Lesson 9

[Mark Wakely]

Mark Wakely’s Budget

What I learned doing this assignment is how to reduce a movie budget to make it attractive to low-budget movie producers

Contained screenplay title: E-5

MAIN VARIABLES

Number of Locations: One. Interior and exterior of a restaurant with a basement and a small employee washroom.

Expensive locations: None.

Number of characters: Four. Could be cut down to three but some dynamics between characters would be lost.

Special effects: The sound of a tornado and debris blocking a basement staircase. The debris could be from a construction or demotion site, or props fashioned to look authentic. Same with a falling floor joist- it would need to be a lightweight prop since it strikes a character, resulting in a bloody facial injury.

Number of pages: No more than 90.

Crowd scenes: A few first responders at the very end, but most could be heard and not seen.

Stunts, Chase scenes, and Fight scenes: One character pushes another.

Special sets: None.

SECONDARY VARIABLES

Rights to music, brands, books, etc.: None.

Explosions and Firearm: None.

Kids — shorter work days, tutor on the set: None.

Animals – need a wrangler, more time to shoot, Humane Society: None.

Weather — Rain, snow, wind, tornados: A tornado heard from the basement where the four characters are but not seen. Could be just a powerful fan to blow minor debris around as the characters take shelter under the stairs.

Water and underwater scenes: None.

Night scenes: None.

Helicopters, aircraft, drone shots: None.

Green screen work: None.

Extensive Make-up: Characters look tired, sweaty and disheveled by the end.

Archival Footage: None.

Anything else dangerous that increases preparation time and/or Insurance: None.

For a quadrupled budget:

We see the tornado approaching and destroying the restaurant in addition to the characters hearing/feeling it in the basement.

One or more A-list actors.

A large cast of first responders with multiple rescue vehicles in the final scene.

[Tom Freyer]

Tom’s Budget

What I learned: By dividing budget into main variables and secondary variables, you can suggest small or big changes to the overall production budget.

The main variables are locations and extras. Losing the crowd scene at the beginning and replacing it with either stock footage or just a sound track would cut the actor/extra budget significantly. Shooting the crash site on green screen would enable the bulk of the movie to be contained on a sound stage vs mountain location.

It’s possible to elliminate the publicist part completely with a rewrite, but I wouldnt recommend it.

That’s about it.

[Paul McGregor]

Paul’s Budget.

4. What I learned doing this assignment was more than I budgeted for! I had no idea about all the costs related to music rights, child actors, horses etc. But being aware of that is extremely useful and I will bear them in mind in writing future scripts. Maybe the best way to reduce budget is not to film in the USA, with all its labor union rules and insurance regulations!

1. Decrease the budget:

I do not see many opportunities to reduce budget since there are only 3 locations – Jill’s apartment; Jill’s car as she drives to the House for Sale and the House for Sale itself. There are also just 3 characters.

• Replace gun with a hanging rope in Jill’s attempted suicide scene.
• Replace Jill driving car towards the House for Sale, with her getting out of parked car at the house.
• Replace the two cars in the scene of Jill’s attempted escape and have cars disappear instead.

2. Increase the budget:
Have a gun for the suicide scene. Keep the cars.
Have more special effects to demonstrate the Agent’s miraculous powers.
Introduce musical effects to highlight the Agent’s mysterious being.
Add flashback scenes showing Jill and Jack playing as children in the garden of the House for Sale.

END

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by  Paul McGregor.