For some of you, the idea of creating a budget may be daunting. Where to start? what if my numbers are off? I hate numbers! I hate math! Look I hear you and I used to be the same way. But here’s the thing. You know how shot lists always seem to change when you’re on set, but because you created them ahead of time, you’re able to adjust your shots on the fly? You’re prepared for the curve balls that filmmaking always seem throw at us. Well it’s the same thing with budgets.
When you really know and understand the numbers going into your production, you’re ability to financially manage the project is heightened. Otherwise, it’s like driving a car without a gas gage, you have no idea how far away you are from running on fumes.
The other thing, spreadsheets are your friend, because they do all the math for you. You just need to understand the basic formulas and mechanics behind creating your own video budget sheet. And that’s what I’m going to show in this video.
Now I use excel, numbers and at times google spreadsheet. I’ve found I don’t need expensive budgeting software with hundreds of line items when I’m making simple online videos. They’re great for feature films and other large projects but for short form video, you just need something simple.
I’ve also found it just better to create my own spreadsheet, as I can easily adjust it for different types of projects.
Now, a budget is an estimate of what you think a project will cost over a period of time
You create it by estimating the number of resources (people, rentals, expendables)
will be used for a specific period of time (hours, days, weeks) or at what quantity of an item and at what cost (their rate or cost per item).
Resources * Units * Rate/Price = Cost
That’s our basic formula. Amount of the resource times how much time or units of that item we need times its rate or price.
An example, You need a voice over for a corporate video. Your Voice Over actor tells you it would take 2 hours to record. Their rate is $350/hr, for a total $700.
Another example. You need to rent 2 GoPro’s for a two day car shoot, and the GoPro’s rent for $50 day, for a total of $200. Pretty simple right?
Now each row in our form represents a type of resource, our “line items” like our voice over actor and the go pro rental. You just add in whatever people and items you anticipate you’ll need for your production. For a 2 minute animated explainer video, it might just be a director/producer, after effects animator, illustrator, editor, and voice over actor.
Now the columns represent the sections of our formula; the amount (people, rentals, expendables) multiplied by how much time (hours, days, weeks) or units
and then multiplied by that resources rate or price. If they bill by hour, you’ll want an hourly rate, day a day rate and so on.
Sometimes, you may have someone on what’s called a flat rate. They get paid one price for the work they produce regardless of time spent. In other words, there’s no time period. For example, you may only have $600 in your budget for the voice over. If your voice over talent agrees to that “flat” price, you put in 1 unit for time and the increment is “flat.” If your unit is a quantity that you purchase say expendables like cans of Fog or rolls of black wrap, you would use the unit “each” and list that price.
The next step is to total all of your line items using the Sum formula, to find out your budget total. I’ve created subtotals for the categories I sort my budgets by, the standard categories of Pre production, Production and Post,. I create the subtotals in a separate column though, so I can easily total that column at the bottom, using the sum formula.
So that’s the basic, bare-bone mechanics behind creating your own video budget spreadsheet. There’s a lot more detail and nuance to the actual budgeting process beyond that which I’ll probably cover in another video.
Bottom line is, when you create your own budget, you can build it anyway you want. Anyway that works for you. And as you can see, it’s fairly straight forward thing to do.