Comparing commercial production companies before you brief

Agencies with a verified published price

How to compare production companies fairly

1. Write the deliverable list before you request quotes. Name every asset you need out of the shoot: the hero cut and its length, the cutdowns, the vertical versions, stills, and any subtitled variants. Firms quoting against different deliverable lists will produce incomparable numbers, and the extra versions are cheap on the shoot day and expensive later.
2. Ask for a treatment, not just a price. A short written treatment describing the approach, the look and the shape of the story tells you more about a firm than any reel. It shows whether they understood the brief and whether they can think, and it is the cheapest way to compare creative judgment before committing to a shoot.
3. Establish who is actually on set. Ask which of the people in the pitch will be there on the day, whether the crew is in house or freelance, and who directs. Freelance crews are entirely normal in this industry, but you should know whether you are buying a specific director's judgment or a production office that books one.
4. Settle usage, licensing and ownership in the contract. Music licenses, stock footage, talent buyouts and the term of use all carry expiry dates. Agree how long you may run the work, in which media, and what renewal costs, plus who owns the raw footage. This clause causes more retrospective expense than any other part of a production budget.

What actually drives the quote

Crew size and shoot days come first, because both scale everything else: more people means more equipment, more catering, more insurance and a longer day. Talent is second, and paid performers carry usage terms that can cost more over time than the shoot itself. Location is third, since a permitted street closure and a studio hire are different worlds from filming in your own office. Post production is fourth and is systematically underestimated by buyers, because animation, color grading, sound design and licensed music each add real time. Revisions are fifth: two rounds included is standard, and open ended revision is how a fixed price becomes an argument.

The important question is not which firm is cheapest but which quote contains the things you will need anyway. A bid that excludes music licensing, subtitles and vertical cuts is not cheaper, it is incomplete, and you will pay for those items at a worse moment.

Judging a reel, and what to check afterwards

Reels are edited to flatter, so watch a full finished piece rather than a montage. Look at whether the story holds without the music, whether the dialogue is intelligible, and whether the work looks like the brand it was made for rather than like the production company. Then ask for the brief that produced it and what the client was trying to achieve, because a beautiful film that missed its objective is a warning rather than a credential.

If the finished work will carry claims, testimonials or paid endorsements, the same advertising rules apply to video as to any other medium. The FTC's guidance on making effective disclosures in digital advertising is clear that disclosures must be clear and conspicuous and placed where people will actually notice them, which in practice means on screen and legible rather than buried in a description field. Raise this at the treatment stage, because retrofitting a disclosure into a finished edit is expensive.

Questions people actually ask

How much should a commercial cost?

The honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on crew days, talent and post production, which is why a specific deliverable list matters more than a benchmark. Get three quotes against one written brief with identical deliverables. The spread between them, once normalized, tells you far more about the market than any published average would.

Should we hire a production company or an agency?

An agency brings strategy, messaging and media planning and usually subcontracts the shoot. A production company brings craft and execution against a brief someone else wrote. If you have a clear proposition and know what the film must say, going direct is often better value. If the proposition itself is unresolved, buying production first tends to produce an expensive answer to the wrong question.

Who should own the raw footage?

Negotiate for it, and expect some resistance, since archived rushes carry storage costs and some firms treat re-edits as future work. Owning the raw material is valuable if you will make cutdowns later. At minimum, agree a fixed price for re-edits and a period during which the footage will be retained and made available.

How long does a project take end to end?

For a straightforward single day shoot, expect a few weeks from brief to final delivery, most of which is scheduling and post production rather than filming. Animation and anything involving casting, permits or multiple locations runs longer. Build approval time into the schedule honestly, because client side sign off is the most common cause of a missed launch date.

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