Phase-by-phase planner for indie and broadcast documentaries — logging, rough cut, fine cut, color, sound & delivery.
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Enter your project's footage breakdown by type (interview, vérité, B-roll/archival), the target finished runtime, doc style, workflow complexity, and your post crew day rates. The estimator computes each phase of post-production independently and totals up time and cost.
Every minute of raw footage must be watched and logged before editing begins. Interview footage is faster to log (structured, static, transcribed). Vérité footage is slower — you're hunting for usable moments in hours of continuous rolling. Rule of thumb: 6–12 minutes of logging work per minute of raw footage, depending on type.
Building the first story from selects. The IDA and professional editors consistently cite approximately 1 editor-hour per finished minute as a rough-cut baseline for interview-based work; vérité-heavy projects run 1.5–2× longer because story structure must be discovered in the edit, not scripted in advance.
Each round of notes and revisions typically adds 30–60% of the rough-cut time. Broadcasters and co-producers often require 3+ rounds. This is the phase most indie filmmakers under-budget.
Final approval, output of EDL/AAF/XML for sound and color, and creation of delivery versions. Adds 0.5–1 day per delivery version.
Professional colorists typically budget 1–3 days per 10–20 minutes of finished program for a documentary. Archival-heavy films with mixed formats require more time for technical matching.
Dialogue editing, sound design, music licensing/composition, and final mix. Documentaries with location interviews require careful noise reduction and equalization. Plan for approximately 1 editor-hour per finished minute as a baseline, more for narrative-style docs with sound design.
DCP mastering, broadcast spec QC, streaming encodes, closed caption files, and final archive. Additional versions multiply this time.
Multipliers derived from industry rules of thumb published by the International Documentary Association (IDA), Cyber Film School, and practitioner discussions on Larry Jordan's editorial blog. All estimates are starting points — actual time varies by editor speed, director decisiveness, and project complexity.
The widely-cited rule of thumb is 1 hour of editing per finished minute for the rough cut alone. A 90-minute documentary with 30 hours of interview footage typically requires 150–300 total editor hours across all phases. Vérité-heavy docs with 50+ hours of footage can take 400+ hours. Most feature-length documentary post runs 4–9 calendar months with a full-time editor.
Interview-based documentaries typically shoot 20:1 to 50:1 (20–50 hours per finished hour). Vérité and observational docs often exceed 100:1 since the camera rolls continuously for unscripted moments — a 60-minute vérité film may have 100+ hours of footage. Short-form web docs can work at 10:1. The higher the ratio, the more logging and selects time you need to budget.
At typical indie day rates ($500–$800/day editor, $600–$900/day colorist, $500–$750/day sound), a 90-minute interview-based documentary with 2 revision rounds might cost $18,000–$40,000 in editor, colorist, and sound fees. Vérité docs or broadcaster-level projects with 3+ revision rounds and multiple deliveries can exceed $60,000–$80,000. Adjust the day rates in this tool for your actual market.
Unlike structured interviews (which follow a known script and are often transcribed), vérité footage is unscripted and continuous — the editor must discover the story within the material. This increases both logging time (you don't know what's important until you watch it) and rough-cut time (structural decisions must be made from scratch, not scripted). Professional editors and the IDA both note that vérité projects regularly require 1.5–2× the edit time of comparable interview-based films.
A commonly cited benchmark for indie films and documentaries is 15–30% of total budget for post. For very low-budget docs ($50,000 or less), the percentage is often higher because post costs have a floor (a color and sound mix below a certain quality is unsellable). Many filmmakers shoot their full production budget and then scramble for post funds — a common cause of unfinished documentaries.
The estimates are based on indie and mid-budget documentary norms. Broadcaster and streamer commissions often require more revision rounds, stricter technical deliverables, and more formal sound and color work — so actual time and cost will be at the higher end of each range. Use the "3–4+ revision rounds" and "3+ deliveries" settings to reflect broadcaster reality.