Are You Making Your True Worth?

If you’re a Prop Master you’ve got a very tough job and many times it’s a “Thankless” job. You start at the break of dawn many times and don’t finish until very late at night. The weather can be brutal. The competition is dog eat dog. And sometimes the food tastes like dog food. You hear some crazy numbers getting spent to make some of these shows. So are you getting decent compensation for your efforts? And what’s the future look like?

Check out some of the numbers. Remember that some of this data is from 2011. Use the Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) to calculate to today’s dollars.

So from those of us here, we appreciate you work, effort, dedication and tenacity.

Salary of a Prop and Set Designer

Why Movies Cost So Much To Make

The movie business is a big business, garnering around $450 billion in 2007 globally. But even that huge number doesn’t mean that all movies are money makers. Although there are thousands of movies made every year, only a percentage of those become feature films with the big budgets we often associate with the Hollywood movie-making business. And though the occasional independent, low-budget film will break out and become a runaway hit (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “Super Size Me” and “Paranormal Activity” are all fairly recent examples), most blockbusters are on the high-budget end.

In 2007, for example, the average cost to produce a major studio movie was around $65 million. But the production costs don’t cover distribution and marketing, which was another $35 million or so, on average, in 2007, bringing the total cost to produce and market a major movie right at $100 million. Those kind of numbers are a long way from the lowly $400,000 it cost to make “Napoleon Dynamite.”

“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) cost over $100 million and made over $1 billion worldwide.

In 1993, “Jurassic Park” was on the lower end of the average movie budget, costing $63 million;

In 2004, “Shrek 2” had a similar budget of over $70 million. Both “Jurassic Park” and “Shrek 2” grossed over $900 million worldwide.

“Avatar” (2009) is a great example, with a mind-blowing budget of $237 million. The high investment paid off, though, with the movie grossing well over $2 billion.

Some costly flops include

• “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” which had a $100 million budget and managed to gross just a bit over $7 million.
• “How Do You Know?” with a $120 million dollar price tag and a return of just under $50 million.

The Costs of Making a Movie

According to an article by The Guardian, movie costs can be broken down into some broad categories, including script and development (around 5% of the budget).

Actual production costs, which include the ongoing salaries of all the people needed to make production happen, 25% of the total. And production isn’t the end of the story: special effects, depending on the type of movie, can be an enormous cost, and music has to be composed and performed as well.

Then, when the whole movie is made and ready to go, it’s time to start in on the work of marketing and distributing. After all that money invested, you can be sure that marketing is not an overlooked part of the process.

“Spiderman 2,” which had a production cost of $200 million, racked up another $75 million in expenses for marketing.

Source: Investopedia

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