Creating A Budget For Your Independent Film

What are examples of budgeting for pre-production?

Pre-production is when you sort of organise your troops for battle, if you will. You are planning out where you're going to shoot, you're getting your calendar together, you're storyboarding the film so you know what each shot is going to look like, or what you want it to look like. You kind of identify your trouble points and say we're going to have four days, we're going to have to be shooting on the beach and we're trying to make a movie that's set in the summer but we're shooting it in February, this could be tough, how do we do that? So you're trying to analyze problems before they come up, because inevitably on any independent film of any size, things are going to come up that you didn't expect or didn't plan for. So pre-production is when you are casting the independent film, is when you are getting different actors to sign up and to commit to being in the independent film. It's when you are working on your production schedule, you're planning out your locations, securing your locations, and basically just organizing everybody to go out and make the independent film.

What are examples of budgeting for production?

Production is where you're getting the value for your money when making an independent film. This is when you're paying your actors, you're paying your crew, you're paying for locations, you're paying for insurance. You are basically paying for everything during production, but you are not spending everything as you've got to save some stuff for post-production because you have to go out and edit the movie. But production is where you're getting your value and your money and that's where it needs to be spent. And every dollar on an independent film should go into the making of the movie, so if a director wants a car service to take him from the hotel to the set every day it should not happen on an independent film. Maybe they have to jump on the subway like everybody else, because you're trying to save money. And those little things count on an independent film as they add up. So money-wise and financing, production is where you're getting the best bang for your buck.

What are examples of budgeting for post-production?

With Post-production when you are making your independent film, you've got to have some money saved up because that's when you're doing your editing and colour correcting. You are also helping out the sound if there's any sound issues, you can bring the actors back into the studio to do some voice-over work and you can cut it together. Indeed it's called ADR when people come in and they do voice work and match it over the actual footage they shot. So basically any time you're doing post-production for your independent film, you're really making the movie, defining it's voice and defining what the film is.

What would a general breakdown of a budget look like?

A general breakdown of a budget of an independent films depends, as every budget is different and everybody puts money into different things. Some independent films spend all their money on getting big-name actors and go cheap on the production, while other independent films will make sure that the film looks nice and has great locations, but will use some sort of unknown actors so they can save money there. Every budget is different on every independent film. People put in their fees before the making of the movie as a producer might want to say "if I produce this movie I want to take fifty grand off the top to know that I at least got paid", while others will say "I want the money to go towards the making of the movie and I'll just be promised money on the back-end". So everybody has a different budget and breakdown for their independent film.