As noted, you first need to create a preliminary schedule in order to construct a realistic budget for your production. A movie budget is essentially the financial representation of what you expect it will cost to execute that schedule and deliver the elements you are planning to create to make your movie. This is why we have emphasized that the two go together—if one changes, the other will likely change with it. That is why, like your schedule, your budget will evolve over time. And that is also why, in some cases, you may—as some studio productions do—initially design alternative budgets to account for different scenarios or possibilities that could come to fruition later.

As student filmmakers, your primary goal in making your movie is not (yet) the same as the primary goal of Hollywood studios: the almighty profit motive. However, at a foundational level, you still need to be able to figure out if you can afford to make the movie you have designed. But we have also emphasized what is obvious—that filmmaking is a creative endeavor. And you are students, with few resources. Therefore, many things in your screenplay will be left to a different sort of creativity to determine how you will execute them: creativity built around how cleverly you allocate and use scarce resources. As students, you will examine your resources, tailor the plan to what is feasible, and then budget for it. The creative importance of the scene and what you can afford to do with it will help you come to some budgetary conclusions about it.

It is crucial to remember: Your budget is not the creative limiting factor. It is the creative defining factor. Whether the budget is $100 or $100 million, it is still a finite number (exceeded by at least 10 percent in many cases). You and your team will have to figure out how to squeeze every penny out of whatever that finite number is to tell your story.

Whatever choices you make, there will be some kind of cost associated with them, even if those costs are bottom-of-the-barrel minimal. The cost of anything you might want to do, from getting a camera to clothing, transporting, or feeding actors, are all potential costs. As students, you will most likely be doing some of the jobs on the set yourself. Other jobs, such as acting and camera work, will be handled by volunteers. Even so, these volunteers will all need to be fed. Cars or trucks will need gas. If you don’t have a camera, you will need to borrow, buy, or rent one. Anything that you actually spend money on—even pennies—will end up being a hard cost, which you will need to account for somehow. You will need to monitor these costs and adjust for them. Therefore, it is essential that you create a budget document in order to follow these costs and make sure that you don’t spend more than you have—an eventuality that could grind your project to a halt, not to mention potentially land you in financial hot water. This budget document is not about making rough estimates; it is about notating everything you will need to make the movie, ascribing real costs to each element, and detailing how those costs are going to be covered. In this section, we will review how to make up such a budget document, how to resourcefully reduce costs or find work-arounds when you have no resources, and what the basic terminology and concepts are for movie budgeting.

Budget Document

Film budget documents generally have a standard format, and the important thing to remember is that the more detail included in your budget, the more accurate it will be and the better off the project will be. With basic skills, you can create a budget document using an Excel spreadsheet, but a wide range of budget template software tools are available at low or no cost across the Internet, including many tailored specifically for movie production. Whatever tool you use, the general format will look like this:

In all budget documents, it is best to itemize your ATL and BTL costs. On the professional level, this can run on for thousands of lines and dozens—sometimes hundreds—of pages. Each line will account for one crew member, item to be rented or purchased, or supply to be consumed; the daily or weekly rate for the item; how many hours, days, or weeks it will be used; what scenes it will be used for, and the costs per scene or location in many cases; and the subtotal for that item. Each line of detail also ties to the schedule. Taxes (such as sales taxes) and fringes (such as Social Security payments, state disability insurance, union-mandated health and pension benefits) and other fees will have their own lines and sections; there will be categories for what currencies are being used or transferred, as well as a host of minute details that would be of interest only to studio or bank accountants. Also, in the modern era of digital filmmaking, visual effects can be so large and complex and eat up so many resources that they frequently go through their own, entirely separate scheduling and budgeting process.

Obviously, not all of this will apply to you right now. Still, this approach is the only real way that you, and anyone you are responsible to—your professor or school, financiers, family, partners, or friends—can know how your resources are being used; more importantly, since you are students, it is the only way you can possibly learn proper principles and procedures for motion picture budgeting. Though this may never become your passion as a filmmaker, if you ever hope to participate in producing your own work at any future level, having this knowledge will serve you well.

Be Resourceful

One of the positive things about making low-budget movies is that reality can lead to better creative choices, and not only where the on-screen narrative is concerned. As students, you have the opportunity—indeed, the requirement—to be ultra-resourceful on the business side of your project as well, and by definition, that resourcefulness requires a level of creativity and even panache. The better you get at figuring out ways to insert zeros into the “costs” column on your budget document, the more success you will eventually find at being an innovative and free-thinking, out-of-the-box filmmaker.

And when we say “resourceful,” we mean in terms of finding ways to get jobs done and equipment and materials procured without spending money. There is an art to developing the skill of finding low- or no-cost labor, equipment, props, locations, costumes, and so on, and you will only get better at it over time. However, there are some tried-and-true shortcuts and tips that independent filmmakers have used for generations that you can consider, depending on your project’s needs (see also Action Steps: Planning Crew Meals on a Tight Budget, below). Among these are the following:

Remember: all such items, even if coming to the project at no cost to you, need to be listed on your budget document and tracked. You may owe someone a credit in return for the resource or future revenue if the movie earns any money down the road, or you may need the information for tax purposes later on.