Scheduling and Budgeting

 

 

 

Scheduling

 

 

Scheduling is the organization process where our crew, actors, equipments, commodities are scheduled in the most cost efficient way. It is a document where in film is shooting scheduled in scenes are grouped together - most efficient use for execution of time, personal or resource.

 

Steps to effective scheduling :

 

1. Read and Markup shooting script - lining the script.

 

2. Prepare master breakdown.

 

3. Prepare scene wise breakdown / scene breakdown.

 

4. Production strip board preparation.

 

5. Schedule the shoot date wise.

 

6. Organize your approvals permissions and contracts.

 

7. Prepare call sheets, advanced schedules, equipment lists, transportation lists, contact list etc.

 

Production strip board :

 

The standard method for organizing production for over 70 years is known as the production strip board. It is the filmmaking term for cardboard or wooden chart holding colour coded strips, representing scenes for the scene and the elements needed for the shoot. It helps us to ordering the shoot plan. It is generated from the scene break down.

 

Each vertical strip contains :

 

1. Scene number

 

2. Break down page number

 

3. Page count

 

4. Scene name

 

5. Location (number)

 

6. Day / Night

 

7. INT / EXT

 

8. Character name / number

 

9. Extras

 

10. Special notes - V (vehicle) A (Animals) SE ( Special Equipments) M (Music)

 

Development:

 

Before filming a movie, you need a story. The producer will work on acquiring the script which can be a costly expense. He will also sign a screenwriter to adapt the script into a film and possibly look for a potential director and main cast members so he can get financing on the project (if he isn’t backed by a major studio)

Pre-production:

 

Once a project gets the green light, this is where the producer will start officially hiring all the cast members, director, cinematographer, set designer, extras and hundreds of technical people needed to actually shoot a movie. All the planning that needs to be done before shooting begins is done here.

Production:

 

The actual shooting of the film. Expenses includes everyone’s paycheck, the cost of fabricating sets, costumes, stunts and pyrotechnic, traveling, food catering, insurance, equipment, blocking streets off, renting facilities and all other cost related to filming the movie.

Post-production:

 

After shooting is finished, the movie still has to be put together. This is where the editor comes into play. If the movie needs CGI, the visual effect people might start working here. Another significant cost is scoring the movie with a composer and/or by buying rights to whatever songs the director wants in the movie. This can be quite costly as you may have to pay millions to acquire the rights to play one single song in your movie.

 

The Importance of scheduling

Scheduling is very important. There are so many people involved in the making of a film that without a schedule your project will eventually become chaos.

The classic right way

There are two important questions concerning the schedule:

1. How many days is it going to take.
2. In what order should we shoot things.

How many days will it take

Use the following information to decide how many days your film will take. Do this very carefully and realistically. Once you start shooting you have to make every effort possible to stay on schedule because

1. Actors and crew are expecting do certain scenes on certain days and if you fall behind even one day you will waste even more time getting everyone rescheduled.

2. Your budget will increase as you have to feed people whether you are staying on schedule or falling behind.

3. It's very unprofessional to fall behind. Your financiers will NOT be impressed.

4. Financing of future films will be effected on how well you stayed "on schedule and on budget" with your previous films.

 

As a good rule of thumb for all films at all budget levels is that you can shoot up to 6 pages a day if you work really, really hard, or 3 - 4 pages of a screenplay in a day at a reasonable pace if:

1. Your actors know their lines pretty well and have rehearsed until they have a good idea how to play each scene.

2. You are doing about three angles of each scene and three to six takes from each angle to get the best performance.

3. You only move locations every couple of days.

4. You are putting a reasonable effort into lighting the set and recording decent sound with a boom mike.

 

The pages per day rate will get worse if:

1. Your actors and crew don't know what they're doing.

2. You don't know what you're doing.

3. You are in many locations.

4. You are outdoors and weather becomes a problem.

5. You have crowd scenes.

6. You have animals or children in scenes.

7. You are trying to achieve special effects.

8. You have scenes involving fights, gunfire, explosions, car chases, etc.

9. You have limited access to your locations.

10. You are a perfectionist.

 

You could potentially shoot as many as 30 to 40 pages of screenplay a day if:

1. Your cast has spent weeks perfecting their performances to where they never blow a line or are really good at improvisation.

2. You do one take of each scene from one angle.

3. All the scenes are in one location and you rarely need to adjust the lights. (What lights?)

4. You aim a shotgun mike at the scene and don't worry about how bad the sound will be.

5. You work as fast as you can for 12 to 14 hours or more each day.

 

 

Budgeting

 

 

The script and the budget are the two corner stones of production. The script is about the creative aspect while the budget is financial aspect. The budget breaks down the complete costs from start to finish of the entire project. It gives us the details of what can and cannot be accomplished.

