ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years, 10 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Thanks, Sherice. Good answers (and I can assure anyone from that answer, she knows what she's doing)!

I hope shooters here are now more informed and how fucking important a schedule is before you even THINK about doing a budget.

9 years, 10 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Hi Sherice, I'm curious about the way in which you go about a first schedule. I've done quite a few schedules and budgets over the years, and aways have 2, and most of the time, 3 schedules for a script. One is the "dream schedule", then low budget, and ultra low-budget if I think that is even possible.

I hope people take you up on this, or even come to the conclusion you need a schedule before you can do a budget. So many don't do a schedule, and it drives me batty. "How did you do this budget if you don't have a schedule?" They just guess at the shooting days. Also, often in low budget, too often, people do a "reverse budget": we have this much money, now how can we do the movie for that? To me, you have to do a proper schedule and budget to see if you're even in the ballpark. There is only so much cutting you can do. You really can't do a 30 million dollar picture for a million bucks, after all, unless 25 million of that budget is star salaries. But, if someone comes to you with a budget, do you try to fit the schedule to that budget? Or a shooting ratio (25:1 assumes a longer shooting schedule than a 10:1)?

So what type of guidelines do you use? Do you assume an 18 day schedule, for example? Or do you assume a film to be done "properly" (whatever that is). If a first time filmmaker comes to you with an action script, do you keep in mine that he's a first timer, AND it's an action picture? Or if they say; "we have mr. big shot actor for 3 consecutive days", is that reflected in your day out of days? Or do you assume all actors are union scale--with all the rules that go into that?

Anyway, just curious.

9 years, 10 months ago - Marlom Tander

I've used Sherice precisely because you need a schedule in order to do a budget, and for the budget to stand up to any kind of scrutiny, that schedule has to be sensible, and since I hadn't got the hands on movie experience to be confident mine would be, I used her.

For those not paying attention at the back, the smaller the budget, the more it is driven by the bed,board and logistics of caring for your cast and crew, and that means that you need a good estimate of the people/days/meals/beds/cars number because they could be way bigger, per day, than everything else put together.

9 years, 10 months ago - Sherice Griffiths

Hi Dan

Thanks for your question. I think it’s quite a sensible thing to do multiple schedules. When someone comes to me with a script I first determine if they know how they will raise funds, if they want to produce the project themselves or if they already have funding attached. These three questions can pretty much inform a first draft. More often than not a lot of scriptwriters want to direct their film as well which again impacts the schedule. This would indicate an indie film with probably quite limited funding thus resulting in longer days shooting but less overall days. There isn’t a singular way I create a shooting schedule, I look at the information available and then look at the script and think about shooting locations, time spent and possible problems that could delay a day.

Generally when working to a budget this again informs me of how long there will be for certain scenes and how long a location could be hired. A lot of it just comes from having worked on films before and knowing how long things take. Each script comes with it’s own challenges and it’s very difficult to just say there is one sure fire way of creating a shooting schedule. I think it’s a much more fluid process, you can never ‘assume’ an 18 day schedule, you can try for an 18 day schedule but if there is simply too many different scenes and locations, it would be foolish to assume you can just ‘fit them in’. I also never assume a project can be done ‘properly’ as even major big budget films will have their own challenges and restrictions to follow. A first draft shooting schedule should highlight the difficult scenes, show a producer and financier what the money is going on and indicate how many days core talent will be needed. All key things to getting a project greenlit, after that process the schedule changes to become a more viable shooting schedule where budget, actor commitments, location commitments are changes and amended to fit the needs of the production..

You asked a lot of questions os hopefully I answered most of them, I’m not sure how much this has helped but I hope it has!