Why does CGI cost so much?
Your favourite animated films frequently use CGI effects. However, the majority of creative companies would charge by the second if you attempted to produce an animated video.
Do you know how much CGI expenses are each second? We will tell you!
The cost of CGI
The cost has to do with the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into creating CGI. Often known as computer-generated imagery, you need a broad skill set.
It takes a team of highly skilled artists and technicians many months to create just a few minutes of high-quality CGI footage. And, of course, all that time and expertise comes at a cost. Additionally, other factors can drive up the price of CGI, such as the complexity of the project and the level of detail required. Ultimately, it’s a highly specialized field that requires a lot of resources, and those resources come with a price tag.
Other factors that have an impact on the cost …
They are the total length and a list of revisions. CGI modellers and animators determine the overall duration of the film or animation. Of course, the cost of a short movie will be less than a 2.5-hour blockbuster.
Another aspect is the number of revisions. When the customer requests many rounds of adjustments, the price tag can be higher.
How Much Does CGI Cost Per Second
The CGI cost per second is at least a minimum of $13 per second. Similarly, it would cost you around $800 per minute. At the same time, these are just estimations of the cost. The actual cost can go a lot higher based on the project.
However, CGI can go for a couple of hundred $ a second or several thousand. Talent, experience and reliability are what affect the price.
Here are some of the most expensive TV shows ever made with CGI:
- Marvel. This includes the wildly successful WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye. Due to the fantastical nature of this visual content, Disney+ sets aside $25 million per episode. With the response they’ve gotten, it seems a worthwhile investment to the animated giant.
- The Pacific. When you put two film giants on a project together, it’s unsurprising to anyone how epic the journey will be. This HBO original is the most expensive series the network has made, created for you by Steven Speilberg and Tom Hanks. Overall, the show cost about $200 million.
- Game of Thrones. Likely the most popular and widely viewed, heavily CGI’d program of all time went on for eight seasons. That’s 73 episodes, six of which were in the last season. Season eight alone cost $120 million.
- The Mandalorian. While this show has only had two seasons so far, it costs the same amount to do this early on as it did per episode in the last season of Game of Thrones. $240,000,000 over two seasons means Disney is going all out to get it right. They even developed new technology just to reduce the amount of location variation.
- Lord of the Rings Prequal. This one hasn’t even been made yet, but Amazon has already shelled out a quarter of a billion dollars to produce five seasons of it. Estimates are at $1,000,000,000 in total budget by the time the show ends.
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