WholeReach · industry directory

Film & Video Production

The companies that define the film & video production industry, each read on the same nine-check website rubric — a 0–100 score with the exact fixes — alongside the concepts, the developments and the questions that shape the field.

See the directoryGet your free score

The companies

25 companies in the film & video production industry, each graded on the nine things that decide whether a buyer or an AI assistant can find and trust them online. Open any name for the full write-up and the specific fixes.

70+ solid   45–69 gaps   under 45 costing customers

Sites we couldn’t reach

9 businesses whose website blocked our scanner — common when a site filters datacenter traffic, and not a sign the site is broken. A blocked site is never scored zero.

Who defines the film & video production market

The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in film & video production — context, not local listings; never scored.

Film & Video Production guides

Concepts

Above-the-line vs below-the-line

Above-the-line is the creative leadership negotiated before production — writer, director, producers, principal cast. Below-the-line is everything it takes to execute: crew, gear, stages, locations, post. The split is how every budget top sheet is organized and where a client's questions about 'why does it cost that' usually land.

Day rate vs kit fee

The day rate is labor; the kit fee (box rental) is the separate, negotiated payment for a crew member's own equipment — a DP's monitor, a sound mixer's cart, an editor's drives. They are taxed and reported differently, and collapsing them into one number is a common budget error.

10-hour day

The scheduled workday most commercial and non-union crews are booked against, measured from crew call to wrap, with overtime beyond it. Scripted union days are more often 12; the number a bid assumes silently sets the overtime exposure.

Turnaround and golden time

Turnaround is the mandatory rest between wrap and the next call — breaking it triggers penalty pay. Golden time is the punitive rate (often double or more) after an extreme-hours threshold. Both are schedule risks, not line items, and they are what makes an ambitious day expensive rather than just long.

Per diem

A daily allowance for meals and incidentals on location travel, paid on top of rate and separate from lodging and travel days. Standard on distant location work and frequently forgotten when a client asks for a two-state shoot on a local budget.

Call sheet

The single daily document issued the night before: crew and cast calls, scenes and pages, locations and maps, weather, hospital, meal times and special notes. If it is wrong, the day is wrong — it is the operating contract for the shoot day.

One-liner

The condensed one-line schedule showing each scene, its slug, day/night, cast numbers and pages in shooting order. The document producers and department heads actually plan against, distinct from the full stripboard.

Shooting schedule and stripboard

The scene-by-scene plan built from the breakdown, ordered by location, cast, daylight and company moves rather than script order. The stripboard is its traditional color-coded form; the schedule is where money is won or lost before the shoot starts.

Script breakdown

Parsing the script scene by scene into every element that must be scheduled, hired, built, rented or cleared — cast, extras, props, wardrobe, vehicles, VFX, stunts, animals, special equipment. The breakdown is the source of both the schedule and the budget.

Storyboard and previz

Storyboards are drawn frames of intended shots; previz is a moving 3D or animatic version with real lensing, staging and timing. Previz earns its cost on VFX-heavy, stunt or volume work by proving a sequence cuts together before a crew is on the clock.

Script supervisor

The department of one that tracks continuity, coverage, screen direction, timing and every take's circle-and-notes, then hands editorial the log that makes the footage assemblable. Cutting the position is the classic false economy.

Dailies

Same-day processed, synced, color-corrected and transcoded footage from each shoot day, distributed for review and handed to editorial. The dailies pipeline is where camera metadata, LUTs, sound sync and proxy generation all have to line up.

Offline vs online edit

Offline is the creative cut, done on lightweight proxies to decide story and timing. Online is the finishing pass at full resolution and quality with the picture locked. Blurring the two — recutting during online — is the single most expensive habit in post.

Conform

Rebuilding the locked offline sequence from the original camera files at full resolution, matching every cut, effect, speed change and reframe. It is where mismatched frame rates, missing media and undocumented edits surface.

Color grade

The creative shaping of image — exposure, contrast, balance, secondaries, skin tone, look — done by a colorist in a calibrated suite. It is where a competently shot piece starts looking expensive, and it is craft plus a controlled viewing environment, not a filter.

