Film crew rate
calculator.
Day rates are the easy part. Prep days, travel days, overtime, kit fees and fringes are where a crew budget quietly goes wrong.
Build the crew list below and every one of those is costed per role. Download it as an Excel file with the rate conventions still live, so changing one re-prices everybody. No account, nothing uploaded.
Rate conventions
The four rules that turn a day rate into what a person actually costs. The defaults are the common ones, not the only ones — change them to match your market or your agreement.
Fringes are charged on labour only. A kit fee is equipment rental rather than earnings, so payroll tax and holiday pay don't sit on top of it — and a calculator that charges them anyway overstates your crew cost.
The crew
One line per role. Two grips on the same rate is one line with two people.
1 paid day
1 paid day
1 paid day
1 paid day
1 paid day
1 paid day
1 paid day
A day rate is not what a day costs.
Crew is the largest line on most productions and the one costed most casually. It goes wrong in the same five ways every time, and they compound.
Prep days
A recce, a build day, a kit check, a pre-light. Normally paid at the full day rate, and normally missing from the first draft of a budget. A three-day shoot with a build day is four paid days.
Travel days
Commonly paid at half rate, though it varies by territory and by how far you're asking someone to go. Either way it is not free, and on a location job it can add a day per head in each direction.
Overtime
A day rate covers a set number of hours — usually ten. Past that you pay a multiple of the hourly rate the day rate implies, typically 1.5×. Two hours over on a ten-person unit is not a rounding error.
Kit fees
Crew who bring their own camera, sound bag or van charge for it separately, per shoot day or as a flat fee. It is rental income, not wages — which changes how it is taxed and what fringes apply to.
Fringes
Payroll tax, holiday pay, pension, levies. A percentage on top of everything you pay a person, varying hugely by country and by whether crew are employed or engaged. It applies to labour, not to kit rental.
Headcount
“Two grips” is two of all of the above. The multiplier is obvious written down and forgotten constantly when a budget is built in a hurry against a rate card.
One DoP, three shoot days.
At €600 a day. The naive figure and the real one are not close, and nothing here is unusual — a prep day, two travel days, four hours over, a camera fee, and 20% fringes.
3 × €600. The number that gets typed into most budgets.
One prep day at full rate, two travel days at half.
4 hours at 1.5× the implied €60/hr, plus €150/day camera fee.
On the €3,360 of labour — not on the €450 of kit rental.
Two and a half times the naive figure, for one person, with nothing exotic in it. Multiply that across a unit and it is the difference between the margin you quoted and the margin you get. If you want the rest of the budget around it, the film budget template has the sections; the budget calculator turns a total into a price.
How do you calculate a film crew's cost?
Take each role's day rate, multiply by the number of people and by every day you are paying for — shoot days, prep days and travel days, which are often paid at different rates. Add overtime, charged off the hourly rate the day rate implies. Add kit fees for crew who bring their own equipment. Then add fringes — payroll tax, holiday, pension — on top of the labour. A crew cost that is only rate × shoot days is usually 20–40% short of what leaves your account.
Are prep and travel days paid?
Almost always, and forgetting them is the single most common error in a crew budget. Prep — a recce, a build day, a kit check — is normally paid at the full day rate. Travel is commonly paid at half, though it varies by territory, by agreement and by how far you are asking someone to go. A three-day shoot with a build day and a travel day is five paid days, not three.
How is film crew overtime calculated?
A day rate is deemed to cover a set number of hours — ten is the usual assumption. Divide the day rate by those hours to get an hourly rate, then pay a multiple of it for every hour beyond: typically 1.5× after the standard day and 2× after a further threshold or on the seventh day. This calculator uses a standard day and a multiplier you can change, because both are conventions rather than laws.
What is a kit fee?
A separate payment to crew who supply their own equipment — a DoP's camera body, a sound recordist's bag, a gaffer's van. It is charged per shoot day or as a flat fee for the job, and it is rental income rather than wages. That distinction matters: in most territories a kit fee does not attract payroll tax or holiday pay, so a calculator that adds fringes to it overstates your cost.
What are fringes on a film budget?
Everything that sits on top of a rate because you are employing someone rather than buying a service: employer payroll taxes, holiday pay, pension contributions, and sometimes union or insurance levies. It is expressed as a percentage of the labour cost and varies enormously by country and by whether crew are employed or engaged as freelancers. It is left at zero here by default because guessing your jurisdiction's figure would be worse than asking.
Do I need an account to use this?
No. It runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and the Excel download is written on your own machine. Slatewise itself — where rate cards, crew assignments and margin live across every project — has a free plan with no card required.
Rate cards that stay right, on every project.
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