million dollar movie


A couple of weeks ago i went up to Kuala Lumpur and met a man who owns an animation studio. That studio makes animated TV shows for various countries, and other design and art work. At that time i did not ask him the actual cost of producing a full-length animated movie, as i (and he) knew i don’t have the money for it, plus he steered the conversation more towards drawing stills first for a manga instead of launching full-body into a movie, which is wise i think. But a friend asked me how much it would cost to make, so i asked him the other day. Here is his reply today:

(Here are) the estimates. I’m calculating based on a 90-minute animation special to be produced for TV or direct-to-video quality. The breakdown is as follows:

  • Animation pre-production, production and post: RM3,219,681.00
  • Music, Voice talents, Sound effects: RM200,000.00
  • Total: RM3,419,681.00
  • The animation pre-production includes all aspects of character design, models, props and background designs, story editing, storyboarding, and animatics (animated board to gauge timing sequence).

    Animation production include all aspects of animation from key poses, in-betweening, pencil linetest for approval, cleaning up, painting, and compositing with background.

    Post production include compositing, visual effects and final transfer to desired media – digital master tape (digibeta), DVD, web streaming, etc.

    All the above is done at Ixxxx. For the music, voice recording, sound effects, mixing and all other sound related sessions will be performed by a third party but under the supervision of our producers.

    We will set milestones and review stages for approval from pre till final delivery so that you can be sure that everything works according to plan. We will discuss about this in details later.

    Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need additional information or if you have any questions.

    (for calculation sake, RM3,419,681.00 = 1,013,212usd)

    2 thoughts on “million dollar movie”

    1. Sorry to hear this. Does this mean animation is no longer a goal? If so, what alternatives are you thinking of?

    2. Animation is still definitely a goal. Very definitely. In fact, this is the first hard “number” i’ve been given to get this goal to reality, which gives me more impetus to get it done.
      .
      But how?

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