Trying to Budget for first production

B

balugaa

Hey, Guys I am new and just about getting my feet wet, basically decided to produce a short (well shortish) I figure it will be about 20mins, i have a good script and am now trying to prepare the budget for it,

As far as locations are concerned that i have covered, I am planniing to shoot this HD, simply because i figured id pick one format and i chose that.

I am having difficulty trying to budget for the "Film" version of this,

basically i can see how this would work using film .. i would end up cans of the stuff post shooting. Whats the deal with HD?

Is it reasonable that the cinematographer download onto a disk and give me the disk after, or a setup where it downloads from camera to computer? do these type of setups exist?

Basically would like to get it into a format where i could use Final Cut,

Wanted to know what the deal was with this, how much should i allocate budget wise to achive this?

I am based in london, and was also wondering how much i should look to pay a decent director and DOP i.e. going rates etc ..


Please advise

Many Thanks

Mo
 
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balugaa said:
Thanks tongol, i see what you are saying, first off i have this forum to be extremely useful,

Second, I need to have an idea aas to how much these things cost, it would be stupid of me not to, its my money i will be spending. I am not going to pay people however much money they ask for.

Lets put it this way i am ready to pay what everyone else pays not what someone asks for

From this site I have obtained good estimations as to what is required

And I am really glad to you think pre-production and all the information and things to consider therein has a low difficulty level, because I am not finding it easy at all .....
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well im far from saying pre production is easy,
what i am saying is finding the information on this forum is.

but budgeting isn't that hard aether, its just time consuming and invoulving a lot of research. id say it is about 4/5 researching.
 
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2001 Productions said:
Depends how much time you have to spend on the shoot. I know several DP's who are their own gaffer, but it takes longer between setups. What you save in paying an additional crew member may end up costing you more in longer or additional shooting days.
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Thats awesome, thanks everyone, I now have the line item complete in the budget ... will go for a 3 man crew with the "rush" delivery to hard disk ..
 
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Wondering if you've already shot this and, if so, how it went. 20 minutes is long for a short film and, depending on how many locations, actors, and types of props and wardrobe needed, could get rather complex. Tackling such a project for the first time is ambitious, and it's a lot more work than many newbies realize.

For total newbies, I recommend doing a few no-budget shorts of 5-6 pages first (with everyone working for free or extremely cheap) to get a feel for what's needed and how to manage it all. Then you will have a base of confidence, or at least experience, to go on and make your 20-minute film.

You might appreciate this article: Making the Four Dollar Movie by Ela Thier
 
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Hey Sorry been away for a while,

This project kind of exploded and instead of a 20min short its a full blown Feature, How did this come about, I got the numbers for what i needed for the short, and found with a little more I could make the whole movie and that made sense.

So while it was a daunting task to begin with, it has now become much more manageable all the crew are in place here in the UK (all 19 of them) I have a director too, am currently trying to figure out if it will be cheaper to make in the US, but thats a side matter.

And just to make Alcove happy now have a 3 man sound crew, recordist, mixer and editor

It is a bit scary since its going to be my first but am thoroughly enjoying it ..
 
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