You Want a Number

You Googled "video production cost NYC" because someone at your company said "we need a video" and now it's your job to figure out what that means financially. You want a clean number. One number.

I can't give you one number. Nobody who's honest can. But I can do better than "reach out for a custom quote," which is what every other production company's website says before routing you into a sales funnel.

I've been writing these invoices since 2020. I know what the line items look like. So let's get into it.

Three Buckets, Every Single Time

Every project, whether it lands at $4,000 or $40,000, breaks into the same three categories.

Pre-production is the planning. Calls, creative briefs, shot lists, location logistics. On a tight project this might be a few hours of back and forth. On something bigger it's weeks. Multiple stakeholders, multiple rounds of alignment, multiple opinions about what "cinematic" means. (It means something different to every person who says it.)

Production is the shoot day. Crew, gear, location access, permits if you need them, meals, parking if you're lucky enough to find it. A shoot day in Manhattan with a real crew runs $3,000 to $15,000 depending on scope and crew size.

Post-production is everything after. Editing, color grading, sound design, graphics, revisions. This phase takes longer than people expect. A one-day shoot needs three to five days in post minimum. More if motion graphics are involved. More again if your team has strong feelings about music.

What Crews Actually Cost Per Day

Solo shooter with their own kit doing run-and-gun work. $1,500 to $3,000 for the day. Basic edit included at the lower end.

Two-person crew. DP plus audio, or DP plus an assistant. Professional gear package. $3,500 to $6,000 for the shoot day. Post is a separate line item.

Full crew. Director, DP, audio tech, gaffer, PA, possibly a producer running logistics on set. $7,000 to $15,000 per day. Post-production is separate and it's going to be a real number on the invoice.

These aren't aspirational ranges. These are what we quote and what the companies we respect quote. Give or take.

The NYC Tax on Everything

Nobody charges more because the city is glamorous. The math just works differently here.

Parking a grip van in Midtown runs $50 to $200 depending on your luck. Filming permits start at $300. Studio space with a proper cyc wall in Brooklyn costs $3,000 to $5,000 a day. A basic room with decent light and no street noise is still $1,500.

Then there's the crew. These people live in a city where a one-bedroom apartment costs $3,200 a month. Their day rates reflect that. A DP in Brooklyn and a DP in Nashville might have the same eye, same reel, same experience. One of them pays twice the rent.

We once spent 45 minutes hauling C-stands up a freight stairwell on West 27th because the elevator was down and nobody mentioned it until we arrived with cases. That kind of thing happens every other shoot in this city. You can't plan for it but you pay for it one way or another.

What You Get at Each Level

$3,000 to $7,000. One shoot day. Small crew. Single location. One final deliverable. A talking head, a product walkthrough, a batch of social content. Tight scope, but the result is sharp if the team knows what they're doing.

$7,000 to $15,000. This is where most real projects live. Multiple setups or locations. Full crew. Professional post with color grading, sound design, licensed music. A corporate brand video, a mini-doc, event coverage with a highlight reel. Enough room to actually be creative.

$15,000 to $30,000. Multiple shoot days. Bigger crew. Scripted content with talent. Location design. Full post-production pipeline including graphics and animation. A two-to-three minute brand film that looks and feels like one.

$30,000 and up. Campaign work. Commercials. Multi-video packages from a single production. This is where hair and makeup, wardrobe, catering, and everything that makes a set feel like a set come into play.

The Line Items Nobody Remembers

Revisions. Most companies include two rounds. After that it's hourly. If you have six people giving notes and three of them contradict each other, those rounds disappear fast.

Music licensing. Stock tracks run $30 to $300. Custom scoring starts around $1,000. That song your marketing director found on Spotify is not an option unless your legal team wants a side project.

Talent. Actors are a separate line item. SAG rates, usage rights, fitting sessions. A single on-camera talent for a one-day shoot can add $1,500 to $5,000 depending on experience and usage scope.

Travel inside the city. Moving a crew and eight cases of equipment from Greenpoint to the Financial District takes real time. If your shoot has three locations in one day, that transit is eating into productive hours. Nobody talks about it during scoping. Everyone notices it during the shoot.

The Pricing Calculator Exists for a Reason

We put a pricing calculator on the website because the email back-and-forth was burning hours for everyone involved. Ours and yours.

Plug in your crew size, shoot days, deliverables, post-production needs. You get a ballpark based on what we actually charge. Not a final quote. A real starting point that skips the part where you wait three days for someone to reply with "great question, let's hop on a call."

On Margins and Why They Matter

Production companies have margins. That's not a confession. We pay crew. We maintain gear. We carry insurance. We have software, storage, an accountant, and rent in a city that doesn't do favors.

A healthy margin in this business runs 20 to 35 percent. On a $10,000 project, the company keeps $2,000 to $3,500 after hard costs. That covers the project management, the emails, the revision calls, and the months where the inbox is quieter than you'd like.

If someone quotes you dramatically less than everyone else, something is getting cut. Crew quality, post-production time, or maybe they just won't be around to finish the job. We've picked up projects that started with cheaper crews and needed to be rebuilt from scratch. That's the most expensive outcome. I wrote about what to look for before you sign anything if you want to know the red flags.

Bottom Line

Video production in New York is not cheap. It wasn't in 2020 when we started. It isn't now.

But it doesn't have to be confusing. If someone can't tell you where your money is going, that's their problem. Not yours for asking.