DI (digital intermediate)

The full finishing pipeline around the grade: conform, VFX integration, titles, mastering and version creation in a managed color space. The term comes from film-out days and now describes the finishing stage as a whole.

Sound design

Building the non-dialogue, non-music sonic world — effects, backgrounds, ambiences, hard effects and designed elements. On most branded and documentary work it does more for perceived production value per dollar than any additional shoot day.

ADR and foley

ADR (automated dialogue replacement) re-records dialogue in a studio to fix unusable production sound or change lines. Foley performs everyday sounds — footsteps, cloth, props — in sync to a stage. Both are how a track survives location noise and international delivery.

Mix stage and stems

The calibrated room where dialogue, music and effects are balanced to a target loudness and format. Stems are the separated dialogue, music and effects submixes delivered alongside the final mix so a piece can be re-versioned, localized or re-cut without a full remix.

Delivery spec, deliverables and QC

The buyer's written requirements — codec, resolution, frame rate, color space, loudness, captions, textless elements, slates, stems, metadata — plus the technical quality-control pass that verifies them. A piece is not finished when it looks good; it is finished when it passes QC against the spec.

LUT

A lookup table that maps one set of color values to another — a viewing LUT to monitor log footage on set, a show LUT to hold a consistent look across departments. A LUT is a preview and communication tool, not the grade.

Log vs Rec.709

Log encoding preserves highlight and shadow latitude in a flat-looking image meant to be graded. Rec.709 is the standard display color space that looks correct straight out of camera. Shooting log without a color pipeline just delivers gray footage.

Codec and proxy

The codec is how images are compressed and stored (ARRIRAW, Blackmagic RAW, ProRes, H.264/265); a proxy is a small lightweight duplicate used for editing and review, relinked to the originals at conform. Codec choice drives storage, edit performance and finishing quality all at once.

Frame rate

Frames captured and played per second — 24 for cinematic motion, 23.976/29.97 for broadcast heritage, 25 for PAL regions, higher rates for slow motion. Mixing rates without a plan produces cadence artifacts that surface only at delivery.

Aspect ratio

The width-to-height shape of the frame — 1.78 for standard video, 2.39 scope, 1.85 theatrical, 9:16 vertical, 1:1 social. Modern jobs are shot with protect-and-crop framing so one capture can deliver several ratios, which has to be planned on set, not in post.

LED volume and virtual production

Shooting against high-resolution LED walls playing camera-tracked environments so reflections, lighting and parallax are captured in camera. Genuinely strong for vehicles, controlled environments and reflective product; weak when the content pipeline, previz or stage staffing is underfunded.

Greenscreen

Chroma key photography against evenly lit green (or blue) for later background replacement. Cheap to shoot and expensive to fix — spill, uneven lighting, motion blur and fine detail decide whether the key costs an afternoon or a month.

Plate

A clean background or element photographed for compositing — a locked-off empty room, a driving plate, a sky. Missing plates are the most common reason a VFX bid doubles after the shoot.

VFX shot count

The number of individual shots requiring effects work, and the unit VFX is bid and tracked in. Complexity per shot varies enormously, so a count without a breakdown by tier tells a client nothing useful about cost.

Temp love

When a client or director becomes attached to temporary music, sound or effects used in the offline cut and rejects the finished replacement. Managing temp expectations early is a real producing skill, not a joke.

E&O insurance and COI

Errors and omissions insurance covers claims arising from the content itself — rights, clearances, defamation, trademark — and is mandatory for most distribution. A COI (certificate of insurance) is the document proving general liability and equipment coverage, and no stage, location or rental house releases anything without one naming them.

Location permit

Municipal or property authorization to film, typically requiring insurance, a site plan, notification, and sometimes officers or fire safety. In Austin, city permitting runs through the local film office, and permit lead time is a scheduling constraint, not paperwork.

Film incentive / rebate

A state or local program returning a percentage of in-state production spend as a grant, rebate or transferable credit. In Texas this is TMIIIP, a cash grant administered by the Texas Film Commission and awarded after an audited application.

