The cost of a music video is only loosely related to how expensive it looks. Budgets are driven by the number of shooting days and by how many people each day requires.
Crew is the largest recurring line
A shoot involves camera, lighting, grip, wardrobe, hair, production assistance and someone coordinating all of it, and each role is engaged for the whole day regardless of how much footage results.
Because these costs repeat daily, an ambitious concept that requires two days is close to twice the price of one that does not, whatever appears on screen.
This is why compressing a shoot is the first thing a producer attempts, and why concepts are often revised toward a single location before anything else is reduced.
Equipment and locations are priced by the day too
Cameras, lenses, lighting and grip equipment are rented for the period they are held, and specialist items such as cranes or high-speed bodies carry their own operators.
Location fees vary enormously, but the hidden cost is usually access rather than rent, since a space may only be available outside working hours or require a full reinstatement afterwards.
Permits, insurance and security are unavoidable on any shoot that occupies public space, and they scale with disruption rather than with the artistic scale of the production.
Preparation and finishing are separate from the shoot
Before filming there is treatment development, casting, scouting and scheduling, all of which consume time from people who must be paid whether or not the shoot proceeds.
Afterwards there is editing, grading and any visual effects, and effects in particular can exceed the shooting cost entirely if the concept relies on them heavily.
Budgets that account only for the shooting day routinely fail at this stage, because the remaining work has no natural ceiling once revisions begin.
Where money is genuinely visible
Spending that shows on screen tends to be concentrated in a small number of items, typically an unusual location, a large group of performers or a single technically demanding shot.
Everything else is infrastructure that makes those elements possible, which is why two videos with similar budgets can differ enormously in apparent scale.
How the money is usually recovered
A video is promotional expenditure rather than a product sold directly, so it is assessed against what it does for the recording rather than on any revenue of its own.
That framing explains the persistent pressure on budgets, since the case for spending more must be made in terms of attention gained rather than income produced.