Service
Line Producing and Full Production Services
Scale it to your brief: minimal logistical support, a full line producing service, or turnkey production and delivery with you directing remotely.
Short answer
Film Ethiopia provides production support at any depth, from a single fixer and a driver through to full line producing and turnkey production where we build the budget, hire the crew, secure every permission, run the shoot and deliver the finished film. Clients who cannot or do not want to travel can commission the whole production remotely, directing over a live link, with dailies uploaded from the field each night. We work on documentaries, commercials, corporate films, drama, news and factual series, at every budget level.
Three ways clients work with us
Support level. You bring your own crew and creative and want the friction removed: permits, customs, vehicles, hotels, a fixer, a translator, and someone who answers the phone at four in the morning. This is the most common starting point.
Line producing. You bring the creative, we build and own the physical production: budget, schedule, crew, kit, locations, permissions, logistics, contingency and cost reporting. Your director and producer travel and direct, and everything under them is ours.
Turnkey production. You bring the brief and we deliver the film. We develop the treatment with you, shoot it with an Ethiopian crew, and deliver a graded, mixed, subtitled master. Increasingly this is done with the client watching a live feed and giving notes from another continent, which removes travel cost entirely.
What line producing actually covers
- Budget build, cost reporting and final cost report
- Schedule, call sheets, movement orders and contingency planning
- Crew hire, contracting and payroll
- Camera, lighting, grip and sound packages sourced locally or imported
- Permits, customs, insurance and risk assessment
- Vehicles, fuel, accommodation, catering and craft
- Location fees, community payments and contributor releases
- Health, safety and security planning, with medic and security adviser where the shoot needs it
- Data management, backup regime and dailies delivery
- Post-production supervision through to delivered master
Budgets from micro to major
A one-person self-shooter on a three-day trip and a fifty-person unit on a month-long series are both normal work here. What changes is the size of the team we assemble, not the standard of the paperwork or the care taken.
We will also tell you when you are about to spend money you do not need to spend. Hiring a local grip package instead of shipping one, using an Ethiopian drone operator instead of importing an aircraft, shooting a second location on the same permit, moving a travel day to avoid a market day — these decisions are where a good line producer pays for themselves several times over.
Line Producing and Full Production Services
Questions producers ask
Can you produce a film in Ethiopia if we cannot travel?
Do you work on drama and scripted projects?
What is the smallest job you will take?
Related services
Often booked together
Filming Permits in Ethiopia
We identify, apply for and hold every permission your shoot needs: federal media authorisation, regional approvals, heritage and national park access, church and community consent, and press accreditation.
Drone Permits and Aerial Filming in Ethiopia
Aerial permissions, security clearances, no-fly assessment, licensed local pilots and in-country drone equipment, planned as a dedicated workstream with a ground-camera fallback.
Customs Clearance for Film Equipment in Ethiopia
Manifest preparation, temporary import and carnet guidance, clearing agent appointment, Bole airport attendance on arrival and departure, and re-export reconciliation.
Start a production
Tell us what you are trying to shoot
Send dates, regions, crew size and a paragraph about the film. You will get an itemised, honest answer within one working day — and we will tell you if something is not going to work.