Domestic and Foreign Sales Teams

We all wish film financing was like having a wealthy uncle who could write a check so we could make a movie for however much we want. In reality, filmmaking is based on a reasonable business model where the goal is to make a profit. As everyone know, profit is defined as revenue minus expenses. After you have assembled your film package, foreign sales agents will evaluate it off of the three most important elements: 1) What is the genre? 2) Who is the director? 3) Who are the actors? Based on these answers, the sales agent will estimate the value of the revenue on the film. Unfortunately, most filmmakers never learn this simple concept which is used to value every film sold before completion. I used to work for a film finance company and I was amazed that they never read the script!

Now that you have a professional estimate of your film's sales revenue, you know that your film must cost less than that to make a profit. It is at this point, that you create your film budget by taking the total desired budget amount and back into each of the accounts.

If you would have first estimated your budget based on the script without any consideration to sales, your rich uncle could stand to lose a lot of $$$.

Film Budget Process

Recently, a line producer wrote a Tweet about www.QuickFilmBudget.com: "Need detailed script breakdown b4 budget. If you back into a number, you change the script to fit the budget. Not ideal."

I would say that this person is approaching budgeting in the traditional way taught in film school where you first read a script, break it down by schedule and then determine the film budget. However, today's market forces filmmakers to rely on their own salesmanship. For instance, if a recent film school grad wants to make a horror film, the current market determines that it should be made for a $1-2 million with no known actors or about $10 million dollars with known stars. This all assumes that the film is intended for domestic and foreign sales. ("Paranormal Activity" is a one in a million lottery winner.) Most indie films work backwards from an amount that investors are willing to give. To start the budget process by scheduling and breakdown is a dreamer's approach in today's indie world. Also, Quick Film Budget is a tool for getting started for the cost of $149 and not intended to be the actual shooting budget. The difference is that we admit that up front whereas UPM's (like the one who wrote his criticism on Twitter) sell their budgets to filmmakers in need of a budget for a typical price of at least $1000 without clarifying that their budget is also a road map and a true shooting budget will have to be created-- When? After the total budget number is raised and the budget will have to "backed into that number".