Qualified spend

The portion of a budget an incentive program actually counts — typically in-state vendor payments and wages paid to state residents, excluding many above-the-line, out-of-state and non-qualifying costs. Two budgets of identical size can produce very different awards depending on how spend is structured.

Union vs non-union

Whether a production operates under guild and union agreements (IATSE, SAG-AFTRA, DGA, Teamsters) or outside them. The choice governs minimum rates, hours, turnaround, benefit contributions and who is allowed to work — and it is the first structural decision in a budget.

IATSE contract tier

IATSE agreements scale by budget and production type, so a low-budget tier carries different minimums, staffing and benefit rates than a major agreement. Producers pick the tier the project qualifies for, and a misclassified tier is a costly discovery at audit.

SAG-AFTRA New Media Agreement

The union agreement covering content made for internet and streaming distribution, with negotiated flexibility on rates and terms relative to theatrical and television agreements. It is how most branded and digital projects hire union performers without a studio-scale budget.

Buyout vs usage

A buyout pays a flat fee covering defined use for a defined term and territory; usage pays per placement, market or renewal. Talent, music and stock all price this way, and the cheap bid is usually the one with the narrower usage grant.

Music licensing: sync, master, publishing

Using an existing recording requires two clearances: a sync license from the publisher for the composition and a master use license from the label for the specific recording. Clearing one and not the other is the classic mistake that pulls a finished piece down.

Needle drop

Using a pre-existing commercial recording rather than composed or library music. Fastest way to a specific feeling and the most expensive and slowest to clear — budget and lead time both have to exist before the edit assumes it.

Work-for-hire and chain of title

Work-for-hire language assigns authorship of commissioned work to the hiring party; chain of title is the unbroken documented trail of rights from script and underlying material through every contributor to the finished piece. Distributors, insurers and buyers audit it, and gaps are discovered at the worst possible moment.

Residuals

Ongoing payments to performers, writers and directors when a production is reused, licensed or streamed beyond its original run, administered through the guilds. A structural cost of union work that non-union budgets avoid and that clients rarely anticipate.

MOS and wrap

MOS marks a shot recorded without sync sound. Wrap is the end of the shoot day or the production, and 'wrap' as a phase covers gear return, location restoration, final timecards, petty-cash reconciliation and asset handoff — real work that gets left out of bids.

Post schedule

The dated plan from wrap to delivery: assembly, rough cuts, client rounds, picture lock, conform, VFX, color, sound, QC and delivery. The number of client review rounds is the variable that quietly determines whether a post budget holds.

