So what happens to the guys that bill $500,000 for a commercial?


That Amazing Tesla Video Was Made by Recent College Grads For $1,500
http://adage.com/article/digital/tesla- … ds/292188/

"Tesla doesn't spend a dime on paid advertising, but a group of recent college graduates decided to make a video spot for the electric car brand anyway.
The result was a minute-long ad titled "Modern Spaceship," which the Los Angeles-based creators spent $1,500 to make in November. The creators recently started a production company called Everdream Pictures."

You may be confused. The amount in the headline is production only.

Cost of production
Usage fee
Total billing

They are different numbers; not the same things. There is a girl who creates seven second vine commercials with her iPhone. Her total fee is, as I remember, around $25k-$35k per. She uses common objects in still frame, taking about 2-3 days production time.

Production costs vary greatly. The Super Bowl Frido-lay home produced commercials will be considerably lower in production cost than hiring one SAG camera operator. The amount headlined does not include any payment for the labor (preproduction, production, post), creative fees, insurance nor usage fees. It probably did not even include the cost of lunch or snacks.

O god, here come the butt hurt photographers & et all who will look at the "$1500" and see nothing but.

The irony is they're likely deliberately aware of this, which will only contribute to the virality of the story..compounding the strategy upon itself.

it's really nicely done, I think they did a good job.

Cool ad. I guess you can do a lot with $1500 if everyone's working for free. I wonder if Tesla donated the car as well.

Cost inc;
Account handler... agency fee.
Marketing... sometimes agency.
Production/traffic... agency fee.
Creative... part of agency fee.
Film crew/studio/models, mua, stylist ect.
Post production; editing, colour grading/retouching.
Media booking.

And agency fee inc. expensive lunches..... I'm all for that.

Probably had to spend it on the cost of using the wormhole sequence from the film Stargate

Nice ad, very well done. I hope they get some work out of it.

Creative people do experimental work on spec at sub market rates all the time.  You just don't hear about it because 99% of the time nothing happens-either the work is unremarkable, there are licensing/brand/talent issues, or the client isn't successful enough to make any news.  The production company obviously wants more work, will attract more clients, and wants to become an agency that bill $500,000.

This is not a surprising or generally successful strategy.  There were probably 500+ car commercials made on spec last year that went nowhere.