 

It includes all projective expenses for preproduction, production and post production. Each and every item whether it is the salary of talent and technicians (cast and crew) seen ring of the location or transportation or any other Minute elements includes pricing and must be itemized categorized and accounted for.

 

Standardized budget form :

 

The top sheet of us a financial overview or summary of all the major budget categories known as accounts. The money for each category is put into the respective account and each budget category is given its own account number for easy reference.

 

The second part of the budget form is called detailed budget. It is the complete breakdown of each category. Here we calculate the amount according to the quantity, time and rate.

 

The average Hollywood feature film contains 6 stages and the cost of marketing and distribution are not included in the negative cost. Those additional cost can easily dwarf the budget of smaller movies but for your average Hollywood feature movie in the $40-100 million budget range, a good rule of thumb is that marketing and distribution will cost about as much as it took to make the movie.

 

 

Budgeting Accounting Terms

 

Above the line cost

 

Above the line costs are generally all of the costs involved in a production during the development and pre-production before the principal of photography (Actual Shoot). These are necessarily all pre-production costs and includes things such as salaries of the producer, director, main star cast, fees for screen writers and underline rights for the script and as well as initial expenses related to the production office , paper work, taxes etc.

 

Below the line cost :

 

Below the line cost are basically everything else that doesn't come under the preview that above the line cost. This includes the cost of technicians, secondary casts and equipment in preproduction, production and post production. That is the A to Z of all expenses leading to the final product.

 

Contingency Cost :

 

Contingency costs is an important part of budgeting for film production as it is a prominent tool for risk management.

 

Risk Management :

 

Cost estimation of a product, item or projects, always includes a variable uncertain costs component known as Contingency cost. It is like an emergency fund to help tied over uncertainties and hence every film should have the buffer amount allocated during accounting.

 

Negative Cost =

Development Cost + Pre-Production Cost + Production Cost + Post-Production Cost

 

Marketing (A):

 

Think about a movie that you are looking forward to. Most likely, it was due to some type of marketing that made you aware of it. You might have seen a trailer during a prime-time TV commercial slot, a banner at the mall, advertisement in magazines and newspaper, a virtual ad banner on the internet etc…

 

This is called media buying and is usually a very costly process for your average Hollywood feature because you have to buy ad space and slots in every single market (domestic and foreign) you are planning to release the movie in. All of this at a very specific and simultaneous point in time, further driving up the price.

 

Additionally, think of all the thousands of movie posters and memorabilia that have to be created and then shipped all around the world as well as all the marketing related to selling DVDs and Blu Rays discs a few months later. Marketing a movie is an extremely costly enterprise.

Distribution (P):

 

A print is the physical copy of the movie that is locked in a metallic box and sent to the movie theater. A single print cost up to $2,000. Multiply that by the number of screens and you can see that it adds up pretty fast. Add the cost of the logistics to produce, store, maintain, send and recover those prints from all around the world and this gets very expensive very fast.

 

Other cost here include things such as sending prints to foreign markets, printing DVDs, Blu Rays etc… Finally, one has to understand that the studio doesn’t recover all the money from the sale of tickets at the box office. The movie theaters get to keep a fraction of the revenue and various residual fees are docked off.

 

In the case of foreign box office, the studios recovers even less money since they often have to find local distributors in those markets who will keep a significant portion of profits.

 

The Four Budgets

1. Hollywood blockbuster budget
2. The typical Hollywood budget
3. The million dollar film
4. The low budget

Within Hollywood, a low budget is anything under $10 million.

Low budget has been further broken down:

1. Low budget – a budget of under $/£/€1 million
One in ten readers of this book will have access to a budget this size.

2. Micro budget – a budget of under $/£/€500,000
One in five readers of this book will have access to a budget of this size.

3. No budget – a budget of under $/£/€100,000

 

Call Sheet

Cam Journal

Cast Contract

Continuity Synopsis Sheet

Crew Contract

Daily Continuity Log

Daily Editors Log

Daily Production Report

Daily Progress Report

Easy Script Breakdown

Equipment List

Field Tape Log

Film Budget Template

Location Contract

Location Release Form

Location Scouting

Personal Release Form

Script Breakdown Sheet

Script Supevisor Notes

Talent Release Form

 

 

Tamil film budget prototype

 

 

 

 

 

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