What drives the price
For the same minute of film, differences in visual difficulty and revisions can change the time needed several times over. The main factors are:
- Runtime: billed in whole minutes, with anything under 1 minute billed as 1
- Visual difficulty: character acting, continuous story, complex action and exact product reproduction count as Premium
- Revision needs: many approval layers or “revise until satisfied” moves up a tier
- Whether you need an original script or an extra concept for comparison
- 4K output, a specified high-quality model, or a project that can never be shown publicly
- Subcontracted work such as 3D or human voiceover, listed at cost
Three ways to fit the budget
First, choose the Light tier: for finished work with simple visuals and few revisions, each stage fixes only objective errors (such as a prop from the wrong era or a horse missing a leg in an AI shot) and not taste notes like “a different style would look better,” and the final film still may not have obvious flaws.
Second, shorten the runtime and focus on the most important points. Third, reduce difficult shots: fewer multi-character scenes, lip-synced dialogue and fast action can move the film down a tier.
Small ways to start
With a small budget, start small: a sample demo of 15 seconds or more, fully credited if you go ahead; or, if you already have an overall plan, just a few AI shots or effects segments priced by shot count or segment length.
For a series, episode one builds the characters and locations, and later episodes that reuse them in the same style are discounted per episode. The second opening film for Cangqian Subdistrict in Hangzhou reused the first one's character and style and took under a week from script to finished revisions.
Why we don't cut the price within a tier
Our quotes are not negotiable and stay valid for one month. The workload of a tier is fixed, and cutting the price without cutting the work would only cost quality, so we would rather help you change the approach than do lesser work within the same tier.
