Budgets

Say, does anyone have lying around a budget for a one-camera cable sitcom? And/or a prime-time network sitcom?

A Faithful Reader needs one for his investors...

Low Budget, Continued

Q. What about the fact that this is still largely a numbers game? Let's say for the sake of argument that for every movie that gets made for $25 million, there are a hundred movies that get made for $2.5 million. Wouldn't that imply that your odds of selling a script that can be made for the lesser amount are 100 times greater than the alternative?

There aren't 100 movies that get made for $2.5 mil for every $25+ mil movie, so, no. The point of my earlier post was that there's a reason for that. The surprise is that financing a $2.5 mil movie is just about as big a pain in the ass as financing a $25 mil movie. But there's only 1/10 the payoff for everyone working on it.

There are other reasons not to focus on writing low budget movies. To get paid on a low budget movie, you pretty much need to spec the movie and then hope it gets made. Otherwise you won't get paid. $25 mil movies support a lot more development. You might get paid to write it. Or paid to rewrite it. There will be a real option payment instead of option shenanigans.

Moreover, you may do well out of a $25 mil movie that never gets made. Studios, who make $25 mil movies, buy and commission way more scripts than indie producers, who are the guys who make $2.5 mil cheapies.

And, of course, you get paid a hell of a lot more on a $25 mil movie. The production fee for a $13 mil movie made in Canada is $300K. The production fee for a $2.5 mil movie doesn't even cover the scale payment, which is around $50K. I'm guessing in the US a $25 mil movie would carry a production bonus along the lines of $500K.

All this is really just intended as an antidote to the feeling writers get that they should write small. Don't write small. If your story is small, if it's all on the scale of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, or MOON, say, don't make it bigger than it needs to be. But if your story is an action adventure, don't cut down on the action for budget's sake. Let the producer tell you to do that -- after he signs an option/rewrite contract with you.

Low Budget Is Not Necessarily a Plus

I was chatting with a smart young woman who had a terrific idea for a feature. She was going on about how it could be made for very little money.

There's a tendency to think that if you can make a movie for little enough money, it is more likely to get made. This is not entirely true.

For one thing, when you make a low budget movie, everyone gets paid less. The producer is more likely to have to defer his salary. There is no production bonus for the writer.

A low budget movie is less likely to get a decent marketing budget, because the studio hasn't invested as much in its success.

That means it's less worth it to you to write a low budget feature, and it's less worth it for the producer to spend two years of his life making your movie happen.

In some ways, it is just as hard to get a low budget movie made as a decently budgeted movie. You still have to find bankable cast, and a financing company, and a distribution deal. But at the lower budget levels, it is just not as worthwhile for other people to get involved in your movie, because they won't see as much return.

Sure, it's possible for a low budget movie to make a whack of money, and if so, it will go into profit a little faster. But the movie business doesn't run on profit. It runs on salaries. You get your salary whether the movie tanks or not. People buy houses and cars with their profits; they put their kids through school on their salaries.

While it's always nice for a movie to be doable at a lower budget, don't focus too much on that. Really, you want to make sure that your movie can be made at an appropriate budget for what it is. If it's an action movie, you want it made at a decent budget or the action will suck. A romantic comedy needs a good cast. A horror movie can be made for very little money (see BLAIR WITCH) and low production values. But most other genres don't do their best at the lowest budget levels. Science Fiction, obviously, needs a certain minimum or it's going to be styrofoam rocks and spaceship walls that shake when you bump into them.

Don't write carelessly. But also don't be overfocused on your budget. Focus on making the movie you're telling as commercial as possible. You would much rather be the writer of a $25 million movie than a $2.5 million movie.

Don't Stress About Locations

Here's why you no longer have to worry about writing too many expensive foreign locations into your script.


It's dangerous for a novice writer to worry too much about how much things cost, because novices often make wrong assumptions about what's expensive. These days an explosion might be digital. So might a wrecked ferry. So might Moscow.

If you're intentionally writing a low budget movie, or a TV show, then keep the number of locations down, and the number of actors in a scene down. But if you're writing a big spec script, leave the worrying to the producers.