Let's say you would like to make a 2-on-1 flick - five girls getting DPs, doing A2M and swallowing cumshots. Let's say you already have a home studio of some kind, with lights and a couple of semi-professional DV cameras. Let's say you have two buddies who want to make names for themselves as good cameramen and who will work for pizza and free beer. Let's say the girls do all their own makeup.
You hire five girls for one scene each (at $1.000): $5.000
Pizza and beer and the like for five days: $1.000
Two studs from the b-list to make five scenes each: $2.000 total
You do all the editing on your home computer with pirate software, and then sell the product almost completely finished...
It has cost you about 8.000 and a whole lot of your time, the equipment not counted. Hopefully, your product is good enough that some company will buy it.
I guess companies like PXP and RLD spend at least 20 big ones per film.
But that is just my educated guess - please correct me if I'm wrong.

