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How a Lagos Feature Gets Paid For

AB Aisha Bello

Producers in this industry are secretive about money and it has never once helped the people doing the work. This is a plain breakdown of what a small feature here actually costs, where the money goes, what the kit pool changes, and what we pay people. Numbers are from our own productions between 2024 and 2026, rounded, in naira. If you are about to make your first film, read the budget section before you read anything else.

01 The budget, opened up

Where the money on a 45 to 60 million naira feature actually goes, and which lines are the ones that quietly ruin you.

The rough shape of a small feature budget

Crew, equipment, transport and locations swallow most of it, and the two you underestimate are transport and contingency.

On a feature in the 45 to 60 million naira range, our splits usually land near: crew and cast 34 percent, equipment 22 percent before the pool and about 9 after, transport and logistics 12, locations and permits 9, art and wardrobe 8, catering 6, post 10, insurance and admin 4, contingency whatever is left, which is usually nothing and that is the problem. The two lines first time producers get wrong are transport and contingency. Transport because Lagos traffic converts into overtime, and moving a grip package to Ogun costs more than anyone budgets. Contingency because it feels like money you could spend on screen. Then it rains for six days. Build a cover set into every schedule. It is free and it has saved four of my productions.

What rental was doing to us

Equipment at market rate ate 30 to 40 percent of small budgets, which is why so many first features are shot in eleven days.

The chain runs like this. Rental is expensive, so you cut shoot days, so you shoot ten to fourteen pages a day, so coverage suffers, so the edit has no options, so the film looks rushed. Then everyone blames the director. At pool rates the same package costs roughly a third. On our last feature that difference bought six additional shoot days. Six days is the difference between a scene you can cut and a scene you have to use. This is why I say infrastructure is a creative issue. Nobody makes better work by being braver about a schedule they cannot afford.

Weekly pay, and what it actually costs

Paying crew on Fridays rather than at wrap cost us cash flow and about six percent, and saved more than that in reshoots.

Weekly payment requires a float, proper payroll admin and a bank that will not hold transfers, which took us four months to set up. It is genuinely harder than paying at wrap. That is the honest reason most producers do not do it, whatever they say. Our costs went up around six percent. Our reshoot and pickup days went down by more than that. People who are paid on time do not disappear onto another job mid shoot, and a grip who is not worrying about rent is a grip who catches the thing you missed. It is now a condition of kit pool membership. That has cost us two members and I would do it again.
02 The kit pool in practice

Twenty-two productions, six month average booking, and the objections everybody raises before it works.

Objection one: nobody looks after shared kit

Twenty-two bookings, three incidents, all self reported. Shared ownership plus a small community beats a deposit.

This is the first thing anybody says. Our record across twenty-two bookings is one broken matte box, one lost baby pin and one case handle, and every incident was reported to us before we found it. I think the mechanism is social rather than financial. Members know the next production in the queue and will see them at a screening in six weeks. A commercial rental house is an anonymous counterparty and people treat it that way. The deposit still exists and the insurance is real. But the deposit is not what is protecting the kit.

Objection two: it will just become one company's kit

Which is why booking and money move to an elected member committee in early 2027, with no veto for us.

A fair objection, and the honest answer is that right now it is partly true. I decide bookings when two members clash. That has been fine because there are twenty of us and I try to be fair, but fairness administered by one person is not a system. The constitution puts booking, priority disputes and the maintenance reserve under a five person elected committee with two seats reserved for people who do not own a company. We keep one seat and no veto. If that handover does not happen by February 2027, everyone should treat the rest of this as marketing.
03 Rates and the ladder

What we pay, why it is public, and what happens to people after their first paid shoot.

Why the rate card is public

Publishing department rates in 2023 raised our costs six percent and ended most fee arguments before they started.

Secret rates only benefit whoever holds the budget, and on my sets that is me. Publishing ours was not generosity, it was an attempt to stop wasting three days per production negotiating with sixty people individually. Effects, honestly measured: costs up about six percent, negotiation time down enormously, and a noticeable improvement in who says yes to us. Two other companies published theirs within a year, which was the actual goal. The card covers grip, camera, sound, art, wardrobe, production and catering, by day and by week, with overtime defined in hours rather than in vibes.

What happens to trainees afterwards

Twelve through so far, nine have worked paid calls we did not organise, and transport allowance was the fix we missed.

The measure that matters is not how many people finish the scheme. It is how many are working six months later on jobs we had nothing to do with. Twelve people through intakes one and two, nine of them working, two on a commercial rental house's regular grip roster. One left the industry and said so plainly, which is a fine outcome. Finding out on a paid job beats finding out after three unpaid years. The thing we got wrong was transport. Two trainees from Ikorodu were losing nearly a fifth of their wage getting to set. Allowance is now standard and written into the constitution.

Current member rates, package inventory, available dates and how a production applies to join.

🔗Kit pool rate card and booking calendarthirdmainlandpictures.ng↗