Multi-million dollar 10-minute movie?

[Aaron Gerow]

The Asahi has a fun article in this morning's paper (December 10). As  
other media have reported, there's a little bit of a hubbub going on  
regarding how much Tokyo Prefecture spent on a 10-minute promotion  
video as part of their effort to become the host city for the  
Olympics.  It's interesting because the article compares how much this  
video cost and how much the average movie costs in Japan.

First, the 10-minute video, which was produced by Dentsu (the major ad  
agency in Japan), cost 500 million yen (or about $5.7 million) to  
make. The breakdown is as follows:

FIlming and editing: 270 million yen
Computer graphics: 80 million yen
Producer and staff: 54 million yen
Extras: 25 million yen
Music and narration: 17 million yen

The media is taking this up as another example of the government  
wasting money, and so to emphasize this, the Asahi gives some  
comparative facts. First, a PR video of that length usually costs  
20-30 million yen. Second, the average budget of the 407 Japanese  
theatrical films made in 2007 was 260 million yen (about $3 million).  
A film producer working at one of the major TV networks even commented  
that a big budget TV-produced theatrical film is usually only about  
400 million yen. Third, the computer graphics budget for a feature  
film with lots of CG work is at best about 100 million yen.

There's a comparison I would like to add: the amount that the Japan  
Foundation supposedly wasted -- and that so far has gotten much more  
publicity -- was only about $900,000.


Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com