Budgeting an AI short film

A 5–10 minute short film means 60–120 shots and 400–700 seconds of kept footage — the largest generation project on this site. Uniform premium generation would cost $300–700; nobody does that. The working structure:

Layer	Share of shots	Tier	Cost (7-min film)
Previz / animatic (whole film)	100%	Vidu ~$0.04/s	≈ $25
Coverage & atmosphere	~70%	Seedance / Kling	≈ $45
Character & dialogue scenes	~25%	Kling / Veo 3.1	≈ $55
Hero moments	~5%	Sora 2 Pro / Gen-4.5	≈ $30

Rates shown at each model's base tier, verified July 2026 from official vendor pricing pages and documentation. Vendors change prices without notice — see methodology.

≈ $155 for a festival-ready short

With retakes budgeted per layer (×1.5 coverage, ×2.5 characters), a 7-minute short lands around $130–190 in generation — a number that would have been a fantasy in filmmaking two years ago. The binding constraints are elsewhere: character consistency across scenes (lock one reference image set, generate everything from it — Kling's specialty), continuity of light and wardrobe, and the edit itself.

The previz layer is not optional at this scale: $25 of Vidu animatic prevents hundreds in premium regeneration by resolving pacing and shot-order decisions before they get expensive. See best AI for previz for that workflow.

Run your own numbers. The cost calculator applies your clip length, resolution and a realistic retake buffer across every model at once.