need budget writing advice

[william howell]

We're applying for a grant to finish an internal documentary, which we've been filming for about 3 years.

The majority (99.5%) of the filming is done, with internal interviews of the participants of the project left to film.

we've done everything in house, and have over 28tb of footage to work with.

Basically... This will be our first feature length documentary, and I have no idea about the expenses involved in Post-production/distribution.

I just need some guidance on "planning out" the next phase of production so I can start calculating how much money we need to ask for in the budget.

Thanks

This is the preview to the film, a documentary on our work with humanoid robots for the darpa robotics challenge.

 

[Chris Henze]

Easiest way to think about finishing the movie is to decide where you want it to wind up. If you're looking to show it non-commercially, in film festivals and give it away on YouTube the bar is much lower than if you want to sell it or have aspirations of TV, or theaters.

In general I've noticed that most filmmakers underestimate the difficulty of finishing and having a movie ready for distribution, DVD, streaming etc. Your post said you feel like you're 99.5% finished. That's the classic mistake. I'd say you're 70% finished and the last 30% is full of difficult tasks which require specialists to achieve. Here are some of the costs I just went through to "finish" my last documentary. Theater Mix $4500, Color Correct $4000, Clearance lawyer $6000, Entertainment lawyer, $15,000, E&O insurance $3000, Streaming/DVD stereo mix $2000, music rights $10,000 (resist the urge to use logic as your music source, everybody's heard every track already), Sound Design and Dialog Editing $2500, producer $8000, DCP formatting $8000, facilities $8000 plus a bunch more stuff. Also, actual MPAA review $5000 (if they see your make believe version you'll get a takedown notice and then lawsuit pretty quickly)

If you pathway involves non-commercial exhibition then just put in the hours and get it done best as possible. When there is no money involved in the showing no-body can come after you. If the piece gains some traction and someone wants to exhibit it commercially, they'll usually have some resources to take care of the legal stuff.

People you need to hire are a post-production supervisor/producer and an Entertainment lawyer.

Good Luck,

 

[Marc Wielage]

Hire a post supervisor who has experience dealing with budgets, deliverables, and managing the process.

There are some excellent books out there on Film Budgeting in general, and most go into detail about the line items involved in the post process. Some of the most unexpected expenses can happen in post, particularly music clearances, multiple versions, multiple sound mixes, tape formats vs. file formats, and so on.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Low budget cable movies usually budget $150k for post. Think in those terms.

Nick

 

[Marc Wielage]

Low budget cable movies usually budget $150k for post. Think in those terms.

There's a sliding percentage of what post typically represents, but I think 15% of the budget for a $1 million indie is not unreasonable. However, there are $100M films where post (including VFX) was a lot more than 15%. 35% would probably be closer to reality. There are also certain fixed costs you can't overcome.

I'd also think it depends on whether you have a union post crew -- and there are low-budget IA contracts that can work even for a $500,000 film -- and how long you plan to edit picture, cut sound, and do the final mix and color pass. I know of films that spent months mixing, and films that did the entire mix in 1 week. And I've personally done color-correction on films that took three months, and films that we knocked out in a couple of days. However much work you have to do quickly expands to take over however much time and money available.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I'm costing it more like how Chris Henze explained it. So i'm separate production and post from finishing. My separation point is everything up to the dubstage is post, while the dubstage/coloring/distribution_packaging/legal is finishing, then one more huge block for P&A (also a contingent fund for reshooting/adr/rescoring/etc if somewhere down this path the channel deal requires it). All the ratio's of cost change dramatically based on distribution and channels. From the feel of this it looks similar to "Tim's Vermeer"(though that seemed to have a lot more interviews then you have in your clip), that to me would be a optimal outcome for this if you could pull that off. Another example, probably less optimal, is "cave of forgotten dreams", I think that went into a fairly long finishing/redo process.

As Marc commented, i think a lot of the time/money in finishing is how together everything is before it goes to finishing. I've noticed it's easy to think something is "nearly" finished, and with a little objectivity it's no where close, thus the "finishing" cost goes way up.

 

[Björn Benckert]

We work on a feature now. Low budget Indy stuff with not much VFX and so on. More straight cuts, grade, some retouch and composting. On the link you see the quote for all the post work with the different costs.

http://classic.syndicate.se/project/Invoice.aspx?id=67dd0da8f0ef

Usually it lands about there but producers and directors tend to add things in the process that we then do at 20% discount to the listed prices.

And again, this maybe does not fit your film but possibly gives you some sort of reference.

 

[william howell]

Your post said you feel like you're 99.5% finished. That's the classic mistake. I'd say you're 70% finished and the last 30% is full of difficult tasks which require specialists to achieve.

Thank you for the advice, I'll look into everything you suggested... that cost list is really helpful.. But.. I should point out that I said we were 99.5% finished filming... hopefully... We have not even begun the editing stage... just the shooting part.