What’s happening

• Generative AI has moved from demo to daily pipeline use in previz, concept and pitch frames, rotoscoping and cleanup, temp voice, and editorial assistants that log and search footage — while the union agreements wrote consent, disclosure and compensation requirements around it: the 2024-2027 IATSE Hollywood Basic and Area Standards Agreements, and the successor 2026 WGA Minimum Basic Agreement ratified in April 2026 and 2026 SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Agreement ratified in June 2026, which preserve the 2023 AI protections and add notice and bargaining rights over generative-AI training licences and synthetic performers. The practical effect on a bid is contractual, not technical: a client now needs language on what a model generated, who owns it, and whether any performer's likeness or voice was involved. Production companies that can answer that in writing win work that AI-ambiguous vendors lose. 2026-08 source ↗
• Virtual production and LED volumes have matured past the hype cycle into a tool for specific shot types — vehicle interiors, controlled and reflective environments, actors who need real interactive light — rather than a general replacement for location work. Volumes sold as a general-purpose standing capability have found that a harder sell; volumes sold per-sequence with funded previz, real content pipelines and proper brain-bar staffing are working. The honest sales position is now 'here is where the wall beats a location, and here is where it does not.' 2026-08 source ↗
• Production spend continues relocating toward incentive states, and Texas made a structural move: Senate Bill 22 of the 89th Legislature (2025), 'relating to the Texas moving image industry incentive program and the establishment and funding of the Texas moving image industry incentive fund,' took effect September 1, 2025, putting TMIIIP on a dedicated fund rather than a session-by-session appropriation, with statutory provisions extending to 2035. The Texas Film Commission administers TMIIIP as a cash grant on eligible Texas spend that can stack Additional Grant Awards to a maximum of 31%, with Texas-resident cast and crew thresholds and a requirement that most of the production happen in Texas. 2026-08 source ↗
• Streaming's contraction reversed a decade of assumptions. Commissioning volume fell from the peak-content years, streamers tightened per-title spend and became more selective, and theatrical windows returned as a value driver rather than an obstacle. For production companies the consequence is fewer, more scrutinized greenlights and a much larger share of revenue coming from brand, agency and independent clients rather than platform commissions. 2026-08 source ↗
• The post-strike labor landscape has not returned to pre-2023 levels. Production employment recovered unevenly, day rates compressed in commercial and digital work even as union minimums rose, and experienced crew diversified into branded content, corporate, live-event and creator work to fill the calendar. Access to a reliable, verified crew base — not gear — is the constraint that decides whether a company can staff two overlapping jobs. 2026-08 source ↗
• Vertical and short-form video budgets have shifted decisively to brand and social teams, who buy differently from agency producers: smaller per-piece budgets, far more pieces, faster turns, and success measured against platform metrics rather than a launch date. Alongside it, vertical microdrama — feature-length stories told in 60 to 100 vertical episodes of a minute or less — has become its own production category with compressed schedules and its own economics. 2026-08 source ↗
• Creator-studio hybrids have become real clients and real competitors. Established creators now book stages, hire union-experienced crew, commission color and sound, and run development slates, while traditional production companies build creator-style output for brands. YouTube's dominance on the living-room screen means a piece produced to broadcast standards and a piece produced for a channel increasingly compete for the same attention and the same budget. 2026-08 source ↗
• Remote and cloud post workflows are standard rather than pandemic improvisation. Camera-to-cloud upload from set, cloud-hosted editorial and shared project workflows, remote color and mix review sessions, and browser-based client review have unbundled where post physically happens — which lets an Austin facility finish work for a coastal client and lets a coastal facility bid into Texas. 2026-08 source ↗
• Camera and codec choices have standardized around a small set of accepted systems — ARRI's ALEXA line, Sony's VENICE and FX cinema cameras, RED, and Blackmagic — with ARRIRAW, Blackmagic RAW and ProRes as the workflow-safe recording formats and streamer camera-approval lists effectively setting the floor for episodic work. Standardization is good news for rental houses and post pipelines and bad news for anyone selling an unapproved camera into a delivery-spec job. 2026-08 source ↗
• Post and VFX consolidation turned violent: Technicolor Group collapsed in early 2025, pushing MPC, The Mill and Mikros into administration and forcing a sale of the pieces — TransPerfect bought MPC and The Mill and has since folded them into a single global studio under The Mill brand, while Rodeo FX acquired Mikros Animation. Buyers responded by adding vendor-solvency questions to their bid packages — escrowed media, project-level insurance, and 'what happens to my assets if you close' is now a normal procurement question and a real differentiator for stable independents. 2026-08 source ↗
• Recorded-music revenue has tilted decisively toward streaming rather than toward sync — the RIAA's 2025 year-end report puts U.S. revenue at $11.5 billion wholesale, with streaming at $9.47 billion or about 82 percent, downloads down to $272.6 million, physical up 5.0 percent on vinyl's $1.04 billion, and synchronisation a comparatively small $407.1 million, itself down 1.3 percent year over year. Sync nevertheless carries outsized weight for the composers and libraries who work in film and advertising, so licensing-ready recording, split sheets and clean masters matter as much as the mix. At the same time AI-generated music has forced rights disputes and new platform disclosure rules, which pushes commercial buyers toward composers and libraries that can document provenance — an advantage for real studios with real session paperwork. 2026-08 source ↗
• Live-event and broadcast production have converged on IP: SMPTE ST 2110, the standard suite for professional media over managed IP networks, which carries video, audio and ancillary data as separately routed, individually timed streams; Dante for audio distribution over standard networks; and remote-integration (REMI) models where a small on-site crew feeds a control room hundreds of miles away. It lowers the cost of multicamera live work and opens event capture to production companies that could never have afforded a truck. 2026-08 source ↗
• Brand video has largely moved in-house for volume work — brands run their own studios, editors and channel calendars — while outside production companies are hired for the pieces in-house teams cannot make: complex shoots, talent, high finish, and anything with legal or clearance exposure. The winning positioning is partner-and-overflow, not vendor, with content aimed at marketing leaders rather than at other filmmakers. 2026-08 source ↗
• Austin's production market is being reshaped by the same forces at once: the Texas incentive fund gives the state a durable pitch, SXSW and Austin City Limits keep national buyers coming through town, Austin Film Society's Austin Studios anchors stage capacity, and the 2024 shutdown of Rooster Teeth released a large pool of experienced digital-video talent into the local freelance market. The result is an unusually deep crew and post base at costs below Los Angeles and New York — and correspondingly more local competition for the same regional brand budgets. 2026-08 source ↗

