Production Mogul: Price a Production in the Time It Takes to Read the Brief

Every producer knows the ritual. The brief lands on Friday afternoon, and the weekend disappears into a spreadsheet: crew rates, gear lists, fringes, payment terms, a cancellation ladder, all formatted into something a client can sign. Production Mogul exists to end that ritual. It is production budgeting software that prices a film, video or photo production in the time it takes to read the brief, and it was built by DesignHero’s own Olivier Hero Dressen after twenty years of quoting jobs the hard way.

• First insight: Production Mogul turns a pasted client brief into a structured budget with crew, gear, schedule and conditions in one document, then exports a client ready quote.
• Craft highlight: edits happen in plain language, typed or dictated. Only the items you name change, and if the AI drifts beyond the request, the whole edit is rejected.
• Industry context: rates come from 229 roles traceable to published sources, with median market rates for cities like London, Los Angeles, New York and Bangkok.
• Bottom line: free to try in the browser with no signup, $19 a month or $190 a year when you need to export, save and print.

What Production Mogul Actually Does

The core move is simple. Paste the client brief, an email or a PDF, and the software converts it into a structured budget across 19 departments with above the line and below the line subtotals. It handles the unglamorous machinery that eats bidding time: per department fringes for pension, health and welfare, payroll tax and workers comp, union or non union, all editable by market. Pass through costs like flights, hotels, permits and cloud compute sit outside the fee and deposit schedule, billed at cost, where they belong.

It also meets the industry where it already is. You can start from a blank sheet, a department template, or the AICP bid form with its lettered sections A to P. If you have years of budgets in Excel, you can import them as reusable templates instead of starting over. Supplier quotes in PDF, Excel or CSV import directly and match their lines to the open quote.

Bring Your Own Templates

Production Mogul does not force you into its structure. Every company already has a budget format its clients recognise: its own departments, its own line items, its own house terms. Upload that template as an Excel, PDF or CSV file and it becomes reusable inside the tool. From then on, every brief you paste lands in your format, not a generic one, and the client receives a quote that still looks like it came from you.

That matters more than it sounds. Switching tools usually means abandoning years of refined budgets. Here, the work you have already done becomes the starting point. Agencies with strict brand guidelines, production houses with a signature layout, freelancers who have quoted the same way for a decade: all of them keep their format and lose the weekend.

To show what comes out the other end, Olivier is running a set of sample templates through Production Mogul: real budget formats turned into finished, client ready quotes. The point is simple. Before you build anything yourself, you can judge the quality of the output with your own eyes.

Who It Is For

The positioning is deliberate: working producers, not enterprise buyers. Directors who quote their own jobs. Photographers pricing a print campaign. Small production companies that cannot justify premium budgeting suites but lose real money to underpriced bids. Olivier has spent two decades as the person the brief lands on, and the presets reflect that range: film and video, AI video, photo and print.

There is even a preset for AI print work, which tells you how current the thinking is. For a sense of what those AI pipelines look like in practice, our breakdown of 50+ AI filmmaking tools maps the territory.

The AI Editing Is the Quiet Breakthrough

Most AI products fail producers in the same way: they do too much. You ask for one rate change and the model rewrites the document. Production Mogul inverts that. Changes are made by typing or dictating plain language, and only the named items change. If an edit goes beyond what you asked for, the entire edit is rejected rather than partially applied. Five levels of undo sit behind it, and critical fields can be locked entirely: screen credit, change order rate, kill fee, payment terms. That is the correct amount of distrust to build into software that touches money.

Rates, Markets and the Benchmark Question

A budget tool is only as good as its numbers. Production Mogul ships median market rates for 229 roles, each traceable to a published source, with the London rates citing APA 2026. Markets include London, Los Angeles, New York, Bangkok, Cape Town, Paris and Dubai, with live exchange rates and an optional second currency for the client. The interesting part is the anonymised benchmarks: opt in, and you can see where your rates sit against other producers in the same market.

Project, client, contact, brief and conditions data are never shared, and quotes stay on your machine. Nothing is uploaded. If you have ever wondered who really gets paid when a production makes money, this is the layer where those numbers start.

From Brief to Client Ready Quote

The output side is where the weekend actually gets saved. The client PDF carries your logo, colours and terms, and strips everything internal: costs, margins, benchmarks. XLSX export and project file hand off cover the rest of the chain. Conditions presets handle the parts producers postpone until midnight: split payments with deposit, shoot day and balance on delivery, a cancellation ladder written in days, usage pricing, and revision limits. It runs in any modern browser on Mac, Windows or Linux, phones included, with nothing to install, and the interface speaks English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic.

Pricing and What Free Gets You

The trial is genuinely free: no signup, no card, and it builds complete budgets in the browser. The licence, $19 a month or $190 a year, unlocks exporting, saving and printing. That is the entire model. Against premium budgeting tools priced for studios, it is an easy comparison to run, and you can run it before spending anything.

The launch was carried by AP News and more than 780 news sites, but the better credential is the author: a three time Stage 32 winner who has priced work for Nike, Porsche and Coach, building the tool he needed on the kind of productions he writes about here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Production Mogul free to use?

Yes, the browser version is free with no signup and builds complete budgets. Exporting, saving and printing require a licence at $19 a month or $190 a year.

Does Production Mogul upload my budgets?

No. Quotes stay on your machine. The optional benchmarks share only anonymised pricing structure, never project, client, contact, brief or conditions data.

Can I use my existing Excel budgets?

Yes. Upload your own budget template as an Excel, PDF or CSV file and it becomes reusable, so every new quote comes out in your format. Supplier quotes in the same formats match their lines to the open quote.

Does it support the AICP bid format?

Yes, the AICP bid form with lettered sections A to P is one of the starting points, alongside blank sheets and department templates.

Which markets does it cover?

Median rates cover 229 roles across markets including London, Los Angeles, New York, Bangkok, Cape Town, Paris and Dubai, with live exchange rates and a second display currency for clients.

Explore more from DesignHero

Watch every feature in action on the Production Mogul YouTube playlist. For the production side of AI work, start with 50+ AI Filmmaking Tools for 2026 and AI Render Pro, the prompting tool for filmmakers. For the business of getting paid, read Movie Profits: Who Really Gets Paid.