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The Cricklewood greats only cost £100k
radyag
Posts: 2,220 Forum Member
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I heard peter capaldi on radio 4 and he said he made the mock doc for a cut price because he knew BBC4 had a tiny budget. Amazingly it looked great and was well made. Does it not prove TV budgets are higher than they could be?
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How do you pay the bonus though?
Most TV contracts don't pay the production based on how many viewers it gets as the budget per viewing is set.
I don't thnk it shows that budgets are too high, rather it shows that if you get the right people they might from time to time be willing to work for much less (or even free) because they want to do something,
Dr Horribles Sing along Blog is a great example of that.
Wheadon got some great talent together, and much of the equipment and post production was done either free or cheap based on a percentage of the sales of dvd etc.
That worked mainly because:
A: there was a strike on, which meant that no one was doing much for Studio productions (the biggest employer) - so most of the cast/crew/facilities would have been idle otherwise.
B: There was a great script that the people wanted to do.
C: The Producer personally knew, and had worked with most of the people involved, so many of them were willing to do it partly as a favour/fun project.
You can make great cheap TV and films at times, but only when the you're either not doing anything advanced/complicated, or people (and companies) are willing to work for well below their normal wages (which most can't do that often as they still need to earn a wage they can live on).
It's one of the reasons some big names seem to be in an odd selection of programs, they'll do one or two projrcts to pay the bills, then something fun/they want to do for themselves.
Pretty obviously you have a different contract.
More importantly you hold back a proportion of your budget for the bonuses, easily done if the upfront costs are lower.
Too many has beens and prima donnas expect football star wages when someone on a quarter of the wage could put in as good a performance and get a similar audience.
Point taken about most of the crew, whose names are not known and who are on ordinary wages.
One big advantage is that the big broadcasters would no longer feel they had to sign up a big name from the past (or upcoming "star" with inflated ego) and push their show at all costs.
In the multi-channel time-shifting downloading future shows willl increasingly stand or fall on their merits, not their position in the schedules. When it becomes apparent that there are many competent actors, comedians, musicians, newsreaders and quix show hosts out there wages will drop to sane levels and money will go where it belongs, to scripts, training and new talent.
[edit] What's £100k in today's money?