ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years ago - Marlom Tander

IRL most businesses start with a blank spreadsheet and build their own budget from there.

Why? Because it's all about the money and you need to work through and control and vary everything in the context of your own needs.

Last year I was sent a budget - prepared by an award winning Director/Producer - for a project we were looking at. A 20M budget. And yes, it was a spreadsheet. A long one, but a spreadsheet.

The thing about spreadsheets is that everyone who uses them understands the language.

If an academic wants you to use anything other than a spreadsheet for building a financial model (and a budget is nothing but a financial model), they don't know how the real world works.

Open Office is free and includes a spreadsheet :-)

Workflow, Teamwork and Scheduling systems - there are a bunch of these, but they only work if their designers work flow matches your own, so use the free trials. But even then most tight teams end up with a collection of tools rather than a monolith package.

9 years ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Not free but excellent option from a professional pov: Gorilla or Movie Magic. And don't forget that a key ingredient to a budget is the schedule from which you build the budget.

9 years ago - Franz von Habsburg FBKS MSc

I've always used Movie Magic which is why I write in Final Draft because you then export via Final Draft Tagger into Movie Magic Scheduling and then onto Movie Magic Budgeting. You then have all the scene headings, characters including non-speaking and costumes and props. You then click on a character and add actor, daily rate and contact details etc. A production accountant can do all this for you :-)

9 years ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

I use Movie Magic Budgeting, which I hate. It does do some things well (eg applying tax credits, automatically adding fringes etc). It does some basic stuff horribly badly (copy and paste, for instance, or being the only reason I have to have extinct Java on this computer).

It is 'industry standard', but the development is lazy and it only has that title from having been innovative years back and won the race at the right time. Instead, get into Excel, and it'll do you proud.

9 years ago - Dan Selakovich

How does one create a budget without a schedule? They aren't requiring you do both? Or is it some kind of test to muck you up?

I don't know if this is still the case, but Gorilla offered a 30 day free trial. Perhaps they still do. 30 days would be plenty of time to budget a short. I've been burned by Movie Magic tags, so I still break down a script by hand with my ruler and color pencils. It has the added advantage of forcing you to know a script in great detail. Plus, I'm old and find it relaxing.