFTRA 2025 Commercials Contract, Year 1 (Year 2 is Year 1 + 2.5%) |
| SAG on-camera principal, session fee | $822.30 | Same rate sheets |
| SAG off-camera principal (VO), session fee | $618.30 | Same rate sheets |
| SAG on-camera group | $602.00 / $533.00 / $440.70 | Groups of 3–5, 6–8, and 9+. Same rate sheets |
| SAG General Extra (background) | $448.70 | First commercial, 1-year use. Same rate sheets |
| Pension & Health | 23.5% | Of covered earnings. Same rate sheets |
| AI digital replica performance | 1.5× scale | Session fee, plus full holding and use/residual fees. 2025 SAG-AFTRA Commercials Contract |
| Music — web/social only | $59 | PremiumBeat Standard. Explicitly excludes TV, radio and film |
| Music — broadcast, 1 territory | $199 | PremiumBeat Premium |
| Music — broadcast, 5 territories | $999 | PremiumBeat Business. Enterprise is custom for unlimited territories |
| Union DP day rate | $1,118.88 | 8-hour, studio-local. IATSE Local 600 Theatrical/TV Basic Agreement scale — not the commercial agreement; commercial bids typically run above scale |
| Camera Operator / DIT | $691.60 / $691.44 | Same source |
| AICP production-company markup | 25% | The standard figure, widely stated across the industry, though AICP's own cost survey is members-only. At ~$100,000 this sits inside the quoted number, not on top |
| Production insurance — GL premiums | $525–$565 / ~$1,110 | Short-term $1M general liability flat, and $5M respectively. The often-quoted 2–3%-of-budget figure is a rule of thumb, not a published rate Directional |
| 2D animation, commercial quality | $7,000–$20,000 | Per finished minute |
| 2D animation, established studio | $8,000–$25,000 | Per finished minute |
| Film permit — NYC | $500 | Per 14-day period, plus $3,200 admin fee for DCAS-managed interiors, $1M GL minimum |
| Film permit — FilmLA | ~$931 | Standard motion permit, ≤5 locations, 7 days. FilmLA states its application fees are only ~40% of true permit cost |
| Explainer market, 242 companies | Median $5,400 | Wyzowl: range $600–$250,000, average $10,983, trimmed average $8,457 |
| The one disclosed project cost found | $22,500 | Yum Yum Videos / Chargebee — a 90-second animated video, $15,000 per finished minute |
Both appear across multiple production-company blogs and content sites. Neither survives a check against the primary source. If either shows up in a proposal or a deck, it is worth asking where it came from.
"4A's 2025 Production Cost Survey — median $342,000 for a national :30, $18,500 for digital-first video."
This survey does not exist. The 4A's discontinued its annual TV Production Cost Survey in February 2014, after 25 years. The last edition covered 2011 data. There is no successor and there has been no 4A's cost survey for over a decade.
"AICP 2025 Guidelines — average national :30 spot $387,000."
Also fabricated. The actual AICP National Live Action Production Guidelines document was retrieved and text-searched: it contains no per-spot or per-minute cost figures at all. It is a bid form and a methodology document.
| Source | Status |
|---|---|
| 4A's Production Cost Survey | Discontinued 2014. Last data: 2011 |
| AICP cost survey | Exists, but members-only. Public documents are the bid form and bidding guidelines — methodology, no dollars |
| ANA "Production Transparency" (2017) | Real, but about bid-rigging and agency conflicts. No dollar figures |
| Animation Guild / TAG | Publishes labor wage scales, not production cost-per-minute |
| Trade press, 2024–2026 | Anecdotes and qualitative commentary. No systematic averages |
Effectively every per-minute figure in circulation today traces back to production-company marketing content. Nobody can state what a "market rate" video costs. The practical consequence: a proposal at any level has to be justified by line items rather than by category average — there is nothing credible to compare it to.
The last real benchmark, for historical scale. The final 4A's survey, on 2011 data, put the average across all TV ad lengths at $298,000, with :30 spots at $354,000. That is the national broadcast television tier — a ceiling anchor, not a comparable for brand or digital film.
One more figure to keep away from a production quote. Stride, Inc. discloses advertising expense in every 10-K, and the FY2026 filing describes those costs as consisting "primarily of internet advertising and online marketing," totaling $92.1 million for the year ended June 30, 2026. That is media and working spend. Production is inside SG&A with no disclosure, so the two numbers do not belong next to each other.
Each of these would change a decision if it were known. None of them is guessed at above.