CHAPTER 5 ESSENTIALS

• Organizing a movie project means putting on a producer’s hat, creating a production management team, and delegating management tasks to that team. Someone acting in the capacity of unit production manager (UPM) will play essential roles in this process.
• The UPM will painstakingly line the script, identifying every element that needs to be scheduled or budgeted; organize those elements into detailed breakdown sheets; and create schedules and lists that allow you to efficiently figure out timelines and costs for each of those elements during the budgeting process. The UPM will also generate detailed shooting schedules, as well as call sheets that will serve as daily guides for every crew and cast member.
• Even with low resources, detailed budgets that delineate above-the-line and below-the-line costs are essential not only for business purposes but also creatively, in order to let you know what elements of your story are feasible to execute, and enable you to move your plan forward and avoid a stalled or derailed project. Resourceful independent filmmakers can reduce or eliminate costs, but they will still wind up with hard costs they will need to develop financing plans.