Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to build a film set?
How much does film set construction cost?
Is it expensive to build film sets?
How are fake walls made for sets?
How do you build a film set?
What is a green screen?
How do you estimate costs?
How to budget your set build
How long does it take to build a film set?
It's a piece of string question but here are some examples:
We have built 4 blanks walls and painted a floor in 4 hours, so we could shoot the same day but it was less than cost effective overall and most people will refuse or just not manage it.
A big set on a movie can be many weeks from start to finish but this has factors like; waiting for drawings, shortage of labour, waiting for exotic materials, rewrites and so on.
A small commercial would be perhaps 2 day build but a decent commercial would be a week or two.
A small film stage with one or two sets can be perhaps two weeks but often sets are changed and swopped over the course of shooting as well to save money.
Please remember the set has to be struck (demolished) at the end, after all other departments have left, its will also not happen instantly but certainly a whole day minimum is ideal.
How much does film set construction cost?
A set can be built for £1,000 but we are probably talking about a single wall under those circumstances. The UK film construction industry is catering to perhaps the largest Film and TV budgets in the world, this makes for high pay and high standards. That being said indigenous British film productions do not traditionally allocate large budgets to their productions and so must be looked at and indeed catered to separately by separate suppliers.
UK Commercials have now a similar agreed pay scale to that of long form US productions and major films shot in the UK and so is similarly budgeted. The bottom line is that any film set must be estimated based on requirements, it can not simply be calculated as a percentage of the production budget. A single domestic room set could be built and struck for £5000 or could cost you £45,000 if the architectural and finishing requirements are exotic enough.
A rather simplistic rule of thumb would be to look at the square footage of floor space and the square footage of wall space. If it is large, the cost will be substantially more than if it is small. This seems patronising but producers often skip this step and are amazed when the see the estimate.
A small independent film might spend £50,000 on the interior of a large luxury flat. A low budget (£1 million) Sci-Fi movie might do a typical single stage worth of a main set and a few minor sets for £70,000. A Hollywood production would spend £200,00 and £700,000 on roughly the same size of sets respectively but they are not getting the same detail of product, they are also building 6 other sets for that movie at the same time over a prolonged period.
With these numbers, I am speaking about experienced film construction companies who’s reputation hangs on every project. We will not deliver something that embarrasses us, we will refuse the project if the budget cannot achieve our level of quality. Beware the “set builder” who either does not or can not maintain this standard, a good set is always good value.
Is it expensive to build film sets?
Building a set is cheaper than using a location in the following circumstances;
If you have a lot to shoot, either angles or just pages of dialogue, the freedom of movement for the camera and crew combined with rapid turnarounds, controlled conditions like sound proofing and much broader lighting and grip options multiplies your output many times over.
Walls can be floated out or holes can be hidden in the set as camera traps to achieve, otherwise, impossible angles. Everyone can be on the same stage floor even though the setting is multiple floors. There is no traveling time from base and equipment can be rigged and be standing by on the stage. The set can be rapidly changed to solve problems on the day rather than returning to a scene later. Lunch breaks can be shorter with no travel time.
Loading in on a first day does not face the bottleneck of a residential front door and a single parking space, studios have car parks and usually loading bays, so multiple departments can load in simultaneously.
Bottom line costs, locations can be expensive in themselves but the addition of location facilities can be a multiplier. You must have a unit base, unit drivers, toilet facilities, standby grip vehicles, standby prop vehicles, makeup and wardrobe facilities, on set security, locations crew, mobile catering, parking and suspension permits, location protection must be done before the crew arrive, wrapping storage is needed for location furniture etc not being used, generators, more sparks, more camera crew, more wardrobe and makeup due to splitting the teams between unit base and the location, more time allowed for breaks to travel.
Even if your production is too small for all of these, you will encounter some of them certainly.
Unforeseen issues, drivers can struggle to find you but a studio is a difficult thing not to track down. Camera equipment, props, crew and above all cast often go astray on the way to a location and any single element being delivered to set can hold up the entire production. Likewise a mistake in the kit list is much easier to rectify in a studio because hire companies, prop houses and studios tend to cluster or at least there is a more regular delivery schedule which can have one item piggy backed onto it.
Professional crew all know the established studios intimately as well as details of parking and loading in.
Infrastructure. Hanging drapes, lights or green screen can be done without additional rigging from the gantry. As can ceilings pieces, special effects or set dressing.
You can have health and safety issues assessed more easily, even by the studios own people. Things like gunfire and explosions do not require informing the police in general with studios as they do with locations.
Local councils are more at ease with the welfare of child actors in controlled environments. Animal handlers are likewise better catered for with holding areas and unloading facilities. The sound department would much rather be in a sound stage than bedsit The grip department will prefer a flat solid floor with lots of room for all the toys.
