Budgeting for Screen Productions

How do you cut a budget?

I always wonder: how are screen industry budgets constructed?

I specifically refer to the all-too-familiar restricted budgets that most in this industry must work with. (Okay, I realise Peter Jackson probably considers his budgets to be restricted, but honestly there’s restricted and then there’s restricted…) From the outset I must be clear about one thing: I’m talking from a supremely naïve place. This is not always a drawback, I’ve found. There are good aspects to be found in points-of-view that are more than ‘fresh’ — they are unaffected by preconceptions.

With regard budgets-of-all-kinds it is essentially true that I know next-to-nothing (…Before anyone panics, by the way, I am not in charge of the Guild accounts!) Never-the-less, I’m a firm believer that thinking about any issue can be reduced to ‘first principles’ — the philosophy (or assumptions) on which anything is based — and it’s important to consider what underlies the ways we work. In the case of budgets, I reckon the first principle should be: those that work hard, deserve to be remunerated.

So, given a restricted budget, where do you start to carve up the pie?

I guess that the start point must be costs that are immovable. Gear? You ask. Well, no, in my experience the setting of gear-hire rates always involves ‘doing a deal’. Film stock? If you are shooting on film I imagine there is a base-cost that is essentially immovable, so — in that case — yes. (If shooting digital I imagine that deals for equipment are done alongside other gear.) Insurance? Certainly I think anyone trying to skimp on insurance for filming is a mug. By now you might guess where this is heading… In my humble — albeit uneducated — opinion all budgets should start with crew costs. After all, given crew also supply a good deal of gear, you are likely to make significant savings on gear-hire from crew who feel they are being treated fairly in terms of rates.

So how can this work on a production with a micro-budget? How do you establish rates? How do you set a minimum below which no one should be asked to work? Well I think you can do worse than estimating total shoot-hours and multiplying by the minimum wage rate… I know some will splutter at this, and it probably seems outrageous in an industry where — relatively speaking — average income-levels are pretty high. But, from the tales I’ve heard, if you calculate the actual rate-per-hours-worked for crew on a ‘day-rate’ you may find some easily fall below the minimum-wage threshold when hours are long (why does it strike me that long hours and fixed day rates must regularly coincide?). I also think going through the exercise is probably a sobering experience about actual per-hour-remuneration received by crew. While we are sobering-up, lest we forget that crew are not even employees (minimum wage theoretically allows employees to earn enough to get by); Crew are contractors, with all the extra costs, such as ACC, etc. And — post-Hobbit Law — it is essential that this fact not be ignored any longer: Crew must not be asked to foot contractor-responsibilities, while having terms and conditions set for them as if they were employees...

At this point, in my imagining, a few people who ‘do budgets’ might be looking at things a little differently. I imagine that what crew have been paid at times is not looking so great. To me the rest of the costing for a project should begin with establishing a base amount to pay crew.

What can be achieved with any production budget should be based on what is left-over once crew (and actors) are paid at a rate commensurate with a living wage. Much as we encourage crew to invoice at their full rate (adjusting for different genres) and show any lower payments as discounts to the production; I suggest production budgets begin with standard rates for the genre and — if it can be shown that a budget cannot absorb standard rates — reductions in rates should be clearly indicated. It is in everyone’s interest to have healthy levels of production, and both strategies keep in-focus what rates should be, and clearly show where crew subsidise productions by accepting lower rates for their services.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this imagining of mine bears no resemblance to how budgets are actually worked out in the ‘real world’. If it is true, I’d like to know why... The only possible answer I can think of is that various things are valued more than people. To which I would counter with what is perhaps our most famous national proverb: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata! He tangata! He tangata! (What is the most important thing in the world? It is people! It is people! It is people!) Or to put it another way (and repeat what is said to soothe me when I get overwrought about this job and perceived inadequacies in achieving the impossible): ‘At the end of the day this job is not about saving the world – it’s only film!’ I don’t want to get too existential, and I get that the telling of stories can be incredibly profound. But does anyone really want to tell a profound story while robbing those who made the telling possible of a living?

SINZ

On a really positive note, the various unions and guilds have responded to calls from within the screen production industry for increased and visible cooperation and communication, by setting up a pan-industry body named SINZ (Screen Industry New Zealand). SINZ is open to associations of those working directly in the industry, as opposed to those who interface with those in the industry.

SINZ Membership includes representatives of actors, crew (as always I point out this refers in the broadest sense to all personnel on- and off-set and in pre- and post-production), directors, producers and writers — as well as cross-category associations of Maori and women in the industry.