Questions people ask

What is the difference between above-the-line and below-the-line?

explain that above-the-line covers the creative principals negotiated individually and below-the-line covers the crew, gear and services priced from rate cards, and why the split exists on a budget top sheet

What is a day rate, and what is a kit fee?

explain that the day rate pays the person and the kit or box rental pays for equipment they own and bring, that they are separate line items, and that they are reported differently

What is a 10-hour day, and what are turnaround and golden time?

explain the standard day length most rate cards assume, overtime past it, the minimum rest period between wraps and calls, and that turnaround violations cost real money on union jobs

What is a call sheet and what has to be on it?

explain that it is the single operational document for a shoot day — times, locations, scenes, cast, crew, weather, hospital — and that it is the record everyone works from

What is the difference between an offline and an online edit?

explain cutting on proxies to lock the story versus conforming back to full-resolution media for finishing, and why the offline decides the schedule

What is a conform and what is a DI?

explain relinking the locked cut to original camera media and the colour and finishing pass that follows, and that this is where delivery problems surface

What are stems and why does a client need them?

explain separated dialogue, music and effects mixes, and that they are what makes localisation, versioning and future re-edits possible

What is a delivery spec and what does QC actually check?

explain that the spec dictates codec, resolution, frame rate, loudness, captions and metadata, and that a QC failure late is one of the most expensive avoidable costs in post

What is a LUT, and why do people shoot log?

explain that log preserves dynamic range for grading and looks flat until a LUT is applied, and that a viewing LUT on set is not the final grade

What is the difference between a buyout and usage?

explain that a buyout pays once for defined rights while usage pays by media, territory and term, and that the word buyout means nothing until the scope is written down

What is chain of title and why does a distributor ask for it?

explain the documented trail proving the production owns or licensed everything in the film — script, music, footage, likenesses — and that gaps stop a delivery cold

What is E&O insurance and what is a certificate of insurance for?

explain errors and omissions coverage against rights and clearance claims versus a COI proving general liability and equipment coverage to a location or rental house

What is TMIIIP?

explain that the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program is administered by the Texas Film Commission as a cash grant on eligible Texas spend, and that recent legislation moved it onto a dedicated fund rather than a session-by-session appropriation

How much does a corporate or brand video cost?

give the cost structure — pre-production, crew size, shoot days, talent and usage, gear package, post hours, music and deliverable count — and explain that these swing the total by an order of magnitude; do not publish a price

Why does a 60-second commercial cost more than a 10-minute corporate video?

explain that finish level, talent and usage rights, and the number of people whose approval is needed drive cost far more than runtime does

Do I have to pay a kit fee on top of a day rate?

explain that a kit fee pays for equipment the crew member owns and would otherwise have to be rented, that it is negotiable and should be itemised, and that refusing it usually means renting the same gear at a higher price

Watch

Run a film & video production company?

Get your free website score and the exact list of what to fix — no charge, no pitch. Claim your listing or ask for the full report.