Kelvaro
  • Financial ops
  • Product tour
  • Guided pilot
  • Pricing
  • For accountants
  • Partners
  • Tools
  • Signals
  • Blog
Menu

Explore Kelvaro

  • Financial ops
  • Product tour
  • Guided pilot
  • Pricing
  • For accountants
  • Partners
  • Tools
  • Signals
  • Blog
Sign inRequest access
Free production crew calculator

Production shoot crew cost calculator

Estimate a shoot crew budget with day rates, kit fees, travel, and an overtime reserve visible as separate assumptions before production wraps.

Your assumptions

Estimate

Base crew labor$25,200.00
Estimated kit fees$1,680.00
Travel + per diem$1,750.00
Overtime / schedule reserve$2,863.00
Estimated production crew cost$31,493.00
Average cost per crew member$2,249.50

This is a budgeting tool. Actual union terms, overtime, turnaround, kit-rental arrangements, payroll obligations, taxes, travel, and worker-classification rules vary by production.

From estimate to workflow

Keep the actual crew cost connected to the job

Kelvaro is designed for businesses that repeatedly assign rotating contractors to jobs, approve changes, pay the right people, and reconcile the final cost without rebuilding the story from email and spreadsheets.

Request pilot access →Explore industry workflows

How to interpret the estimate

A production crew budget should separate base day-rate labor from kit fees, travel/per diem, and an overtime or schedule reserve. That makes cost changes easier to trace back to the production instead of appearing later as unexplained wrap-week variance.

Methodology

  1. Base labor = freelance crew members × paid days × average day rate.
  2. Kit fees = crew members × paid days × average entered kit fee.
  3. Travel/per diem = crew members × entered per-person allowance.
  4. The schedule reserve is applied to the entered crew subtotal and is not a prediction of actual overtime.

Useful for

  • Budget a commercial, branded-content, photo, or video production.
  • Stress-test the impact of an additional shoot day.
  • Compare the original crew estimate with approved wrap-week changes.

Related resources

Kelvaro for production companies →Production crew rate planning guide →Three-day commercial shoot budget →
Kelvaro

Contractor and financial operations for project-based businesses with rotating crews.

Request access →

Product

  • Financial operations
  • Kelvaro Margin
  • Kelvaro Collect
  • Kelvaro Cash
  • Contractor onboarding
  • Payment workflows

Use cases

  • Event contractor payments
  • Event staffing payroll
  • Industries
  • Compare software
  • For accountants

Tools & learn

  • Payment tracker
  • Free tools
  • Research
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • User guide
  • FAQ
  • Glossary

Company & trust

  • About
  • Press & media
  • Methodology
  • Data sources
  • Security
  • Compliance
  • Privacy
  • Terms

© 2026 Kelvaro. All rights reserved.

Built for controlled, evidence-backed operations.