9 Film Budget Templates – Word, PDF
In many aspects of life, you can find a use for a budget. One example is a business budget, but you can also make and use personal budgets if you wanted to watch your own spending. Of course, one very good example of budgets in business would be film budgets.
As in any other field, creating a budget for a film would require you to take a number of considerations into account. In spite of the fact that film budgets often reach into the millions, one would still need to know how to allocate funds properly so as to make the most of them.
Budget for Film Production
Sample Documentary Budget
Film Low Budgeting
Feature Film Production
Short Film Budget Template
What Does a Film Budget Include?
Every kind of film budget, including a college student budget sample for a college film, has the same elements, which include:
- Equipment, as you should allocate some of your budget to securing equipment such as cameras and microphones.
- Location, as shooting on location could incur considerable costs such as for redirecting traffic, while shooting on set would require building a set.
- Salaries, as you also need to consider what you are paying everyone, especially your actors.
- Post-production, as editing your film would entail time, effort, and extra equipment so as to put it together properly.
How to Plan a Film Budget?
While you can use free budget templates to help you, careful planning is still a must for making your budget properly.
- First, be sure to secure personnel so that you can take their salaries and incidental costs into account in your cash budget templates.
- Make sure that your script is finished, as this can inform other costs like location and equipment.
- Be sure to plan ahead for location scouting and costs so that you can afford shooting locations.
- Also be sure calculate the costs for all the equipment you will need for every stage of production.
- Last, calculate all these costs so as to give yourself a sample budget draft.
Budget for Post-Production
Free Film Budget Template
Budget for Student
Projected Operating Budget Request
Guidelines on How to Prepare a Film Budget
When making different kinds of documents, you can always find different tips that can serve to guide you through the process of writing. The same can be said of sample budget templates, as there are indeed ways to streamline the entire process of planning a film budget.
- Create a proposed shooting schedule. Having a schedule can help you organize production so as to save on costs, especially if you can find shortcuts such as shooting difficult scenes first, consolidating all your actors, etc.
- Be sure to edit your budget repeatedly. It would be prudent to go through your budget several times to see if you can find new ways to reduce costs. This is a sacrifice you will have to make so as to secure more funding.
- Propose more money than “needed.” Aside from finding shortcuts, you should be sure to secure more funds than an operating budget sample might suggest. This can serve you as a safety net in case production should go over budget.
- Make sure to break down each scene in the script. This can help you determine exactly what is needed in each scene so that you can take their particular costs into consideration when designing the budget as a whole.
With the help of these insights, you may be able to make the job of creating your own film budget much easier, which can only help make production flow more smoothly.