There may be a limited store of supplies in case of emergencies, like sheets of material, paint, rostrum decks, wall or ceiling pieces, weights and braces. Electricity capacity of a studio is greater even than that of a large and expensive location generator and does not cause noise pollution.
How are fake walls made for sets?
Walls for films, TV and events all use a principal called “flats” which are light timber frames with a skin of plywood or similar material. They can be any size but stock flats are generally 8ft by 4ft in the US and the UK, European standard sheet size is slightly larger than that at 1220mm by 2440mm.
For on camera work, flats are joined together to make larger walls and then covered in a single membrane to hide the seams. Either an unshrunk cloth or lining paper which is then painted. Alternately the wall can be plastered for almost any texture.
Events flats are usually clothed separately with a finished colour, usually dark.
How do you build a film set?
A film set first must be designed by a Production Designer who usually works in pencil and creates sketches for the Director and the Director of Photography (camera man)
Once these are approved the designer has the Art Directors draw up the sets in technical drawings, which are given to the construction manager. The CM then calculates a price for each set to be built, modified during shooting and disposed of at the end.
The producers then decide if this is acceptable, negotiate with the Designer/Director/DOP based on budget and either approves it or new drawings are produced to be priced again.
Once all drawings are approved the stages in a studio are booked and detail drawings of every single part of each set begin to be produced while the construction team set up in the studio.
The studio floors are marked out for the walls
Steels are erected for any second floor sets
Riggers install any overhead rigging for ceilings or lights
Stage hands load in stock of timber and sheet materials
Workshops are installed near the stages
Flats (wall sections) begin to be fabricated
Walls begin to go up using carpenters and stage hands
Plasterers start covering walls and adding holding details
Painters begin coating the surfaces, walls and floor
At this point final textures and colours are still not solidly agreed and the director often visits the set or is shown samples by the paint shop. Once sections of the set are completed large props like doors or trees or features are added by prop dressers and/or carpenters and final paint effects may be applied to everything.
Finally the set will be dressed according to the set dressers instructions and lighting will begin to light the set.
What is a green screen?
Green screens work on a principal called “ChromaKey” which allows an automated editing system to remove a single colour from the image or in this case a moving image. Bright green and bright blue are the two colours found least in human skin tones, therefore they are the best of a large number of colours used in chroma key and hence the term Green Screen prevails.
The principal is that a large green drape is hung behind the actor and any props and so they can be cut out of the background easily. The the green are is replaced by a landscape or virtually anything you want.
It is rare that any well funded piece of filming will not have some small piece of green screen in it these days due to the increasing quality and ease of the process.
How do you estimate the cost of building a TV set?
TV in the UK has very different rates to film but TV sets tend to be extremely expensive due to the need to durability and also a modular (mostly steel) construction. They usually require long lead times and in-depth structural analysis for health and safety purposes. Pilots often use more traditional non reusable sets for cost reasons, which can easily look as good on camera.
How do you work out the cost of building your event?
It's really just a matter of asking your event builder as early as possible about potential designs. With a wealth of knowledge and experience, you will at least be given “Do-able ideas” that can be priced easily and accurately. When excluding the builder you run the risk of committing to highly impractical and expensive ideas that will be difficult to estimate the cost of.
How to budget your set build
You should budget your set build only once you know what your design is but often in lower budget productions a designer is not onboard yet, in this case, speak to a construction manager directly.
If you have a total production budget of £500,000 and £450,000 is already accounted for, there is no point in asking a designer to create sketches of the Titanic. Remember anything built must be of quality or it will undermine the credibility of you entire project.
Begin by finding studio space, with enough space you can reform your own budget to allow locations to be replaced by sets, thus slashing your scheduling issues and equipment hire costs. With long form productions, sets can be remade and repurposed in hours at little cost in an appropriate space.
Construction labour in the UK today costs the construction company between £255 and £265 a day, so they will be passing it to production for about £300 to £310 per day unless you set up a construction accountant and pay direct (you will struggle to find crew this way) and everyone expects overtime, which increases cost even further.
So actual labour is the greatest cost and also a major cashflow issue as wages are weekly.
Lets put that in perspective
4 carpenters per day is £1200, plus 2 painters @ £600 is £1800 per day
Then there is the hire of £20,000 worth of tools @ 1% per day, a construction manager all through prep and production and many tonnes of materials.
Lets say you allow 30 man days for your little film, that £54,000 without the Construction manager or the tool hire or the materials
Try to allow the construction company freedom to improvise and reduce the need for labour, listen to their advise rather than following only the creative brief to the letter. Major motion pictures can do this but rarely even then is it accepted as best practice to have the wheel reinvented when there are already wheels available.
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