We have just spent two weeks in a studio in Tokyo for two separate video shoots so I thought I would outline the nature of the shoots and some actual costs.
The studio was in Meguro, which is reasonably central Tokyo, and the dimensions were a width of 8m, height of 5m and a length of 7m for the actual studio shooting area and a total of 13m for the whole space.
Shoot one was for an overseas based IT company wanting to film customer testimonials and explanatory video for their annual company online event. The event was put together to feel live, but we actually pre recorded and edited it before hand in the studio (keep that a secret!).
We had one day for building the set, setting up the lights, cameras and mics and then filmed presentations from about 10 customers over 2 days with a 3 camera set up, some with a teleprompter.
The set we had the vendor built was just basically a bigger version than the one we had last year and cost a bit over 1,000,000 yen for design build in and build out. The studio, one day of prep, two days of video shooting, including full lighting that included a couple of Arri HMI’s and some Arri S-60c’s came to a bit less than 1,500,000 yen.
Of course on top of that there was our costs and those for the camera equipment. We also did the edit, piecing everything together ready for live streaming for this as well.
Shoot two was the next week, in the same studio, but this time for an overseas company doing masterclass style personal growth seminars. Three cameras again, again 2 fixed and one on a slider, but just filming one person speaking directly to the camera for a number of different presentations.
This time the set was a bit more elaborate with more parts, costing about 1,500,000 for the design, build in and build out. Just filming one person seated so the number of lights was less , although more directed with flags making them more complicated to set. The cost for the studio for one day of preparation and about a day and a half shooting was about 1,000,000 yen.
The other costs were our production costs and camera equipment, including live streaming all three cameras to the director overseas. Editing was done by the client so we uploaded to their frame.io account for delivery.