I was bemused by speculation that this group would be challenged to agree on anything, to locate common ground. In an industry so fundamentally reliant on collaboration, and where competitive lines cannot be drawn between ‘corporate’ entities — because work-teams are constantly forming, disbanding, re-forming and merging — clearly what is good for the industry is good for all. I can happily report the inaugural meeting confirmed that the majority of issues are shared, and that this pan-industry body will collaborate toward positive change that benefits all its members.

Mixing it up – the only recipe for success in Escalator, IMHO

I had a chat with the NZFC a while back, including and concern over perceptions of the Escalator fund — reports the fund might be seen as a way to force reductions in crew rates. The NZFC explained the principal behind the fund for ‘newbies’ types to gain experience in the industry (and I paraphrase). Certainly not to offer crazy-low-rates to experienced crew. Hmmm, I said, it strikes me that expecting anyone to try for less than the most experienced crew they can find for any given production, is a bit naïve… Not least in a small industry characterised by generosity and a lack of demarcating lines between departments. I added that success of Escalator as a training ground surely relies on mixing up the crew: using some key, experienced people, some relatively inexperienced and some total newbies. How else are skills going to be handed on from those with experience to those new to the industry?

Having had more time to think about it I maintain this stance. And I’m in favour of suggestions of funding less movies with higher rates, over more movies with lower rates, given that is the choice facing funding agencies. It’s brilliant the NZFC has confirmed Escalator contracts must guarantee backend for crew from runaway successes — that had to be a minimum for supporting the scheme (and I said so in our meeting). But it’s also clear that engaging a crew with a mixture of experience requires more than a wing-and-a-prayer. I personally cannot imagine being able to afford to work without pay for even a week! I realise some can and do manage it, and there are probably cases where it’s not wildly unreasonable — bottom line though, anyone who brings something significant to the table deserve (at the very least) some remuneration during the time they are undertaking the work. It’s not reasonable nor sustainable to expect crew to work for nothing, not least as the realities of working-for-nothing are that crew actually pay out of their own pockets for the privilege. As it is so wisely written in ‘12 things they didn’t teach you in Film School’ (www.nztecho.com): Understand that when a producer says ‘if you work on this project for less money then you will be on full rates for the next’, you have a less than 20% chance of even being on the next project.

High production levels and mentoring

At the risk of getting a bit profound, I’ve got an axe to grind about mentoring and I’m going to sharpen my argument as we have been seeing healthy production levels lately. It echoes Sioux’s message (page 24) about reaching out to mentor newbies and those wanting to step up to the next level, but puts it in a wider perspective. I won’t apologise for the weight I put on the issue: I think it’s essential to look up — not just up from your camera/schedule/palette/boom, but — from the industry itself to the wider community. To consider how society feeds into our industry and how we as an industry contribute to society.

It’s common to hear throw-away comments about the current batches of young people being ‘less’: less smart, less respectful, less committed. It’s incredibly seductive to give in to such simplistic explanations, to roll your eyes and avoid taking chances. Conversely, when you see younger crew doing a good job it’s very tempting to see them as exceptions to the rule. I’ve co-opted a theory about this sort of thing. I forget where I first heard about it, but I think the impacts cannot be overstated. I think they cut to the heart of our society (I know, I know, it’s true though).

Our communities have moved away from apprenticeships, wholesale. In the screen production industry an apprenticeship/training used to mean working your way up through the ranks, and learning a lot as you went along, until you found your natural place. Now young adults learn practical skills in herds of their peers within tertiary institutions. The blind-leading-the-blind, supposedly to learn all they need from distant mentors standing at the whiteboard. The best mentor in the world cannot do this job adequately under such conditions. Meaningful engagement is required, and it must be (figuratively speaking) man-to-man. Unfortunately I think the result of the trend toward formal education for any and every vocation, is a profound lack of mentoring—especially, I would maintain, for young males — not just into jobs but into adulthood itself. What we’ve ended up with are 17-year-olds mentoring each other. Any wonder they can get a bit too cocky, lack a robust work ethic and end up believing their own hype?

All young adults need examples of what it means to be a man, or a woman, respectively, that come from outside the immediate home. Even those lucky (rare?) ones with great parental figures at home, reach a stage where they need mentors outside the family to teach them what it means to be an adult.

So when you take on a mentoring role, you are doing something pretty damn important. If your charge needs a (metaphorical) kick up the backside, then that’s what you are there to show them. If they need encouragement, you need to do that too. Their mates aren’t going to do it, and though they might well have their first experience of learning ‘the hard way’ – it’s more than likely they’ll actually love you for it in the end.